FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

Saturday afternoons and Sanctuaries of Newness. Women's Spirituality Circle, April 2, 2011

~ by Ashely Curl

This new group met for a first gathering in the winter, a second in the spring, and will meet once more on Saturday, July 9th, from 3-6 pm for a summer gathering.  Email Jill Minkoff if you are interested in attending in July or the autumn.

On April 2nd, six women of multiple spiritual paths and backgrounds found their way to my apartment, a small space in a courtyard building in South Slope, Brooklyn.

We gathered in furniture around an empty coffee table decorated with jars of daffodils, symbols of the season which was so apparent on that day, spring. Each women brought something to my home from there own: One woman brought her baby, one, rocks to be “charged up,” one a Bible. There was an old journal from early spiritual exploration, a story, a jar of dirt… all symbolizing journey and path: sacred milestones in each of our lives and momentos from a time of journeying as a woman.  

This gathering had a different spirit from the last. Appropriate, I think, because it was comprised of different people, and the shape, sight, and smell of the gathering was affected and changed based on the experiences and needs of the women present. The afternoon felt sundrenched, lazy, and homey – women eating, chatting, connecting with each other, relating, understanding, passing on bits of wisdom and just listening… to decisions being made, frustrations and questions being had.

We began our time introducing ourselves to the group in the way of some aboriginal peoples of Australia, where I had spent some time – “from where we have come” – this having multiple meanings for the women gathered: from immigrant experiences, genealogical lineages, specific sojourns, pilgrimage, spiritual heritage and geographical location.

What became apparent, in the sharing, meditation, conversations, and silence, was an incredible diversity of human experience and recognition of transitions that each of us face and wrestle with in the context of our spiritual and religious realities – be they the past, present, or hoped-for-future spaces. New marriages, new children, new solitudes, new callings, new loves, new jobs, new communities and practices… 

And a new community of women who are learning and practicing and experimenting what it looks like, and smells like, and feels like, to learn, grow, and practice together… not regardless of spiritual background, but out of the backgrounds that have spiritually formed us and create us into the women that we find ourselves to be.

As my home emptied, I felt a sense of rejuvenation and expectancy as I looked at the daffodils that were left and thought of those that had left with these community women.

And I was thankful.

Women's Spirituality Circle, February 5, 2011

~ by Ashely Curl

This new group met for a first gathering in the winter, a second in the spring, and will meet once more on Saturday, July 9th, from 3-6 pm for a summer gathering.  Email Jill Minkoff if you are interested in attending in July or the autumn.

We were five.

Like a fist, like points on a star, like fingers and toes.

Like the senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell.

The expanse of Jill’s apartment view in the Bronx laid our whole city before us: beginning in day, fading into dusk, and ending in night… as the three hour time frame we had allotted for the first “interfaith, multifaith, and no faith” women’s spirituality circle began, settled, and ended on an incredibly sacred afternoon.

As we came together with cups of tea and things to “nosh,” we spoke of how we could usher in the divine in our midst and gathered incense, candles, plants, stones, fruit – all together to be gathered in the center of us: a makeshift altar-of-sorts.

In the naming and the building we were creating our safe, sacred space, and I felt the anticipation of learning and growing and getting to know the “sacred things” that each woman brought to add to our common table. Full of meaning, women brought a necklace, music created, a stone of hope, a jar of lava rocks, an art piece created at a time of another women’s circle.

Wide-eyed and questioning, there was a sense of earthy divinity in the way that each person “tread lightly” upon the experience of gathering as a whole and each other’s lives. Silence, sharing, ritual, laughter, singing, eyes closed, open, and downcast, amidst the smells of incense and herbal tea … there was a combined sense of solemnity, relief, and gratitude that pervaded the entire gathering.

We entered into, stayed inside, and came out of, a sacred process of engaging – together. Having anticipated this experience for many months with my friend Jill, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion and exceeded expectations for the vulnerability, power, and tenderness that I felt imparted to me as a result of each woman present.

I even more now than before, anticipate what will evolve…

(F)a(i)theist: How One Atheist Learned to Overcome the Religious-Secular Divide, and Why Atheists and the Religious Must Work Together

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

6 pm Doors, 7 pm Program

Intersections, 274 5th Ave

Btwn 29th and 30th Sts

With Chris Stedman,
Interfaith and Community Service Fellow
for the Humanist Chaplaincy at
Harvard University  

 

Co-Sponsored by the Center for Inquiry, NYC 

 

"Looking at the shouting match in our culture, between the forces of aggressive atheism (The End of Faith, God is not Great) and the armies of belligerent belief (James Dobson, Pat Robertson), it looks like the widest part of the faith divide is between religion and secularism." ~ Eboo Patel

 

Ten years into the 21^st century, there is still significant division between the religious and nonreligious in American civic life.  In this Living Room, Chris Stedman, a young "humanist interfaith activist" and accomplished author, speaker and organizer, will identify ways the religious and secular might better understand one another in order to work together.  Chris will share his passion to catalyze a movement in which religious and secular folks not only co-exist peacefully but collaborate around shared values - and engage us all in a small service project to put our words to work. 

 

Chris Stedman is the Interfaith and Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University and the Managing Director of State of Formation, a new initiative at the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue. Chris received an MA in Religion from Meadville Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago, for which he was awarded the Billings Prize for Most Outstanding Scholastic Achievement. A graduate of Augsburg College with a summa cum laude B.A. in Religion, Chris is the founder and author of the blog NonProphet Status. He is a popular writer for The Huffington Post Religion, the youngest panelist for The Washington Post On Faith, and his writing has also appeared in venues such as The Journal of College and Character, Tikkun Daily, The New Humanism, and more.  

 

Previously a Content Developer and Adjunct Trainer for the Interfaith Youth Core, Chris is a secular humanist working to foster positive and productive dialogue between faith communities and the nonreligious. In 2011, the University of Oregon Alliance of Happy Atheists recognized Chris' work with their first annual Happy Heathen! Award. He is currently writing a book on this work and on his experiences for Beacon Press and speaks on it regularly both by invitation and as a member of the Center for Inquiry Speakers Bureau and Secular Student Alliance Speakers Bureau. Chris also serves on the Leadership Team of the Common Ground Campaign, a coalition of young people standing up in response to the recent wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence violence in the U.S., on the Board of Directors of World Faith, and as an advisor to the Foundation Beyond Belief's Challenge the Gap initiative. Portland, Oregon's GLBT newspaper Just Out called his work "brilliant" and labeled him an "emerging... vibrant and youthful queer voice for the secular humanist movement."

 

Find this event on Facebook. RSVP on EventBrite  

 

This Living Room event is Co-Sponsored by the Center for Inquiry, NYC, whose mission is to "foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values."  

Visit our Donate page to learn about Sponsoring or Co-Sponsoring an event.

The 9th Annual City Wide Interfaith Teach-In on Approaching the Anniversary of 9/11

Join an open conversation among New Yorkers brought to you by The Dialogue Project, co-sponsored by Faith House, and co-chaired by our very own Samir Selmanovic!

 

Sunday, May 15, 2011, 1:30pm-4:00pm  

 

199 Chambers at West Street-BMCC Richard Harris Terrace (A,C,E,1,2,3 to Chambers or 4,5 to Brooklyn Bridge)  

 

RSVP to KYLE@thedialogueproject.org or 718-768-2175

*$10 suggested contribution

 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Haroon Moghul and Joshua Stanton with the Peace of Heart Choir

 

Explore with a teacher of a different faith or ethnicity:  

* Community Trauma & Healing * Transforming & Resolving Conflict * Stereotypes * Concepts of the Stranger and Other in our texts and cultures

 

Teachers and Leaders: Imam Shamsi Ali, Rev. Haifa Bint Kadi, Chloe Breyer, Raymond Brock, Lisa Bellan-Boyer, Prof. Brigitte Kahl, T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki, Marcia Kannry, Maryum Khwaja, Sally MacNichol, Rabbi Simkha Weintraub, Rabbi Serge Lippe, Imam Khalil Abdur Rashid, Syed Sayeed, Rori Picker Neiss, Rev. Peter Sabune, Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei.

 

Co-sponsors: Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Arab American Association of New York, Bay Ridge Jewish Center, Brooklyn For Peace, Brooklyn Heights Synagogue, Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, Buddhist Council of NY, CAIR New York, Community Church, Congregation Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives, CONNECT Faith, Grace Church, Faith House Manhattan, The House of Peace Inc., The Interfaith Center of New York, The Iqra Mosque, The Islamic Center of New York, JStreet NYC, Muslim Consultative Network, Park 51 Community Center, Park Slope Jewish Center, Pax Christi Metro New York, Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, Progressive Muslims Meet Up New York, Rabbis for Human Rights, NA., Religious Freedom USA, Romemu, Union Theological Seminary-Interfaith Caucus, and The Zen Center of New York City.

 

The Dialogue Project promotes encounters among new immigrants, and long time residents of diverse faiths and ethnicities, and with Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers. We create face to face engagement where difficult subjects are explored and our personal narratives are shared. We learn how to listen actively and reflect each other's story.

VIDEO of the Special Event with Karen Armstrong

Did you miss the "Special Event: Enter the Conversation with Karen Armstrong" last week at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine? Well, you're in luck!

Our videographer, Sean McGinn, graciously captured this riveting conversation between the Very Rev. James A. Kowalski and Karen, which is posted on the Charter for Compassion YouTube channel. The discussion centers on religion and ethics in the modern world, and why we must place compassion at the heart of public discourse on religion and morality.

Karen Armstrong, author, scholar, and journalist, is among the world's foremost commentators on religious history and culture. She has written more than 20 books on faith and the major religions, studying what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and how our faiths shaped world history and drive current events. Her books include the bestselling A History of God and The Battle for God, as well as Buddha; Islam: A Short History; Muhammed: A Prophet for Our Time; Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths; and most recently Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. In 2008 Dr. Armstrong, recipient of the TED prize, spearheaded the founding of The Charter for Compassion, a document that transcends religious, ideological, and national difference. It proclaims a principle embraced by every faith, and by every moral code.

Karen Armstrong is one of the heroes of the modern interfaith movement and endorsed Samir Selmanovic's recent book It's Really All About God, saying "Samir Selmanovic is asking the right questions at the right time, and refusing the consolations of certainty at a time when strident orthodoxies-atheist as well as religious-are perilously dividing us."

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine is a "house of prayer for all people." Faith House partnered with the Cathedral and GreenFaith last year to host SUSTAIN with Bill McKibben. Bowie Snodgrass is a member of the Congregation of St. Saviour at the Cathedral and her husband, George Mathew, is the Artistic Director of the New Year's Concert for Peace at the Cathedral.