What is religious pluralism to the Survivor? To the one who’s lost faith in themselves? Lost faith in other people? Lost faith in humanity? To the one who’s lost faith in their ability to connect because…
I’ll be honest. I haven’t felt at home in the field of interfaith work for quite a while. During one of the last interfaith conferences I spoke at, I was asked by an older white gentleman why I was there, then insisting…
n the spring of 2020, I was working with my higher education colleagues to prepare for an interfaith retreat set on Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California. We had planned numerous…
October 2023, Emerging Interfaith Culture, Interfaith Relationships
I’ve written about “casserole” hospitality, an ethic of care demonstrated in America’s Heartland found in communities of various traditions who welcome…
When we talk about compassion, which by definition is found in aspiring to alleviate another’s suffering, it is far too often viewed as a path that only implores people to be kind. Some societies are…
I first became intoxicated by India as a college student in the 1960s, through the movies of Satyajit Ray, the music of Ravi Shankar and, most of all, the revelations of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. My first exposure to those sacred texts came second-hand, through the work of interpreters like Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley and the fiction of Herman Hesse, Somerset Maugham, and J.D. Salinger. The Beatles put me over the top when they took up Transcendental Meditation and made their landmark pilgrimage to Rishikesh. The total effect of those cross-cultural hinges was to turn this existentialist/atheist/social activist into a dedicated spiritual seeker. I’ve been immersed in yogic practices and Hindu texts ever since.