FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

Two Poems That Will Stop You In Your Religious Tracks

~ by Samir Selmanovic

April is National Poetry Month. Here are two poems of war I recently came across (thank you Robert Darken for “Revenge” and Erica Wright for “The Diameter of the Bomb”). Read them and be prepared to carry them inside of you for weeks to come.  These are about you and me, no matter what our religion, race, or nationality. We fall within the diameter of every bomb and we all find solace in suffering of our enemies. And we have a say about the wars raging close and far away. No war is ever merely their war.

THE DIAMETER OF THE BOMB

(by Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000),
translated from Hebrew by Yehuda Amichai and Ted Hughes,
Selected Poems edited by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort)

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its
effective range –
about seven meters.
And in it four dead and eleven wounded.
And around them in a greater circle
of pain and time are scattered
two hospitals and one cemetery.
But the young woman who was
buried where she came from
over a hundred kilometers away
enlarges the circle greatly.
And the lone man who weeps over her death
in a far corner of a distant country
includes the whole world in the circle.
And I won’t speak at all about the crying of orphans
that reaches to the seat of God
and from there onward, making
the circle without end and without God.

                REVENGE

                (Nazareth, April 15, 2006,
                by Taha Muhammad Ali,
                translated from Arabic by Peter Cole,
                Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin)

                At times ... I wish
                I could meet in a duel
                the man who killed my father
                and razed our home,
                expelling me
                into
                a narrow country.
                And if he killed me,
                I’d rest at last,
                and if I were ready—
                I would take my revenge!

                *

                But if it came to light,
                when my rival appeared,
                that he had a mother
                waiting for him,
                or a father who’d put
                his right hand over
                the heart’s place in his chest
                whenever his son was late
                even by just a quarter-hour
                for a meeting they’d set—
                then I would not kill him,
                even if I could.

                *

                Likewise ... I
                would not murder him
                if it were soon made clear
                that he had a brother or sisters
                who loved him and constantly longed to see him.
                Or if he had a wife to greet him
                and children who
                couldn’t bear his absence
                and whom his gifts would thrill.
                Or if he had
                friends or companions,
                neighbors he knew
                or allies from prison
                or a hospital room,
                or classmates from his school …
                asking about him
                and sending him regards.

                *

                But if he turned
                out to be on his own—
                cut off like a branch from a tree—
                without a mother or father,
                with neither a brother nor sister,
                wifeless, without a child,
                and without kin or neighbors or friends,
                colleagues or companions,
                then I’d add not a thing to his pain
                within that aloneness—
                not the torment of death,
                and not the sorrow of passing away.
                Instead I’d be content
                to ignore him when I passed him by
                on the street—as I
                convinced myself
                that paying him no attention
                in itself was a kind of revenge.

Good Atheism, Bad Atheism

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Even though there haven’t been any new arguments against the existence of God since late 18th century, atheism is hot again. The enlightenment—a powerful movement in recent centuries that helped us question superstitious stories told by our grandmother as well as theology taught by respected university professors—has triumphed. One glance at the Google News page makes this abundantly clear. Religion is not in charge of the world anymore.

However, spurred by fear of religious fundamentalism, new atheists want to go further than their forefathers. Instead of arguing about the existence of God, they are fighting against the existence of religion itself, calling humanity to brace for an apocalyptic showdown between faith and reason. 

Religion does deserve to be challenged. “Deserves” has two meanings. First, religion deserves the pain of criticism and correction because of its failures to live up to its own ideals. Second, religion deserves the blessing of criticism and correction because it has often been a precious catalyst for justice, peace and beauty in the world. Recent challenges should therefore be welcome by religious people as a chance to see, to grieve, to repent, and then with renewed wisdom act for the common good.

Atheism at its best is crucial in this process of religious renewal. With its own set of beliefs, constructive atheism—often described as humanism—sees God as a human creation and not vice versa. It therefore locates the mystery of life in this world, this matter, this humanity, as the only one we have. It insists that all religion must land on the ground where we humans actually live. Religion must learn to live on earth. If religion is not valuable on earth, it is not valuable at all.

Constructive humanism’s contribution to our life together on this planet is its insistence that every religion ought to embrace, not just its adherents, but the whole planet as their ethical community. In our newly small planet, this is not a matter of humility or virtue any more, but of survival. In this way, these atheists are like the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, calling people out of their hypocrisy toward better faith and a better world.

However, attacks that fight against all religion, instead of bad religion, are bad atheism. It reinforces the suspicion of people who cling to the status quo in religion that atheists are on a power trip of their own, on a mission to strip the world of mystery, beauty and spirit—getting rid of anything and everything that humans cannot understand, control or subjugate.

The problem with anti-religionist atheism is not that it questions the existence or character of God. It is problematic because it embodies a contempt for any faith at all—any belief or practice toward creating value and meaning for ourselves. In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Lee Siegel writes,

“The leap of faith is really a very ordinary operation. We take it every time we fall in love, expect kindness from someone, impulsively sacrifice some little piece of our self-interest. After all, you cannot prove the existence of truth, beauty, goodness and decency; you cannot prove the dignity of being human, or your obligation to treat people as ends and not just as means. You take a gamble on the existence of these inestimable things. For that reason, when you lay scientific, logical and empirical siege to the leap of faith at the core of the religious impulse, you are not just attacking faith in God. You are attacking the act of faith itself, faith in anything that can’t be proved. But it just so happens that the qualities that make life rich, joyful and humane cannot be proved.”

Atheistic fundamentalism is a dogmatic expression of a worldview equally capable of destroying humanity with zeal and effectiveness as any fundamentalist religion. Shutting out the spiritual, mystical, metaphorical and transcendent, atheistic fundamentalism resorts to cleaning up the world of those who disagree and creating a naked public square, devoid of any options but its own.

While philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche rightfully observed that “Every truth is a tool in the hands of those in power,” atheistic fundamentalists have come to an irrational belief that they are an exception as they are trying to sell their ideas to those to whom they so openly condescend. What can be a greater power trip than believing everyone is on a power trip except oneself? Instead of promoting a secularization that fosters religious pluralism, these atheists impose secularism—a closed worldview, devoid of the windows and doors of self-doubt and hope.

To the end of his life, Sigmund Freud was an uncompromising atheist, describing belief in God in his book The Future of an Illusion as a “collective neurosis.” But his last book was titled Moses and Monotheism, in which he suggested a surprising view about religion, recognizing the poetry and promise of religion. He argued that Judaism and other expressions of monotheism helped free humanity from bondage to the immediate, empirical world, opening up fresh and renewing possibilities for human spirit and practice. He argued that people who can worship what is presented in symbolic terms, practice the ultimate exploration of the invisible inner life. For Freud, faith in God opened a gift of inwardness and imagination.

Both faith and doubt are opposites of certainty and therefore part of the same whole that refuses to see only the obvious. To end religion, would be to end imagination.

The stingy polemics of religionists who defend religion at all costs on one side and anti-religionists on the other seem like arguments fought in an attempt to justify closing one’s ears to hearing the Other and sharing the planet with others. Both of their identities depend on a divided world. Instead of leading us to generosity and great hope toward an unknown future, and instead of enlightening and inspiring us, religionists and anti-religionists are moving us into a new dark age, both using God to bring an end to imagination.

People will not stop looking into the past and mining religion for its spiritual treasures and hard-learned historical lessons. And they will not stop organizing themselves into new kinds of religious communities. For we have learned from human history that religion does not have to be the opium, but can be the poetry of the people.

(from Signs of the Times, Australia, March 2008, adapted by the author)

Encounter the Mystics: Julian of Norwich

~ Dr. Frederick Roden is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Connecticut and lives in New York City. He has published primarily on homosexuality and Christianity. He is a lay Associate of the Episcopal Order of Julian of Norwich (see www.orderofjulian.org) and the author of a commentary companion to her text which will be published by Liturgical Press later this year. He is currently working on a book on Jewish/Christian intersections and can be reached at fsroden@aol.com.

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well…”  This familiar phrase of the 14th-century English writer Julian of Norwich inspired poet T. S. Eliot to look around his broken world—the devastation of twentieth-century war and genocide—and glimpse the power of the Unseen working in and through All Created Thing. We read these words and immediately assume that we should get what we’re asking for, that our prayers should be answered, that the outcome we crave is the outcome God will provide. In Julian’s theology, the answer is: yes and no. For her, as for all the great mystics and poets, the Divine is ever bursting through the material world. She maintains that we cannot know ourselves without knowing God; that God is nearer to us than our own souls. The depth of our human experience is firmly grounded in the Divine: the Divine is fully known in our material experience, not outside of it. Our deepest longings— our truest selves—are inseparable from God.

The problem comes with how things look on the outside versus inside. This question of separation versus inseparability defines Julian’s theology. She had prayed for a full experience of Jesus’s Passion. She wanted to feel the depth of human suffering her God knew. Her desire led to a vision that opened her awareness. Julian could not turn from the suffering human body of her God because there she found her heaven. Her God willed to know human suffering so deeply that it physically “one-ed” God with All Created Thing. Julian’s famous “all shall be well,” so often cited out of context, is God’s answer to her questioning of this eternal “one-ing.” How can all be well given the brokenness, suffering, and separation in the world? How can all be well given what she had been taught to understand as “sin”? In the theology Julian develops, “sin” is literally no-thing. It is separation: the wound that God constantly works to heal—the brokenness of our experience for which we can never be blamed. In and by our wounds (our divisions) we are healed and the world is made whole.

In Jewish terms, that opening is the space of tikkun olam, the repair of the world. In Julian’s words it is the work of “mercy” and “grace” dynamic and active in and through Creation. Julian’s God is a verb. This God’s sole purpose is healing separation. In a sense we have a choice whether to answer this call. Yet Divine Love (inseparable from Divine Reason) continuously works in and through us whether we like it or not, whether we cooperate or not! Julian’s Christianity understands this as the Incarnation, the Real Presence of the Divine acting through our material existence. This “Incarnation” isn’t limited to Jesus: there is no difference between God in Jesus the Christ and God operating throughout the material world. The degree and level of perfection (literally, as “fully realized,” “fully made”) may vary, but the Presence and call to be present is true for all of us in all incarnations.

Julian lived at a time of plague and war. Her society rigidly separated “saved” from “unsaved.” As much as she was a product of her culture, Julian challenged this view in claiming God as one: unity as the work, truth, and destiny of all Creation. She rejected a world-view that separated sheep from goats. While grounded in Christian Trinitarian theology, the singular experience of Divine Love working in and through the world defined that meaning Julian put forth as God’s message for all humanity. 

Julian never stopped asking questions of her God. Although professed as a hermit, her hermitage was attached to a church in a busy market town. Hers was no escape from the world but a way of living deeply in it, fully present to the experience of All Created Thing. With a literal window open to her society (who viewed her as a spiritual director) Julian conveyed her God’s ultimate message: one she spent over twenty years contemplating—the final answer to her question.  At the end of her visionary text (written in a time and place where few men and fewer women read, let alone wrote), she concluded that “Love was His meaning.”  In the end, all shall be Love. Julian did not intend that we await the end of time for realization of this Love. Rather, we are called to awaken to it in our lives as we glimpse the Divine—our truest self—in the face of The Other.

Blessed Julian of Norwich (1343-1423)

THE DAY OF

my spiritual awakening

    was the day I saw

    and knew I saw

       God in all things

       and all things in God.

River of Maybe

~ by Rabbi David Ingber

INTRODUCTION (by Samir Selmanovic)

Last Friday night I visited a wonderful Jewish congregation on the Upper West Side, Kehilat Romemu. In the spectrum of Judaism from classical to experimental, this congregation firmly holds on to both, reassuring and challenging at the same time. Rabbi David Ingber and I had met a week earlier in David’s apartment, where we passionately conversed about our dreams. No words can convey to you the warmth and depth of this community. I can only offer you a slice of my experience in hope that those of you who live in New York area will visit and see for yourself.

The service took place in a rented gym, Romemu’s new regular gathering place, with one wall of windows, many of them open, all the sounds of the street coming in. During the time of the service when we all turned towards Jerusalem (which happened to be turning our back to the windows), and when we were quietly vocalizing a Hebrew melody full of longing and hope, we were all interrupted by a woman’s voice singing on the street. 

The strong voice seemed to sing in Spanish, a melody that could be from South America or the Middle East. One could not tell. As her voiced entered the gym and overpowered ours, Rabbi David said, “let’s sing with her.”  So, we did. We all started improvising as one voice and wove our Hebrew melody into her song. Someone from the congregation shouted, “everyone, come to the window.”  We all turned around and came.  Soon, there were a hundred or so heads, all men wearing yarmulkes, looking out the windows.  Right in front of us was a Christian Easter procession, with eleven large black and white art pieces depicting the traditional stations of the cross and twelve young men dressed in white robes following a priest who was carrying a cross in the front.  They all stood in front of the building absorbed in their song. Apparently this part of Spanish Harlem was one of the stations.  The Jews started waving their hands above their heads, a motion of blessing, and many who saw us at the windows waved back.  We all got blessed!  What an awkward and sweet moment!

Then Rabbi David talked about Purim, and to illustrate his message he mentioned a video, “Stroke of Insight.”  His teaching about Purim was fitting and fascinating, so I asked him to send me his comments as well as the link for the video. Here they are:

ABOUT THE VIDEO “STROKE OF INSIGHT”:
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story of recovery and awareness -- of how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 18:44.). To watch this powerful testimony to the spiritual aspect of our lives, click HERE.

COMMENTS BY RABBI DAVID INGBER:
It was an interesting Friday night, without a doubt. So many surprises, so much that spontaneously arose from the collective heart of all those present. Purim lends itself to non-normative or even anti-nomian practices, and what transpired Friday evening certainly qualifies as that. So many memorable moments from that prayer service, but without a doubt standing by the window, waving and blessing our fellow worshipers on the street, sticks out in my mind as special. Samir, may the day soon arrive where all that unites us as children of G-d outshines all divisions. 

Here is a brief rendition of my comments Friday evening:

The story of Purim takes place in a city called Shushan. Interestingly enough, we find two Shushans mentioned in the Bible. One is called "Shushan Habirah" or Capital Shushan and the other is called just "Shushan."  Apparently, according to many commentators, there was an inner city the capital—and an outer city, the area known as Shushan. Elsewhere in the Bible, in the book of Daniel, we find an interesting remark.  We are told that in order to enter the inner city of Shushan, Shushan Habirah, one had to cross a river. The river was called "Ulay". In Hebrew, "Ulay" means “perhaps” or “maybe.” The symbolic significance of this is profound. What emerges is the assertion that in order to enter the inner city of Shushan, the location of the King, where "liberation" and "transformation" can occur, one must cross over or enter into the great not-knowing, the mysterious realm of uncertainty where all things dissolve and all edges are rounded. This to some degree is hardwired into our very biology as you will see in the video. The video clip is a prayer, a plea for us to choose that part of our brain (right hemisphere) that blurs divisions, that allows for a melting of tensions that arise in the mind that divides. This is the mystery of the statement of the Rabbis that one is obligated on Purim to "imbibe until one cannot distinguish between ‘cursed is Haman’ and ‘blessed is Mordechai’". One day a year we allow ourselves to commit fully to the notion that all the lines we draw are functional, not ontological, instrumental means to essential ends.

Rabbi David Ingber studied Philosophy and Psychology at NYU, and has learned at a wide range of yeshivot in Jerusalem and New York, from the ultra-orthodox Yeshivat Chaim Berlin, through to modern orthodox institutions such as Beit Midrash leTorah and Yeshivat Chovovei Torah. Major influences include Rav Moshe Weinberger, David Goshen, and Rav DovBer Pinson. David received his smicha from Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.  He promotes a renewed Jewish emphasis on meditative practices and is working for the integration of sacred body practices into mainstream Judaism. For more about Rabbi David click HERE.  To read New York Times article about him click HERE.  For learning more about congregation Kehilat Romemu and for the schedule of their services click HERE.

From a Novel "Life of Pi"

~ by Samir Selmanovic

I have been reading Life of Pi, a novel by Yann Martel that deserves all the praise it has been getting since it came out in 2001. I could not resist sharing this passage with you, even at the risk of doing so without checking whether I need a permission from the publisher. 

Main character, boy named Piscine Patel, grew up with his non-religious and pragmatic parents in India. Without their knowledge he developed a relationship with the local spiritual leaders and became a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu. The problem was that the priest, the imam, and the pandit did not know about the other two. Until Piscine's father invited all three of them for a meeting in Patel home (p. 66):

    My parents, the priest and the pandit looked incredulous.
    The pandit spoke. “You’re both wrong. He’s a good Hindu boy. I see him all the time at the temple coming for darshan and performing puja.”
    My parents, the imam and the priest looked astounded.
    “There is no mistake,” said the priest. “I know this boy. He is Piscine Molitor Patel and he’s a Christian.”
    “I know him too, and I tell you he’s a Muslim,” asserted the imam.
    “Nonsense!” cried the pandit. “Piscine was born  a Hindu, lives a Hindu and will die a Hindu!”
    The three wise men stared at each other, breathless and disbelieving.
    Lord, avert their eyes from me, I whispered in my soul.
    All eyes fell upon me.
    “Piscine, can this be true?” asked the imam earnestly. “Hindus and Christians are idolaters. They have many gods.”
    “And Muslims have many wives,” responded the pandit.
    The priest looked askance at both of them. “Piscine,” he nearly whispered, “there is salvation only in Jesus.”
    “Balderdash! Christians know nothing about religion,” said the pandit.
    “They strayed long ago from God’s path,” said the imam.
    “Where’s God in your religion?” snapped the priest. “You don’t have a single miracle to show for it. What kind of religion is that, without miracles?”
    “It isn’t a circus with dead people jumping out of tombs all the time, that’s what! We Muslims stick to the essential miracle of existence. Birds flying, rain falling, crops growing—these are miracles enough for us.”
    “Feathers and rain are all very nice, but we like to know that God is truly with us.”

The Community of More

~ Bill Ashlock is a seasoned business executive, writer, and want to be wood turner with a passion and calling to tend God’s trees.  Bill works out from Singapore, lives in California, and is often found in New York. His tools include innovation, excellence, and compassion with an unending view of community.

It was in India, the land of my birth, that I first found the desire to be in relationship with the Divine. I cannot recall a particular moment or event, when I came to accept the “truths” that influenced me in my early years. Looking back, one of these truths became particularly important to me: spirituality was not singular. My God-connection was more than my personal relationship with the Divine, for God always exists in community. My being is to be found in belonging to both God and humanity. 

I watched men publicly demonstrate their devotion to God. I saw some whip themselves as they walked to a temple, their lashed induced blood dripping with each stride. Others embraced extended periods of silence and withdrew from the world. Leaders of different religions, including the Christian religion of my upbringing, highlighted acts of dedication, fasting, and penitence, reminding their followers that they should do likewise. As I matured I found myself looking for something more.

Less Anti-theism, More Humanism

~ Greg Epstein serves as the Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University. He recently agreed to write his first book, Good Without God, for William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Epstein was the primary organizer of “The New Humanism,” an international conference in honor of the 30th Humanist Chaplaincy of Harvard University, which drew one of the largest and most diverse audiences of any Humanist gathering in North American history. He blogs for Newsweek magazine and The Washington Post, and his work as a Humanist rabbi and Chaplain has been featured by National Public Radio, BBC Radio, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, The Jewish Daily Forward, and more. 

Endorsement of Faith House Manhattan:

"Faith House Manhattan is a really intriguing idea, and quite possibly a necessary one. I would encourage my fellow Humanists, atheists, agnostics and the non-religious to check it out, and to consider getting involved. Samir Selmanovic should be commended for reaching out earnestly, in respect and friendship, to our community. We secularists and freethinkers should do the same to him and to theistically-oriented Christians, Muslims, Jews and other religious people everywhere. Global warming doesn’t care what we believe or disbelieve about a god, and that’s just one of the many dangers that may doom us if we can’t figure out how to work together and care about one another despite differences. I’m hopeful this project can help build common ground and enable us to learn from one another in New York City and beyond."

Following post is adapted for Faith House by Greg Epstein, originally posted on On Faith, an online conversation about religion facilitated by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and Washington Post journalist Sally Quinn.

Christopher Hitchens, author of the bestselling book God Is Not Great writes that "Religion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children."

In this quote, Sally and Jon identify a classic example of the way in which Christopher Hitchens’s approach to religion goes far beyond atheism and is really better understood as anti-theism.

While atheism is the lack of belief in any god, anti-theism means actively seeking out the worst aspects of faith in god and portraying them as representative of all religion. Anti-theism seeks to shame and embarrass people away from religion, browbeating them about the stupidity of belief in a bellicose god.

Anti-theists are often brilliant scientific thinkers. The ones I know tend to be passionately ethical in their personal lives. And as in the case of Hitchens, they can be ferociously eloquent. So why hasn’t anti-theism ever gained any real political or social power?

In most people’s minds, “religion” does not just stand merely for belief in an unseen, all-seeing deity with a baritone voice and a flowing beard. It stands for the things we hold most dear: family, tradition, and community. Memories of lost loved ones and consolation in the face of death. The organized pursuit of social justice. Not to mention music, art, architecture, and I could go on and on.

These things are all good. If you take a rhetorical blowtorch to religion without acknowledging the way it provides them, you get precisely what we have today: a nation and world where despite all our scientific knowledge, 80 to 90 percent of people say they are religious.

Now let me be perfectly clear about myself. I have zero belief in god, gods, goddesses, or any other manner of supernatural spirits. I affirm that there is one and only one world: this natural world. As far as any human being will ever know we get only one life, from womb to tomb.

My conviction that this life is all I have, however, is precisely why I don’t want to spend my days focused on the worst in religion. I prefer seeking the best in each of us. I am not an antitheist, and not simply an atheist, but a Humanist.

Humanism is the non-religious pursuit of all that is best in human life. It is based on reason, compassion, and creativity, and promotes loving and ethical connections with family, community, all human beings, and the natural world surrounding us. It is a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment, aspiring to the greater good of humanity.

Simply put, Humanism is being good and living well without god. And that is no small matter, because it is hard to live a good life in this world regardless of what you believe. We human beings are all so imperfect—we are hurt so easily and too quick to hurt others. We get sick and die just when it is least fair and most painful.

Ultimately, we are social animals. We need each other. Our lives are best when we take part in an ethical community that extends far beyond ourselves; for thousands of years, religion has been the best human institution at providing that community. So if all we stand for is anti-theism, we will get nowhere, even though Hitchens is right -- partially -- about the evil religion can do.

Today, the billion of us around the world who are not religious can and must join together to create a humanistic alternative to religion. And let us do so while honoring the good in those of our religious sisters and brothers who are trying to live well according to a belief system we cannot share.

For a Humanist, it is not enough to simply rage, rage against the dying of the enlightenment. Let us get involved in Humanism and make this world, though it will never be perfect, a better place.

Links to explore:

The New Humanism
American Humanist Association
Institute for Humanist Studies
International Humanist and Ethical Union

While atheism is the lack of belief in any god, anti-theism means actively seeking out the worst aspects of faith in god and portraying them as representative of all religion. Anti-theism seeks to shame and embarrass people away from religion, browbeating them about the stupidity of belief in a bellicose god.

Anti-theists are often brilliant scientific thinkers. The ones I know tend to be passionately ethical in their personal lives. And as in the case of Hitchens, they can be ferociously eloquent. So why hasn’t anti-theism ever gained any real political or social power?

In most people’s minds, “religion” does not just stand merely for belief in an unseen, all-seeing deity with a baritone voice and a flowing beard. It stands for the things we hold most dear: family, tradition, and community. Memories of lost loved ones and consolation in the face of death. The organized pursuit of social justice. Not to mention music, art, architecture, and I could go on and on.

Islam: Three YouTube Videos to Begin

~ by Samir Selmanovic

The more deeply people know about religions and cultures other than their own, the less perturbed they are be about the idea of Faith House. Our recent Sabbath poem by William Stafford begins with the words:

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star

The chasm of ignorance about our religions as well as our cultures at times seem insurmountable, even to those who are eager to learn. Those of us in the west might know more about the fantasy worlds of reality shows, Lord of the Rings, or Desperate Housewives than about real communities that surround us.

However, to love our friends, family, neighbors, enemies, anyone at all, we have to know them. One cannot respect what one does not know. So it is with our religious worlds. We fear what we don't understand, and what we fear we avoid. This isolation is a form of spiritual laziness, a failure to become fully human by learning about humanity through humans other than ourselves, it is subsistence really. When we don’t know the Other, we fear the Other, and when we fear the Other, even their words of blessing sound harsh and their words of peace threaten us.

This chasm between cultures is so huge that for many of us this learning task that comes with globalization seems too daunting to start.

But a start is much more than just a beginning. I realize this every time I find the courage to step into an experience with the Other. Most of the time, awkwardness quickly gives way to kindness, generosity, laughter, and blessing. So when I found a saying from Horace (65 B.C.E.) printed on a tea bag paper tag, I tore the tag and put it into my wallet to remind me that entering the experience of a relationship with the Other goes much farther than merely crossing a starting line. Wise old Horace wrote :

    "He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin!"

The beauty and depth of our individual lives, cultures, and religions is so vast, I don't think we will ever be anything but beginners. But again, to begin is to make a great progress. If you have never begun learning about Islam (or any of our religions) and people who embody it, reject fear. I invite you to take some time to begin by seeing these three short videos. They are not expensive productions designed to wow you, but simple samples of spiritual, social, and global experience of the Muslim members of our human family.

VIDEO 1: One of the ways we learn about the Other is through their songs. Congregational hymns tell us about the heart of a congregation. Popular songs tell us about the heart of a population. Here is a song video I got from Lauralea Banks, titled Al Mu'allim, which means Teacher, by Sami Yusuf. The video is followed by the lyrics. As you listen and read, feel free to enter a new experience. You don't have to agree with everything you hear in order to feel empathy, get inspiration, and thus finally begin to know!

VIDEO 2: In December 2007, over 2,000 American Muslims were asked what they wished they could say to the world and this is their reply. This informative and at times humorous production is an unofficial music video for Kareem Salama's A Land Called Paradise, produced and directed by Lena Khan.

VIDEO 3: This is a song by Yusuf Islam, known as Cat Stevens. This grand performance of Peace Train was recorded at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, December 11, 2006.

AL MU'ALLIM

Al-Mu'allim (Teacher)

We once had a Teacher
The Teacher of teachers,
He changed the world for the better
And made us better creatures,
Oh Allah we’ve shamed ourselves
We’ve strayed from Al-Mu'allim,
Surely we’ve wronged ourselves
What will we say in front of him?
Oh Mu'allim...

He was Muhammad salla Allahu 'alayhi wa sallam,
Muhammad, mercy upon Mankind,
He was Muhammad salla Allahu 'alayhi wa sallam,
Muhammad, mercy upon Mankind,
Teacher of all Mankind.
Abal Qasim [one of the names of the Prophet]

Chorus:
Ya Habibi ya Muhammad
(My beloved O Muhammad)
Ya Shafi'i ya Muhammad
(My intercessor O Muhammad)
Khayru khalqillahi Muhammad
(The best of Allah’s creation is Muhammad)
Ya Mustafa ya Imamal Mursalina
(O Chosen One, O Imam of the Messengers)
Ya Mustafa ya Shafi'al 'Alamina
(O Chosen One, O intercessor of the worlds)

He prayed while others slept
While others ate he’d fast,
While they would laugh he wept
Until he breathed his last,
His only wish was for us to be
Among the ones who prosper,
Ya Mu'allim peace be upon you,
Truly you are our Teacher,
Oh Mu'allim..

Chorus . . .

He taught us to be just and kind
And to feed the poor and hungry,
Help the wayfarer and the orphan child
And to not be cruel and miserly,
His speech was soft and gentle,
Like a mother stroking her child,
His mercy and compassion,
Were most radiant when he smiled

Chorus . . .

Lyrics and Composition: Sami Yusuf
Producer: Sami Yusuf

FOR VIDEOS 1 AND 2 CLICK THE LINK BELOW

In Their Own Words: A Talk With Samir (AUDIO)

There’s something about hearing it firsthand – without the barrier of ink and paper (or a computer screen) and a need to wonder about tone and meaning. And with the delicate first steps of Faith House Manhattan, and it’s commitment to listening deeply and speaking authentically, people associated with Faith House here in New York have a desire to build the dialogue in clear tones. In Their Own Words seeks to hear from voices on all sides of the issue; those looking on, those deeply involved, those unsure of where all this is taking us. Every voice is important and we invite you to join in by leaving a comment or contacting us directly at info@faithhousemanhattan.org.

Length of the interview: app. 20 minutes

Click here to LISTEN "A Talk With Samir" ...

Click here to DOWNLOAD "A Talk With Samir" …

Interview conducted by Stacey Antoine Savariau, JD, CHHC, AADP, a Certified Holistic Health Counselor, creativity coach, workshop leader and an evolved attorney. After working for years as a litigator she retired from the courtroom to pursue her other passions. Stacey is devoted to coaching, teaching & facilitating workshops & women’s wisdom circles for creating vibrant health, awakening creativity, restoring passionate and balanced living & discovering the work we were born to do. She reaches a global audience through her site, www.OneWorldWellness.com. Stacey lives in a brownstone on a tree-lined street in Brooklyn, N.Y. Where else?

Four Stories of God

~ by Samir Selmanovic

For more than 20 years since my baptism (a ritual by which one signals publicly that one has become a follower), people have often given me the opportunity to “tell my story”—to “give a testimony,” as we Christians like to call it. Despite the fact that my life with God was not only passionate but also conflicted and complicated, the story itself was easy to tell. It was all one story. One life. One song. 

But it is not that easy anymore. Today, as early Hasidic Rav Kook did long ago, I find myself wondering which song I should sing. Should I look into my own soul and sing the song of the struggles and joys I encounter within? Or should I move beyond myself and sing the song of my people, my religion? Or maybe I should rise above my Christian story and sing a song of all songs of humanity? Or should I spread my heart still wider and sing a song with all creation?

Is the story of God a story of my own soul, a story of my religion, a story of humanity or a story of all that is? To accept all these stories as the stories of God is to imply that my religion then becomes only a part of the ultimate story of the world, not the ultimate story itself.

Orthodox rabbi David Hartman, concerned with the perennial conflict in Jerusalem, insists that different melodies of one God must be cherished: “Each group feels that its way is the only way: there is one God, therefore there has to be one truth. Christians build their story on the Jewish story and therefore feel they are inheritors of Judaism. Muslims built their story on the Bible, and therefore they feel that they are the perfect expression of monotheism. Now, we’ve got to get out of each other’s story. We can’t feel that in order for me to tell my story, your story has to end. . . . In other words, affirmation [of my story] does not require that I demonise those who are different from me. I don’t have to build conviction out of hate and fear.” If my identity depends on annihilation of other stories, I cannot really sing all four songs of God.

What if God measures our religion by the way it contributes to stories other than one’s own? What if our religions will be judged by the good they bring to their non-adherents? Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel says this succinctly: “When in the afterglow of religious insight I can see a way that is good for all humans as it is for me—I will know it is His way.”

In the same vein, The Quran reads, “Had God willed He would have made you into one religious community; but it was his will to test you in what He gave you. So compete with each other in doing good works” (Quran 5:48). Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University contends that “there’s no more crucial problem for our day than to be able to cross religious frontiers while preserving our own integrity. In fact, I think this the only exciting intellectual adventure of our times.”

So I find it hard to “give a testimony” today without offending people of my own religion whose identity depends on a divided and conflicted world. As a follower of Christ, I have grown to believe in a world that is larger than Christianity. Jesus called this larger world the kingdom of God. It is the symphony made of all stories, individual and communal, our magnanimous God is involved with in this world.

Only God is God. And Christianity is not. Nor Judaism. Nor Islam. Paradoxically, this realization about the greatness of God is a deeply Christian, Jewish and Muslim teaching.

When I pray the Lord’s Prayer, I begin with the first word, “Our . . .” (see Matthew 6:9) and I stop and ask myself, “Who do I include in this Our?” I remind myself that the story of God is bigger than my personal story, bigger than the story of my religion, bigger than the story of all humanity, and bigger than the story of all creation. In the kingdom of God, these four stories are all really my stories—all at the same time—woven together, giving meaning and life to each other.

(from Signs of the Times, Australia, September 2007, adapted by the author)

Reflections: The World We Want to Live In

~ by Rathi Raja

Rathi Raja is president of the Arsha Vedanta Center of Long Island and executive director of the Young Indian Culture Group. She has been featured extensively on PBS in their “Asian Indians in America” and in The New York Times. She is an active member of the Herricks Clergy Coalition, an interfaith group based in New Hyde Park, engaging in educating through programs in the community, schools and colleges. She has been a Hindu spiritual teacher for the past 17 years, sharing the teachings of the Vedic vision with youth and adults. She is an ethnographer and storyteller of Asian Indian heritage, and a founding trustee of Young Indian Culture Group, Inc. Rathi served as a panel member of the New York State Council on the Arts for 2003-2005, was named the Long Island Traditions’ Honoree of the Year, and received the Nassau County Community Service Award in 2000. (Recently we had the privilege of sitting down with this effervescent woman, and found her views most insightful and energizing as we continue to make plans for Faith House. Here is her contribution to our blog.)

Healing starts by knowing ourselves and then allowing the powers of desire and action to do their work. Inter-religious or inter-group dialogue without self-reflection takes us nowhere. That vital first step of knowing oneself facilitates every other progress. Without self-awareness, a dialogue is a nonstarter.

Our relationships should be far more than tolerant, but a true spirit of tolerance matters. Not one based on law, for that will be short lived, rather one rooted in compassion. Tolerance without compassion is barren.

Every religious tradition builds on the cornerstone of compassion, because this is a key aspect of what it means to be truly human. No matter what our religious tradition, we can find compassion there. It may be buried under layers of distrust, anxiety, hatred, anger and jealousy, but when we rediscover this compassion, tolerance will happen!

And out of these two—tolerance and compassion—will come trust in each other. Lack of trust is the most eroding thing in our lives today, at a personal level, in our families, community, and country. Without getting that trust back, we will never know how to speak of and live out peace.

Faith that comes from restored trust, when expressed through our personal lives or organized religion, can douse the flames of hatred and anger, and dismantle the rigid boundaries we sometimes erect for self-protection. In contrast, a faith that encourages its followers to draw rigid boundaries will lead to deepening distrust and fear, and a sense of hopelessness about ever being able to establish peaceful human relationships.

We spend so much of the world’s resources on biological diseases, but what about the spread of hatred? Unfortunately distrust and hatred spread as fast as biological diseases and are most destructive in terms of loss of human life. Like restoring human health, restoring human trust will bring with it unmeasurable good.

What is key in this process of rediscovery of what we can be? Forgiveness! We must forgive ourselves first, for our past fears and for our hatreds. And we must forgive others for the pain and sorrow they have caused us. We must forgive society for our collective ignorance and forgive history for its wide swath of painful, violent events. Justice without forgiveness is an empty vessel that will not quench our thirst or heal our social ills.

The only antidote for this epidemic is to realize there is a larger force, a bigger order to this universe, and to take the journey forward to re-learn to trust this grace for all and this order. That is how people change—true trust, one person at a time. And when these individuals find one another and become friends, the movement can multiply exponentially.

Just as our physical environment needs immediate attention if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences, our social and religious environments need immediate attention if we are to quell the spirit of violence, mistrust, and hatred engulfing so many areas of our world. The path away from the brink begins with the steps of self-exploration, compassion, forgiveness, and trust. These are the essential healing qualities we must share with every person we meet.

Thank you for Faith House dream. Your enthusiasm and openness is based on strength and a desire to reach beyond the tried, tested and failed sequence of steps. You are curious and will surely discover that people are waiting for that spark to know they have nothing to fear, only something to gain!

Count me in friends!

________________________________________________

Truth is one: sages call it by different names
It is the one Sun who reflects in all the ponds;
It is the one water which slakes the thirst of all;
It is the one air which sustains all life;
It is the one fire which shines in all houses;
Colors of the cows may be different, but the milk is white;
Systems of Faith may be different but God is One.
As the rain dropping from the sky finds its way towards the ocean,
So the prayers offered in all faiths reach the One God, who is supreme.

    —Rig Veda

What's in the House?

~ by Samir Selmanovic

When I came back from a trip couple of months ago, I found a sheet of paper, “a surprise for dad,” on my desk. My daughters Leta, who is 10, and Ena, 12, drew Faith House as an actual house, with rooms, an attic, a yard, and a basement. This is how they imagine the future. 

- for a larger image: click on the picture -

 
They latter asked me to give them the password for my computer. “What if you die?" they said.  "If something happens to you, we want to work on it."  I was startled. My wife Vesna and I have thought them to pursue a life of loving God and belonging to a real community, but I did not know they so quickly understood that these ideals are larger than any one of us.

If you want to read more about their relationship to Faith House, you can click at the following two posts:

Not a Believer Yet (April 3, 2007)

Her Prayer (July 10, 2007)

Enough in Common

~ by Roy Naden, an author and Professor Emeritus (Andrews University, MI) who lives, gardens, and writes in Seattle area

It’s Thanksgiving Day 2007, a beautifully warm, sunny day here on the North West Coast where I write.  Today I had to call a cab for a friend and her two little children newly arrived from Africa.  They are coming to have their first traditional American meal with us.  I called Tony’s cell phone.  He’s been taking me to and from Seattle-Tacoma airport for over a decade.  He seems to work 365 days a year.

An unrecognizable voice answers.  “Is Tony there?” I ask.  An Indian-accented male voice says, “No.”  I repeat the number I thought I had dialed and ask, “Do I have the right number?”  “Yes,” he confirms, “but Tony isn’t here.  He’s dead!”   

I stammer out the first words that come from the tip of my tongue:  “But he took me to the airport a couple of months ago just before he left for India on a business trip!”—as if that comment had any relevance.  “What happened?” I continued.   “It happened on his trip.  Someone gave him the poison.  He died.”  The conversation also seemed to die at that moment.  I had no idea who this man was, or what to say to him, or what to comment about the circumstances of his death.  What do you say to a total stranger when someone you both know has died?

Pictures of Tony began floating through my memory.  He was such a dapper Indian.  Impeccably dressed, his cab immaculately kept, and like a crown he proudly wore the turban common to all men of the Sikh religion, holding their long hair.  The practice of allowing one's hair to grow naturally is a symbol of respect for the perfection of God's creation.  He seemed to have an endless supply of brightly colored cloth with which he wove his head gear, from brilliant yellow to rich purple, and very occasionally he picked me up wearing a black turban.  But the drabness didn’t suit him.  He was always so talkative and helpful.  We got to know each other’s families over the years.  He followed my various trips around the world by taking me to my departing flight and being the first one to welcome me back to Seattle.  And when he was about to leave on an annual business trip to India, he would tell me all he hoped to accomplish.

The man on the line gave me the contact information for Tony’s family. As I sat looking at the number I had just written down on a post-it pad, I didn’t know what to do.  I had never actually met Tony’s wife; didn’t even know her name.  But I thought I should call her and express my sympathy.  That seemed like an awkward conversation.  If she had been a Christian, it would have been easy.

I’m a slow thinker.  I said to myself, “Tony was a sincere believer and spoke of his faith often.  But his beliefs were vastly different from mine.  I was accustomed to comforting Christians. What could possibly sustain a conversation with his wife?”  I called the number anyway.  Tony’s wife answered.  I told her my name, that we had never met, but that I had learned quite a lot about her and her two children from Tony.  Before I could continue, she exclaimed, “You must be the man from Australia!  Tony spoke about you often.”  And from there the conversation flowed easily.  Without hesitation I told her of my sadness at Tony’s passing, and I told her I would pray that God would comfort her and sustain her in her loss.  We talked for a quite a while. 

Afterwards, as I thought about the call, the more I realized how much we held in common.  Two human beings.  We knew about each other simply because her husband and I had been friends.  We both new the deep sadness of a loss in our families.  And we both believed in God.  The differences may have been more numerous than the likenesses, but the basics that really mattered we held in common: relationships, feelings, and desire to understand the other.  It was enough to allow meaningful conversation.  It almost always is.

Binding In Jordan and Manhattan

~ by Lauralea Banks, a new Program Coordinator of Faith House Manhattan

After deciding my life in Washington, DC, was not fulfilling or taking me where I wanted to go, I decided to seize the moment and pursue my wildest dream. 

Three years ago, I moved to Jordan for nine months to study Arabic.  I had visited Jordan twice on archeology digs in a little village close to Amman. But moving there was something different. In part, I wanted to experience how deep Jordanian hospitality went.  My earlier visits had revealed the kindest, most giving people I had ever met.  But I wondered if the red-carpet treatment had been brought out just for a guest.  And if their hospitality was really as deep as it seemed, I wondered what driving force lay behind it?  Was it culture, religion, heritage?

After living in Jordan for a few months, I began to figure out how to navigate social interactions. I learned for example that people might offer things, but you only knew they were serious if you declined their offer three times and they still insisted.  Many times I found they meant what they said, but just as often they changed the subject after the first invitation.

Throughout my nine-month stay, one group of people inspired my passion for interfaith dialog and this prepared me to capture the vision of Faith House.

I felt fortunate to have friends in Jordan before I moved there.  They emailed advice prior to my arrival, and only later did I learn they had spent hours knocking on doors trying to find me an apartment.  Through their military connections, they obtained special passes so they could meet me at the gate of my plane.  At every turn, they were there to help me.  And yes, they found me an apartment, and then shared information about jobs in which I might be interested.  They took me shopping.  For my first week, they arranged for one of their cousins to meet me everyday after school to make sure I settled in OK.  It became a habit and for nine months I spent every afternoon surrounded by people eager to help who wanted only friendship in return. Over time I felt a degree of skepticism about such kindness and pressed a friend on the subject.  He responded that that they wouldn't be good Jordanians or Muslims if they didn't take good care of me.  Then he paused, looked at me and said it was partly my fault.  I had been so interested in them, and had been so non-judgmental of our differences that it had been hard for them not to reciprocate!

We spent hours talking about religion: each of us explaining why we belonged to our respective faiths.  It proved to be quite a challenge because there were irreconcilable differences between us that we could only begin to understand by seeing the world through each other's eyes.  A few months after I arrived, we had a long conversation about women in Islam.  They explained why women in the Middle East utilize a different “space” than women in America.  It took all nine months of my stay to begin to wrap my brain around the different ways Jordanians define female agency and empowerment.  I'm still trying to understand it.  But our friendship only deepened in these conversations and made me recognize the arrogance I brought with my worldview.  My friends began to feel the same way about their perspectives as well.

As we dismantled misunderstandings and arrogance, something else happened to our friendship: I spent more time in the village with my friends.  Invitations were always extended three times and after awhile, merely mentioning an event meant I was expected to show up.  And when some guys at school approached my friends and asked about me in a suggestive tone (implying the stereotypical assumption that all Americans are like Britney Spears) they were told I was a sister.  These young guys protested, but were firmly informed I was their sister and would be respected as such.  Their willingness to defend me as their own blood deeply affected me and proved to be a monumental step in our friendship.  They insisted I was not like other Americans, that the thoughtfulness I brought to my religion and spirituality made me more like them than if I had converted to Islam. It’s true they often expressed the wish that I would convert, but respected that I had a different path to walk.  As a result, our friendship created a strange new family of different religions but similar mandates for living.

When Samir approached me about Faith House Manhattan, it resonated with my experience in Jordan.  Imagine Muslims, Jews, Christians, Atheists, Buddhists, and other religions coming together, staying rooted in their faith but recognizing that their religious journey can be strengthened by learning about other religious traditions!  From my experience in Jordan I can say this process is powerful and binds people together in a unique way.  Imagine taking that powerful connection and using it to touch the lives of neighbors in your community.  I've already lived the dream of Faith House and the outcome is miraculous and beautiful.  For me it is the true and complete picture of God.

(read more about Lauralea soon on this website)

Don't Hurry Through This One

~ by Samir Selmanovic

I am at an airport right now. 

If you travel a lot, I am pretty sure you cannot escape the magic of watching people every once in a while, imagining their journeys, their stories, studying their body language, their faces, thinking about what they are really like. What is her life like? Where is she coming from? Where is she going? If you look at a person long enough you are bound to realize that, without exception, they are your very own flesh and blood. You realize we are all coming from the same origin, the same womb, we are all living under the same sky, going into the same dirt. 

Here is a poem by a contemporary poet I discovered recently. Her name is Naomi Shihab Nye. Naomi was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in Jerusalem and San Antonio. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words Under the Words, and You and Yours.

I suggest, don't hurry through this poem. Let yourself be there.

WANDERING AROUND AN ALBUQUERQUE AIRPORT TERMINAL 
(by Naomi Shihab Nye)

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? We told her the flight was going to be 4 hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu-beduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.
She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late.

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of
It. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookies.

And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,
With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.
Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

 

Celtic Trail: A Better Way to Believe

~ by Danut Manastireanu, Romania

Whatever our deeply held religious beliefs or worldviews, there are different ways to communicate it to others.  How we believe is equally important as what we believe.  Recently I had the extraordinary opportunity of a study trip on Celtic spirituality, following in the footsteps of St. Patrick, Columba, and Aidan.  Sharing cherished convictions and practices in a way that honors the others is the true test of our faith and character. 

The trail began in Downpatrick in Northern Ireland the origination point of the magnificent story of St. Patrick. In the fifth century, Irish raiders abducted the boy Patrick and made him a slave in Celtic territory.  There he had a personal encounter with God that changed his life. After a miraculous escape, Patrick returned to Britain, became a priest, and felt God's call to return to Ireland and become an apostle and prophet among the Celts.

Missions and missionaries do not always have a good name these days. Patrick, however, was a different kind of missionary. He did not have a faith to sell, but a story to tell. And his incredible personal life gave authority to the story. He did not try to uproot the druidic traditions of the Celts, but reconstituted them and incorporated them into a creative, courageous Christian faith. At the end of his life, one chronicler observes, Celtic lands knew a long-lasting peace unprecedented in the history of this most temperamental nation.

From Ireland, we moved to Iona, a tiny island south-west of Scotland, where Columba, a Celtic monk from Ireland landed in 563 AD with twelve of his disciples. Columba’s arrival changed the face of the island. He established a monastery, and taught the community to read and write.  They were known as "people of the Book" and brought the Christian faith to the Hebrides and Britain, and to the feared Picts that inhabited Scotland at the time. Columba’s version of Christianity, inspired by the vision of Pelagius was:  a rural community, close to nature, democratic, gender balanced, optimistic about the goodness of humanity, poetic and passionate.  This community stood in striking contrast to the Roman version of the Christian faith rooted in the vision of Augustine: an urban community, imperial, hierarchical, institutional, pessimistic about the human nature, and somewhat impersonal.

The last leg of the Celtic trail took us to Lindisfarne, the "holy island" in the north of England, where Aidan, a monk from the Iona community, came at the request of Oswald the king of Northumbria and established a Christian mission to the population in that territory in 631 AD. Aidan served the poor and liberated slaves with the riches he received. He established schools, challenged the powerful about their abuses and preached the love of God in Christ to this troubled generation. Not long after Aidan, the Roman version of Christianity became prevalent, and Celtic Christianity faded into the background, surviving only as an undercurrent in a world dominated by Rome.

Who knows what the history of the world could have been if the faith of Patrick, Columba and Aidan had prevailed?  Who knows what the future of the world can be if our religions would learn to follow the trails like these?

Danut Manastireanu is an economist and theologian who lives in Iasi, Romania. Danut is married to Mihaela and they have two grown up children and five grand children.  He holds a PhD in theology from Brunel University, London and works as Director for Faith & Development for the Middle East & Eastern Europe region of World Vision International.

Spiritual Discipline of Receiving

~ by Samir Selmanovic

On a steamy hot summer day, after our Christian worship gathering, a group of us went to one of the New York city parks with gallons of homemade ice-cold lemonade, offering it to anyone who wanted it—for free. But people did not want it. That is, until we asked them to pay for it. Only then they would take it and happily guzzle it down.

People know that a gift is almost never just that, a gift. Philosopher Jacques Derrida argues that what we have historically regarded as a gift was actually never a gift. We give to gain. In return, we covet a favor, thankfulness, a sense of satisfaction in seeing ourselves as a giving person or simply the warm sensation of buying something for someone we love. Our gifts are a form of exchange. We give something obvious, to receive something subtle.

Sensing this dynamic, people who stand to lose anything don’t easily accept free help, advice, favors or money from others. To receive means to lose control. Gifts change relationships.  The recipient becomes a “weaker part” in the transaction.

Accordingly, receiving anything associated with someone else's religion is far more difficult than receiving a glass of lemonade.  That's why this reluctance to receive has become a grave problem among religious people today. Yes, we have learned to tolerate one another to some extent. Jews, Christians, Muslims and atheists have learned to live parallel lives and have parallel monologues, like toddlers who enjoy parallel play. But in order to make progress toward peace and justice in the world and in order to increase joy and beauty of human life, we must learn to appreciate, and at times receive what others have to give us. 

For many, this amounts to recanting of one’s own faith. Religion is an expression of what we hold as true, valuable and beautiful. Because religion—or any other worldview (including atheist varieties)—holds the meaning of our life together, accepting a gift of insight, truth, or beauty from other groups feels like losing face, control or power over life we think we have mastered through our religion. It potentially exposes the weaknesses of our faith structure, casting us as weaker and therefore dependent on the relationship with others.

That’s why many people who are sure about everything don’t know how to recognize their needs or receive a blessing from others.  Even within groups that want to learn to love others, we say to each other, “Love people, in your school, in your neighborhood, in your workplace. And then give them the truth.” We call each other to ministry, which always means serving people, caring for their needs, teaching them what they need to know to live better lives. Giving, giving, giving. Giving keeps us in control, subtly communicating the superiority of our worldview not only to others, but to ourselves as well.

And we like to be in control—even of God, goodness and love.

Our giving is actually becoming a way of taking.  We exalt the virtue of giving, saying, “It is in giving that we receive.” This is true and the world would perish without people who understand this law of life of any human community. But, how about giving up the role of being the sole giver of truth to the world?  That would be the ultimate act of giving, expressed (paradoxically) through receiving. In the relationship between religions, the attitude of being a sole dispenser of the blessing is becoming terribly counter-productive.  When it comes to God and truth, every group wants to teach and no group wants to learn. Everyone wants to stay in control by giving and nobody wants to seem weak by receiving. That’s why, for example, religions often don’t know how to repent of their historical failures. Repentance means one needs to receive forgiveness. And receiving means our religion is not as perfect as we think it must be. 

Religion (or a worldview) that will matter in the future will not pretend to be faultless, self-sufficient and above the frailties of human existence. In my Christian tradition, for example, concept of sin revolves around self-sufficiency. And this should include matters of spirituality. To grow spiritually should mean to journey to a place where we get better and better at receiving goodness, grace, and God from others. God is in others, even in the enemy. God is in a stranger. That’s why in the Bible hospitality is of such value, not just as a custom of the day but as a way God visits us, unexpectedly.

Lov