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Meaning Making, Environment/Climate, Coexistence
Sofia Sayabalian
Among Ice, Lichen, and Light

by Sofia Sayabalian

Having the opportunity to visit Reykjavík, Iceland was a special one. I always thought of Iceland as an isolated place–far, freezing, and frosted with whispers…

Among Ice, Lichen, and Light
March 2025, Inclusivity, Meaning Making, Ethics
Frank DiGirolamo
Authoring our Shared Story

by Frank DiGirolamo

“Wow! … You just listened to my whole anthem.” It was late at night, years ago, on North Broadway in Capitol Hill. “Miguel” had just recited his life story to me for a good 20 minutes…

Authoring our Shared Story
March 2025, Family, Meaning Making, October 2012, Beliefs
Camila Torres
Echale! The Story of Generations Past

by Camila Torres

When I was a child, I was terrified of the dark. I hated going to sleep, because, once the lights turned off, the sheer possibility of encountering a monster kept me awake…

Echale! The Story of Generations Past
Judaism, Family, March 2025, Young Adult
Amina Malkin
An Inheritance of History

by Amina Malkin

When talking about religion, my father will sometimes talk about “the chosen people,” a title that Jewish people have historically adopted as a way to reference being descended from…

An Inheritance of History
March 2025, Family, Young Adult, Catholicism
Gabby Prado
An Ongoing Legacy of Faith and Family

by Gabby Prado

Throughout my life, I’ve lived by the belief that my success and achievements are not solely mine but are deeply connected to the generations of my family who came before me…

An Ongoing Legacy of Faith and Family
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Experience Your Neighbor's Faith to Deepen Your Own

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Experience Your Neighbor's Faith to Deepen Your Own
We are coming to a realization that religious zealots cannot be fought with indifference. Extremists of all nationalities and religious persuasion feeding on prejudice, legislating exclusion, and resorting to violence cannot be prevailed upon by people with less passion. Telling them to "cool down" and to "be moderate" will not do it. We must allow fires greater than theirs to arise. Our passion for a whole and interdependent word must rise above their passion for a segregated and zero-sum world. 

Live the Promise: HIV and AIDS Campaign

Leaders from five world religions gathered in Toronto, Canada, are encouraging their peers to deepen their engagement and action on HIV by addressing the difficult issues raised by the pandemic in dialogue with people living with HIV.

Woman Leaders Hold Interfaith Forum at UST

MANILA, Philippines — The Asian Conference of Religions for Peace, in collaboration with the University of Santo Tomas (UST) recently held the Asian Women Forum, an international, inter-faith gathering of global women leaders and women of faith in a dialogue on the primordial role of women in peace building.

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KidSpirit – Youth Model the Spirit of Pluralism

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KidSpirit – Youth Model the Spirit of Pluralism

by Elizabeth Dabney Hochman

New Journal on Religion and Contemporary Life

"Religion" is one of the most difficult words to define.  People use the word all of the time but have a hard time flushing out its precise meaning.  Having spent time on issues surrounding defining "religion," I felt it would be a good idea to start a new journal where "religion" can be analyzed, interpreted, and compared with other phenomena.  I figured it would be an accessible, academic, online forum for people to publish on issues surrounding "religion."  Much like State of Formation, Claremont Journal of Religion is meant to facilitate academic dialogue and encourage the enactment of deep pluralism.

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Telling Stories of Muslims and Christians in Syria

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Twelve years ago, I travelled to a monastery in the Syrian desert, where I met an Italian priest by the name of Father Paolo Dall'Oglio. For 20 years, he had been living in rural Syria, serving as the abbot of the ancient monastery of Deir Mar Musa. There, he led a community of Arabic-speaking monks and nuns dedicated to prayer, hospitality, manual work and dialogue with Muslims. As I settled in I was astonished to notice Muslims visiting all day, admiring the church frescoes, joining the local Syrian Christians for lunch, even excusing themselves so that they could perform their prayers in a quiet corner [Father Paolo Dall’Oglio] of the monastery grounds. I had never seen love between Muslims and Christians embodied so effortlessly, a communion of human beings sharing daily life.

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When Dialogue is Not Enough

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Where do we see ourselves five years from now?” asked Jean, a founding member and frequent facilitator for the West Los Angeles Cousins Club, a group of Jewish and Muslim women.

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“I’ll Have a Dark Roast Mocha Latte with Social Values to Go”

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Java. Joe. Brew. Whatever you call it, coffee is a fixture in American culture, a heart-warming part of our national diet. With average consumption exceeding 400 million cups a day, America is the leading consumer of coffee in the world, an $18 billion dollar market that secures 90 percent of its production from the third world. While the cost of an average cup now ranges from $1.25 to $2.50 in the US, not counting higher priced gourmet specialty brews, millions of farmers in countries like Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Sumatra, working year ‘round growing the beverage we imbibe, receive but a tiny fraction of that price for their labor. Too often, the multi-national financial machinery that grinds out our richly flavored brew leaves poverty in its dregs.

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Unique Clergy Network Empowers Religion Sector

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Here’s the challenge.

  • Engage all of the 440 clergy serving a northern California region of just under a million people.

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Should People of Different Faiths Pray Together?

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This question has become increasingly important with the growing interaction between members of the world religions at all levels of society. Still quite a new issue in the Western world, few churches have given it much attention. In most cases, practice is well in advance of thinking about interfaith worship. I write as a Christian, mainly from a British context, and it will be good to hear from other standpoints.

The People Who Write for TIO

This posting marks TIO’s sixth issue. Half a year in seems a good time to catch a breath and see where we’ve come. More than 100 articles, news items, interfaith reports, and calendar events have gone to TIO subscribers and can now be found at www.theinterfaithobserver.org. In sum, this material underlines the assumption which motivated this venture in the first place – that those who embrace interfaith culture need to know more about each other, the manifold resources that are surfacing, and the ways healthy interfaith collaboration can contribute to peace, justice, and care for the Earth.

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The Fiery Force that Sparkles in Everything

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What is the positive core at the heart of who I am? My response: “You are I, recognizing the fiery force that sparkles in everything.”

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Declaration of Indigenous Peoples at Durban Climate Change Talks

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Dear Friends,

Greetings of peace and blessing from URI Africa.

Indigenous people participating in the Conference of Parties (COP17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban , South Africa from November 28 to December 9, 2011 have released the following Declaration demanding that their rights be respected, protected and fulfilled.

In peace,
Mussie Hailu

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United Religions Initiative Conference in Mogadishu on Resolving Religiously Motivated Violence

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Greetings of peace, light and blessing from URI Africa. Hope this finds you in peace and good health.

“Meaning” Brings Everyone to the Table

Human beings, gifted with consciousness, have no choice but to explain, at least to ourselves, what life means. Even “meaninglessness” qualifies as a definition of meaning, as when Shakespeare’s King Macbeth cries out that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Easy for the King to say. Prey to his own worst instincts and reduced to violent tyranny, Macbeth’s “nothing” comes between hearing that his partner in crime, Lady Macbeth, has committed suicide, and his own beheading.

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Ice-breakers, Dancing, and Meaning Making

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During the ice-breaker at a recent interfaith gathering, we each shared our ‘faith journey’ with the group. We were mostly strangers. The facilitator had created a set of cards, each with a simple line drawing of something from everyday life. She asked us to choose a few of the cards to illustrate our faith journeys. Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Pagans, and more, each chose some cards and told their different stories. Then it was my turn.

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State of Formation Weighs in on Meaning

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State of Formation (SoF), which publishes a weekly newsletter, is a forum for emerging religious and ethical leaders. SoF draws from more than 100 young adult writers representing all sorts of religious, spiritual, philosophic backgrounds. Founded by the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, it is run in partnership with Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School, in collaboration with the Parliament of the World’s Religions.

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One Thousand Words on “Meaning”

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My source of meaning is God. For me, God is a character in the stories from the Talmud that are the scaffolding of my life. These stories begin with God consulting the angels: Should I create human beings or not? The angels, as argumentative as the Jews telling the story, break into factions and debate the issue. Some argue that human beings will be so morally flawed as to make a mess of the world, others that they will bring healing. While they fight, God sneaks off and creates Adam. The stories continue with God creating human beings in God’s own image. No exceptions. And further, God tells us that we are responsible for shaping that likeness. But how? Just as God clothed Adam and Eve in the garden, so are we to clothe the naked. Just as God buried Moses, so are we to bury the dead. Finally, the story I love the best. The rabbis debated for two and a half years if it was a good after all that humans were created. They finally came to a conclusion: it was a mistake. But, they added, as long as we are here, we ought to watch our ways or, as some would put it, scrutinize our deeds.

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What is Most Meaningful in My Life as a Buddhist

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Before writing this short essay, I puzzled for some days over what is most meaningful to me, especially pertaining to my Buddhist identity. There are many candidates. I value my relationship with my teacher; I value my sangha or community; I value being a Western Buddhist, which allows me to critically evaluate which aspects of Buddhism to take on and which, such as its sexism and patriarchy, to reject; I value all the training and inspiration I have received over the years.

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Starting with Moksha and Karma Yoga

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Finding meaning in life is an age-old quest that has perplexed people across geographical frontiers and transcended religious and spiritual affiliations. It attracts the interest of sages, religious scholars, and ordinary individuals alike. From distinctions between faith traditions to individual differences within a single religion to variances in time and space, every person will answer this question their own way, uniquely. It is therefore a quintessentially individual and personal search involving a diversity of perspectives.