Hold Fast Hope

This last weekend I came face to face with great hope and great despair.

Over the course of the last year I have had the opportunity to become involved in active peace, justice, and reconciliation work with a Muslim community in Portland. This relationship began when our community hosted Imam Toure- a sixth generation Imam from Senegal, spiritual guide of the Bilal Mosque, and founder of the Institute of Islamic & Interfaith Studies. He spoke on the universal principles of holiness at an afternoon lecture, and delivered the sermon at both of our worship services last Fall. Our community was deeply moved by his visit- having many assumptions and stereotypes about the Islamic faith shattered. His visit birthed a friendship between our communities, and birthed within me an urgency and priority for this type of conversational reconciliation work between the faiths.

I am consistently reminded of this urgency as I watch the news. This last weekend saw the death of over 100 Israeli & Palestinian men, women, and children- the highest death tolls in over a year...ultimately leading to the end of the current peace talks.

Enter great despair.

Not to mention,these current events all came on the heels of a visit Dave and I took to Portland to visit our Muslim friends Thursday night. The evening was filled with great hope. Dave and I attended an interfaith event at Bilal Mosque with a group from the Quaker community (this community was the first to offer their support to the mosque after Sept. 11th).

Now...to be honest, I have always been skeptical of interfaith events. I usually feel as though all faiths become "watered down" at these kind of events in the name of tolerance and not wanting to step on anyone's religious toes. But, this was different. It pushed passed tolerance and moved into a deeper appreciation of faith, whether that be Muslim, Jewish, or Christian. I don't know how to explain it...other than to describe it as beautiful, pure, and authentic.

Unfortunately, this type of work isn't always valued in faith circles- especially within the fundamentalist branches of the Muslim & Christian community. Nativity (our community), and particularly Dave have been added to many prayer lists, have been confronted about "being duped" into thinking that Muslims might be "good people," and have been ostricized by a few churches in Bend for having Imam Toure speak. My favorite story involves a woman sent from her church to deliver a copy of a book called "Because they Hate," to Dave- to prove to him that all Muslims are evil. Ugggh...once again..enter great despair.

Pushing past the despair, and moving into great hope- Dave, Imam Toure, and Rabbi Areah (a friend of Toure's from Portland) have begun to plan a spiritual pilgrimage to Israel/Palestine for next year. Each community will be bringing ten representatives to learn, invest, and commit to reconciliation work pre and post trip. We met face to face after the event on Thursday evening for the first time to discuss the trip.

Enter great hope.

It was a beautiful evening. We ate food from all over the world, and enjoyed the company of people from Jordan, Turkey, Yemen, Pakistan, Senegal, Thailand, and the Philippines as we talked about the importance of taking a trip like this. I am becoming more and more convinced that with all of the problems in the middle east, we all need to move this kind of dialogue to a higher place of priority on our personal "social justice lists." As for now friends, I leave you with this:

May our conversations transcend tolerance and move to action and appreciation. May we all reach out to our Muslim brothers and sisters soon. May great hope win out over great despair. And finally, may we push our leaders to bring forth peace (with justice) in the Middle East.

Thanks for reading. We are all in this together...hold fast hope.