York Interfaith Week

I had a really good week during mid-November that I've been meaning to write about for a while. The York Interfaith Group sponsored a week of events to promote interfaith collaboration and education. I'm really interested in other faiths and cultures, so this was really exciting!

One of the things I struggle with being a Volunteer in a church right now is feeling a bit penned in by Christianity. I've never felt this at home at Ascension Lutheran or in my life in general, because my religion isn't such a dominant part of my working/personal life as it is now. But here I feel awkward when I tell someone I believe in ideas like reincarnation and karma but still consider myself a Lutheran. Christianity in the context I'm experiencing it is more structured than the context I've experienced previously. I know that myself and a number of other YAGMs are struggling with this right now.

But it's hard, because diversity in faith is one of the things that excites me most! And so I want to talk about it a lot. Some of the ideas I've learned from Gagan, who is Sikh, or from friends who are Jewish, really resonate with me and I've incorporated them into my spiritual practice. During college I began to really explore other religions and getting to know the ideas of other faith backgrounds. This continued after college by getting to know Shantonu's family and learning more about Hinduism and Islam.

On the whole, however, I feel most spiritually fulfilled by worshiping as a Lutheran right now and  holding my different beliefs at the same time. I love my church at home because of personal history there, its beliefs and action towards social justice, its warm and inviting attitude, and most importantly the great people.

Additionally, during my last semester in college, I took a life-changing class with my amazing history professor Dr. Grubb (I was a history minor). It was about the Protestant Reformation; it was kind of a cool way to end four years of a side-hobby of exploring different cultures and faiths (made easier by going to UMBC, the best ever and most super diverse university).

In the class, we focused a lot on Martin Luther. I really liked what I learned about the history of Lutheranism and its roots in social justice and that made me realize how important it is to me. This class, among a million other things, taught me how not to see in black-and-white when it comes to people. Martin Luther spread some AMAZING messages and made having a spiritual practice much more accessible for a boatload of people. But he was also crazy at the end of his life and said some not very nice things about Jewish people. Kind of like how some people love Gandhi and I also know people who think he was shitty and marginalized certain groups. Basically, no one is perfect but you CAN hopefully take the good from them.

That's how I feel about Jesus. He was human. He wasn't perfectly perfect. And I don't feel the desire to believe or carry forward ALL of the messages from the Bible about Jesus' life.

Because I don't fundamentally agree with the idea that Jesus was the ONLY savior and the ONLY representative of God's work on Earth.

Christmas decorations in the German Christmas store in York!

To me, Jesus was an amazing example of God's love and hope. God challenges us to make the world a better place; therefore, He gives us examples of how to be peace-bringers. So I really like Jesus. I strive to act in a way that is Christ-like (failing, more often that not, but don't we all?).

But I also strive to act in ways that are like Buddha, the Sikh Gurus, Mohammed and other spiritual and social justice icons like Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King, Jr. I love Jesus' message of tolerance, hope, and justice, but I don't see why I can't believe and accept messages from other peace-bringers too. I have a load of other beliefs that I'm slowly realizing since being here don't fit into the "Christian" mold but that's a post for another day :)

I wanted to begin to share some of my interest in other faith backgrounds with the folks at my church here, St. Columba's. So I asked four friends, all from different faith backgrounds, to write a short summary about their faith. I planned an activity where we'd read these blurbs and then each participant would write a blurb about Christianity, and another one about the United Reformed Church. This would be held during our Tuesday worship service, which is a short half hour service that is led by rotating members of the congregation and can take various formats. I really love these services and enjoy getting to see various members of the church take a turn in the spotlight and share their gifts.

I planned all this with the aim in mind of doing a session at a student night in October and then got the flu, so I postponed the session until November (when it was next my opportunity to run the Tuesday worship service). And it was super cool because it happened to turn out that the week I ran the Tuesday Worship service was the start of York Interfaith Week!! So we were doing something interfaith at St. Columba's without even realizing it.

Lights in the city centre for Christmas - so pretty!

The worship service was a mixed bag. On one hand, I really enjoyed reading the blurbs, connecting with my friends about their faiths, and doing my own reflection on world religions. On the other hand, during the worship service  I was a bit underwhelmed. I wanted a bit more discussion of complexities of world religions, but it basically wound up with some of the participants discussing all about the United Reformed Church, which is meaningful but even I, having been here only 3.5 months, had heard this conversation happen before multiple times.

At the end was a bit of chat about the world religions and their inherent similarities to each other and Christianity. I do like how all of the people at St. Columba's like to deeply discuss and talk about things - I was just hoping they'd talk about the other religions rather than their own Christian denomination this time around :).

I decided that regardless it was good, because the participants were interested in the different faiths - they took home the blurbs to read more in-depth - I felt like there was some growth for everyone involved (me included!). And I also felt like I got the rare opportunity to share some of my own life with the congregation, too, through my friends' words about their faith. 

The next day, I went to an Interfaith Cafe at the Unitarian Church in York with my friends Chantal and Aline. It was so fun! There were amazing snacks (like homemade scones and cakes and crackers) and I chatted with these two really nice women who described Unitarianism to me. It's basically a mixture of all faiths and congregants learn and worship in a variety of faith styles without sticking to one. I LOVE THAT. Learning from the teachings of ALL spiritual practices IS AMAZING. Lots of faiths participate in York Interfaith Group - Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, etc. I came away really rejuvenated spiritually because it felt nice to have more breadth and openness in a faith context.

The other activity I went to for York Interfaith Week was a Zazenkai service. It was super cool because it was held in the Dean's Library on the grounds of the York Minster. So this beautiful, very old room with thousands of ancient books and a kind of upper-crust British feel to it - in an Anglican church that was once Catholic - was home to a group of practicing Buddhists. I wouldn't say the service was spiritually fulfilling but it was interesting.

When I walked in I sat in one of the chairs around the room, but there were also a bunch of mats around as well. Practicing members of the group were intermixed with newcomers who came because of the Interfaith Week. We started with a 25-minute meditation so I quickly moved my butt to one of the mats and managed to get a spot where I could lean against the warm radiator.

Of course I promptly fell asleep and stayed asleep for the entire 25 minutes. I woke up kind of startled a few times with my mouth hanging open and drowsily tried in vain to make it less obvious that I was napping, but it was useless...good thing everyone else supposedly had their eyes closed too. It's just annoying! Because when I try to meditate I either a) fall asleep or b) worry about how I can't meditate or c) get distracted thinking about pretty much anything besides my breath and clouds and that shit. UGH.

Christmas cracker crown! 

Then we did some chanting, which was cool but kind of hurt my throat, and then walked around the room in a circle while we supposedly meditated. Obviously I was dwelling on what had happened that week, what I was going to eat for dinner, and the super old books that were on the shelves and how long the room must have been in existence and how nice the rug was and how many historically important people must have been in the room and pretty much anything else besides calm nothingness thoughts. To be fair, we were in socks so it was kind of cold and that always distracts me from calmness. But there was one spot where a warm pipe was running under the carpet and was briefly exposed so every time we passed that spot I tried to linger for like a split second longer so my feet would warm up.

We heard a lesson based on one of the teachings of Buddha, which was interesting - it was about how one of the Zen masters chops off this guy's hand to teach him a lesson and the speaker told us all not to take it literally and explained the metaphor really well - and then we did more chanting and more walking after that and then we finished up. Everyone was super nice and it was a nice calm environment but I didn't leave thinking, Wow I'm so going to be a Zen Buddhist now. I was more like YAHOO it's dinnertime!

The York Minster

Overall, the whole week was an awesome chance to learn more and broaden my perspective of other faiths. It was spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually refreshing.

If you want to read the blurbs about the four world religions (minus Christianity because I didn't write one that's good enough to publish) you can do so here! Special thanks to Tamie, Gagan, Saroj Mashi, Basma didi and Auntie Haifa, and Shantonu :)