Friends, it seems that I am now wanting to write this blog in tandem with what is currently going on in my life. Sorry I just could not resist, you could skip to the juicier stuff once I write it...
I am currently looking up ways to write a good cover letter, looking for jobs to apply for, if I qualify, things like that . . .Sometimes I tell myself "Common Lauren! Give yourself a boost of confidence! You used to work faster than your own thoughts could even keep up with you!"
I am sorry Me, sometimes I find myself just staring at a computer screen wondering where I should even begin. Deep breaths, the anxiety and frusteration eventually quiet down to some intimate and familiar feeling within myself.... ahhhhh yes, I remember, I used to resort to feeling peaceful.
What makes me feel more peaceful? The first thing that comes to mind is my work with Interfaith.
People from different backgrounds coming together in positive light and warm feelings of accepting one another. That's interfaith. No... understanding and respecting one another...that is true interfatih but in the meantime, the warm fuzzy feeling is implied. One I can revisit in moments of this type of reflection.
Last night, some members of the Olive Tree Initiative and myself attended an Interfaith Harmony community event at a center for a specific faith , the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormonism?), but was accompanied by the good people of the interfaith community (every other religion close by). First step in diversity is filling the room with all sorts of different people. CHECK! Next step: the talking.
Now last night, we had to speak to this room full of different people of different faiths, speaking about religion, response to our current events, and in memory of 9/11 as the U.S. remembers it to be. (I am also happy to report that the speaker from the Islamic Center recognized another 9/11 event (Chile 1973, read it if you wanna know)
I learned a lot. The event was really quite nice I enjoyed it! They opened with a Taiko drum performance (it felt so powerful, I associated it with warfare, like war drums, but I am sure it is much more than that I am just being a little ignorant). After we all relaxed in confidence ("No. The building won't collapse because of these loud drums . . . let's just feel the rhythm of the beat within our hearts.") I do not want to go into the specific details of the program, but here is what I learned:
Speaker from the Hindu Mission said:
" . . . the truth is undefinable. You cannot define it. . . . When you have water in the ocean, it gets picked up, and when it goes down, it picks up acid, like us. We pick up other things, but meditation gets us back to who we are. You see the divinity of the whole community, and this process cannot fail."
When he mentioned truth, I remember that a lot of our lessons in the Olive Tree Initiative reflections during the trip. We grappled with the need to understand the truth. What was the truth? And which of the two sides, the Israeli or the Palestinian, possessed the true-truth? I think the ultimate lesson was that there is no True-Truth. Some would even say that the truth does not exist. But hearing this man say that it has no definition, I think I can agree with that even more. Some people define truth as the facts. Some people define truth as their own personal experiences. So how do I define truth?
I cannot. I am still exploring, or I have not figured it out.
Rabbi from the HOAG Memorial Hopsital Presbyterian said:
"make those strangers into our friends."
I am just comforted with this. It makes sense in principle. It is something I try to actively do. Or when this fails, giving the benefit of the doubt, knowing that another person too has hopes and beliefs, that is comforting enough, even if I was afraid of them or intimidated at first. And when this does happen, I try my best to at least get to know them a little bit more. (Then I can judge whether I like them or not)
AND WHEN THAT FAILS:
"I do not have to be friends with everybody. Civil, yes, civil can definitely work. That's co-existence..right?"
