Bridge Builders and Spiritual Engineers

In a time of religious and racial intolerance and misunderstanding, (when hasn’t that been the case) there are always a few who are not content with complacent hand-wringing. There are always people around us who are trying to bridge divides. Eboo Patel is a Muslim community builder who is trying to do just that. And he says the most frutiful ground for creating interfaith cooperation is on college campuses and in churches.

He builds on the ideas of sociologists Bob Putnam and David Campbell and their recent book, American Grace, who say that one of the most effective ways to improve attitudes toward people of different religious backgrounds is to have a positive, meaningful encounter with them. Do something together and attitudes change.

That means we are in a unique position in a church community. We are situated in the very place where change for the good, can and does happen.

We are blessed with a community of bridge builders, spiritual engineers. Blessed are we!



Peter

God's Light- Peace For All

Friday night our church film group took in London River, a tough film to watch. A Christian woman and a Muslim man search London for their children following the 2005 bombings. In the discussion that followed at a local bar we came up with quite a list of why this was anything but a Hollywood ending. Still the two parents found ways to hesitantly reach across their separate realities. And it was the Muslim that took the initial and the larger steps.

Even tentative attempts to bridge the religious and cultural divides in our world are steps worth taking. Some say that it is only Christians that are taking the steps. But then comes the news that Muslim intellectuals and activists called upon Egyptian Muslims to attend Coptic churches for Christmas Eve mass to show solidarity with the country’s Coptic minority after the Epiphany bombing of a Coptic church.

A 40 year old house wife Fatima Mostafa said, “I want to show the world that Islam is a religion of peace and that such attacks are nothing more than a result of poverty, ignorance and oppression.”

A story like that makes you believe that God’s light might yet find a way to make some of the old prophecies sound possible.


Peter

Success Starts With A Single Step

I’ve been reading Parker Palmer’s writings on spirituality for years, so I was delighted to find a reflection by him on writing as an act of faith.

Palmer describes a revelation he received thirty years ago on holding in his hands the first copy of his first book. Up until that point he had written essays. Somebody liked what they read and asked him for more. The next thing he knew he had a book.

The bolt from heaven was that we can do things we don’t think we can do if we don’t think about doing them.

And so “if you can’t write a book, then write a lot of essays. If you can’t write an essay, write a lot of paragraphs. If you can’t write a paragraph, write a line or a word. And if you can’t do that on the page, write your truth with your life, which is far more important than any book.”

For Palmer faith is less about a big leap, more about taking one more step. Writer or not, that applies to us all.


Peter

Dare To Change - Trust The Spirit

So do you have any resolutions for the new year? There are those who say that people do not change, that January gym members' enthusiasm inevitably expires before their memberships do. That may be reality but it does not do justice to the few who do make a decision and manage to stumble along in a new direction. Some people do change, some of the time.

The gospel texts for the season of Epiphany are all about choosing a new direction. Jesus chooses to go to John to be baptized. Simon and Andrew choose to follow this new teacher. Jesus chooses to see his next steps of faith as a response to the inspiration of the Spirit.

The decisions to move in a new direction are probably never as neat as the story describes. There is probably more doubt, disagreement and discouragement than the narrative reveals.

But the gospels have this spirit of adventure and hope that is quite thrilling. I choose to believe that despite our human resistance, the Spirit constantly invites us to new beginnings. That's a theme I am going to be exploring this month. Can I interrupt old patterns? Can I open some new door in my life? Can I trust that God has something new for me to discover?

"I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?"
Isaiah 43:19


Peter