Greek Orthodox 9/11 memorial photo

From inside the Greek Orthodox Church of Stockton, CA during 9/11 memorial.

Michelle Mueller, M.Div.

MIC Contemplative Service for Peace

Like so many millions of Americans across the country, we here in Marin County stopped to remember the events of 9/11/2001. There were about a dozen events listed in the local newspaper commemorating that day, so I wasn't expecting too many people to come to this one offered by Marin Interfaith Council, but come they did, about 80 in all. In speaking with others who were there, I learned that some were not religious people, but simply wanted to come together in community for this occasion. They didn't want preaching, of which we had none (and if we had, I likely would not have participated).

We gathered in a circle around Community Congregational Church of Tiburon's new labyrinth. One arc of the circle was shaded by a small grove of redwoods, and another opened onto a vast view of the Golden Gate and the Golden Gate Bridge. A central altar table held a staff (gift to the church from the woman who consulted on building the labyrinth), a blue glass novena candle, a Tibetan singing bowl, and a small statue of Lady Liberty. I placed the last two items there. Lady Liberty's torch held a small candle. There was a light breeze blowing, so I didn't expect to be able to keep a candle lit. Those who saw me about to do so told me not to bother. Still, it was important to light it, so I did. It burned for a few seconds, maybe a minute, and blew out.

The Marin interfaith singers opened the gathering with "Dona Nobis Pacem," a lovely song that most, if not all, religions seem comfortable with. I know I am.

We were welcomed by the Rev. Carol Hovis, Executive Director of MIC, and the Rev. Curran Reichert, pastor of the host facility. I was encouraged to hear Carol speak of the religious dimension of the 9/11 attacks and of the fact that all religions have their dark sides.

The Rev. Jeremy Levie of Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center, read from the Buddhist tradition. Rabbi Henry Shreibman, a reconstructionist Jew, recited in Hebrew from the book of Lamentations, then spoke the words in English. Then MIC intern Abby Fuller rang a bell signaling silent meditation.

From Brahma Kumaris, a Hindu order, Sister Kyoko Kamura played flute while Sister Roslyn Seaton read.

Group chanting and silent meditations occurred between readings.

Sister Colleen McDermott, of the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, read a Roman Catholic meditation.

Following another period of silence, in honor of Lady Liberty, I read "The New Colossus," by Emma Lazarus, written in 1883 and inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York City Harbor.*

As I walked back to my seat on the other side of the labyrinth, I stopped to relight Lady Liberty's torch. It lit, and it stayed lit.

After a musical meditation by Stephen Iverson, Music Minister at Sleepy Hollow Presbyterian Church in San Anselmo and Cantor at St. Rita's Catholic Church in Fairfax, a youth leader, Nura Heydari, from San Rafael Bahá'í Community, gave a reading.

Author Nafisa Haji of the International Society of Sufism, gave the final reading, followed by closing words from MIC intern Abby Fuller from San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo and First Church of Christ Scientist, San Rafael.

We closed with a group chant that was written by a member of the EarthSpirit Community in Boston as her immediate response to the 9/11 attacks. As I led the chant, I extended my hands to grasp those of the people on either side of me, until the we all created one circle.

Rabbi Schriebman played taps.

The magic of the day was that for the duration of the service, Lady Liberty's flame stayed lit. It would flicker and seem to be gone, and then it would leap to life again. Corby and I were watching it intently. I noticed that Carol Hovis across the circle was also watching it. As it turned out, almost everyone was watching that sacred flame, as many of them commented to me afterward. I told them it was magic, which indeed it was. We Pagan priestesses are good at doing magic.

Corby and I, and others, I'm certain, found each different reading offered something comforting, wise, and inspirational to be gleaned.

One could not have asked for a more beautiful day to commemorate such a horrendous day ten years earlier. Or a more beautiful location. Healing is happening.

Yours in service to Coventina,
M. Macha NightMare (Aline O'Brien)


* I was pleased to learn that my colleague at CHS, Holli Emore, read the same piece at an Interfaith Gathering for Peace in which she participated in Charleston, SC.

Saratoga California - 9/11 Observance: Moving Forward: Transformation through Community Engagement

On September 7th the Islamic Networks Group (ING) in partnership with the Council on American Islamic Relations – San Francisco Bay Area, Addison-Penzak Jewish Community Center, Roman Catholic Diocese of San Jose, Jewish Community Relations Council, and the Silicon Valley Interreligious Council (SiVIC) hosted an interfaith gathering commemorating the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in Saratoga, CA.  The event was meant to both memorialize the victims and honor those who sacrificed their lives trying to save others on that day.

There was a lovely reception with Middle Eastern snacks. The lobby of the McAfee Center was colourful with all the religious garb and other nicely dressed attendees. There were over 30 religious leaders, a dozen first responder representatives and Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese, two filmmakers and I would estimate 100-150 attendees and staff. Local service organizations were present in the lobby offering volunteer opportunities.

The program started with the documentary Love Hate Love by Dana Nachman & Don Hardy chronicling three families torn apart by terrorism. The Aldermans lost a son in NYC's World Trade Center, the Hymans lost a sister in the London Underground bombings and the third story was about Ben Tullipan, who was himself caught in the Bali nightclub bombing where he was severely burned and lost both of his legs. In each case the survivors turned to helping others in their search for meaning. The Aldermans have created mental health clinics in war torn areas to help those afflicted with PTSD make new lives. The Hymans support a children's eye clinic in India because their lost sister  discovered as a teenager that she was nearsighted and corrective lenses let her appreciate art. Ben helps new amputees get back on their feet and supports the Bali community with his import store in Australia. It was very nicely done and filled with hope and meaning.


After the film, Supervisor Cortese welcomed people and the 30 faith leaders processed up to sit on stage. (So I have no pictures of the event, first they put us in the very back and then on stage.)  Then the first responder representatives were called and they joined us on stage. We had four keynote faith leader speakers Fr. Jon Pedigo from the Catholic Diocese, Shifu Jian Hu from the Sunnyvale Zen Center, Rabbi Dana Magat from Temple Emmanuel and Imam Aladdin El Bakri (that is Al eh Deeeen not Aladdin like the Disney movie). Between them they hit on absolutely every theme that was appropriate for the day. I am very impressed by our local interfaith community!

We finished on time and folks were so energized that they continued to chat in the lobby (and finish off the snacks). It was a really beautiful ceremony and brought our community together.

Rowan Fairgrove
NCLC Interfaith Rep

Marin Interfaith Council Considers Death Row

Please see guest blog at California Correctional Crisis blog.

Yours in service to Coventina,
M. Macha NightMare

Full report of NAIN Connect (including text of Don's talk) on NAIN website

The good folks at NAIN have put a comprehensive report (with photos) of the NAIN Connect conference on their website at http://www.nain.org/news/NAINConnect2011ReportWeb.htm

If you wish, you can go directly to my talk (which was originally titled "Am I not welcome?": The Dark Side of the Golden Rule, but was mysteriously renamed Weaknesses of the Golden Rule) at http://www.nain.org/news/NAINConnect2011ReportWeb.htm , or get the full text as a PDF at
http://www.nain.org/news/DonFrew.pdf. 

If you DO read my talk, please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Blessed Be,
Don Frew
National Interfaith Representative

CoG Interfaith Reps on Board of new Interfaith Journal

Rachael Watcher and I are serving on the Board of a new interfaith journal / website.  It will be to interfaith work what Beliefnet and Patheos have been to comparative religion.  I urge you to take a look at the pre-launch site and subscribe if you are interested.  http://theinterfaithobserver.org/

Don Frew
National Interfaith Representative

WELCOME TO THE INTERFAITH OBSERVER (TIO)

Thirty attended an early-morning discussion of TIO’s September launch at the North America Interfaith Network’s annual Connect, July 24-26, in Phoenix, Arizona. [Photo: Terry Weller]

In a world beleaguered with poverty and violence, an emerging interfaith movement offers opportunities to become friends with ‘the other’ safely, a first step in peacemaking. The whole human family is showing up in neighborhoods in countries everywhere, thanks to airliners, the internet, videocams, and so much more. This new diversity can terrify or delight us but will not go away. The strategic question – whether to choose ‘fight or flight,’ or, as those in the interfaith movement would suggest, to reach out.

In spite of the daily news, the great good news is that people everywhere, in fact, are reaching out. A thousand interreligious flowers and more are blooming across the globe. No one organized, planned or even predicted this surging proliferation of activity. It seems to be a natural human response when the races, religions, and cultures of the world interact freely with one another, face-to-face, on a daily basis.

The very spontaneity of this development in world religion means most of us involved don’t know the bigger picture, haven’t yet connected with brothers and sisters working on the same issues elsewhere. Amazing stories wait to be told, and multiplying resources deserve promotion. TIO aims to connect the dots.

On September 15, 2011, a group of seasoned interfaith activists who care about these matters will launch The Interfaith Observer, casually known as TIO. It will be a monthly e-journal telling new stories, exploring new issues, identifying exemplary resources, and connecting us to each other. TIO will look for the big picture while providing hundreds of links to particular opportunities. For more details about TIO, click this link.

If interfaith dialogue and relationships matter to you, please subscribe to TIO. It is free, written and edited by volunteers with decades of hands-on experience in this new arena. It aims to be a provocative, useful source of hope. Thanks for passing this invitation on to anyone else you know who cares.

In peace and love,

 

Rachael's NAIN Conference Report

On the 22nd of July I headed out to Phoenix to attend a North American Interfaith Network "Connect". I was gone five days and those days were packed. Up at 6 or 6:30 to take advantage of a delightfully warm swimming pool and get some kinks out then to breakfast. At 9 meetings started. The first two days were filled with board meetings which (with breaks of course) lasted until 9pm. Then there were informal talks at night, until I staggered to bed to begin again in the morning.

As Don Frew has faithfully reported on the happenings of the Connect, I will give you an overview of my time there rather than over saturate you with details. I did not mention specific names where I had less than positive things to say of someone for the sake of their privacy.

On the 24th with the yearly board meeting behind us the conference got under way. The theme was "Living the Golden Rule". As a member of the program committee I might have protested more vigorously about such exclusivity of terms, but this group stepped in when we were totally without a plan for the next year and had just published a book of days with a short meditation from every religion that they could find that had anything connected with a Golden Rule type of philosophy and wanted to showcase their work.

The programming results were predictable; one saccharine sweet talk or panel after the other touting the "Rule" as a universal panacea for a perfect world. Two major concerns arose for me when I realized that the first plenary speaker, who was introduced as the leading academic expert on world religions and the Golden Rule knew nothing of almost any religion except the Abrahamic faiths. He was not even aware that Wicca (currently listed as the fourth largest religion in the US by more than one reliable poll) existed, and had no clue what Rastafarian tradition was (which is arguably among the Christian faith groups). As the days passed and I had an opportunity to speak with him personally I realized that his knowledge was woefully lacking in just about all areas including Jainism and huge chunks of Hindu practice. Worse he has written books on the subject that are pointed to as the authority on why the Golden Rule is universal and teaches college courses in it. Heavy sigh!

The other major speaker was probably a bit more informed but spent most of his time quoting Confucius and using phrases like "All Gods Children" (a phrase that the Inquisition used to distinguish between Christians and all those whom they persecuted). Neither of these men, in personal conversation, were in the least willing to consider that they were not as fully informed as they believed and were being insulting and exclusionary to religions who did not have any such philosophy.

Fortunately two speakers, Rabbi David Kunnin, and Elder Donald Frew, stepped forward to point out the flaws in such thinking and, surprisingly, were well received, most likely because they were both well educated, excellent speakers whose points were pretty much irrefutable.

Not every religion has the Golden Rule, most specifically those closer to indigenous and/or pagan practice

Post colonial occupation either translated and re-worked native doctrines so that they looked more like the Golden Rule or..

Post colonialized populations re-worked their own ethical systems so that they looked more like the Golden Rule in order to be more accepted by their "new friends".

By stating that the Golden Rule is universal we are saying that any religion who does not have an ideology that might be tooled to apply is, by definition not a religion.

Such exclusionary terminology is detrimental to the practice and idea of interfaith.

For me, however, the topics and themes were only of secondary interest as I had just been promoted to the Chair of Internal communications, an office that had here-to-fore been held by one person who handled both the internal and external communications for us. She was falling behind in both technology and time and wanted to focus on the Newsletter and other forms of communication with the broader community of interfaith practice. Unfortunately I inherited a web page woefully out of date and an internal communications network that was totally unworkable.

She had been trying for ages to get the board to release us from a program that was really not designed for our needs but only this year were she and I able to convince the board to drop it in favor of easier and free programs for calendar and list serve processes. However she had proven reticent to release design of or make any changes herself, to the web page. I spent most of the time during the day being collared by members of the board who wanted me to do something about the web site. As it happened I made some excellent connections with the younger contingent who were a part of our young adult program and had received scholarships to attend this year's Connect. They managed to hunt me down when they discovered that I would be doing the new site and volunteered their services.

This was, almost in full, the work of a young intern who had been on the board with the chair of the communications committee for the past year and who was very aware of the need for change and the reticence of the chair to relinquish responsibility. It was she who recruited the "volunteers" for me and helped me formulate a plan to acquire charge of the website rebuild without hurting the person involved. She will be continuing to work with me on this project as a volunteer herself as her time with the board has expired. She is also, though it makes no difference to the process, of a neo-pagan leaning and had a long conversation with me on the history of Craft in general and the various traditions which have come out of it.

I did realize that there might be some generational disconnect while visiting with the younger folks when they started to throw out strings of letters such as LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, transgender) and then added even more letters which I can't begin to remember. I told them I had enough trouble just remembering BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism) which had taken me years to figure out. They laughed and we had a good time discussing all of the latest issues and agendas around such things. I didn't learn much but I did learn what they are calling it now days and, interestingly, what the academics are saying. I can't be certain but I think that they were a bit surprised and delighted to find that older people in a religious setting were open to and interested in such conversation. (Not to mention World of Warcraft, South Park, and Family Guy.)

Another advancement that I believe was very important was that every board member decided to completely endorse the use of Adobe Connect for meeting purposes. We had had two members who were dead set against any further advances in electronic usage, but Paul Chaffee, one of the previous hold-outs finally allowed me to show him the program and was so enthusiastic that along with my plea to curb our carbon foot print and set a cutting edge example to other organizations that even the most resistant member finally came to me and told me that he was moved by my sincerity and offered me his commitment to work to familiarize himself with the program and use it.

In fact I may have done too good a job on sales as they began to discuss the possibility of a future connect that was all electronic offering plenaries and workshops on line that were totally interactive. Exciting, I have to admit but.... Don't ever think that people over sixty can't get with the idea of a world in the clouds.

By the end of the Connect I was able to report back to all of those who had spoken with me about the web that we were moving ahead. We have a site for our Connects for the next two and possibly four years, and have commitments to better communications both internal and external. We have committed to having ten scholarships available for youth participation and two intern positions for young adults. We determined that every committee chair will have a co-chair to help with work and international communications, and we founded an ad-hoc financial group to help bring back lapsed members and seek new ones along with asking organizations for more financial support. All of the board members and in particular the Chair left feeling very optimistic about our growth and headway and despite the topic of the gathering I felt very good about the general outcome.

At the end of the meeting, at dinner, the Producer asked that anyone who had a brief comment on the time we had spent together or next year's connect should stand up and speak up. I stood and suggested politely that, as we had focused on our similarities this year perhaps we might focus on our differences in the love and safety of our gathering next year. I saw a very large number of people nodding in agreement. Who knows, perhaps we will finally get down to some really interesting conversations next year.

In Her service and yours,

R. Watcher, National Interfaith Representative