At last night's community forum, Belief and Truth from a Multifaith Perspective: Finding Unity in Diversity, many expressed a desire to continue these kinds of conversations and to take action together for building bridges in our community. These are some of the ideas that were shared for next steps:
- Find something concrete that we can work on together in our community
- Come out with a statement to the community about this gathering
- Have clergy visit other houses of worship for teaching and conversation
- Invite people of other faiths or no faith traditions into our houses of worship
- Bring younger people into our interfaith programs
- Ask elected officials to talk about this kind of work
- Identify root causes of hatred and address them
- Encourage media coverage of our programs
I saw the gathering at the mosque as an affirmation of our commitment to a multicultural multiracial world. It was a protest against the white supremacists, bigots, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, etc. It was an affirmation that all of us gathering in that room is the best of America and what we stand for. Given that, we should not only support one another against attacks, but find some local community project that we can all do together. Something on the environment would be especially welcome but almost anything would be good.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughtful comment. As it happens, Temple Isaiah is planning on opening up our Day of Good Deeds (Mitzvah Day) to the community. We will be cleaning up our beloved West Meadow Beach in the afternoon and invite all members of our 3 Village community to join. It will be on May 5th. All are invited to a light lunch before.
DeleteI will post details on this blog soon.
I hope we can all come together in this worthwhile project!