Look! A group of interfaith seminarians got together this week for a dinner and dialogue, and it was incredibly meaningful!
But before I tell you more, a little on my thought process...
As I constantly think about how I can best expand my interfaith work to affect as many people as possible, my mind constantly whirs through all the different ideas out there. If my goal is to make multifaith dialogue a societal norm, how can I and we best take steps in that direction?
- Is it by hosting large, dramatic public events that bring in hundreds of people for a one-off event (something like a Ramadan iftar in a synagogue)?
- Is it by teaching our youth the value of dialogue early, because they will take it into the future (perhaps by bringing together local Hebrew School and Sunday School classes, which would generally only be possible in groups of relatively small numbers at a time)?
- Is it by getting lay people to meet on a regular basis to form longer-term relationships (like through a monthly interfaith text study)?
- Is it by bringing together community leaders, who then can lead by example as they form stronger bonds with their colleagues of other faiths (along the lines of the Interfaith Clergy Lunch I hosted up in Connecticut last May)?
I would love to do all of these and more, but I have been told that sleep is apparently a necessary thing, so I have periodically tried to focus on different methodologies at different times. Currently, the idea of training faith leaders--or rather, future faith leaders--has been at the top of my mind.
I have previously shared that in August I began rabbinical school, the beautifully long path that will hopefully eventually lead to me being ordained as a rabbi of the Jewish people. And it got me thinking: it is great to bring together clergy members for dialogue, because of their presence and existing powerful place in their communities, but what about emerging and future clergy members? What about getting the people who are in their 20s and 30s who could theoretically be serving communities for the next 30+ years involved in interfaith work early?
To this end, I am blessed to have a small grant this spring from the John Paul II Center in Rome to work with Interfaith Philadelphia (a local non-profit doing seemingly endless work in the interfaith realm) on a project for local seminarians. Interfaith Philadelphia is running a program to bring seminarians of different faiths to visit a variety of houses of worship--for example, on Saturday we will be attending a service at a Buddhist Temple in the area (my first time going to one!!! Mildly excited.). My grant allows us to work together to build the program out further to include two dinners supplemental to their programming, that will hopefully give the participating seminarians (and other local seminarians) the opportunity to form relationships on a deeper level, learn from one another, and engage in interfaith dialogue among themselves. The two dinners are also a part of the ACWAY network, of which I have written several times and could wax poetic especially since a friend of mine from that group is visiting this weekend, but I will refrain from doing it again this time.
So my latest dream: I want every single faith leader going out into the world to have had meaningful experiences with people of other faiths. (I like to set realistic, manageable goals.) For example, there is a reason that so much emphasis is put on the friendships that Pope Francis has had over the years with Jews. Since my big goal of bringing interfaith engagement to every single faith leader might take a while, I will settle with offering that opportunity to seminarians here in Philadelphia. Cue my latest project.
We had our first dinner this week on Tuesday night. The first dinner was meant to be relatively informal as an opportunity to build relationships. Seven people attended--three Jewish rabbinical students, four Christian seminarians from different denominations (Presbyterian, non-denominational, Mennonite)--and the conversations grew deep fast. From our latest television obsessions we then moved into how we would describe our own religion in two sentences, religious dress in our tradition and why (or not) we choose to wear it, and the night culminated with each of us going around to answer the question beautifully and bluntly asked by one of my Christian brothers, "So, do you think the Exodus story is true?"
The evening completely surpassed my expectations. I was not sure if seven people sitting around a table in a restaurant in downtown Philadelphia would be able to achieve my vision of forming meaningful interfaith connections so quickly--but it did. In the end, I actually had to interrupt the conversation and leave before anyone else after two hours of discussion merely because of the parking regulations in the city, which I am taking as a good sign. One person exclaimed, "I love this!" and another jokingly said, "So, we'll be doing this every Tuesday night?" In the end, it was the quality of the people who chose to come that made the evening such a success.
I am grateful to those who came for helping me remember that as long as you have the right people in the room, it does not need to be a huge group to have an impact. The seven of us who attended come from different belief systems within our own traditions, we varied geographically even within the Philadelphia region, and we all spoke with curiosity and respect. Everyone in that group will play a role in shaping the minds of others as they go forward in their work, making me think that I may be onto something with the idea of training emerging religious leaders in this work. Or maybe we just had a really good dinner and conversation, but I have a strong suspicion that the discussions we had and bonds we formed will have an impact on us all in some way going forward.
Our second dinner is scheduled for April, and while this one was primarily about building relationships, the second one will also include a speaker or interfaith-related training. I am hopeful that the second dinner will have a larger group of seminarians, so I will be working to maintain the balance of having a larger group present to reach as many leaders as possible, with working in some time for discussions in smaller groups in order to maintain the connection and intimacy of a small-group interfaith dialogue like this one. I can only hope that the impact from this ripples out more than I can ever know. And until someone forces me to stop, I'm going to keep trying.
Now go out and love one another.
<3,
Allyson
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P.S. If you have ever seen me when I get really, really excited--that was me after the dinner.
