Interfaith Work that Cultivates Peace | Global Connections Call Notes 3.1.23
Welcome all to our first Global Connections Call of 2023! Global Connections Calls are monthly gatherings that uplift stories and highlight the presence of and opportunity for peacebuilding in our lives.
On this first day of March we are kicking off our online monthly gatherings focused on interfaith work with inspiring leader Tahil Sharma. Faith and religion shapes many of our cultures, institutions, belief systems, politics, conflicts. Religion and faith can be used as a bridge or a barrier and we are honored and humbled to have Tahil with us today for this conversation.
Tahil Sharma is the Regional Coordinator for North America at the United Religions Initiative (URI), the world's largest interfaith network of grassroots communities, dedicated to establishing cultures of peace, justice, and healing in the world.
Tahil's Hindu and Sikh background inspires his work for education, pluralism, and justice, working in local, regional, and international spaces for over a decade. Tahil also serves as an Interfaith minister for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, a Board Member of Sadhana: A Coalition of Progressive Hindus, and as a member of the Racial Justice & Religion Commission at the Aspen Institute's Religion and Society Program. As a URI cooperation circle, we first met Tahil a few years ago when he took on the role of regional coordinator in North America. He has been a constant supporter of the work of Euphrates and his efforts to uplift the work of peacebuilders reaches far beyond North America. He is bright, kind-hearted, discerning, and a fierce advocate for what he believes in. We’re so grateful to introduce you to him today.
For those of you unable to attend, we're happy to share the call recording. The following are excerpts from our conversation.
Tahil [00:07:54] - The question that I want to pose to you all today is related to this idea of are strong and unique identities, and how we find it to be one of the most important contributions to interfaith work itself the question that I wanna post to you all today is what identities are you bringing to this call today? And when we ask that question, we're referring to all of the different ways that you show up into this space, whether it is your gender, whether it is your place of birth, whether whether it is the role that you play at home with your loved ones,whether it's the role that you have as a member of society, of your religious and spiritual background, all of the different ways that you come into this space today, we'd love for you to list them out in the chat.
The reason why we're inviting that into this space is because we'd like to look at people as intersections. You don't bring in one identity when you go to a meeting or an event. You don't bring in one identity when you navigate the decisions that you make in the world. You come into this as a complicated beautiful person and we want to know all of the different ways that make you complex and make you equally valid at the same time, so we'll leave a couple of minutes for you all to answer that question.
Tahil - Very cool. Thank you all for sharing your identities, and how they look for you. We're hoping to make people realize that when we share these spaces we don't ever want to leave these identities out. And when we're focusing on the work of interfaith cooperation, we don't just focus on the diversity of our religious, spiritual, indigenous, or moral backgrounds, we bring every part of us into the room, and that's what makes us beautiful. That's what makes us unique. And that's what makes us actually show up better for other people.
When we realize we don't have to share all of our identities with others to be able to build loving relationships with them and support them through this process of achieving justice and equity.
Hollister [00:13:29] - Beautiful I just love that. You're starting with this complex identity - everything that we all hold in rooms all the time. It's wonderful to find the cross-sections, the way people are the same, but also the ways that we're uniquely beautiful.
I think a great place to start is at the beginning. You have an interesting background personally and a beautiful journey professionally as well. I'd love to just hear more about your journey - who you are, how you became a person who is not just aware of issues of pluralism or the need for social justice. How did you move from a person who was in this awareness space into somebody who is working to actively solve them? How did you become an agent of change? How did you become who you are?
Tahil - It all started off in 1992, when I was born. I recently turned 31 and I'm still reveling and thinking about how much has changed in the last 31 years. I was destined for interfaith work because I was born into an interfaith family. I come from a Hindu and a Sikh background and interestingly, there's dabbling of different traditions in the process, too. My family in India was living in a pretty pluralistic society. Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindu sects all live together and live to be able to support and cherish one another.
“I realized that not only is my interfaith identity calling me to something bigger, it’s also calling me to call other people to do something bigger.”
That was kind of the mindset that came with my parents when they came to the United States in the late eighties. They kind of did it a bit differently because they also understand the perilous journey that they had to go through being an interfaith couple was something that kind of made the family very hypocritical. The same family that was appreciating this pluralism out in public was actually showing a lot of dismay and scowling towards my dad and my mom for being of different religions and marrying one another.
From a distance we respect everyone, but once it enters the house, diversity is a no-go and my parents just did not want to raise me in that kind of environment. That's why they chose Los Angeles which is a very hyper-diverse society filled with communities from all over the world. Starting from a young age, I was exposed to most of the world's religions. Even before I turned seven I would go with my babysitter from Mexico to mass on Sundays and sit there and learn about Jesus, and learn about the different stories throughout various holidays of the year, which is how I learned Spanish. I learned about the immersive nature of Mexican Catholicism. Then I got exposed to different friends who came from different backgrounds at a very young age at school. We would learn about Kwanzaa. We would learn about Hanukkah. We would learn about different holidays, and it was just a natural part of the process of learning.
Being born into a kumbaya environment I later realized that it wasn't as easy as ‘let's just get along. We're just all people and we believe different things.’ It was more complicated than that. Folks who told me that I cannot be more than one religion, let alone a religion that's not Christianity; people telling me that I cannot own any of my identities because they're not acceptable became common practice. I would just go through school, go just walking down the road, being called an abomination, doing all of these things that I tried to do to just live and still not fit in. It wasn't until 2012 that I realized that not only is my interfaith identity calling me to something bigger, it's also calling me to call other people to do something bigger.
In 2012 a shooting took place at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin here in the United States. White supremacists walked into the temple, thinking it was a mosque, and started shooting at the congregation. The shooting was considered at the time one of the bigger mass shootings that had happened at a religious space. But the first question was not, how do we show up for the people who have been hurt? The first question was, ‘Who are these people, and why have we never heard of them before?’
The Sikh community has been in the history of the United States since the 1880s as far as we can tell. It kind of made me shudder to think, ‘Oh, my gosh! People still don't know about this religious community?’ Even with such an in-depth history and presence, people don't know about the fifth, largest populous religion in the world. What am I supposed to do here?
I turned to my Holy Scriptures to try to seek some guidance, and I didn't actually have to go farther than the first line of the Scriptures itself which basically is defines God as being the one without fear and hatred towards creation. If this beautiful thing that we call God, the divine, spiritual presence, whatever we want to name Them is saying that They don't have fear or hatred, then why should I? Okay, I need to do a better job at showing up for my own community. That was also a day that I said I would show up for other communities too because historically, what happened to the Sikh community is a part of a much deeper, more entrenched history of injustice and oppression that has taken place in a country like the United States, but it's also a reality of what colonialism is like around the world. I promised myself that as a part of being an interfaith activist, that my lens for interfaith work will always remind me that I have to show up for everyone else when they need me.Then we have to build this world house together so I need to make sure everyone shows up to be a part of that.
It's now been almost 11 years since that fateful day, and I have to say, “Boy, has that been a roller coaster for me personally! But it's also been just a treacherous process for the world to still process too. I think that many ways we are being challenged - the natural disasters from climate change; numerous uprisings for people's calls to democracy; the realities of the challenge of democracy here in the United States, which is supposed to be considered the beacon of diversity and democracy. It’s all coming to be challenged because we are letting falsehoods, misinformation, and xenophobia prevail. And this is why I have so much faith in the interfaith movement. There is a space for us to be able to engage in our most pluralistic values, our most prolific approach to democracy to make sure we're all showing up, we're all holding our space, and we're all doing what we're responsible for. So, we can all achieve abundance together, to heal.
Hollister [00:22:04] - I love what you're sharing. I remember my parents when I was young, being a part of interfaith groups and going to have these conversations, and I just thought, ‘Oh, it's so neat, what a great chance for everybody to sit in a room and talk about their different practices.’ As you said, I was thinking interfaith work was about just accepting everybody as who they are, and it is right to accept everybody as who they are. But in a religious space often we have the tendency to bypass the tension. There's this gift of tension and interfaith and peace building work. In peace building and interfaith work we talk about reconciliation and healing and harmony and similarities. I think tension is an inherent part of the work, and it's often bypassed for the sake of just having a comfortable conversation. I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about that tension that shows up in so many different ways.
Tahil - I think oftentimes we think of this idea of interfaith cooperation as you said, Hollister, to be a space for storytelling to be a space to remind each other that we actually coming from different backgrounds do share values; we do share concerns; we do share ways of wanting to see the world be a better place, and that's not a bad thing. That is fundamentally where interfaith cooperation does need to start. But we have to actually reframe it a little bit because that very idea of sharing values, sharing concerns and sharing solutions is something that we do with everyone every day. That's why we exist in this world. Interfaith cooperation is one of the most mainstream things that we do. We just don't think about it that way because we assume that it has to be so intentional that that engagement only can occur if we are really thinking about it as people talking about their religious and spiritual backgrounds. In my opinion, interfaith dialogue can occur when you are interacting with folks from different backgrounds, in different settings. You just don't realize that because the center is not interfaith cooperation, the lens is interfaith cooperation. If you approach the world with the lens of interfaith cooperation, you realize you're doing it all the time with everyone. There's not a separation of yourself from that reality, because pluralism is a norm; having different values, different backgrounds and different experiences is a norm in any society that you're a part of.
Even if we look alike or share features across the board, even if people have a certain nation or country that they ascribe to being members of, there's still a difference in ideas and opportunities and ways to engage that make us live into this work better. I think we often offer that as a disservice in interfaith, because this idea of interfaith cooperation in a lot of these spaces now is for the sake of conformity and assimilation, not for still owning these unique sort of intersections that we have. Being able to share that we're not a melting pot, we're a mosaic - do we emphasize those differences more or do we emphasize the shared values? We just need to improve our relationship between those things. They don't counter each other, they're not mutually exclusive. What we're realizing is even when we go on different journeys, we somehow still come out to have shared values and that's what we need to learn better. I don't need to be born in Lebanon or the Philippines, or in Malawi to still say that I care for my neighbor. I was born in the United States, and I believe the same things.
We have these important ways of being able to re-examine the relationship to the tension itself that often arises because these tensions come from disagreements that are deeply theological - what is our future in the afterlife, what is the state of the world in these situations, and how do we turn to the divine to fix them? Or they can be social and appear to be political. In those situations we have to acknowledge that our base is that we all deserve dignity, equity, and justice. Those in power often decide what’s okay and not okay to talk about, who’s acceptable and not acceptable. We have to approach it differently, and say that at the base of being able to talk about dignity and freedom and justice, that no topic is exempt in an interfaith space. Everything that we do is inherently political because our alliance building, historically speaking, is what people in power and those who are tyrannical have liked the least, and we know that to be true across different histories around the world. We've seen it as a very apparent and strong role in places like South Africa during the apartheid, the United States during the Civil Rights movement, in India and Pakistan during its liberation from the British Empire. It has been present for much longer, we just haven't named it as interfaith cooperation because it is seen in different languages.
Unfortunately, many folks in spaces now are only looking to dialogue as being the most revolutionary thing that is going on. Interfaith dialogue is a core part of the work that we do and it's the first step for a very long journey in engaging in interfaith cooperation. I'm also very concerned that people have reached the first step,have started doing dialogue, and they've agreed that that was the destination the whole time. We don't need to do anything else from here on out, and, as I said earlier, you have to change your perspective. The end goal is not interfaith cooperation. The end goal is justice and equity, the lens of everything that you do is interfaith cooperation. You don't separate yourself from it, you don't step out of it. And the way that you engage that work is by inviting controversy sometimes, by inviting in things that sound political, by inviting those moral convictions that say that we are not going to dishonor people just because everyone else says we should dishonor them. I know this being someone who identifies as LGBTQ. Many interfaith spaces will not talk about LGBTQ people, because they say, ‘Oh, you're now talking about something political.’ This has nothing to do with. I'm deeply religious, and I'm LGBTQ. And there are other people who have been impacted by religion and spirituality positively and negatively. So yes, being LGBTQ is actually being deeply interfaith but we just don't name it that way because we don't understand the nature of the role of things like religion and spirituality in the lives of LGBTQ people. If we choose to ignore them and dishonor them and marginalize them, then we're not actually living a radically inclusive movement. We're living a movement of comfort. We're living a movement of integration and sameness, and that's not the goal of interfaith.
Why do you include people in the space? Is your diversity more than just religious and spiritual? The glacier that we each are in this space means that there are a lot of identities that you can’t tell about us. But if the only way that you're doing interfaith work is by thinking about religion and spirituality, you've forgotten every other part of the human condition which informs so many of the decisions out in the real world, and most importantly, that you are you're underestimating the nature of interfaith cooperation, as only dealing with religious and spiritual matters. When we're supposed to be in the public square fighting for the dignity of all,
Hollister [00:31:22] - My next question was going to be about belonging in that interfaith space. Historically or traditionally, I've thought about interfaith work for Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc., and that just leaves such a huge number in our population that now don't associate with a religion or practice. What I would love to hear from you now are your thoughts about how to enlarge this tent. There are a lot of people on our call that do interfaith work and dialogue, reconciliation work. How do we include as many voices in the room as possible? What do you think that looks like? How can it be accomplished?
Tahil - So I do have to speak more personally on this end, because I've spoken very personally about everything I've said so far, so I'm not backing down from that conviction. In a space like the United Religions Initiative, where we are naming this radical inclusion in so many ways through our own principles. We want people from all walks of life to show up. But it's interesting because our Cooperation Circles are all of these different organizations around the world who do this work at the most local level and possibly, don't necessarily see eye to eye with me on this because they have a different understanding of what this engagement looks like. The radical inclusion may only be up to the point of Abrahamic religions. The radical inclusion can be only to the point of including the Eastern traditions. The radical inclusion can only be even just narrowing it down to two religions who happen to have very diverse denominations. That kind of radical inclusion is kind of the point that I'm trying to push, because, as you were saying, there is a trend of a growing disaffiliation with religious and spiritual communities. That is a fact. Across the board, across new generations, across the continents, that less and less people are choosing to associate with a religious or spiritual background.
The first thing that we have to ask is ‘is that a problem?’ If you say yes, you have to really examine why people are leaving first before you say yes, and if you say no, you have to think about what is your end goal then of trying to help them get involved. Are you just trying to help them have a voice in the space so that you can bring them back to religion? If that's the case, I would not recommend doing the work.
But if your end goal is to make sure that even when they have this trauma, these concerns, the skepticism and step away from spaces that are institutional or that are community based, that you make sure that they can still find community and people to connect with and work with. And that means people who explore religion very much like a buffet. We have to give voice to people who are still exploring and seeking and figuring out where their places in the world. We are also talking about those people who identify as atheists and secular humanists, those who are intentionally saying, not even whether or not there was religious trauma. There's a choice in wanting to not believe in that higher being, and that they have to have a role in this work. They have to have a seat at the table of interfaith cooperation, because whether or not they have a belief in a higher being doesn't exclude them from the holiness that I believe exists in all things. It also doesn't exclude them from being a part of the solution for all of the big problems we have in the world.
The very idea that an atheist cannot be in the interfaith movement is always very funny to me, because that leaves out a very big group of people in the world. About 15% of the world's population does not identify explicitly with religion. And that's a lot of people that need space, that need community, and that need to know that they are being affirmed for that identity and not being intentionally excluded. That's actually why, next month here in URI, North America, I’m hosting an event to talk about the elephant in the room, about atheists and secular people in the interfaith movement. It's because it's a fundamental part of how a society functions and how, when you are intentionally secular, you see a diversifying pluralistic society still not managing to include you, because you are not religious or spiritual.
And that's just talking about one identity, right? I've mentioned gender and sexual identity. I have mentioned your ethnic and racial background. You can think about socioeconomic status where interfaith work is considered a major privilege.
We have to re-examine - is a religious leader merely someone who is dressed up in their vestments, leading a congregation and that's where I have to disagree too. I think we all have a role to play in religious leadership.
“we are the experts at ourselves, at our own journeys, at our own ways of understanding life, and that form of leadership can be taken to make sure that we are one of those people speaking for communities, but most importantly, speaking for progress in our communities.”
It's not to say we can call ourselves the leaders of movements just because we can. We can name that and do that when it is. But what we do have to say is, we are the experts at ourselves, at our own journeys, at our own ways of understanding life, and that form of leadership can be taken to make sure that we are one of those people speaking for communities, but most importantly, speaking for progress in our communities.
Hollister [00:37:59] - What your sharing is so interesting. We work with the theory of peace leadership at Euphrates, and we invite everybody into a space and encourage everybody to identify themselves as an everyday peacebuilder. And so to me it's similar - we're always doing peacebuilding work just as you're suggesting that we're also always doing interfaith work because we're always carrying beliefs with us and ideas with us. I love the convergence of those ideas that the practice of peace, the practice of interfaith work, is ongoing. It's constant. It's part of what we do. And so naming it in this way feels really helpful. It can help transform what interfaith work looks like. It can help us see what peace leadership peacebuilding work looks like because it doesn't leave anybody out of it. It invites us all into the space to kind of reframe how we think about ourselves in all exchanges, from interpersonal to community, to encompassing the entire world.
Before we open to questions, I want to get to what your view of interfaith work can look like. Can you share with us kind of what your vision is and how we can move interfaith lens work, our peace building work forward in really concrete tangible ways for all the different peacebuilders on this call today?
Tahil - Here's the thing about this, this vision that I have. It's a vision that I don't hold a loan and it's a vision that does not hold itself to be selfish because it's not actually a part of how I see it. It's a part of how it needs to be. If it's going to survive , if it's going to sustain itself.
One of the biggest gatherings that we ever had for sort of doing this first major interfaith dialogue is known as the Parliament of the World's Religion. It happened for the first time on September 11th, 1893. Going back about 130 years to say that something like this was possible is unheard of. My vision is that all of our interfaith communities around the world evolved from this idea that we are still doing the same kind of interfaith work in 1893, that we move into the twenty-first century, really thinking about the ways that we engage diversity, that we serve others that we fight for justice and that we ultimately lead to a progress that benefits everyone. That vision is not mine to own, but is certainly one that we all share in, because we all see that for our nation's peoples, for all of our communities and for the world at large.
It's very idealistic to look at it in such big terms. Right? Yes, we want world peace. Of course we want world peace. That is the answer to everything. If we were able to achieve it. But we're talking about a peace that we cannot fathom, and we act as if we have to jump this big arc to get there without all of the little mini steps that actually help us to achieve a better peace. And what I'm asking people to live into is, take your step so that we get closer to peace.
Figure out your strong suit and skills to be able to see how our movement can actually benefit greater because we need everyone we can't leave anyone out, even those that we randomize the most in the process benefit from the work of cooperation because that's what progress is, even those that least expect to get benefited by it also get benefited by it?
And what we're encouraging people to think about in the name of compassion and empathy, in the name of peace and love, is that you do your part to make sure that you're not just here for your own selfish needs. You're also not just here, because you're here to make friends. You're here to make history, and we all have to play our part.
Hollister [00:43:35] It's a big charge. Thank you Tahil, and I think we can live into that, we're all capable of it. We're all capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. Own the gift that you are here to give.
Q & A
Victor [00:44:23] - Thank you very much, sir. Thank you all I've been following your hard work! One of the more important things that the world is facing has to do with the disconnection. The value of religion that has not been taught in school for elementary to junior to university level.
The big challenge for this generation to be able to understand is the value of religion and coexistence within the community. We want you to look in your context. We need to teach this so all the communities around the world will be able to know the value, or each religion that people know the importance or do religion. People do not know the importance.
Tahil [00:46:52] - Thank you for sharing that, Victor and I couldn't agree with you more. I think, being able to, you know, start young people with understanding that diversity as an asset with being able to ask questions that are critical to our understandings of the world, and to be able to re that you can share values and aspirations with people who come from completely different backgrounds who look completely different than you do. And if you start that young, and if you start people with this notion of being a peacebuilder in the world, no matter what sector of work they enter they will do a better job.
That's actually a very important thing you said Victor, because this is a question that I posed to a lot of interfaith communities in the United States last year. A lot of folks were actually wondering where the young people in this work? Where are all of these folks in high school, elementary school, college? And why are they not plugged into our interfaith work and what we're doing? I said, Well, you're asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking is, how does your work for interfaith cooperation serve as an asset for a young person? Do they see value in what you're doing? And are they going to show up? And no one could answer that question.
The movement of young people doing justice work has more interfaith inclusion than the intentional spaces. They are not focused on the interfaith work, they are focused on the justice part. So we have to be very intentional about the framing and if we're going to start people young in this world, we also have to allow them to be critical and skeptical. They have to be allowed to ask questions. They have to know the truths of what a community can experience when it is in its best form and in its worst form. And we have to allow people to make the conscious choice, to believe what they want to as well.
Ugo [00:49:29] - Thank you. You shared so much wisdom. I have 2 questions for you. One, is when you encounter people with religious extremism, for example, how do we integrate them into your work? Then the second question is about a person's religion or spirituality that includes harm. For example, some traditional beliefs are making sacrifices like the blood of animals in a public space like a stream where others go to get water for themselves, or to swim, and your spirituality permits you to go there to make sacrifices, knowing that it will harm others. How best can you tackle such, because making any attempts to stop them can be seen as an attempt to stop them from practicing their beliefs?
Tahil - Thank you, Ugo. I think those are really, really important things to think about. I think, first in terms of religious extremism, the first thing that you have to examine is, will they even consider connecting with this work? Most probably not. We can safely assume that they're not gonna be interested in interfaith work if they come from a religiously extreme mindset because they're focused more on the supremacy of their community than they are with connecting with other communities. They are very disinterested in wanting to learn about differences. They're very disinterested in even wanting to be with people who have different identities, even if they agree with things that you're saying. But interfaith cooperation can plant a seed in that person for change, and the reason why is because oftentimes religious extremism is filled with a lot of holes about why they're convinced that they are better people than others. It's rooted in a lot of convictions that are loosely coming from religion, and also very psychologically oriented.
There is this idea of supremacy that you think you're better because all of these things that happened in your favor, and therefore it just makes you a better person. When you're surrounded by the same people saying the same things makes you want to affirm that you are better. If you don't have any form of diversity of thinking, of appearance, of identities, etc., you cannot challenge the precept that you are the best. We here in the interfaith movement can challenge that because we say we're all pretty awesome, and we all come from different backgrounds. I don't know why you think you're so special sitting up there, and you can push the chair over and they'll fall off. The planting of that seed has to be very patient, though, because when you engage in conversations with folks who are fanatics, or who will enter these extreme elements, the tendency to be violent also increases significantly. What we have to do in response to that is invite them into the subtlety of what interfaith works like. They also have fears. They also have concerns, they also want to see a better world, but just have a very sinister understanding of it at times, and we have to say that we're actually standing on the same boat. You're just making holes in it and we’re all sinking. We're in this together, whether we like it or not.
We have to make sure that these small seeds are planted in people in extreme spaces to challenge the way that they understand how things work.
And the more you challenge them from those deeper theological, social, political points, the more they will evolve out of being extremists and entering back into a society where diversity is the norm.
To the second question about engaging it with folks who may have specific practices that are outside of norms. A lot of indigenous communities here in the Americas, for example, have this idea that complete respect to the animal means complete usage of the animal. So no part of the animal actually goes to waste. The meat is eaten, the leather is used for clothing. And if you come from a different mindset about the role of animals and creation, the role of animals and how we are supposed to understand their connection to the divine, those kinds of things can be very challenging. I think that we can sort of reach down to its core that animals, nature deserve equitable dignity, like human beings do, and that we shouldn't be abusing nature in the name of religion, tradition, or consumerism.
If we're looking at these practices where animal sacrifices and things happen, we do have to consider, you know, the best steps that we can take to respect the tradition for what it is because it is unique and a part of a process for a unique community. But if it is actually harming nature in a very significant way, maybe they can re-examine the understanding of what a sacrifice looks like. In the Hindu tradition, for example, there is actually this idea of the sacrifice of fruits and vegetables rather than animals. As a practice to be able to say that you know the gods will not be angry with you if you don't do things like you used to. Tradition adapts, human beings adapt, and it is okay to say that change is okay.
I know a lot of religious communities are very uncomfortable with the idea of change and move at a snail’s pace. It is also okay to challenge them and say, Hey, have you considered looking at it a little differently?
Have you considered the relationship that we have to these creatures? How we can go forward doing the same things, but in a different way, and you'll be surprised at the results of what people are able to do.
We learned that very well during the Ebola outbreak. We have to credit the leaders in Africa. Many traditions often require folks to touch the corpse of the disease in their process of their final rites, and that was ultimately spreading Ebola. So conversations were had among faith leaders that invited people to not practice that and help them think about different ways of engaging in these practices. And that's what helped to actually break down Ebola and make it become virtually zero.
We have to thank faith communities and faith leaders for changing tradition and being able to save their communities so that they could go forward and take care of each other and not have to do it in the name of tradition where they're hurting each other.
Hollister [00:58:40] - Charles Stocking asks what are the best models for interfaith cooperation?
Tahil - I cannot answer that question because that's for you to answer. You have to figure that out. There are many examples out there that I can say that are good. We have a long list of really great organizations at the United Religions Initiative, like the Euphrates Institute. Interfaith cooperation doesn't have to look the same. We have to be very clear that the models of interfaith cooperation are all dependent on who's involved, what you're addressing, and how you're planning to address it. That's all going to depend on where you are and how you can make it happen. This is just to say that that is supposed to be the point of interfaith cooperation - the way that it functions is deeply dependent on who's involved. Maybe you have an answer for us that we don’t know yet! We're inviting you to actually help us think about better models going forward.
I think at the base level, a model of good interface cooperation is one that does not just focus on dialogue. It does not just focus on religion and spirituality. It does not just focus on having a meeting every month or every couple of weeks just so that people can come and eat, become friends, and then leave and meet next month. It's more than just a monthly book club or a monthly supper. It's a space for power. It's a space for deep engagement. It's a space for service. That's what a model interfaith community looks like.
Hollister [01:00:36] - I love reframing things that we've thought about for 130 years and longer, based on the Parliament of World religions in 1893, how it is possible to break down traditions and old formats that don't serve in the way that they originally did, or maybe, if their origins weren't really serving in the way that we think the world needs that kind of interfaith work to look now. The last question that I think we'll get to before we go into our breakout spaces is from Helen, as someone who works with diverse groups of people, and despite the challenges that you encounter, what motivates you the most?
Tahil [01:01:26] - Oh, my biggest motivation, I think, is joy! The reason why I use the word joy actually is because there's a lot of pain in the world, and there's no question about it. People are suffering immensely in so many different ways, and that really excludes us from being able to find this ultimate joy that we all deserve. So for me joy is transformative in a way that reminds us that even if we lose hope, we lose a lot more than we expected. In a world that already has experienced such immense loss, that continues to experience so much injustice, it's the one ray of light that's helping us get through this. That's why you'll always see me sort of being very smiley and peppy. I'll always be trying to make jokes because I'm trying to remind people that this is very serious work, but even God is a comedian and you have to laugh sometimes. You have to be able to get through this work with some joy in your heart.
This is not supposed to be a task. These are not chores. Enjoy what you're doing, enjoy interfaith cooperation for what it is. You're getting to experience the world in a small space, and when your space grows and the people grow in it, that joy becomes stronger, and that's the anchor for many of us in trying to get through this work. When you have to deal with so much pain and injustice, and oppression and the ways in which people are continuously being exploited after centuries of colonization you can't help but laugh sometimes and how absurd things are!
You have to be able to approach it with some joy because the bitterness is what becomes so corrosive that we begin to lose touch with ourselves and begin to realize that this tiny marble in all of the universe still has a lot of potential to do good, and we need to be a part of that good, and we can only do it if we find that source of joy and hope and a sense that things will get better.
Hollister [01:04:04] - I love that. It reminds me of a quote by Phyllis Tickle, a writer and journalist. After 9/11 she was being interviewed t and was asked when is it okay to return to joy, return to laughter, and her response was “laughter is the voice of human triumph.” So it's the space that, like you said, breaks down the bitterness because that’s not what will move you, but joy will.
Closing Remarks
Hollister [01:06:43] - We're so grateful to Tahil for showing up and bringing his full self, his full wisdom, all of his energy, all of his passion for this work. Tahil would like to hear your inspirations and takeaways.
Valerie - I just had the opportunity to look at a little bit about you from behind the scenes, and you shared just a really nice story of how you were at a protest and you had 2 conflicting views happen. Just asking somebody if you could pet their dog, changed the dynamics of a situation, and you got to know each other. It was humanity happening over a simple act. We try to find those similarities in our life cross-sectional within interfaith that, as you said, if we reach out and say that we're more alike.
Tahil - Thank you so much, Valerie. I appreciate that. You'll be surprised how much good stuff can happen with the dog room.
Charles - I think the opportunity for interfaith dialogue and communication and collective action could never be greater than it is now where you have such separation being expressed in the political, geopolitical environment. When faith groups can come together and address some of the dire human needs that are in our individual communities, it’s very touching to the soul. It gives us great, great purpose and the opportunity to make a real difference in not only our own lives, but in the lives of those who so desperately need somebody to give them a hug in a tangible way. So something for us all to think about. How can we do that? Can we launch off of this gathering to go out and bridge our faith communities and our groups we gather with?
Tahil - This being a great task of great responsibility, I think what I wanna remind people is that this work has to start small. It has to start in your community, and it has to start at the basics - feeding someone, holding them, talking to people, sharing kindness. It has to be very local, because only then does it grow and multiply. We cannot end world hunger in one day, as all of us together, because it doesn't function that way. We all have to take the steps that help us guarantee that people are fed. We start with ourselves, and being able to offer what we can, we then lean on our friends and loved ones, then we ask what faith communities what they are doing and how they can expand it, then we ask those that govern us to make sure they're doing a better job of taking care of their citizens.
It's a winding road that takes us to solving the problem, and it doesn't all have to be a burden that we bear on our individual shoulders. So this is also a reminder that when you are exhausted, when you feel dread, when you feel concerns that are overwhelming you, please excuse yourself and take some rest. We don't want people functioning at 20% all the time. We need you to function with all of the energy that you have and that means you need to take care of yourself if we're going to take care of each other.
Hollister - Thank you! That feels like such a great benediction in this space. I'm just deeply grateful for each of you showing up today, and I invite you to continue to spread the message of these global connection calls and let people know that they're happening. They are for anybody just like interfaith work isn't just for somebody with a religious affiliation it's for all of us. So grateful for each of you, and Tahil, you know, just buckets of gratitude bouquets of gratitude.
A reminder to join our next call on April 5th!