I approached this book with high hopes and some trepidation. I longed for interspirituality when I had no name for it. I knew I wanted more than interfaith dialogue, useful as that is as a starting place. I am usually disappointed when authors compare faiths. My experience of heavily negative criticism of Christianity and blithe misinformation makes me wary.
Five Interfaith Resources to Make 2013 a Green Year!
Happy New Year! While everyone is still thinking about New Year’s resolutions, why not consider making 2013 the year you reduced your carbon footprint and helped the community at large by planting a sustainable vegetable garden.
The Heart of My Grandfather
Detroit, where I was born, formed, and raised, straddles a bittersweet line between two worlds. It is a place where the American Dream has already died four or five different times. It is a spent shell from its days as the “arsenal of democracy.” As I visited my family during a recent holiday trip, the starkness of this reality took on a deeper clarity. Walking and driving through the city, I came upon the supremely haunting vision of the burnt-out yet still elegant remains of the old Michigan Central Station. Pete and Frank’s, a grocery store my mom and her mom had scoured for bargains for nearly 50 years, is now empty and on the auction block.
Just Sign Up for the Goodies?
I was prepared not to like this book. I did not disagree with the author’s core belief that, in the words of Brother Wayne Teasdale, there is a “shared mystic heart beating in the center of the world’s deepest spiritual traditions.” Nor did I have trouble with naming that heart “interspiritual.”
Faithful to the Truth
Mirabai Starr speaks of the great tree of monotheism with its roots entrenched in the immutable soil of the metaphysical truth of love and its trunk extending heavenwards.
Elijah Interfaith Leaders Claim Hope as a Shared Principle
The Elijah Interfaith Institute is a multinational organization dedicated to fostering peace among the world's diverse faith communities through interfaith dialogue, education, research, and dissemination. Its unique programming generates interfaith dialogue at the highest levels, bringing together world religious leaders and renowned scholars the world over, through research projects, public conferences, and community-based initiatives. Its abiding commitment to harmony in the holy land finds many expressions, including Hope Booklet published in support of hundreds of [Eliijah Interfaith Institute leaders looking across Jerusalem.] peacebuilding activities around the world last month.
SARAH Celebrates 10 Years
Eleven years ago I awoke to the unbelievable imagery of a catalytic shock to our world, a wake up call inspiring millions of people to co-create a new world. In particular, it would be the activating yeast mobilizing women to embrace leadership in a familiar but long forgotten way.
Sacred Ground by Eboo Patel: A Review
With Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America, Eboo Patel establishes himself as the preeminent voice of the interfaith movement. The book is about the “promise of American pluralism,” because, “Simply put, it is people who have protected the promise of pluralism from the poison of prejudice.” Patel unabashedly notes that “the main character” in this book “is the one I love the most – America.”
Mirabai Starr – An Interview about Writing God of Love
Mirabai Starr’s new book, God of Love – A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, will be disconcerting to many in an arena that seems sometimes to have been written to death – the complexities of the Abrahamic faiths. The interconnections Starr explores seem novel but obvious at first. As the interconnections accumulate, though, familiar sacred texts become powerful and compelling in new ways, a source of hope for those who’ve concluded that Abrahamic violence is forever intractable.
The Beloved Community in the Face of Violence
This story was originally posted in Huff Post Religion on July 7, 2012, following the tragic violence at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin. Entering 2013, Susan Baller-Shephard’s story about the Sikh community continues to resonate and offer lessons for us all. Ed.
Getting Serious about Spirituality and Health
Anything less than a contemplative perspective on life
is an almost certain program for unhappiness.
- Father Thomas Keating
Buddhist Translators without Borders
I’m sitting in a retreat bungalow in the Australian bush south of Brisbane, near Mudgeeraba, Queensland. I am translating an ancient Buddhist scripture with twenty other people, most of whom are in different countries.
Women Provide Prophetic Voices in 1893 – Part 2
Swami Vivekanda’s famous greeting at the 1893 World Parliament of Religions, “Sisters and Brothers of America,” brought 7,000 women and men to their feet, clapping “for more than three minutes” before he could resume. But on the platform of speakers, women were a small minority, offering a little more than ten percent of the 200 presentations.
Interfaith-Active Artists Promote Peace with Story & Song
Once the car capital of America, Detroit has come to be known for its urban decay, for massive unemployment, decrepit housing, and endemic crime. Its vast freeway network resembles a ghost town during rush hour, an incongruous and troubling image for the once prosperous, vital home of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler.