Midweek Faith Lift
August 30, 2023
Thoughts from the 2023
Parliament of World Religions
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Reflection
August 18, 2023
The leaders of eight Amazon River basin countries forged an agreement to conserve the world’s largest rainforest, setting a framework for coordinating conservation funding, scientific research, and combating illegal mining and logging. “The rainforest isn’t a void that needs occupying nor a treasure trove to be looted. It’s a flower bed of possibilities,” said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula.
“There is divine potential at the depths of all life, awaiting our discovery and our guardianship. As we honor this promise – the essence of Spirit within us all – we come to recognize it everywhere. We see it in nature and in others, and we feel its power within us. Undivided beauty, resources, and goodness.” – Scott Awbrey
Affirmative prayer: Infinite Presence, I’m thankful to know that wise souls prevail to transform possibilities into experiences of life-affirming goodness. I honor the holy potential in each of us and call it forward in my own life that I may witness pure Spirit expressed in remarkable ways. Thank you, God, forever. Amen.
This particular Spiritual Reflection was on August 18, 2023 the final day of the Parliament of World Religions and it is so appropriate for that day. The Parliament’s theme this year was: A Call to Conscience: Defending Freedom and Human Rights and the program was 5 days of sessions, experiences, workshops and plenary sessions to do just that! It was a challenge to make a choice each day from all the incredible sessions. Today I just want to share with you some of the titles, some of my experiences and the sense of hope that I gained as a result.
Educator Parker Palmer writes, “The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed, exactly as it is.” The Parliament was an incredible opportunity to witness the human soul exactly as it is. One of the overarching themes that I noted were all the sessions dedicated to bringing people who are in conflict together, to talk to each other, to get to know one another and develop relationships. That theme was evident in the very first session on Interfaith and Defending Religious Freedom. I learned of USCIRF.gov, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, established in 1999, which I did not know existed.
One of the members of this panel was a young woman, Amina, from Bosnia who is a Sunni Muslim. She spoke of her initial understanding of Interfaith dialogue as a way to highlight and promote her own religion and then the shift she made to the place of realizing the value of each religion, each version of the Muslim religion to its believers. Her insight was the need to bring people together within her the Muslim tradition as a first step in bridging the differences and supporting human rights. She now works to bring young people together, Sunni, Shiite, and other Muslim groups together to understand, listen and form relationships and she is having success.
This became a consistent theme throughout all the sessions I attended. While all that divides humanity gets a lot of attention a common theme at the parliament was that freedom of religion cannot be partial, we must secure for our neighbors what we want for ourselves. We are familiar with the golden rule about treating another as you want to be treated. There is also the Platinum Rule: treat others the way that they want to be treated. This requires direct communication and interaction to learn just how the person or group wants to be treated and then responding accordingly. If we even made an attempt to do that there would be more honoring of religious freedom and human rights for sure!
One of the most compelling and hopeful things I learned was at the Closing Plenary when a group called “Friends of Roots” received the an award from the Parliament for their work in bringing Israelis and Palestinians together in the Holy Land. From the Friends of Roots website
I took the following:
Over the past five years, Roots has created and fostered standing partnerships between Israelis from across the southern Jordan Valley and Palestinians from the villages of Ouja, Fesayel, and others. Regularly held meetings, shared religious celebrations, and children’s activities laid the branch’s foundation for its first three years. After cultivating relationships with Palestinian university students in the Jericho area in January 2021, Roots’ core staff launched a pilot dialogue program connecting them with local Israeli university students. The group met bi-monthly throughout 2021 and has evolved into a joint study group in which participants learn about nonviolence, with an emphasis on the religious bases of nonviolence in Judaism and Islam. Roots activists in the Jordan Valley also hold a bi-monthly clean-up event at the local Ouja spring, and recently submitted a proposal to fund a joint restoration and environmental education project there. Our fourth Run for Reconciliation took place in March 2022 in the Jordan Valley, bringing together over 90 Roots supporters.
What an inspiring and powerful initiative! And this was one of many such initiatives that I learned about at the Parliament this year.
It would be inaccurate to say that there was not also much discussion about facism, the patriarchy and the powerful elites holding onto wealth and power worldwide. That is all true, and the rise of religious persecution around the world is also true. But there are an incredible number of initiatives about peace and justice, which are also happening that unfortunately don’t get the attention of the media. The titles included: Healing and Justice for the Trans Community, Catalyzing a Global Ethic of Cooperation in Service of Love, With the Best Intentions: Interrogating Interfaith Mistakes, Conflict Sensitivity in Interfaith Initiatives and How to Talk to Your Enemies and on and on and on. The work of interfaith groups around the world to aid in healing and bringing change is truly inspiring.
One of the most powerful experiences I had was Wednesday evening when I attended the Cosmic Mass lead by Matthew Fox, former Catholic but now Episcopal priest. This takes the essential elements of the Catholic Mass and transforms them into a participant ritual experience for everyone. The first part was the “Via Positiva” during which 700 or so of us gathered, participated in a spiral dance, chanted, heard a beautiful poem, and shared with each other what “spiritual” means to us. We were preparing for the next step: grieving. This was a transition to the “Via Negativa,” which was a powerful communal, collective grieving process…during which I, and others actually cried! We got down on all 4’s, head to the floor, all 5’s, to surrender our grief to the earth. We have so much to grieve in the post-Covid times. It was not for the faint hearted!
This was followed by the “Via Transformativa,” which included a time of honoring and greeting each other, saying “I behold the light in you” to each other. The communion ritual to which all were invited and which included bread and wine and a blessing by the Buddhist monk, Tich Nhat Hahn, was next. And then finally, the “Via Creativa,” which included dancing and celebration and a sending forth. It was amazing and I left feeling lighter, hopeful with much less sense of stress and burden.
To be fair, I also attended a session that was a pagan ritual honoring St. Brigid who is the patron saint of musicians among other things. Bridget has her own cross and a whole set of chants and rituals from the Celtic/Wiccan traditions. It was lovely, although I have to say it was weird chanting “Bridget, Bridget, keeper of the earth energy, please come forth and be with us!” My youngest child is named Bridget and I truly expected her to come through the door at any minute!
On my mile long walk to McCormick Place where the Parliament was being held, I offered to help a young man, who was attempting to push luggage and pull luggage while drinking his coffee. I pulled the smaller case, which was quite heavy. I was helping Shane Claiborne, one of the Closing Plenary speakers although I did not know that at the time. His mission is to turn guns into garden tools, literally forging them into garden tools, using the wood and the metal. He lives on the north side of Philadelphia and essentially has a “mission to end violence” in his neighborhood. He grew up in Tennessee as a gun loving “fundy” Christian until as an elementary aged kid, he had a classmate who was playing “cops and robbers” with a gun that was loaded and accidentally shot and killed his playmate. That began his transformation whereby he is “Beating Guns into Garden Tools.
I bought a heart necklace made from a gun and he gave me a copy of his book, Beating Guns: Hope for People Who are Weary of Violence, as a thank you for helping him carry his suitcases. This is all before I even heard him speak! His group set up on the outdoor deck with their portable forge to demonstrate how they actually transform guns into garden tools! This demonstration was right next to one that said in huge letters: ENOUGH and included 30,000 orange flags, one for each child in America killed by a gun since the Sandy Hook killings in 2012. It was very powerful!
There were so many incredible presentations and speakers and I heard so many inspiring messages. When bringing people together for an interfaith experience or attempting to help people as a faith group, first DO NO HARM and be vigilant and mindful of any unintended harm that you might do! That was insightful and instructive in how to work with people who are connectors and dividers, because every group and every project has those folks! If pork is prohibited by a religion you are connecting with, don’t serve pork! Not easy to do in southern states!
“Is Racism Fake News?” presented by our very own Unity folks was insightful, helpful and excellent! And no, it is NOT fake news, unfortunately! This was a great learning experience to ask how people of color want to be treated…..and then listen! Don’t touch their hair, and don’t even ask. It was interesting to also learn that black people from Haiti who speak French have experienced “racism” from African Americans, especially in middle and high school! We all have a lot to learn and many ways to wake up and grow up for sure.
Finally, Marianne Williamson was one of the keynote speakers on the day that the Plenary theme was “A Call to Conscience.” She was excellent at motivating all of us to rise to meet this moment in history, which she called the “Dietrich Bonhoeffer” moment. She called us to be the “Death angels to the Old and birth mothers to the New with a Moses consciousness that takes us into the Promised Land. It was quite compelling. But my favorite quotation was from the Rabbi who spoke on behalf of the Roots organization as they received the Humanitarian Award. He said, “We don’t all start in the same place, but we’re standing together now.” For the sake of our survival, the sake of the planet, may it be so!
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb