FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

A Sabbath Poem (UN)

A Call to Prayer
— U.N. Environmental Sabbath Program  

We who have lost our sense and our senses – our touch, our smell, our vision of who we are; we who frantically force and press all things, without rest for body or spirit, hurting our earth and injuring ourselves: we call a halt.
     We want to rest. We need to rest and allow the earth to rest. We need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lives in us, that is the ground of every unique expression of life, the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion.
     We declare a Sabbath, a space of quiet: for simple being and letting be; for recovering the great, forgotten truths; for learning how to live again.

This poem is a part of a series that comes from the book "Earth Prayers," a collection of daily earth honoring poems and prayers

7th Annual Interreligious Prayer Service Celebrating the United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week

Join us, as Bowie Snodgrass will be part of this service at St. Francis Xavier, the church that hosts Faith House's Interfaith Seders. This event is part of the United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week. For more information about the week generally, visit http://worldinterfaithharmonyweek.com/

7th Annual Interreligious Prayer Service Celebrating World Interfaith Harmony Week

Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 7:30 PM

Church of St. Francis Xavier
46 West 16th Street
New York, NY 10011
between 5th and 6th Avenues
Wheel Chair Accessible at 55 West 15th Street

Special Guest Speakers include 
Sister Kathleen Deignan, CND
Ralph Singh, Chair Wisdom Thinkers Network
Father Roger Haight, S.J

Event Contacts:
Xavier Interfaith Committee: LMDiaz@sfxavier.org
Xavier Peace and Justice: johnkarle@gmail.com
Charles S. Chesnavage: 914-261-0468

A Sabbath Poem (Berry)

We Who Prayed and Wept
— Wendell Berry 

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and yoke of liberty
accept the tyanny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.

This poem is a part of a series that comes from the book "Earth Prayers," a collection of daily earth honoring poems and prayers

A Sabbath Poem (Griffin)

Matter (How We Know)
— Susan Griffin 

We know ourselves to be made from this earth. We know this earth is made from our bodies. For we see ourselves. And we are nature. We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature. Nature weeping. Nature speaking of nature to nature.
      The red-winged blackbird flies in us, in our inner sight. We see the arc of her flight. We measure the ellipse. We predict its climax. We are amazed. We are moved. We fly. We watch her wings negotiate the wind, the substance of the air, its elements and the elements of those elements, and count those elements found in other beings, the sea urchin's sting, ink, this paper, our bones, the flesh of our tongues with which we make the sound "blackbird," the ears with which we hear, the eye which travels the arc of her flight. And yet the blackbird does not fly in us but is somewhere else free of our minds, and now even free of our sight, flying in the path of her own will

This poem is a part of a series that comes from the book "Earth Prayers," a collection of daily earth honoring poems and prayers

Walk in Your Shoes: A Day in the Life of an Other

Thank you, Zac, for sending this!

In our suburban, mostly white, mostly Christian city in southwestern Indiana, our private high school has longed for opportunities to interact with the rest of the world. We welcome the chance to study different cultures, political systems, and religions in meaningful ways. While we have a handful of Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu students in our school, none of them happened to enroll in our World Religions class this semester. Those enrolled in the class came from highly similar Midwestern Christian backgrounds. So what are a bunch of mostly white, mostly Christian, suburbanites supposed to do to get a better understanding of those different religious faiths?

About a year ago, I learned of a fascinating man named Samir Selmanovic. Pastor Samir is the author of the book: It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian. He is also a founder of  Faith House Manhattan, an interfaith community at the growing  edge of a movement to do more than just tolerate and respect those of differing faiths. This movement aims to humbly approach the other in an effort to learn and not just to share one’s own beliefs.

With a book subtitle like that, and an obviously unique way of approaching different religions, my interest was piqued. This belief that others have more to teach us than we have to teach them resonated with me. This ended up setting the tone for our class philosophy, and we decided to contact Samir for help.

We wanted to better know what it feels like to walk in the shoes of someone who follows Islam, Judaism, or Hinduism. We literally wanted to share of their soles. We asked Samir if he could help us to locate some shoes from his friends to help us to physically experience this in our classroom.

We would be spending a certain amount of time on each religion in our class, with guest speakers to boot. As a sort of final project for each religion, I wanted each student to prepare a short presentation, imagining what a day in the life of an other might be like. The idea was to experience true empathy for those of differing faiths, and not just detached knowledge about those faiths.

Samir was very warm to the idea. He responded promptly and graciously, ignoring our offer to pay to ship these shoes to us from New York City. He remarked offhandedly that paying to ship the shoes “would be rewarding for the giver to do”. Samir’s philosophies were becoming more captivating with every step. Out of the blue, I received a non-descript, cardboard box from Samir. It happened to be right before our World Religions class, so I brought it in to open in front of the rest of the class. The students were thrilled and intrigued by the shoes, many of them commenting on how “normal” they looked. We were now prepared to put flesh into these shoes and put flesh onto the beliefs we were studying.

As the students gave their presentations, I was struck by how natural it was for them to step into the role of an other. With all of the fervor in the media regarding terrorism by Islamic militants, and the Park 51 project near Ground Zero in New York City, I expected that the students might have a particularly difficult time relating to Islam in an authentic, personal, empathetic manner. Quite the contrary was true. The students all seemed to express an awareness of the hostility towards Islam, and demonstrated how they (their character) relied on God and their community of faith to stand strong. The same was true of Judaism and Hinduism. Each student commented on how many similarities between beliefs there ended up being.

  In the end, we felt a sense of a journey’s inauguration because of our experience. While we are not experts in the faiths that millions of our fellow humans live and breathe every day, we are certainly much less ignorant. We are sincerely thankful to Samir and Faith House Manhattan for their munificence. I hope that our small steps together have produced a hunger to taste more of the rich bounty of truth and beauty that seems to be everywhere, in everything, and not just in our Christian tradition.

 With warmest regards,

 Zac Parsons

 

A Sabbath Poem (Hesse)

Sometimes
— Hermann Hesse 

Sometimes, when a bird cries out,
Or the wind sweeps through a tree,
Or a dog howls in a far off farm,
I hold still and listen a long time.

My soul turns and goes back to the place
Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,
The bird and the blowing wind
Were like me, and were my brothers.

My soul turns into a tree,
And an animal, and a cloud bank.
Then changed and odd it comes home
And asks me questions. What should I reply?

This poem is a part of a series that comes from the book "Earth Prayers," a collection of daily earth honoring poems and prayers