FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

It's Not All About Today

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Every morning as I step out of my apartment in Manhattan, I grab two free daily newspapers from the stand at the street corner. I then walk four city blocks to the subway station, reading while navigating my way through the crowd, and by the time I arrive six minutes later, I have read them both! It is a skill I have honed over time that integrates fast reading, selective attention, finger dexterity and navigating the traffic around me with peripheral vision only, never lifting my eyes. But this is becoming dangerous. I might knock down an elderly person, step into a construction site or get hit by a taxi cab.

And if I stop taking time to watch people, sensing their presence, and imagining where they are coming from and where they are going, I might lose my love for the city. When I come home I find my wife’s and two daughter’s heads buried in their laptops, checking their emails, text messages and Facebook accounts. I am beginning to think this diligence about knowing today’s news is not worth it.

We are continually urged to get the most from the present moment. The past is left behind and the future is unreal. And it is not only about our individual lives and families. Our economies have been oblivious to the lessons form the past and severed from the concern for the future, and have crashed as a result. But is the same self-sufficiency plaguing our religions threatening them with their own crash?

While a thoughtful critical tension with our religious traditions is a wise way to hold on to one’s past, the disdainful neglect of the tradition is not. G K Chesterton wrote these words of warning: “Tradition is only democracy extended through time. . . . Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by accident of death” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy).

In 25 years of religious life, I have picked up plenty of stories and personal experiences about how silly, broken or downright toxic tradition can be. It has hurt individuals, destroyed communities and alienated institutional religion from society. I once heard Christian speaker Tony Campolo quoting reformer Martin Luther quoting St Augustine who said, “The church is a whore, but she is our mother.” This statement seems painfully brash. A whore is something no one wishes to be called—or have their mother called. But the second part of the statement matches the first with its exquisite tenderness. My church is my parent who gave me life and loved me to where I am. It echoes the commandment of God, “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12).

Our fathers and mothers don’t have to be perfect for us to honor them. They are to be respected, cared for, forgiven, healed and loved despite their apparent faults. Without those who came before us, without their love and hard work, none of us would be here. Our frustration with the past must be paired with forgiveness and our bitterness must be tempered with gratitude. We are not better. Our time to make mistakes is here and the more we fashion ourselves in reaction to the mistakes of the past, the more likely we will be reacted against by future generation.

Our disdain for the past has been matched by our disconnection from the future. After watching the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, my 11 year old asked me, “Dad, what have you done?” When I asked what she meant, she said, “When you grown ups were making all these decisions in the past, what were you thinking?” She meant, “I am scared and disappointed. Why weren’t you thinking of us, of me?”
We are leaving to them not only a planet in shambles but other things, including religion. By and large, religion today has grown impotent or destructive instead of potent and constructive. We are leaving religions that do not know how to work together to make the world a better place. Religions replicate a civilized market, peacefully and politely coexisting in competition. But like toddlers playing separately, there is no synergy.

Furthermore, much of religion has had a death-wish approach to the future of the world, counting on a Cosmic Fixer to redo the whole thing after the end of the world. Such religion has spurred—or at least failed to resist—society’s plunge into ecological disaster. More importantly, however, religion has been failing to stir human imagination about the future.

I recently spoke with Jeffrey Sacks, an author and spokesperson on issues of poverty and sustainability. He asked, “Did you notice we don’t have Ethics of the Future?” Thinking back to graduate school, I realized there was no ethical systems that asked, “How will this decision affect people who might live 200 years down the road?” People of the present are always the only consideration. Chesterton’s “democracy extended through time” has started after our past and before our future. Our locus of concern has narrowed to nothing but today—another way of saying we have become self-centered and therefore ultimately self-destructive.

But there is a way forward. First, we can live our religions in a place larger than today and for community larger than ours if we can pay tribute to our ancestors and their faith, stamina, vision and integrity. Any good we do, we do because of those who have gone before us. And if don’t know how to name and forgive the past, we will become the kind of people who will make it harder for the coming generation to forgive us.

As we pay tribute to our ancestors, we are also to bless our successors. We don’t have to understand everything they are doing, let alone control it. A new kind of Christianity by definition requires a new kind of thinking. And such innovation begins with questioning the thinking that went before. Those who are emerging will break the rules we have constructed, and produce their own theology and expressions instead of indiscriminately mimicking ours. They will take the vision to places we could not imagine and in the context we cannot understand. Yet they must be released from our expectations and given the holy burden of blessing and hope we have for them.

If God can believe in us, respect us and work with us, why can’t we do that with each other? Our boasting about the self-sufficiency of the present has taken a blow and we are yearning to have a more responsible and meaningful role in the story of God. This story did not begin only when we came on the stage and will not finish when we leave.

We have to regularly lift our eyes from the news of today and look where we are walking. Without perspective, we tend to hurt ourselves. Where we come from and where we are going is as important as where we happen to be now. In the world where economy, politics and popular culture have enthroned the opportunity of the present moment, religions can provide a conversation about our stories, ways to remember where we have been and imagination for where we want to go.

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

Newark in the 80’s: My Memories of Michael Jackson

~ by Bowie Snodgrass

In the days, weeks and months to come, we’ll hear more about how Michael Jackson died and the meaning of his life.  But tonight, just finding out that he’s dead at 50, memories of the King of Pop come back to me…

I was five years old and living in Newark, NJ, in the House of Prayer rectory when Thriller came out.  I remember my favorite babysitter, Mimi Jordan (now Rev. Emma Jordan Simpon), bringing over a copy of the record on vinyl and playing it on our turntable.  We were all dancing, laughing and celebrating life. 

It was 1982, and Newark had the highest child poverty rate in the country.  In the 1970’s it had been called “the most decayed and financially crippled city in the nation.”  We lived down the street from the Columbus Homes, one of the oldest public housing experiments in the country.

"No human should ever have to live that way, no animal should ever have to live that way," a senior Federal housing official, James E. Baugh, said after he toured the Columbus project in the early 1980's.

Michael Jackson’s songs were about street problems and gave a voice to struggles on the street: “Beat It” about a street fight, “Billy Jean” on telling your baby mama’s papa that you’re not the one, and later, “Thriller” with its amazing synchronized dance number on a dark, empty street, and bad things that happen late at night –

It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes,
You’re paralyzed

Cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no one’s gonna save you from the beast about to strike
You know it’s thriller, thriller night
You’re fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight

You hear the door slam and realize there’s nowhere left to run
You feel the cold hand and wonder if you’ll ever see the sun
You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination
But all the while you hear the creature creepin’ up behind
You’re out of time

I remember learning that Michael was child star… a superstar when he was just a little older than I was at the time.  I wonder what happened to him during those early years to scar him so and keep him in a cyclical trap of trying to recapture boyhood.

My parents were committed to being Christians in the inner city and we lived there until I was nine, almost seven years.  It was tough living in Newark, but there were always crowds of happy kids at our church looking to have fun, skip rope, tell stories, and dance!

I remember my brothers and I pooling our change together in 1985 to buy “We Are the World” on cassette tape.  This was a serious purchase for a seven, five and three year old!  We listened to it in the van on our way to school, over and over again.  I think we knew the whole song by heart. 

Michael Jackson was the international King of Pop, but to us as kids on the street … he was the one who said to us, and with us: “We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving.”

My prayer is for all the children of this country.  May God grant them what they need – safe shelter and places to play, daily bread and nourishing food – but most of all – love, a happy childhood, a brighter day, music and dancing!

My prayer is for Michael Jackson, may his soul rest in peace.

My Dad, and Thank You

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Last Thursday, May 28, my father Sead Selmanovic unexpectedly passed away at age 72. The funeral was held on Monday, June 1, in the main cemetery of the city of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.  Several hundred people attended.  An Imam from the main city mosque conducted a simple and meaningful ceremony.  Before our walk to the grave, standing next to the casket, I gave a short talk addressing those present.  I have translated it into English for you below.  After the ceremony, we all went to the mosque to celebrate my father's life. The next day, I went to the grave one more time.  Here are two pictures I took with my mobile phone, one from the city mosque, and the other one from the grave.  My deep felt gratitude to many of you for your condolences and words of love and care.

_________________________

Dear Respected Friends,

We have gathered here because we loved, cherished, and honored my father.

He was truly one of a kind. 

Dad, from you I learned to love. Love passionately: life, myself, others, and Allah, the Gifter of Life. Without your persevering and deep fatherly love, I would not understand or experience God's mercy and love. Without your trust in me, I would not know how to trust in others.  Our relationship was not simple, but it was strong, sincere, and always nourished with your love and care.

You did not talk or care very much about another world. You gave your attention to this world — goodness, justice, honesty, and the beauty of this world. It seems you have decided to live in one world at a time. And now you are at the threshold of a new future.

We are all travelers here. We come to this world and leave.  "Grandfather dies. Father dies. Son dies."  Although we think that this order is right and a part of a good life, our parting is always so unexpected and painful. I am left with some life before me, and my prayer is that I will love and raise my daughters the way you loved and raised my sister Bisera and I, and that I will love my spouse the way you loved mom. I would like to do at least a part of the good that you have done for others. Thank you. Not only from me, but also from the multitude of people here, your friends who came to say farewell. Thank you also in the name of many who will be touched by you through your influence in our lives.

My father remains in our lives not only as a memory, but as inspiration and a guide.

Let's give the last honor in our thoughts, or our prayers, to common humanity and Goodness that sustains life. (SILENCE)

My father, you were a great lover of life and therefore a faithful friend of God. Our hearts are torn, because although we are parting from you and although our sorrow runs deep, your example of love towards life is higher and stronger still. Following your example, we are united in celebration of life, as Mevlana Rumi, one of the great teachers of Islam has thought us:

"Call the drummers and tambourine players. May your steps to my grave be dancing steps. Be drunk with love, and clap, so that people may know that friends of God go happy and with a smile to the place of meeting."

Dear Dad, see you beyond the threshold of this life!

A Muslim Response to a Bombing Plot This Week

~ Sammer Aboelela, one of the leaders in Faith House community of communities and contributor to this website, is Community Organizer with the NYC Community of Muslim Progressives. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Muslims for Progressive Values.

Sammer just left for Cairo, Egypt to visit his family. Couple of days before he left, he and I (Sammer and Samir) met in a coffee shop on the West Side and spend some time discussing the latest in Middle East and then dreaming, hoping, reminding one another why we are doing this community organizing thing. Soon after arriving to Cairo he heard the news about the bombing plot in New York and emailed this letter to us, his Jewish and Christian friends in New York sharing his personal thoughts. Some of the people who live near Riverdale Temple synagogue have been our guests at Faith House and we both met many of our caring and concerned Jewish friends through Marcia Kannry and The Dialogue Project.

Dear friends,

I’m sitting in Cairo now as I write this letter, at the home of relatives with whom I was reunited yesterday after nearly a decade of separation.  I went to sleep last night with a feeling of peace that I haven’t felt in a long time, and woke early this morning to the sound of the Azhan, the Islamic call to prayer, as it sung its way across the neighborhood and through the open window over my bed.

But as I was sharing hugs with my Muslim family here in Egypt, four very disturbed Muslim men were planting bombs in an effort to tear apart Jewish families in New York.  Early news reports suggest that these men were “upset about the war in Afghanistan,” so with a deranged rationale of misanthropic nihilism they somehow concluded that planting bombs in front of two Bronx synagogues and recreating the atmosphere of bloodshed, fear, and loss we experienced during and after 9/11 would provide some personal cathartic release.

I want my friends in the New York Jewish community to know how deeply I sympathize with the emotional anguish that is sure to pervade in the wake of this failed plot.  While we’re all concerned for the wellbeing of our families in this period of economic insecurity, none of us should carry the additional burden of being potential targets of violent acts of hate and terror.  You have no idea how relieved I am that you are all safe from the will of these would-be terrorists, and how concerned I am for your (and our collective) ongoing health and safety.

In all honesty, it is times like these that I wish Islam had some mechanism for excommunication.  I wish that my non-Muslims friends and acquaintances would see me, my family, my Muslim friends, and the American Muslim community as representative of Islam rather than the headline grabbing sociopaths who act in our name.  I’m so sick of finding myself ashamed of something I didn’t do, by someone I do not know, with motives I do not share, against people for whom I care.

Please know that you are not alone in the shock of this news… that good everyday people whom you have never met, and will likely never meet, as far away as Egypt are also distressed by this story.  My thoughts and their thoughts are with you.  My prayers and their prayers are for you.

Peace,

Sammer Aboelela
Organizer, New York Community of Muslim Progressives

Becoming a Modern, Urban, Mystic

~ by Bowie Snodgrass

I bought my copy of Mark Scandrette’s Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus (Jossesy-Bass, 2007) on August 1, 2008.  That date and “Church Basement Roadshow” are scribbled on the front page of the book; underneath it says, "Finished March 2, 2009".  This is book I read slowly and savored for seven months, as I settled into a new apartment in Harlem, a new ministry with Faith House Manhattan, the arc of a historic election, and the maturation of my still-new marriage.

Mark opens up his journey to us and in doing so invites us to delve deeper into our own.  Much of the best of this book shares stories of people (and characters!) Mark has met through his life, ministry, and “experiments.”  The author’s straight-through, authentic, probing,compassionate voice was what kept me coming back.  For the forum of this blog, I’ve selected seven little segments that I underlined over the course of the last seven months to share… pebbles on the path to becoming a modern, urban, mystic.

1… there is more than a little irony in the fact that we sat passively in a regal sanctuary listening to messages based on the adventures of a homeless bearded prophet who wandered the cities and countryside caring for the poor and healing the sick and inviting people to follow his example.  How exactly were we seeking his kingdom by gathering like this?  For me these environments functioned like museums displaying spiritual realities as exotic specimens in a cabinet of curiosities… The context conveyed more about the dogmas of tradition and region than the revolutionary life of the master.  (Page 25)

2 Pilgrims always have a lot to talk about.  There are stories to tell, advice to exchange, and plans to make about the best way to reach the next vista.  Revolutions are often planned in cafes and begin with talks among friends.  Great social and spiritual movements germinate when a few isolated people find one other, share deeply, and dream out loud about a different and better future.  Through generative friendship a collective voice becomes stronger, and what was once timidly whispered in private emerges to become the topic of public discourse and reform.  Dialogue creates resonance that fosters grass-roots energy and initiative.  Conversation at its best is never just talk; it is the means by which we kindle imagination and gain the courage to take action together.  (Page 47)

3 … a quest for continuity: between what we have been taught about God and what we may have yet to learn; and between what we say we believe and how we actually live.  By examining our windows to God and by learning to embrace all of life as a gift and sacred trust, we take steps to navigate making a life in the Way of Jesus. (Page 103)

4 Jesus was a mystic in the sense that he lived in conscious awareness of the transcendent reality of God.  Everything we admire about the life of Jesus – his compassion, wise teaching, mighty acts, and sacrifice – were funded by the private disciplines of his inner life – how he learned to be tuned into the presence and power of God’s song. He demonstrated that the transforming power of God’s kingdom is accessed through receptivity, mindful surrender, study simplicity, silence, and solitude.  Through the example of his life, we are invited to follow the path of a mystic.  (Page 207)

5 My good friend Darren Prince, who is part of an urban order among the poor, is fond of saying, “The spiritual life is more about subtraction than addition. Most of us don’t need anything more added to our lives to be fulfilled. It is more likely that what we really need is to subtract from our schedules and possessions to have more space for God and people.” The quest for simplicity and contentment, rather than being legislated by rules, can be guided by a question: “How can I manage my life to be the most free to hear the voice of love?” You will find the best rhythm of simplicity through careful experimentation. (Page 215)

6 “Mark, my impression is that you are more Buddhist than Christian.” “What do you mean?”  I asked. “Well, your spirituality seems so much about awareness and practice – embracing all of life as sacred.  Those aren’t things I associate with Christianity.” (Page 237)

7 I want to experience the goodness that money cannot buy, resisting internal and external forces that pressure me toward greater security, control, and conformity.  I will remember that life is ultimately about risk and adventure and that we die a certain death when we resign ourselves to propriety and convention.  I will affirm, perhaps only in symbolic gesture, the spirit of the wandering Messiah-prophet, spreading the propaganda of hope, like soul graffiti, on the canvas of Earth and eternity.  (Page 245)

From my Whirling Cousin In Istanbul

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Following is an email and pictures I have received from my second cousin Bekir Yenerer who lives in Istanbul, Turkey, and is following Faith House on the web. This is published with his permission.

The first picture, I took last year in Istanbul at the 800-year celebration of the birth of Rumi Mevlana. It was published in the newspapers here in Turkey. The others are from Yalova, taken during the yearly meeting of an international Mevlana organization, including people from 44 different countries and religions. The meeting went on non-stop for 40 days. I went for four days and we all felt like brothers and sisters there. In this prayerful whirling dance, all the incidents and details of life disappear and the only thing left is God's love, everything else, including me, disappears. The whole cosmos is God's shadow. Enjoy the pictures. I am so glad we have connected again.

 

Bless Your Pharaoh

~ by Amichai Lau-Lavie, Faith House Advisory Council member, and founder, executive, and artistic director of Storahtelling Inc.

"God Bless You"– this common post-sneeze sacred invocation that has gone completely secular is uttered endlessly and mindlessly around the world. Just like 'God Bless America,' this is often simply a polite figure of speech, a civic, civil nicety. In Hebrew you say "La'brioot" – "to health."

The cultural differences are interesting but either way, these are expressions of empathy, and I've been intrigued by this word/concept--empathy--for about a week now. How come there is no word for "empathy" in Hebrew? No exact translation, that is – Israelis say "empatia," one of many foreign words that migrated into Modern Hebrew and stuck. It's a telling fact, though, that words like 'empathy' or 'pluralism' or 'text' do not have an Israeli life of their own. These days, I wonder not only about the missing word in Hebrew but also about the collective ability to exercise the word's imperative: to feel empathy towards others, esp. others in distress, and esp. others in distress who are very much 'the other.'

Ten days since the ceasefire in Gaza, and many efforts at rehabilitation take place– physical, emotional, political and diplomatic. But for many here in Israel, the anger remains. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Merely suggesting the expression of empathy towards the people of Gaza, alongside support for the IDF soldiers and the people of Sdeort, gets many Israelis – including family members and close friends – furious. Calls for empathy and care for the estimated 20,000 Gaza residents who are now homeless is met with pursed lips: "let Hamas help them, its their own fault." Empathy, generally recognized as "the ability to sense and understand someone else's feelings as if they were one's own," seems to take a backseat to her fierce and frugal sister -- survival. "I just can't afford to be thinking about them right now" M. tells me. I get this approach but it drives me nuts. ‘You’ve been in NY for too long’ B. tells me ‘this is how we roll here, remember?’ This isn’t helping either.

There are, thankfully, other voices, and other initiatives that think and do otherwise. L., for instance, a 27 year old student from Jerusalem who teamed up with another student and organized within 5 days a 7 truck convey of emergency supplies to Gaza, thousands of Israeli donations of clothes, food, blankets and personal letters from Israeli citizens to the families beyond the border. I met L. at the weekly Zohar class we attend at the Hartman Institute – who knew she was such an organizer? She didn't sleep for a week and offered many of us a way to be really helpful. I helped by carrying boxes. The story hit the media two days ago -- even Al Jazeera wanted to interview her…

And meanwhile, I've been asking people for Hebrew translation for 'empathy' – heads are scratched, options offered, all admit that there is no one single perfect Hebrew word for it. Yet. How long has it been missing? How come there isn't one?

"In essence," L. tells me, mid-carrying-boxes, "'love your neighbor as you love yourself' is the root of empathy – and Judaism's core concept – but I guess it got lost in translation. isn’t this in the Bible somewhere?"

So I turn to search for empathy in Exodus and check the tale out this week's Torah reading. It’s got the Prime Time coverage of the actual moment of the Exodus – the last midnight in Egypt. The firstborn of Egypt are slain – and there isn't a home in the land that has not been struck by death. Amid the screams, the king relents – demands that they leave the land – and offers the most audacious invitation for empathy:

"Take both your flocks and your herds and be gone; and bless me also" (Ex.12:32).

He's asking them for a blessing?

How can he expect Moses and his people to have anything but hatred in their hearts towards him? And yet he asks. And we are invited to consider, seriously, his request. Can we bless the enemy – then, now?

And let's say we do decide to grant him a blessing – let's pretend that empathy swims in our veins – what blessing would he receive? What blessing would you offer the ruler who has ruled over your misery?

This past Sunday evening, right after the Zohar class (in which L. updates us that the convoy of trucks, courtesy of the UN, made it into Gaza and that the supplies have already been delivered) I walk over to my parents’ house to have dinner. it’s a 10 minute walk, the evening is cold and crisp, and on the way I ponder this question – who is my Pharaoh? Would, could, should I bless him? I recall the psychological/mystical reading that the Zohar offers the Exodus saga – this is all a description of our inner drama. The oppressed slaves are within me – yearning for more freedom, for more autonomy, for more self expression, Moses is my inner drive for growth, my connection to the Higher Self, and sometimes this inner Moses will resort to strange tricks or fierce strikes to get its point across. And Pharaoh – Freud would call him ‘ego’, and I see him as that part of me that refuses to change, yet knows he – I – have to change in order to grow. Can I have empathy towards my inner resistance? Can I have empathy towards my fellow Israelis who have no empathy?

After dinner with my father (my mother is out at some lecture) I sit with him and open a Torah and read the verses with him and ask – what blessing would you have given the king?

My father, who is no Pollyanna, may or may not be thinking of his Nazi jailers, or the Hamas fighters or any other mythic or historical 'Pharaoh' as he quietly, and with great empathy, offers this version of a blessing to the King of Egypt: "May your river continue to flow."

God Bless him.

(And, If you were to bless the Pharaoh – what would your blessing be?)

The Invitation Home (Part 2)

~ by Juliet rabia Gentile

(This is a continuation of the last week's article. To read Part 1 click HERE.)       

 Konya is a small industrial town set like a dusty jewel in the crown of Central Anatolia. It is famous and widely visited only due to the fact that it holds the tomb of Mevlana Jelaladdin Rumi. Over the years since Mevlana Rumi’s death on December 17th 1273, a mystical order based upon his teachings called the Mevlevi order grew. The ritual practice called Sema that one associates with Mevlevis or whirling dervishes – think spinning figures in generous white gowns with funny tomb stone shaped hats whirling for hours - developed out of an incident in a marketplace right there in the town square in Konya. Everything that we know about Rumi has been preserved by his students and family members and can be found in the landscape or in the hearts of the people of Konya.

My flight from Istanbul touched down several hours late due to a burgeoning fog that wrapped itself around Konya’s empty streets like an old friend. Soon after my arrival the phone began to ring and plans mounted up. The celebrations in Konya were well under way despite the cold and fog: there was no time to rest!

It is tradition that Sufis gather together from across the globe every year for seventeen days leading up to the Shebi-Arus celebration which culminates on December 17th. This event known as the “wedding night” commemorates the time when Mevlana Rumi went to join his Beloved. The anniversary of his death is celebratory rather than somber. In fact Rumi wrote in one of his poems, “if you harvest the wheat growing over my grave and bake bread with it, it is sure to intoxicate!” So strong was Mevalana Rumi’s love for God that his fragrance still attracts lovers of all walks of life, religions and nationalities, some 800 years after his death, like bees to honey.

My first stop in Konya was the informal headquarters of the trip: Dervish Brothers Center. DBC was the place of beginning and ending of all journeys and adventures and was visited by many dervish sisters despite its name. It was a place to make and break plans, listen to music and poetry, sip endless cups of tea and have intimate discussions extending into the morning. Before long I had lost track of the number of dhikrs, impromptu musical gatherings, meals and endless prayer vigils I had attended. One highlight of historical importance was a Sufi dhikr held at the tomb of Shems i Tabriz (the mystic thought to be responsible for the full flowering of spiritual wisdom in Rumi’s adult life). This beautiful prayer ceremony which somewhat spontaneously coalesced after the afternoon prayer in the Mosque of Shems was well attended and miraculously accepted by the Mosque authorities, a quiet, though great victory for Sufi activity in Turkey.

One of curiosities of traveling to Turkey is that everywhere you go you encounter people and businesses selling Sufism and Sufi paraphernalia (not always authentic) to tourists, even while its practice is illegal under Turkish law. You may ask yourself why, at a time when Islam is weighed down with fundamentalisms of various stripes and colors, would anyone want to suppress an interpretation of Islam based upon the principle of universal love? Well, despite changing public and political opinion in favor of Sufism, its practitioners are still vulnerable to law enforcement, therefore making the beautiful that day a great triumph towards further opening the gates of understanding and tolerance. 

Perhaps more than any other lesson this journey to Konya taught me the importance of tolerance and understanding, even when I fell short. When you are in a strange country, speaking a new language the importance of open heartedness and true understanding become crystal clear. You become acutely aware of your utter dependence on the kindness of others and their willingness to cover your faults. It takes truth, sincerity and perseverance to navigate cultural divides and find common ground with the other in often difficult or awkward circumstances.

At home, surrounded by the comfort of “my family, my city, my country” it is easy to become complacent and intolerant. It is harder to extend a hand of guidance, friendship, or love. We think our lives don’t depend on it.

In a rapidly shrinking global world colored by increasing violence and polarization, perhaps now more than ever we are challenged to open, rather than shut down, to question and learn, rather than judge. This realization, which I experienced directly rather than ‘thought about’ was one of the most precious gifts I received from Mevlana Rumi and my journey to Konya. In the shadow of His light I witnessed the power of personal connection. The soul stirring invitation afforded by a warm glance, a smile, a prayer – signals that reach across language, race and religion.

In the airport on the way home we encountered that divine fog once again, hemming us in as we waited for hours in the small Konya airport. In the huddled masses there were various fellow pilgrims from England, Pakistan, South Africa and Iran. As the hours wore on and we shared stories, fruit, tea and tears it became crystal clear that we were all drawn to Konya from our various far-flung destinations for one reason: love.

Despite what shade our skin was, what language we spoke or what lives we were returning to, we were all, in our essential natures, one. In those hours of listening to the stories of my fellow pilgrims, the inner meaning contained in Rumi’s famous verses - the importance of extending the invitation of love to others, despite what we think of them - was revealed. This is true Godliness, this is the invitation Home.

"Come, come again
Whoever you are.
Pious one, infidel, heretic, fire worshipper.
Even if you promised a hundred times
And a hundred times you broke your promise,
This door is not the door
Of hopelessness and frustration.
This door is open to everyone.
Come, come as you truly are."

The Invitation Home (Part 1)

~by Juliet rabia Gentile

Since July my colleagues at Faith House Manhattan; Samir, Bowie, Jill, Lauralea and I have put much energy and thought into building a brick and mortar Home for people of all traditions or faiths, or of no particular faith at all. In early December, following a successful Faith House Living Room gathering entitled, Holy Journey: Hajj and Eid ul Adha, where we hosted various leaders from the Muslim Community in New York City, I departed to Turkey for both a personal, spiritual journey and a ground-laying expedition for an International Conference of Sufi women.

On the lengthy plane ride it dawned on me: Istanbul is my spiritual Home. Home is a laden word. For some it conjures happy memories and warm feelings while for others, like victims of violence or exile, the word signals profound grief and longing for what once was. Growing up in and around New York City, a place forever in flux and transition, the word has meant many things to me at different times. Over time I learned not to settle into one set notion of home. Therefore this thought came as a surprise. Perhaps all of us have at one point or another felt a longing for a physical home-land and similarly have felt a pull inward, a longing to find a personal sanctuary, a spiritual home to bring peace, balance and rooted-ness to our life.

Being a student of mysticism I have been taught to seek and find this center in the locus of my “heart.” Called qalb in Arabic and gunul in Turkish, the heart I speak of is not the physical heart but your emotional center where your soul resides, where one’s true essential humanity is to be found. The door to this home is always open, the entrance always immediate.

Despite this fact, on this bitterly cold day in early December I was decidedly on an outer journey into space and time. I was set to arrive in Istanbul, Turkey for a few days and then make my way to Konya, in Central Anatolia, for the Shebi-Arus (literally, wedding day) festival in honor of the poet Mevlana Jelaladdin Rumi, known as “Rumi” in the west. This trip was a long anticipated pilgrimage which I had dreamt of for years.

Islamic tradition relates that the Awliya or (Saintly friends of God) never spiritually die and therefore old cities like Istanbul and centers of spiritual learning, like Konya –places where many Awliya lived and died, are potent places to visit. Therefore I always prepare spiritually and mentally to receive whatever teachings these visits have to offer. You could say I use these travels as litmus tests or sign posts for my own spiritual journey. Spiritual pilgrimage in all traditions is like a continual Sabbath, a state in which your mind and heart are at peace and open to receive the treasures placed before you by God. In this state of openness, every person you meet, every place you visit has something to teach you.

When I arrived in Istanbul, the city was windswept and subdued by rain. The streets were virtually empty as people took a much needed rest after a week of Eid ul Adha (feast of sacrifice) celebrations. That first morning I met up with a young dervish (spiritual initiate), Kemal, who is a life-long member of the Halveti-Jerrahi Sufi order (a Sufi order founded in the 17th century in Istanbul). That day Kemal took me around to some of the sights of Istanbul including Topkapi Palace, which holds Holy relics of the Prophet Muhammad and my favorite Tea garden, the ‘Mystic Water Pipe.’ I ask you where else one can sip Turkish ‘cay’ and smoke a ‘narguila’ (a popular water pipe for scented tobacco in flavors ranging from rose to mint) all the while surrounded by floor to ceiling carpets, lamps and stray kittens cozying in warmth? This is perhaps the best way to adjust to a slower pace of life and to take in the ambience of the old world. After a few days of paying my respects and sending salams to the various Sheikhs of different Sufi orders and branches, it was time to prepare for the real adventure. I was soon to depart to that blessed city, Konya that I had long heard about and longed to visit. What I would find there, of course, defied my expectations and proved to be a memorable and life-changing experience.

(for Part 2 click HERE)

Post-surgical Reflections

~ by Bill Ashlock (see recent picture from the day before surgery), a seasoned business executive, writer, want-to-be wood turner with a passion and calling to tend God’s trees, and a great friend of Faith House. His tools include innovation, excellence, and compassion with an unending view of community. Bill lives in California and is often found in the city he loves - New York.

The idea of stepping out of the high-powered business world during a period of massive financial uncertainty to undergo brain surgery was unthinkable. Yet a few weeks ago doctors, family, and God convinced me I had to do just that. Brain tumors, even when benign, are powerful reminders about what really matters in our upside-down world.

Looking back on the journey I have taken since last July is still overwhelming. Initially, I saw the numerous barriers as uniquely mine, regulated by physicians and lengthy periods of sleep and silence. My fears, uncertainties, and doubts overwhelmed my ability to see beyond the immediate. 

As I now inch back into the world of business, it is hard to believe how much has changed in such a brief period of time. Banks, investment houses, and financial services are in a totally different place than they were before my surgery. Every financial fact I knew and depended on to guide me in my work has been challenged. I have to examine everything I knew with a fresh perspective to see what is true today. Whatever certainty I thought was with us appears to have disappeared. Nothing is certain. It is a daunting situation.

And I am not alone.

My business community in New York, like economists and business people globally, are being tested in a wholly unique way. Traditionalists are no longer sure if their traditions are to be trusted. Conservatives despair of the values being abandoned. Everyone, even progressive and liberals, are struggling to live with unending change. The future is chaotically fuzzy even to the most optimistic. The present is filled with unknowns, uncertainties, and forces outside of our control.

Where does this leave you and me? The answer is all too obvious. We are in the same place we were yesterday, a month ago, a year ago. We are living in the present moment; we cannot live in any other time. The only realty we can know for sure is what is right now.

This may not seem like much. However, it is as much as we have ever had. The wonder of today¹s chaos is that we have been forced to face how much we do not know. Yesterday we thought we knew much. It turns out we did not.

In my self-centric world, I blissfully forget that the rest of the world is walking on regardless of where I am in my recovery process. It is sadly funny. In far too many ways, I had learned to behave as if the world revolves around what is in my vision.

The reality is that we are in a boat together. Each of us knows someone who is struggling with difficulties greater than our own. Family and friends are struggling to survive day to day. Hope seems to be a slippery commodity. Support, often taken for granted, is tentative at best.

I find myself thankful for what I have, in awe of the moments in which I live, and in a place where I can help someone near me. Members of the family have reminded me that we are in a boat together. I can see God's light in the darkness.

The question for me is one of listening and responding--do I hear, am I helping? Am I making a difference in someone else¹s life? There are actions I can take. In times of such uncertainty, I can share hope. For pain, I can offer compassion and empathy. I have experienced compassion and love; I can share.

We all can.

Answering Christian Critics of Faith House (Part 1): Cherishing the Gold of the Golden Rule

~ by Samir Selmanovic

We have come to a time in history when religion is involved in more killing than any time since the Crusades. According to the United States’ State Department, more than 70 per cent of world conflicts are fueled by religion. Although most of these conflicts have dynamics that are fundamentally economic, environmental or political and would have happened outside of a religious context, religion is still partly to blame. The question all religious people need to be agonizing over is “How can religion become a bulwark against violence, injustice and oppression, instead of an ally?” This question applies to our personal lives, family lives, workplace, citizenship, art, politics, everything. And no religious person can afford to ignore it.

To Christians, like to all religious people, some things matter deeply. These convictions vary in substance and expression but through their uniqueness hold our communities together. Our religious imagination spurs us to proclaim our unique message to the world and work hard to embody this message in the way we live. Yet our aspirations have not protected us from harming others. What can we do to withstand the destructive economic, environmental and political forces around us? And more importantly, what can we do to protect the world from our own good intentions?

If all we want to do is tell others what we think they need to know or change them into who we think they should be, we as Christians—or religious people in general—will inevitably stop treating people as subjects with whom we relate and begin to treat them as objects—no matter how noble our intentions. Some years ago, while pastoring a church in New York City, our cause was to reach people in the city and offer them what we have experienced as the best thing in life—God. One of the ways we did that was by organizing a series of public meetings that would convert people.

In order to accomplish this, the church board would meet regularly to discuss the strategy. Meeting after meeting however, I felt uneasy about talking of people as objects to be targeted by our efforts. However, such talk was so deeply rooted in some of the members’ psyche that none of my pleas against objectifying people came through. So I decided to bring two of these “objects” to the next meeting.

“OK, let’s discuss how we are going to convert these people in their presence,” I invited everybody. Some thought I was making a circus out of the meeting, but I persisted. For several church board members, this was nothing but a difficult evening. But for others, this experience was a door into new relationship, not only with people outside our religion but also with God. The language changed. The tone changed. The goals changed. The methods changed.

For me personally, as a Christian, everything changed. While Christ tells me to go out to the world and spread His teachings, He also teaches me that the primary way to do so is to treat others the way I want to be treated (see Matthew 7:12). This command, which has come to be known as the Golden Rule, excludes making other people the object of my best intentions. This is at least a part of the core, if not the heart, of the Christian message. I would not want to be objectified by their efforts to convert me, so they should not be my objects either.

To follow the Golden Rule, I need to learn compassion—meaning to “feel with.” As such, the Golden Rule turns the tables on many of our religious impulses. If we want them to attend our events, we must attend their events. If we want them to be spiritually open to us, we must be spiritually open to them. If we want them to change, we must be ready to change. If we want them to read our Scriptures with trust and respect, we must read their Scriptures likewise. We are interdependent.

And this can be expanded to the national and international level. Imagine all Muslims treating converts to Christianity the way they want Christian converts to Islam to be treated. Imagine Christians reciprocating. Imagine faith leaders standing up to politicians saying, “Your enemies are not our enemies. Any method you want to use on them, you will first have to use on us.”

If we want to convert people, we must be “convertible” first. Concerned believers would say that to live such open Christianity would first undermine our Christian identity and then halt the impact of Christ’s teachings in the world. I passionately disagree. To respect others, to be interdependent, to receive, to refuse to be in charge of God, to be humble and teachable by them, is to be our identity.

As we go to the world with our message, to neglect the Golden Rule would be to betray the teachings of Christ from the start. I would say that the following stands: “To be a Christian means, among other things, to seek God in the other as you want the other to seek God in you.” Just imagine, as Karen Armstrong suggests, if we would interpret the whole of our Scriptures as a commentary on the Golden Rule and read the whole of their Scriptures with Augustine’s rule of always seeking the most charitable interpretation of the text. Not only would this reflect the best of our traditions, but it would paradoxically work to preserve our own religion. 

The Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism are a case in point. The Chinese government has built a train from Beijing to the small Tibetan holy city of Lhasa and has committed demographic aggression, not only by settling twice the number of Chinese in Tibet than there were Tibetans, but by opening 238 dance halls and karaoke parlors on the main street along with 658 brothels, turning Lhasa into an Asian Las Vegas. To top it off, the sacred Potala Palace, which has been home to nine Dalai Lamas, is now mockingly surrounded by an amusement park. 

And what was the response of Dalai Lama? He refused to call the Chinese an “enemy.” In fact, to preserve the value of compassion at the root of the Golden Rule, for the Dalai Lama it hardly matters whether the position of Dalai Lama, Tibet or even Buddhism continue to exist! For the sake of compassion, no sacrifice would be too great. Isn’t that what Jesus Christ was about?

And what is the result? In 1968 there were two Tibetan Buddhist centers in Western countries; today, there are 50 in New York City alone, and 200 in Taiwan. More French people call themselves Buddhist than Protestant or Jew. Not to count all the Chinese who are becoming Tibetan Buddhists.

The Dalai Lama said that calling others your enemy and calling your own people friends would be as crazy as calling your right eye your ally and your left your adversary. It used to be that victory could be identified as destruction of your enemy, but in today’s world, we increasingly have to see destruction of our enemy as destruction of ourselves. The Golden Rule is not just nice thing to practice, a mere virtue. It is a matter of survival, not only for the world at large, but for every religion that has aspirations to thrive in the future. By respecting and loving the other, we are open to the influence of The Other. Going deeper in loving God, now means nothing less than going deeper in loving all of humanity.

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

The Power of Shared Faith

~ Kyle Fischer works with not-for-profit organizations (www.reserveinc.blogspot.com) and in music (www.endup.org). He will attend Union Theological Seminary in New York City in the fall of 2008.

Not long ago, I found myself sitting on the A train with my acoustic guitar on my lap. A man sat across from me, missing teeth and talking loudly to anyone who would listen. People kept getting up from the seat next to him. One woman hardly sat down before she stood back up again, making no pretense as to why as she moved a little further down the car.

Soon he had spotted my guitar case and started asking me questions. Claimed he used to be a bass player. I had to pull my headphones off to hear him. A couple of years ago I might have ignored him and gone back to listening to Sam Cooke, but my spiritual practice reminded me not to close myself off. So I put my headphones in my bag and practiced Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls “the ministry of listening.”

He asked would I mind if he played my guitar? I had no reason to trust him, but then I really had no reason not to. I moved into the empty seat next to him and he strummed idly at the open strings a couple of times, not really making a chord. Then he thanked me and put the guitar back in my hands.

Without warning he produced a harmonica from his breast pocket and began to play. He wasn’t terrific but it was a nice sound, and I guessed at the chord, went with a big six-string G major. Happened to be right. Nice thing about the harmonica - they’re tuned to scale so you can’t really hit a wrong note once you’ve found the key. I played a simple chord progression and he hummed away.

I began improvising silly verses about our subway ride. He told me his name was Dr. J., so I sang, “Well, my name is Kyle and this here’s Dr. J . . .” He played his harmonica in the breaks.

“I’ve been to the Baptist Church you see,” I sang, “Dr. J’s on his way--”

 “From the Church of the Nazarene!” he hollered, finishing the line. It had not occurred to me that he too might be on his way back from church, on a Saturday, no less. It even rhymed.

We had really hit our stride now. People in our car were moving closer to hear. Across from me a teenager was videotaping us on his phone. I looked to my right and saw the woman who had moved away from him smiling, tapping her foot in time with the music.

We found a little refrain, my new brother and I, and sang our impromptu gospel song the whole way home, a gentle testament to the power of shared faith.

Ramadan Begins

~ by journalist David Crumm

On Monday, on the first day of Ramadan, a new month-long Web page launched at www.SharingRamadan.info to share uplifting stories about everyday Muslim life during Ramadan. The site is part of the larger and extraordinary online magazine www.ReadTheSpirit.com co-founded by longtime journalist David Crumm. David writes:

    Can you feel it in the air?
    A major portion of the world -- a billion of our neighbors -- are spiritually on the move this month. Their faith calls on them to devote this entire month to prayer and fasting and kindness toward everyone they meet. And, in the end, the month is supposed to draw people closer to God and to compassionate concern for the world's neediest men, women and children.
    If you're not Muslim, this is a wonderful time to wish your Muslim friend, neighbor or co-worker well during the next four weeks. Keep an eye out for colleagues who may be trying to fast right through a challenging day at school or work. Lend a friendly word of encouragement -- and ask a question, if you're curious. I have spent more than two decades visiting Muslims around the world and I have yet to meet a Muslim who wasn't gracious in responding to sincere questions. 

David emailed us today at Faith House and welcomed our sharing a sample of this new series with you. The team behind SharingRamadan invites readers to visit the site and add their comments or contribute their own stories.

Faith is the strongest glue in our lives. It forms our values, connects us with other people and builds strong communities. I am not a Muslim, but I have devoted more than 30 years to reporting on the changing lives of Americans and occasionally on cultures in other parts of the globe as well. I know first hand that the world’s 2 billion Christians, who form the majority of the population in the U.S., and 1 billion Muslims, millions of whom are Americans as well, all play major roles in shaping our future.

In this rapidly changing era, we have the impression that we can connect with the latest news 24 hours a day. In fact, what we see is mostly American pop culture, sports and the latest violent news rocketing from some corner of our planet. In fact, with the crumbling of traditional news media, it is becoming harder and harder to see our world clearly – and it is often just as tough to see and hear our own neighbors much closer to home.

That is why I was thrilled to work with Raad Alawan in collecting stories for this first-of-its-kind Ramadan project, which we will be publishing online at www.SharingRamadan.info On that Web site, we welcome you to add your own stories and your own reflections about the series. As a longtime journalist himself, Raad immediately understood the need for all of us to explore this life-affirming month that is experienced each year by our Muslim neighbors here and in distant lands, as well.

Visiting mosques with Raad and other journalists, we were warmly greeted by men, women and young people wherever we traveled. These neighbors were proud to share their inspiring stories with us – and with you as well. They described their prayers in this holy month as focusing on patience, compassion, kindness and opportunities to serve others – values we all can celebrate, whatever our individual approach to faith.

So, enjoy these uplifting stories and think about all the ways that these men, women and young people are as eager as you are to strengthen our communities.

---------------------

A Sample from SharingRamadan.info:

Bruce Kadoura: "I guess you can call me a born-again Muslim ..."

RAMADAN begins September 1 for more than a billion of our Muslim neighbors around the world. Each day throughout the month-long fast, you'll find uplifting stories here from the lives of Muslim men, women and young people. Please, enjoy these voices -- and share your own comments and stories (we've got convenient links at the top of this page to help you). We begin, today, with a story from Bruce Kadoura, a business consultant living in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Here are Bruce's words ...

You’ve heard of born-again Christians? Well I guess you can call me a born-again Muslim. I’m 60 and like a lot of Muslim people my age in this country, I had the experience of growing up at a time in the 1950s and early 1960s when our Islamic education wasn’t the best.

I’m part of one of the older families that moved originally to Dearborn, Michigan. My father was involved in building one of the first mosques near the Rouge plant in the southeast end of Dearborn. Back then, everything had to be within walking distance of our homes because nobody owned cars. The mosque was a very small building. My family had a two-story flat and we lived in the lower floor, but rented out the upper floor, which was a prudent thing for families to do back then.

Growing up at that time, our religious teaching came partly from various people who would come from other countries and try to enforce their rules about our schools or how we should learn Arabic or how we should follow Islam. They would come and go and this system didn’t work very well. I remember fasting back then during Ramadan, but it was hit or miss. I really didn’t understand it completely.

Ritual and Repetition

~ by Bowie Snodgras

A couple of weeks ago I was in Seattle for a conversation on what it means to be "Anglimergent."  Abbess Karen Ward of Church of the Apostles hosted a dozen of us to talk about the innovative "emerging" work that is happening around the country by people and communities with an Anglican bond or affection.  If you are interested in learning more about Anglimergence, check out anglimergent.ning.com. 

The night before our gathering began, I stayed at a friend's house and was reading an early-summer New Yorker magazine with a series of one-page reflections on "Faith and Doubt" when I came across one called "Counting Pages" by Allegra Goodman.  I have included the first and last paragraphs below... a beautiful reflection on being inside and just outside of religious structures.

As a young girl, I spent more time outside synagogues than in them.  Services were long, and I always found some excuse to get away.  I remember the Quonset hut where my family went to services when we first moved to Honolulu.  The building looked like a white cylinder half buried in the ground.  I remember borrowed space in a Unitarian church, an elegant old house with woven mats covering hardwood floors.  A weathered tree house sat in the branches of a large tree in the garden.  I'd leave my sandals on the grass and climb the ladder to read Wizard of Oz books.

. . . And yet, inexorably, some of my own religion rubbed off on me.  Might that be the way belief works for some people?  Not  a sudden epiphany but a long, slow accumulation of Sabbaths.  No road-to-Damascus conversion but a kind of coin rubbing, in which ritual and repetition begin to reveal the credo underneath.  As I grew older, I was drawn to poetry, and I began to study the haftarah - the weekly selection from the prophets.  As I grew busier, I began to appreciate the time away from the world.  Services became a refuge.  I did not need to rest when I was a child, because I did not work.  I did not want to come inside, because the outside world was still entirely beautiful to me.

New Frontiers: The Act of Hyphenation

~ Kyle Fischer works with not-for-profit organizations (www.reserveinc.blogspot.com) and in music (www.endup.org). He will attend Union Theological Seminary in New York City in the fall of 2008.

In yoga class at the YMCA the instructor says, “Now reach forward, place your palms face down on your mat, and pull the floor toward you.” Contemporary thinking about space and time tells me I do not have to understand her instruction as metaphor. Standing outside the door of Faith House, I am cheered by the idea that parts of our theology could take similar forms, contemplative strategies along the lines of asking your yoga students to pull the floor towards them.

My girlfriend is a Hindu, definitely a polytheist. She is Australian, raised without religious affiliation of any kind, matrilineally Jewish (but non-practicing), mostly of English extraction, also Malaysian and Indian. But to all appearances, she is a white girl whose skin tone might indicate a passion for carrots, with striking red hair. She talked with me on our first date about her internal struggles with adopting a Hindu religious practice. At first it looked so aesthetically other, so foreign, that is was hard for her to get her head wrapped around something her heart already understood. She found it got easier with practice.

She was surprised, and moved, when I responded by asking her if she wanted to pray together. I would have been happy to adapt my prayer to her idiom. And in fact we didn’t, not then. We got to talking instead.

In sharing our practices since then, and listening to Hindu teachers explain their views on their own terms, I am beginning to feel comfortable with a multifaith religious identity of my own. This requires an act of hyphenation that baffles some. Those of us raised in a particular faith can be very resistant to this kind of plurality. I know because I feel it in myself sometimes, despite the repeated assurances of my parents to their inquisitive little boy that Buddhists and Hindus were not going to hell.

Since considering seminary, I’ve been thinking about my family background in the Disciples of Christ denomination. My dad was a Disciples minister, as was my grandfather, and my great-grandmother.

Dad always explained the denomination in two words, “mainline, liberal.” The Disciples story was explained to me in shorthand – as a frontier church, originally, the Disciples’ formation came out of a need for people of diverse Christian backgrounds to meet together under one tent. Therefore they adopted only very limited doctrinal beliefs.

Is there a lesson in the Disciples model to be applied to our multifaith discussion about religious practice without doctrinal borders, as love draws us out onto new cultural frontiers?

Is there a way to write that sentence in about a third as many words? And what do we call such a practice?

From a universalist Hindu perspective, I am a Jesus devotee. Y’all don’t mind if I call myself a Christian though, do you?

Jesus taught us to look for him in other people. I’ve felt his presence in teachings from other faiths. You never know where the One Love is gonna pop up.

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.

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.

My Neighbors—Down Under

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

A few days before Christmas, I watched two emails drop into my Inbox in quick succession.  Each time, I imagined a good friend pressing the SEND icon seconds before.  Then with the press of a key on my PC, their letters were on my screen!  What pleasure it brought to read those messages and open the attached pictures of their families!

I sent messages right back.  It all happened faster than the time it once took to get up from my desk and walk down the hall to their offices in the same building where we worked together in Australia 40 years ago.  Both John and Russ seemed not so far away after all. 

Over the years the geography of my community has radically changed.  In fact I have more contact with friends far away than with most of the neighbors that live on the same street in Seattle! I used to think that “real relationships” happened with people you look in the eye and give a greeting hug.  But my world has been transformed.  Doomsayers dismiss the new technologies and chant a mantra about the good old days.  Well, in my eighth decade of life, I’ve known lots of those good ol’ times, and agree with my friend George Knight that some of those good old times were nothing short of terrible!  So instead of bemoaning the distance of far-away places where some very special friends live, I appreciate the new ways to keep in touch with electronic bridges that span land and sea.

In The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman summarizes it well:  we can now communicate “from anywhere to anywhere.”   Distance is not what it used to be.  The definition of “neighbor” is now more connected with intentionality than distance.  We no longer connect just informationally, we do it emotionally, spontaneously in the white heat of a moment as we share the excitement of a dream, the memories of an anniversary, the sadness of a time of loss.

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)

Friends Don't Let Friends Consume!

~Alvin Poblacion recently moved to New York City with his best friend, Rosemary Poblacion. He currently works in Manhattan as a physical therapist. Alvin is an avid cyclist, and a photography enthusiast. He thoroughly enjoys getting lost in the City with Rosemary.

I have been drifting away from religion. The question it asks and the answers it provides seem orchestrated. I am attracted to life instead.

Just recently, I had a refreshing chat with a client of mine, (lets call him Craig) as I was treating him for low back pain. As people lie sprawled out in precarious positions, often only partially clothed, thoughtful conversations come about.

As one might expect from “patient-therapist” small-talk, I started out by asking Craig some generic questions about how he planned to spend the upcoming holidays and if he had all his holiday shopping complete. Craig was happy to say that he would be in the company of good friends and family during Christmas. However, he was a bit conflicted about what he was actually going to do during the holidays, and how he felt about shopping for gifts this season.  He wished he had the time and skill to make gifts with his own hands this year. He felt most us in the US have enough junk than we know what to do with anyway. He said he could certainly live without another remote control cozy (I didn’t even know they had those). He went on to elaborate on his growing suspicion towards the “institution” shopping has become in America. We agreed that there must be better ways out there to express our love for our Kin than what BestBuy and DeBiers might suggest.

As we were wrapping up our PT session for the day, Craig was pulling his shirt back over his head. Just then he remembered to share one last thing with me. It was a website address. When I got home from work that day, I logged on and was pleasantly surprised to find a short but informative, video clip. For many people, most of the information here is nothing new. However, I feel it was put together in a way that is bite sized and digestible for people like me. That is, people just coming into the growing conversations about hyper-consumerism, climate change, equitable living, fair trade etc. While these issues may have some political implications, I feel they have a great deal to do with personal and corporate ethics and moral values. I feel that people of faith can and must have something to say and do about the global crisis we find all of God’s creation in. I have great hopes for Faith House and its commitment to use religion to help life and not the other way around.

I trust these will be twenty well spent minutes of your life. Enjoy and use in your work as clergy, educators, activists, or with your family members, friends, and enemies! We are in this together.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Extraction

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)

Faith House Writing Awarded

~ by Nathan Brown

An article written for the Faith House website has been awarded by a Christian publication in Australia. "A Letter to the Three Friends I Wish I Had" by Roy Naden was awarded the Hindson Award for "Best devotional article" in Record in 2007. The article was originally posted on the Faith House web site on March 6, 2007, and was reprinted in Record with permission of Dr Naden and Faith House.

The Record editors' comments with the award read as follows:

"As one of our editorial team commented after reading this article at the time of its publication, 'That article made me want to become a better person.' Now retired, Dr Naden reflected on his working years, both professionally and personally, and expressed regrets for some of the opportunities and friendships missed, before committing to using his remaining years to make the world a better place and support younger people who are now trying to live in a different way."

Dr Naden is originally from Australia, but in retirement lives in Seattle area, Washington. Record is the weekly news magazine of Adventist Church for the South Pacific region, based in Melbourne, Australia.

NOTE: To read "A Letter to the Three Friends I Wish I Had" click HERE.

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)

Colorless World No More

~ Lena Lasarzewski grew up in Sweden and have lived all over the United States for the last 15 years. She currently resides in Bedminster, NJ where she works as a Sales and Marketing Manager for a Swedish company called Pharmadule

My name is Lena and I’m an ex-believer in a black-and-white world.

Like most people, I continuously go through spiritual transitions.  All my life I was both “losing my religion,” (to quote a famous R.E.M song) and regaining it by discarding inadequate answers and learning to ask better questions.  My major transition has been away from a pre-determined worldview handed down to me, to a worldview that I have discovered, created, and now own.  Here is my journey.

The religious subculture into which I was born is the opposite of the culture in which I grew up. Sweden is a “non-believing country” with only 3 % of its 9 million people going to church or believing in God.  The subculture of my church was a very small part of this already small number of believers.

In Bible study from a toddler to an adult, I heard a clear and consistent message:  life is black and white, there is good and evil and nothing in between, and as long as you walk through life with this in mind and believe these truths, you will be fine.  Only later in life did I realize that this black-and-white way of thinking had not prepared me for life.  I realized that being a black-and-white person had turned me into a judgmental person.  I constantly had to make decisions about what is black and what is white and to fit the complexity of life into these two categories, which in turn made it impossible to enjoy life or consider people, religions, and cultures on their own terms.  It was always “us” against “them.”

As a child I accepted the thoughts and beliefs of my parents and the church where I grew up.  I was neither equipped nor encouraged to question the beliefs or practices that I grew up with.  Instead of being invited to not only understand the beliefs of my community but also to contribute by questioning, re-defining, changing and continually growing them, I was asked to merely defend them.  Instead of moving me forward, the beliefs often held me back in a state of constant worry.

After high school I transitioned into the American culture.  On arrival, I connected with the subculture of my denomination in the States and realized how different it was from the church where I grew up.  Our church subcultures are reflections of or reactions to the cultures in which we find ourselves.  Being away from home and responsible for my own life, I started questioning my background and the things I had been taught.  My religious up-bringing had so molded my life that I soon became confused and felt guilty for not thinking, believing and living as I had before.  Eventually, I became so exhausted I took a break not only from organized religion, but from personal spirituality as well.  I began challenging the “do”s and “don’t’s I learned as a child and tried to rid myself of the feelings of guilt for changing my worldview.  It became a healthy cleansing experience.

I have been tired and exhausted. The road has been difficult.  I’m at the end of my latest spiritual transition. I’m seeking the courage to start over with a clean slate, to explore the basics of my religion again asking, as though for the first time, “What is Christianity?”  I refuse to live in a colorless world anymore!  Instead of being a mere watcher of a black-and-white movie, I now embrace all life. I’m excited to be discovering and helping create a community that can offer some new answers for my generation.   

Yes, I’ve learned that you can “loose” your religion, but that might be one of the best ways to find it.  Whether or not it looks the same as before matters less than whether or not you and your community own it.  If you find yourself at peace after the transitions, and if you continue to see ever more color and depth in the world around you, you’ll know your journey is going well.   

The Most Festive Friendships

~ by Joanne Sturt who is a student of Anthropology – a malleable thinker emerging from a shy voice, asking big questions, seeking bigger answers only to continue being on a path of 100% learning. She currently resides in Riverside, CA.

Recently, it just hit me that I’ve been incredibly blessed to have lived in three vastly contrasting countries of the world.  I was born in India, spent time in Kuwait and the UAE, and now live the west coast of the United States. Those experiences are priceless!

Surrounded by different faiths, identities, and customs as a citizen of each country has taught me invaluable lessons about embracing community and expressing identity without feeling lost or alienated.  Whether visiting my Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Arab, Indian, Christian, or American friends, in the end we are just friends.  We share our dreams together, our beliefs, our family customs, and our food, and dances.

What impresses me about being part of the communities in which I have lived is the richness of discovering other people’s lives. I have become not just an honored guest in a faraway land, but a family member in a Muslim home during the holy month of Ramadan, a sister of a Sikh bride on her traditional wedding day doing Mehendi artwork on her hands, and as children of God we have offered prayers together to our Creator as we gathered before a feast of food.  This has been far more than simply exploring unfamiliar territory, I have found fun being in someone else’s space!  It is a blessing to immerse ourselves in the communities where we live.

Is this Utopia talk?  Not really.  Many of us have caught on to this idea.  Any of us can grasp this Utopia and learn to be ourselves, rooted in what we believe whole-heartedly, and still find genuine friendships with people quite different from ourselves, not just toleration of differences.  I have found my most authentic friendships are with the people with whom I can disagree and agree on ideas, we can argue, laugh, share, and still find ourselves inseparable.  Those are my best, my most festive friendships!

So I’m thrilled to learn about Faith House.  It will be the kind of place where this mixing and sharing happens all the time.  My guess is that God is having fun watching us mingle together this way.  Let the festivities begin!

Different Religion, Equal Yoke?

~ by Courtney Perry (Courtney's Blog), a freelance photojournalist living in Dallas, Texas (Courtney's Photography), and a part of Journey Community Church

Recently while in South Africa I had the pleasure of visiting with Roger Saner, maintainer of the EmergentAfrica website, die-hard Protea cricket fan and all-around great guy.  Before we had ever even met face-to-face, we decided by phone to take a short overnight road trip together. Thankfully, in retrospect, this was a good and safe idea.  The quick trip gave us some great drive-time talks, spanning from “So, who are you, again?” to my incessant questions about Johannesburg life to a discussion about the verse in 2 Corinthians that advises against being “unequally yoked”. 

I honestly hadn’t thought of that verse in ages, and my presently conscious mind had completely forgotten it.  Roger wondered aloud what that phrase should even mean to us, seeing as he knows a Christian/Atheist couple and other religiously diverse couples who seem infinitely closer and in tune with one another than many Christian/Christian pairings.  I mulled this over and emailed good friend Luke Miller, who knows a bit about everything theological under the sun.   He directed me to a website, and for a contextual study of the history of this piece of Apostle Paul’s letter, I recommend reading this: http://www.crivoice.org/yoked.html

But what could these verses possibly mean to me in the context of the present when the terms ‘believer’ and ‘unbeliever’ do not compute in my vocabulary?  I love to paraphrase Richard Rohr’s commentary that salvation might best be defined as an individual discovering the God that is already inside.   According to that outlook , my daily life is spent searching to better know the God inside me while at the same time looking for the God which I know to be present in all others.   There is no split; no secret knowledge I can hold over another’s head in a condescending manner.  The problem I have with attempting to assign simplistic modern meaning to the stark words of 2 Cor. 6:14 is that it seems to only exacerbate an us-them; good-evil dichotomy of thinking.  You’re with us or against us—that is all.  Square peg does not fit in round hole and never will. 

So I took this question to the streets. 

A Letter to the Three Friends I Wish I Had

Dear Sam, Hamed, and Jo:

How I wish I had met each of you and that we had become lifelong friends.  Sam, you could have explained the depth of your Jewish faith to me and helped me understand my God better.  Hamed, you could have taught me to understand the beauty and justice inherent in Islam.  Jo, you could have been my agnostic friend, teaching me to ask honest and difficult questions, showing me how doubt and faith are closely linked together.  But we never met.  We lived separate lives.

Now we’re in our ’70s, arthritis and shortness of breath are making their presence felt whenever we see a flight of stairs—and look for an elevator!  Mortality is hovering on the horizon of our lives with increasing intensity.  And I’m reflecting often about “what might have been,” and my grandchildren.

When we left university, we intended to change the world.  I believed that my calling to be a pastor would give me endless opportunities.  It did.  But growing my church absorbed all my energy and enthusiasm.  Looking back, I confess to being more concerned about the affirmation of my church leaders than fulfilling the dream!  I had hoped to leave my small corner of the world in a much better place than I found it.  However, as my church grew, the community around us got worse.  And I did nothing of significance to bridge the gaping chasms between our congregation and people of other Faiths, or no faith at all.  The three of you may have done the same, absorbed in your businesses, religions, and other important goals.

For me, rejoicing in past successes is now overshadowed by my sorrow over past neglect.  My belief in an imminent Second Coming of Christ blinded me to my responsibility to care for God’s creation. My belief in the “chosenness” of my church made me smug, and that closed any real dialogue with others of different convictions or philosophies. If only I had stopped and thought more about what really matters; if only you had stopped and done the same!  Instead of living three parallel lives, we could have learned more about the treasures each one of us has been carrying. I am convinced now that with your help, I would follow Christ better!  All of our lives would have been much richer.

It’s all “What might have been.” 

I’m growing old, and have some time on my hands, so I’m taking a belated new turn in what little is left of the road ahead.  I’m committing to be a better listener.  Not to argue, but to learn, not to seek to demolish another’s beliefs, but to discover their strengths and how they could enrich my life. I want to get beyond the tempting tidbits of conversation that will flow from the next two years of presidential politics, and instead to seek out those with spiritual lives different from mine and to learn from them—especially from Jews, Muslims, and agnostics.  We are fellow travelers on the same difficult road for our world of deteriorating climate, challenges of globalization, dishonesty in politics, and rigidity in religion.  I must hear the things that people from these different persuasions want to tell me.   I want to walk this new path seeking mutual understanding, not domination; building, not tearing down; and working for the good of the wonderful creation God gave us all.

Most importantly (the main reason that prompted this note) I want to model this sense of inclusiveness to my son and daughter in the hope that at least in our family, there’ll be a new interest in the uniqueness and convictions among our recent growing circle of friends outside our church.  The facts are, the four of us are leaving the world in a much bigger mess than we found it.  In the years I have left, I’m doing something about it, and I hope that you three, whoever you are and wherever you are, will hear me through this open letter on the Faith House website.

The journey to a better world seems daunting.  What can we really accomplish until we are no more?  Much, I’m beginning to think. We can leave a legacy in words, in resources, in prayer.  I would like to spend the rest of my days blowing the wind into the backs of those who can use such a legacy to further the dream. A quote from Mother Theresa has greatly encouraged me.  She said something like this:  few of us can do great deeds, but we can all do small deeds with great love.  If I had even one “old” friend from the other great Faiths, I would say to them, “Please accept the ‘changing’ me, so together we can yet make our small worlds better by listening, by acting for the sake of those who come after us, and for the good of the world we will soon leave behind.”

Roy

+ Roy Naden is an author and Professor Emeritus (Andrews University, MI) who lives, gardens, and writes in Seattle, WA +

Webmaster's Note:
Our journey to new world will be difficult or impossible without the help of our elders, people who raised us, taught us, loved us.
  Maybe this is a good time to share with some of them your views about the future? Maybe their wisdom can guide you?  Maybe their blessing can strengthen you?  Or maybe their fear and apathy can embolden you?
  Either way, we suggest you forward this letter to them and start a conversation.
And then keep us posted!

Seeking More Than a Conversation

~ by Justin S. Kim, an attorney who lives and works in Washington, D.C.

When I first read about the Faith House, I was impressed.  It is an ambitious plan supported by a strong list of endorsements. I loved the idea—but it was an idea for New York City.  I live near Washington, D.C.  And I’m not a minister or professor of religion, but an attorney who spends much of the day in front of a computer.  What does an interfaith community in another city have to do with me? 

Religion has been described as a faux pas of polite conversation.  Scratch the surface of a person's religion and faith, and squirming and shifting begins.  We have all seen religion and faith lead to difference and division.  Perhaps this is why we don't think of the workplace as a safe place for serious conversations about religion.   

Yet despite all this, every day, people engage in casual conversations about faith and religion--in schools and offices, over meals and coffee, and between persons of different faiths and nonfaith.  But after promising beginnings, these conversations often end prematurely.  They last over a lunch but then are put on hold when everyone returns to work.

My first conversation about religion at work was also the first sustained encounter with a person who did not share a Christian background.  A colleague and I shared an office for a year.  He was a secular Jew who spent much of his life in Brooklyn; I was born, raised, and schooled in a cocoon of suburban Adventism.  Occasionally, our mutual curiosity led to conversations about faith and religion.  As a secular Jew, he found Adventism to be an amusing puzzle--a Christian denomination with some decidedly Jewish traditions.  (As we would leave work on Friday afternoons, he would wish me "Shabbat shalom" with a big grin.  We laughed at the irony of the Christian who kept the Sabbath and the Jew who did not.)  My political leanings also confounded his idea of evangelical Christianity, which seemed largely derived from reading the New York Times.  Similarly, he was a paradox to me--a secular, agnostic Jew who nevertheless attended temple on holy days.

Over that year, we had engaging discussions about religious doctrine and practice, the nature of God as revealed in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice, and the role of religion in public life and global affairs.  But that was it--a series of interesting conversations.  At the end of that year, we both moved on to different jobs in different cities. 

When you read this, I hope you feel a twinge of loss--maybe a familiar loss that you too have felt.  I wonder how many conversations share the same fate and whether with each repetition, if another opportunity for sharing, understanding, and healing is lost.  Many of us no longer live in a place where entire countries, cities, and neighborhoods share one faith.  Sadly, the diversity of faith and nonfaith in our communities often leads to division and misunderstanding.  A byproduct of this dysfunction is the loneliness and isolation that we feel, even in the dense crowds of city life. 

The Faith House is not primarily a place for interfaith dialogue amongst the clergy.  It’s for all of us who long for our faith to be more intertwined with our daily lives--at work, at home, in our neighborhoods and communities.  When we can’t experience matters of faith and religion with those who regularly come into our lives, it limits our faith.  That is why I am heartened by the Faith House and the idea of a place devoted to supporting and encouraging shared experiences across faiths and religions.  It gives me hope for the conversations yet to come.