~ by Bowie Snodgrass
One goal for Faith House is to be a place where we root ourselves deeper into our respective texts and traditions while interpreting them for our particular context. The other goal is to have a gathering with a "living room" feel, a space where we can come as we are to encounter each other through sharing, listening, and finding God through our religious practices and experience.
We want to be a place where we can have community conversations about how we live our lives, including the realities of life in Manhattan. This second preview was designed along the lines of what Johny Baker calls “Worship 2.0 – creative, highly participative, valuing community as the content, open source, low control where the expert worship leader is replaced by teams self publishing creative content.” The title of our interactive conversation was – At Home in Manhattan, Heart of the Empire – a little like a Zen Buddhist koan (i.e. "a succinct paradoxical statement or question used as a meditation discipline" - Britannica.com).
As people arrived at the SuBud Chelsea Center in mid-town Manhattan, they munched on berries and veggies, learned about Faith House, had time to mingle and check out various stations set up around the space. Rabia, our Muslim co-leader, called us to prayer with a gorgeous, traditional Muslim adhan. When she finished, I opened my eyes to see that people had come to sit in the circle of chairs and gathered together in the main space. Samir welcomed everyone and shared some of his personal journey towards Faith House and then we began with the Jewish Sh'ma, the Christian Lord's Prayer, the Muslim Al-Fatiha, and an inspiring reading from the Hindu Rig Veda.
I expressed our hopes for this time together – namely for people to have individual insights into their conceptions of home and empire (particularly as those two concepts relate to their relationship with NYC and the USA) and learn what these words might mean to others.
We began with fifteen minutes to explore six stations. There was no correct order or required number to visit. These stations were not about completing a checklist, but rather means to "check in" with yourself, encounter new ideas, reflect, or whirl like a dervish! One station was in fact called WHIRL: a room where Rabia was giving 1-minute whirling lessons, along with her friend Aishah, and an iPod hooked up to a set of speakers.
In the front hallway, was the WRITE station, asking people to share whatever words or thoughts came to mind. On a piece of paper with the word EMPIRE, people added: "scary and dehumanizing," "domination," "temporary," "every empire shall end." By USA: "a noble ideal too often compromised." Next to NYC: "my 1st love," "love hate relationship," "is my home… at the moment." And alongside HOME, people wrote: "acceptance," "growth," "happiness," "shelter," "safe," "a context in which I can express my whole self freely."
An ART station provided magazines and catalogues for collages. Our "home" collage featured Manhattan skylines, fancy home décor from catalogues, little kids jumping around, and pop-culture icons alongside eccentrically attired women. A second collage was assembled atop a map of the USA. One person pasted a red path from Southern California to NYC and someone else cut a yellow heart jaggedly in two, putting one half on Manhattan and the other in Washington State. Others added imagery or headlines that related to the wall along the Mexico border and the hope of getting past our racial and political divisions.
There was a station to READ: with a Jewish "Prayer for Our Country", Psalm 137:1-5 (Jewish Tanakh), Matthew 6:25-34 and Ephesians 6:10-18 (Christian Bible), Al-Baqarah 2:21-22 (Qu’ran), Tao Te Ching Chapter 54, definitions of "Empire" from Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, and an insightful article by Reza Aslan called "The War for Islam" from the Boston Globe.
Near the food, there was a station asking WHO IS YOUR NEIGHBOR, with cards to fill out by introducing yourself to someone you don't know and asking their name and why they came to the gathering. Our final station was a place to PRAY by tying a strip of cloth onto a branch, a practice from Zen Buddhism.
After a quarter of an hour exploring the stations, we asked people to sort into four self-selected groups, based on shapes: circle, square, squiggle, and triangle. We had wonderful conversations for another twenty minutes and as might be expected… the circles embraced common ground, the triangles talked about change, the squiggles wandered through many topics, and the squares spent half their time discussing their discomfort with the lack of structure during the time for stations. People shared many thoughts about their notions of home and empire and this wild and wonderful city called New York.
When we came back together as a full group, a spokesperson from each small cluster shared some highlights from their small group, after which, we opened the floor. Although the afternoon began with people’s various responses to the idea of an American empire, it ended primarily with personal reflections on “home”… having multiple homes, being bi-national, being transient, the loneliness of New York City, and the freedom of home as a place where one can "sign and dance naked!"
As our time wound down, we transitioned from conversation to prayer. People prayed silently and shared prayers publicly, ending with the utterance, "this is my prayer." The group was invited to echo back, "this is our prayer."
We had planned to end our time together with a celebratory nigun, a wordless sung prayer from the Jewish tradition (a melody with consonants like lai, di, dai), and dancing. However, our Jewish co-leader's father had passed away the previous week and she was with her family during a time of mourning, so in respect and solidarity, we played a haunting recording of an acappella soloist singing the Alter Rebbe's Nigun while we sat, stood, or knelt together (listen to an alternate recording, piano version, on YouTube).
When the song ended, Samir gave announcements, and people mingled, ate, and helped break down the space. By 7 pm, we were all back on the street again, heading home, to city events, or out with friends.
Our evaluation forms asked people to share an insight they had from the day. One person commented that the "existential struggle with elements of [one's] self parallels the challenge of coexisting with community, as well as the struggle of creating home/empire on a more macro-level." Another person said, they realized that “other people feel ‘home-less’ in the way I feel.” And others said: "we find home in each other."
These are our prayers. Can I get an Amen?
Please use the comment area below (a Web 2.0 feature) to contribute to this conversation. What were your impressions of our second preview? What are your thoughts on being “at home in Manhattan, heart of the empire”?
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