Portraits in Faith | Global Connections Call Notes 10.4.2023
Daniel Epstein offered a beautiful workshop for our October Global Connections call. Our time together included a window into Daniel’s spiritual journey, an exploration of his initiative Portraits in Faith, a photographic meditation, and excerpts from recorded interviews. The following is a summary of our conversation with Daniel. To enjoy the full conversation, please click here for a link to the call recording.
Daniel Epstein has been long involved in community service focused on reconciliation and dialogue across racial, religious, and ethnic communities. His work is propelled by his primary passions - helping others heal, bringing people of different faiths and cultures together, global travel, and photography.
Currently Daniel is based in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Marketing & Innovation Consultant. He was previously a Harley Procter Marketing Director at Procter & Gamble where he was employed for 21 years. It was during his tenure at Procter & Gamble that he conducted most of the Portraits In Faith interviews.
Daniel is passionate, kind, creative, a good storyteller and a good listener. For our October Global Connections call, Daniel brought us a workshop that explores his work, helps us engage in sacred listening, and promotes the power of seeing the other…a practice that is the cornerstone of our work in this Euphrates community.
Origins of Portraits in Faith
Daniel has spent a lot of time thinking about laundry detergents. While working for Procter & Gamble, he traveled the world. On a quest to fulfill his spiritual evolution, Daniel began to add days onto his work trips to spend time interviewing people about the role of faith in their lives and their spiritual journeys. At this time in his life, he was ungrateful, very unhappy, and carried a victim mindset. The Portraits in Faith project became a spiritual practice, helping him feel grateful, connected, and of service. Daniel calls this work his “sacred errand.”
What is the work exactly? It’s a two part process. 1. Daniel takes a black and white photo that attempts to evoke their true spirit. 2. Daniel conducts an interview asking these questions: What is your concept of God or a Higher Power? What is your earliest memory of faith? What is the first time in your life you had to, or chose to, rely upon God? Tell me about a time you doubted your faith. What are you most grateful for? Do you have a message? What’s your greatest wish? What would you like people to know about you when they see your portrait?
Daniel has been in this work for 22 years, photographing and interviewing over 500 people from 28 countries. Ten years ago he launched a web site to share the fruits of his labor. Every few weeks a new portrait from the collection is added to the site. In 2021 he created a coffee table book. His goal is for the work to have a profound healing impact on the world just as it has for him.
Originally Daniel thought this project was to help people tell their story. Then after reading the book “Listening as an Act of Love,” he realized his work was really about positioning himself in a position to receive another’s sacred story. Sacred listening is about receiving the story of someone you perceive as ‘the other.’
Our community paused to share together a photographic meditation and then offer reflections - serving where you are, finding stillness, admiring human dignity, honoring those who have passed.
The work Daniel does is deep and thoughtful, requiring respites. He works with producers that help him find people to interview. Once he was asked “do you only want me to recruit attractive people because everyone in your project is so attractive?” Everyone is or has the potential to be attractive if approached in the right way.
Daniel shared excerpts from a few interviewees who answered his questions centered around higher power, faith, relying on God, and spiritual journey. Many interviews can be heard on the Portraits in Faith website or YouTube channel.
So many lessons were learned during these interviews. Daniel shared “One of the lessons for me is to respect all religions is not about respecting their theology or dogma. It is about seeing the other and saying there is a human being trying to connect with the Divine just like I am.”
Daniel feels strongly called to the energy of all religions and practices, noting he does not have to be a part of them to appreciate and engage with that energy. “I am in love with the mystery of what God is or may be.” He has learned so much from the many faiths he has explored:
To wrestle with God (Judaism)
To let God love us unconditionally (Christianity)
To see God in all things (Indigenous Faith)
To eliminate suffering we cause ourselves and others (Buddhism)
To see God in all his internal & external manifestations of his energy (Hinduism)
To not believe and to doubt (Atheism)
Something that often surprises people is how much Daniel has learned from atheism, humanism, and agnosticism. He has learned they are really a subset of all faiths. “I’ve learned so much from moments of doubt and non-belief.”
A recent initiative that developed out of Daniel’s work was the opportunity to create a gallery exhibit at the Laboratory Schools at the University of Chicago. The exhibit provided an opportunity to create workshops for young people. Working with 4th-12th graders, Daniel talked about ‘the other’ processing questions like “who do you see as the other, when have you felt like the other, what can we do to dismantle our perceptions of people we see as the other?” They engaged in the practice of “sacred listening” where we asked the children to listen to each other without responding. And now the Muhammed Ali Center will be bringing this exhibit to their community in June 2024. Most exciting is that he will again be working with the community on sacred listening, starting with a teen youth corp.
“My goal is to honor each person’s journey and to show we are on a journey together.”
Our Community Conversation
Opening our conversation to the larger group, Daniel received questions about the origin of the interview questions, the work of his organization, the platform used to uplift the project, how we bring “the other” work into our schools, using this interview technique in our individual communities.
Acknowledging that the questions he asks are very much framed by his Judeo-Christian lens, Daniel shared that these questions did not land well in Japan and needed to be reframed to explore what their lives are patterned after. These questions feel like they are the least-leading questions that would still be meaningful to him.
Daniel acknowledges that while taking this work into schools is important, he reminded us that this work is possible in our daily lives. He encourages us to consider who we view as the other and reflect on when we’ve been the other. There is work to do right on our own doorstep.
Closing
“I would love for this work to be accessed by all and have a healing impact….There is a beauty in each person and I believe the real work is inside each one of us…I have to remember to see people walking down the street like I see them when I’m doing their interviews. The work of peacemaking is an inside job...”
“When the universe wants something to be born it will go through any nook and cranny to be born. I was a guy who needed a spiritual lens, needed hope, gratitude, and groundedness…so I am just another nook and cranny. I needed to be reminded of a metaphysical reality that is greater than me.”
Daniel is always looking for new interviews and is available to offer workshops like these at no cost. We encourage you to reach out to him via email on his site!