Today was another jam packed day of learning, dialogue, conversation, music, dance and prayer. I began the day with Anglican worship at 8:00. Then I was on a panel entitled “Taking Our Place: Women in Society, Peacemaking and Interfaith Dialogue.” I was on a panel with a number of women involved in women’s interfaith dialogue here in Australia and in New Zealand. The other panelists included women of Hindu, Muslim and Bahai faiths, as well as a Roman Catholic and another protestant woman. The Australian and New Zealand folks spoke specifically about initiatives in which they are engaged and my role was to bring an “international” perspective, responding to their work from my experience of interfaith dialogue in the US. I did a brief presentation about women in interfaith dialogue in the US and used that as a springboard for responding to their comments. It was a lively panel and the audience was quite engaged. My only difficult moment was when a question was posed to the panel about whether our husbands were supportive of our interfaith work!! Fortunately, there were enough women on the panel that I managed to avoid having to answer. We were almost out of time and the moderator asked me to comment when the others had shared on that issue and I simply finessed the issue without saying anything specific. I did not think “coming out” would be helpful in that particular context!!
Then I attended a terrific workshop entitled “Sacred Envy-Exploring What We Love About Our Own Faith, What we admire in Others and what challenges us in Both.” The keynote speakers on that panel were once again, a star studded group, including the indomitable Sr. Joan Chittester, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield and Imam Feisal Rauf, a very well known and popular Islamic scholar and imam. Rabbi Hirschfield introduced us to a model for interfaith dialogue in which the dialogue goes through four different stages of discussion. First everyone shares (briefly!!) what is most precious or meaningful to them about their own faith tradition. Then they name and discuss what they find most appealing or beautiful or meaningful in the other faith traditions with whom they are in dialogue. Then each person shares what it is about their own faith tradition that upsets them, or bothers them, or about which they are ashamed or concerned. And finally each shares with the other what it is about that other’s faith tradition that concerns or worries them or about which they have questions or concerns. The panelists modeled the way to do that kind of dialogue beautifully. This method of doing the dialogue requires dialogue partners who have some level of trust with one another already and who know something about the other’s faith. It is an effective model for getting the dialogue to go to a much deeper level than such dialogues often go. I came away excited about the method and intending to use it with the Interfaith Forum in Rochester, as well as the Christian Jewish and Christian Muslim Commissions. Lynne Boucher and I also agreed we’ll want to incorporate it into the interfaith conference we’re putting together for CISD for next April.
At lunch we struck up conversation with a young Muslim chaplain in the US Navy. He was a lovely young man and we had an interesting conversation about his experience as a Muslim chaplain in the military in this immediate aftermath of the Fort Hood event.
After lunch I had attended a session of Hindu Odissi religious dance performance. I had thought I’d just stop in briefly to see what it was like and then leave early and go for a walk, but it was so mesmerizing I wound up staying the whole time. I’ve included a picture of the dancers in action. Each dance was the enactment of one of the Hindu myths about their gods/goddesses and the chanting and music were really beautiful.
I then stopped by to see how the Tibetan monks were coming with the mandala. I’ve attached a picture of it as it has progressed thus far! I’ll be on the plane returning home when they do the ceremony on Thursday where they bless the mandala and then dump it in the river. I’d love to see that ceremony although I’m not sure I could stand to watch that beautiful piece of work thrown to the wind and water!
In the late afternoon I attended the next session of the series of workshops dealing with Education Religious Leaders for a Multi Religious world. Today we were examining the questions of what virtues and skills do we need to instill in our religious leaders to equip them for doing religious leadership in a multi-religious context. Of course, this is what I do at CRCDS and so I’m completely in my element in these workshops. When we did the small break out sessions, I was able to be in one of the sessions with the seminary students who are in the program that the Luce Foundation is funding so it was really rich. I also made a connection with a faculty person at GTU with whom I hope to have further conversations about interfaith education in the seminary. That whole track is proving to be a gold mine of information, ideas and resource sharing.
The day ended with a sacred music concert which was another smorgasbord of music and dance from every imaginable world religious tradition. Unfortunately, they forbade flash photography so I couldn’t take any pictures. It was simply too dark without a tripod. The highlights included aboriginal music from Australia, whirling dervishes, and the Tibetan monks doing the chant that they do where their voices somehow manage to sound more than one note at a time. The concert started 45 minutes late, so I left at 10 and they still had a long way to go. I simply had no more energy.
This was one l-o-o-o-n-n-n-g-g-g day and I am way tired. More tomorrow.
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