Today was another full and rich day of interfaithing! I got over to the Convention Center at
little before 10, having opted to sleep in and take the morning a little easier
after yesterday’s marathon. I met
with Imam Bashar Arafat and his Egyptian students and enjoyed talking with them
about interfaith work. I then
attended a very well done seminar by the KAIICID organization on interreligious
dialogue and the processes for bringing people along the dialogue journey,
particularly in a pluralistic cultural context where there is a dominant
religious group in the culture.
KAIICID is an interesting NGO, started by the King of Saudi Arabia and
joined by Austria, Spain and the Vatican as partners in this educational
endeavor. They do a lot of
interfaith education all over the world, particularly with Muslim majority
nations, training religious leaders in the techniques of interreligious
dialogue and teaching conflict transformation skills. The discussion was very lively and the folks attending the
workshop were very diverse so it made for interesting conversation.
As I was arriving at the Convention Center I got a phone
call from one of the vendors in the Exhibit Hall where I had stopped on
Thursday to get some information on educational programs that they offer. By having left my contact info with
them I was automatically entered into a drawing for a mini iPad and lo and
behold, I won the iPad! So I
stopped by their booth after the workshop to pick up my new toy! I then stopped by to see how the
Tibetan Buddhist monks were coming on the Mandala and was amazed at how much
they had done since yesterday. I
then went out to the local grocery store for supplies and rushed back to get to
an early afternoon session on Interreligious Studies, Religious Studies and
Interfaith on college and university campuses.
After that I wandered into the cultural hall where there
were lots of musical groups performing in 20 minute sets. I particularly enjoyed Chinese Buddhist
drummers (the place was really rocking while they were playing!) and the Sikh
kirtan singing. The Sikh community
is here in full force, because of their volunteering to do the langar every
day. Their booth in the exhibit hall was doing a booming business in giving out
free turbans. You could go up to
the booth and they would show you how to tie a turban Sikh style. They said they had over 500 turbans and
they couldn’t give them out fast enough!
So there were lots of “Sikhs for a Day” walking around the Parliament
today!
My students were on for their workshop at 5:15. We all got there early so we
could set up the chairs in circles for the case study conversations. That workshop went unbelievably
well. The students who attended
were completely engaged in the conversations and the wrap up session at the end
was really gratifying for our students as those who attended said things like “
This is what I’ve been waiting for through this whole Parliament”, “this was so
exciting, thank you for doing this”,
“I am so glad to have had a chance to see how interfaith affects all
aspects of my life and future career and that I can be an ‘interfaither’ even
in another professional life”, “I
hope you come back to the next Parliament and do more of this” and on and on. It was wonderful to see how thrilled
our students were with that feedback. They had worked hard on their
presentations and case studies and they did a great job of facilitating the
conversations. The URI Young
Leaders Program director was very impressed with how our students handled the
workshop too. I think he wasn’t
sure what to expect and he seemed impressed that they really knew what they
were doing. It was also fun
to see how our students and the students at Nazareth really bonded and formed
friendships and they were all planning collaborative projects we can do when we
get back to our respective campuses.
All told, it was a great experience for them!
We went to dinner (all 17 of us!) at the Blue Iguana and I
finally crawled back into my room at 9:30, quite tired. Still recovering from my illness last
week and I do not have my usual stamina!
Pics today are of the students presenting and a shot at the
end with some of the students who attended the workshop, the Sikh singers and
the mandala as it was by mid-day today.
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