Celebrating Gratitude within the Beloved Community: The Interfaith Leadership Council’s First Annual Seasons of Gratitude Awards Dinner

I first become familiar with the term “the Beloved Community” in the book Open My Eyes, Open My Soul: Celebrating Our Common Humanity, by Yolanda King and Elodia Tate. Yolanda King, daughter of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., attributed the term to her father, which was used by him to describe humanity as a single family, with differences of race, religion, economic status, and nationality de-emphasized in favor of highlighting our similarities as humans, to demonstrate why we should not use such characteristics to divide us into opposing teams.

With this in mind, I couldn’t think of a more apropos term for the Interfaith Leadership Council of Metropolitan Detroit (IFLC) to use at its First Annual Season of Gratitude Dinner to describe the interfaith community.

The dinner, held the evening of November 6 at Shriners Silver Garden Events Center in Southfield, was the inaugural event of the IFLC’s Season of Gratitude, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s institution of Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

The Season of Gratitude initiative links faith communities with the civic community, through various Thanksgiving-related events hosted by multiple faith organizations around the Metro Detroit area throughout the month of November.

Before the dinner, we mingled in a reception room near the main entrance, which was set up with round tables throughout the room. One each table was set a few prayer or ritual items from a different religion. Since at least a dozen or more faith groups were represented by the event’s attendees, there were people on hand who identified and described the items representing their faith for anyone who wanted to know. Dress ranged from business-casual to flowing clergy robes, to other forms of cultural regalia.

I’m always rather shy when entering a big event, and upon arrival I didn’t see anyone I knew in the room yet. I made eye contact with a woman wearing distinctly Native American attire, and she smiled and came over to introduce herself to me. We “made friends” instantly as she put it, and talked throughout the whole reception, and introduced each other to our friends and colleagues as we met them.

This lovely lady was Judy Muhn, who was scheduled to give the invocation (prayer) before the dinner. She told me she’s a member of the Southeastern Michigan Indians, Inc. (SEMII) in Centerline, Michigan, an organization I am familiar with from many years ago, and that she is also affiliated with Renaissance Unity, an impressive Unitarian Christian congregation well-known to the interfaith community.

When we were seated in the main room, I picked up the evening’s program and flipped through the bios of the program participants. When I read Judy’s, I felt honored and humbled to have been instantly befriended by such an accomplished and remarkable community leader, when I’d had no idea while talking with her who she was or what she was known for. She gave an invocation inspired by her Lakota background, containing both English and Lakota words.

Another noteworthy person I had the pleasure of meeting was Audrey Geyer, an independent video director and producer whose recent work includes the documentary “Our Fires Still Burn: The Native American Experience”. Geyer specializes in public affairs documentaries, drawing on her background in both film and social work. Her films have been shown on PBS before, and the Web site for “Our Fires Still Burn” includes local listings for when it can be seen on TV, as well as a link to use for purchasing the DVD. 

I was delighted to be seated at the table reserved for WISDOM, the Women’s Interfaith Solutions for Dialogue and Outreach in MetroDetroit. WISDOM was honored with a certificate of achievement and community gratitude for hosting seven presentations of its signature “Five Women, Five Journeys” panel discussion program, for sponsoring the teen interfaith group Face to Faith, and for participating in the September A-OK (Acts of Kindness) Day of Service.

Throughout the dinner I looked around the room and saw many people from at least a dozen interfaith groups (both large and small), from Detroit Public Television, college students, and various business and media personalities I didn’t even know had any interest in or ties to the interfaith community, such as our Emcee, mainstream newscaster Bisi Onile-Ere.

The evening’s main awardee and keynote speaker was Paul Hillegonds, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs for DTE Energy. The IFLC presented to Hillegonds the Visionary Civic Leader Award, demonstrating the IFLC’s commitment to forging ties between faith and civic communities.

This event was meant to be the kick-off of the IFLC’s increasing efforts to spread the spirit of the Beloved Community into the general culture of Southeastern Michigan, rather than keep it restrained to a niche initiative of a group of faith communities. The IFLC seeks to mainstream in a good way: 2013 saw its growth as an organization in members, funding, and the reach of its initiatives and programs. 

Thanks for reading, and I’ll continue to keep you posted on as much as I know about the wonderful things happening in the Metro Detroit area, which we hardly ever hear about in the mainstream news—at least not yet.


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Illustration by Karla Joy Huber, 2004; marker, colored pencil, watercolor, metallic gel pen, flower petal

Actively seeking stories: Metro Detroit’s Interfaith Community Partners with Detroit Public Television to Foster a Post-Competitive Era of Cooperation

In southeastern Michigan’s interfaith and intercultural community, the communications model is one of collaboration and information-sharing, rather than of competition and racing to push content out faster than one another.

The fact that ReadtheSpirit.com, Your People LLC, the Interfaith Leadership Council (IFLC), Detroit Public Television, and other local organizations are doing well is a good indicator that this is a sustainable and effective business model, rather than one with no hope of surviving amid speed- and competition-based mainstream communication corporations.

At the July 26 meeting of the Michigan Professional Communicators with interest in religion and cross-cultural issues (MPC), we learned about another major partner of the interfaith community: public broadcasting.

MPC meetings are held at a different place of local religious and / or cultural significance each time, and for this month the Wixom headquarters of Detroit Public Television (DPTV) was chosen.

Our hosts were DPTV President and CEO Rich Homberg, Senior Vice President Georgeann Herbert, and Project Manager Ruth Kaleniecki. Homberg described for us the mission of DPTV, how it operates, and its significance to the Metro Detroit interfaith and intercultural community. The goal of DPTV is to “Bring the world to Detroit,” as Homberg said, “and translate it for you.”

Though DPTV doesn’t have journalists who report the news first-hand as it happens, the station strives to have local programming—and such national shows as the PBS Newshour—help viewers make sense of and understand the context of events and controversies by taking more time and sharing more information than is possible in mainstream news media outlets. DPTV seeks to find where the holes are, as Homberg put it, and provide useful content that helps people get a well-rounded view of current events and issues.

DPTV is a valuable asset to the interfaith community by broadcasting content of interest to the community, content which is almost or completely unavailable on mainstream broadcast channels. DPTV has aired several informative and insightful documentaries, both local and purchased from the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), on a variety of contemporary and historical cultural and religious topics, one of the most notable examples being the God in America series.

Like ReadtheSpirit.com, DPTV is also very timely with its delivery of such content. In the current political climate, the religion of Islam is surrounded by controversy and associated with large-scale violence; DPTV picked up a three-part documentary on the life of Prophet Muhammad, scheduled to air on August 20. The documentary, which is already available on YouTube, explores Muhammad’s history, Islam’s impact on the world, and the debate regarding Islam’s benefit to the modern world. Other highlights of upcoming programming include a documentary series on Latino-Americans airing in September and October, and a series on Arab-Americans.

ReadtheSpirit.com, an online magazine and book publisher, partners with DPTV by providing coverage of DPTV programs and initiatives, as well as by being a valuable online resource for DPTV’s information-vetting process.

“Ten years ago, DPTV would have seen Read the Spirit as a competitor,” Homberg said. “But now it’s more about what we can share.” DPTV reaches out to the interfaith community frequently to assist in vetting cultural and religious content for accuracy and sensitivity to the target communities.

“Interfaith groups are very powerful in society,” Homberg said. DPTV has a database with contact information for a few thousand regional interfaith leaders, a list Homberg never hesitates to refer to when he needs more information about a topic DPTV is considering covering. DPTV recently partnered directly with the IFLC for an initiative called Pre-School U. This program is a grant-funded initiative providing outreach to specific communities the IFLC indicated as academically at-risk.

In addition to filming shows at the Riley Broadcast Center in Wixom, DPTV also accepts content from local filmmakers. As mentioned above, the station carefully vets its content for accuracy, and to assure the context is “non-profit, non-commercial, non-competitive, public media.” The station makes sure to “know how it got there, who touched it, and what motivated it,” Homberg explained. The recent documentary titled Beyond the Light Switch, exploring the future of electricity, is an example of this: The film was funded publicly, not by energy companies, and was intended to present rather than promote the various sustainable energy options being debated.

DPTV has actually turned down some submissions, because it wasn’t able to verify enough information about the film’s makers, context, and the motivation behind its creation.

The five emphases of DPTV, Georgeann Herbert elaborated, are children and education (which also includes community and adult education), health, leadership and public affairs, energy and environment, and arts and culture. The station provides a variety of local programs addressing these topics, as well as the shows it purchases from PBS.

DPTV has recently increased its focus on the Great Lakes area. Great Lakes Now is a series focusing on environmental stewardship. On August 13, channel 56.2 (DPTV Plus, which re-airs much of the content from the main channel at different times) will feature a two-hour panel discussion about environmental stewardship (investing in nature) to help provide a balanced perspective in response to all the hype about technology and venture capitalism, which are touted by the mainstream media as the keys to the future. Detroit Performs is a new program about local artists, how they have gotten where they are, and their creative processes. DPTV is “actively seeking stories from the community” for upcoming episodes, Herbert said. Under the Radar Michigan is a show highlighting some great local travel destinations that are unique to Michigan.

After exploring the link between Detroit Public Television and the Michigan Professional Communicators, next was the “roundtable” discussion of announcements, events, and accomplishments from the interfaith and intercultural community.

One significant accomplishment was for ReadtheSpirit.com’s Stephanie Fenton, the only journalist in the nation doing a regular column on holy day traditions from around the world. Fenton’s content is on the verge of being picked up by national journals, David Crumm announced, and is a “great example of how what we do in our group can influence what people see and read nationally,” as he put it.

“People come to us to find things they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to find,” Crumm said about Read the Spirit, and the same can be said of DPTV. Read the Spirit is often the only news Web site giving coverage to programs on Hallmark’s TV network, the History Channel, etc. Read the Spirit doesn’t cover the major networks such as Fox, NBC, and CBS, because “they typically don’t do content we’re interested in.” (Not to mention there’s already a glut of coverage about the topics those stations cover.)

Other news for Read the Spirit is the announcement that the Web site and publishing house is in the process of establishing e-courses this upcoming winter, regarding topics of interest to the interfaith and intercultural community. More information will be available on ReadtheSpirit.com in the upcoming months.

The subject of one of Read the Spirit’s books published last year came up again, since we are now in the important time of year it discusses. The Muslim holy month of Ramadan occurs at a different time each year (starting eleven days earlier than the previous year), and in 2013 it falls between early July through early August. The Beauty of Ramadan: A Guide to the Muslim Month of Prayer and Fasting for Muslims and Non-Muslims, by local author Najah Bazzy, is a condensed guide to the cultural, health, and socio-political aspects of Ramadan observance. The book is available for purchase from Amazon.com, and through the book’s page on ReadtheSpirit.com.

An upcoming event—or series of events—discussed at this meeting was the Season of Gratitude in November. 2013 is the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s declaration of the Thanksgiving holiday as an American institution—as well as the 150th anniversary of his Emancipation Proclamation. The program is being organized by the IFLC, and links faith communities with the civic community. The IFLC is encouraging local faith communities to host Season of Gratitude events in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Thanksgiving holiday. The IFLC will post information on its Web site about these events, as well as an FAQ.

A new member organization of the national interfaith community introduced at this meeting is Sacred Language Communications (SLC), founded by journalist and church consultant Martin Davis. SLC’s goal is to help churches maximize the potential and effectiveness of the communication channels they already have for connecting with their congregations, rather than focus on introducing new technologies for communications. Though SLC is Virginia-based, Davis has worked directly with the IFLC and is well-known to the interfaith leadership of southeastern Michigan.

“In the world of church communications,” says Davis in a recent press release, “too much thinking about electronic communication is based on pushing information out, and not enough emphasis is placed on the two-way learning exchange that must occur to make electronic communications worthwhile.” SLC offers a variety of services focused on fostering two-way learning, such as lunch conferences, consulting, a free e-newsletter, and Webinars. On August 8, SLC is conducting a 60-minute Webinar titled “Breaking the 80 - 20 Problem: Using E-newsletters to Grow Volunteers and Strengthen Spiritual Growth.”

“We’re in an era where there really are no more competitors,” Read the Spirit co-founder David Crumm summed up. Many mainstream people would disagree, because this is untrue for the mainstream. The reality Crumm described has been created, however, and a gradually-increasing number of people are embracing that reality. They are making it their own, and sharing it, with the goal that eventually it will reach the critical mass of people required to make it a mainstream reality.

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Illustration by Karla Joy Huber, 2004; marker, colored pencil, watercolor, metallic gel pen, flower petal

The Promise of Hospitality – First summit of the Hospitality Initiative in Southeastern Michigan

“The Promise of Hospitality,” held May 3-4 at Oakland University, was intended not as a culmination of the interfaith, Michigan-based Hospitality Initiative’s efforts to date, but as a kick-off for the initiative’s future of hospitality education and outreach focused on helping people adapt and flourish in an increasingly more diverse multi-faith world.

We live in a world in which it is becoming less and less likely that we, as average people, will live our lives without having any significant encounters—from social, to business, to education, to giving and receiving services—with people of faiths and cultural traditions we are unfamiliar with. This creates the necessity of a revised concept of hospitality that aims to eliminate the fear of people unlike ourselves, and to emphasize the importance of extending hospitality and friendship first, rather than feel suspicious until we know more.

“The Promise of Hospitality” summit was the first big event of the Hospitality Initiative. About seventy-five people attended the Friday evening introductory session, which included a welcome by keynote speaker and Hospitality Initiative co-founder Charles Mabee, and a keynote address by Professor Richard Kearny of Boston University. Kearny set the stage for Saturday’s line-up of all-day presentations, introducing the concept of “The Promise of Hospitality in a Multi-Faith World.”

The Saturday main event, attended by about fifty people, included over a dozen presentations by business, medical, education, and communications professionals, as well as by faith leaders and lay-persons of various religious traditions, who discussed the role of hospitality in their spiritual communities, in business, in education, and in society in general.

This line-up included several names familiar the southeastern Michigan interfaith community, such as WISDOM co-founder and past-president Gail Katz, Rabbi Dorit Edut of the Detroit Interfaith Outreach Network (DION), public relations professional and author Lynne Golodner, writer and business professional Padma Kuppa, and Bup Mee Sunim of Muddy Water Zen in Royal Oak. Hospitality Initiative co-founders Olaf Lidums, Charles Mabee, and John Suggs gave remarks, as did representatives from Oakland University, including Dr. Richard Pipan of the School of Education, Dean Mohan Tanniru of the School of Business, and a group of Oakland University students.

Sergio Mazza, who has represented various business and educational institutions, discussed “Hospitality: The Promise for Business in a Multi-Faith World;” Dr. Sandor Goodhart, professor of English and Jewish Studies at Purdue University, talked about “G/hosts, Strangers, and Enemies in a Multi-Faith World;” and Abbot Andrew Marr discussed “Mimetic Hospitality,” the multiple ways in which hospitality has been defined and expressed.

Introductions to the role of hospitality in different faith traditions included Judaism (Gail Katz and Rabbi Dorit Edut), the Bahá’í Faith (John Suggs), different faith traditions in India (Padma Kuppa), American Hinduism (Vineet Chander), Christianity (Dr. George Alcser), Unitarianism (Rev. Dr. Kathy Hurt), Islam (Imam Achmat Salie), Buddhism (Bup Mee Sunim), and Mormonism (Karin Dains).

The day-long seminar was followed by a reception at First Congregational Church, including a delicious dinner provided by Rx Catering and a lively musical performance by Maggid Steve Klaper and Brother Al Mascia, OFM, of the Song and Spirit Institute for Peace in Berkley, Michigan.

Sponsors of the Hospitality Initiative Summit 2013 included First Congregational Church of Rochester, Michigan, St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, The Bharatiya Temple of Troy, the Bahá’í Faith, Saint John Fisher Chapel, Agape Community, the Interfaith Leadership Council, Meemic, WISDOM, Oakland University, First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, and Gail and Bob Katz.

You can learn more about the Hospitality Initiative and its upcoming events at https://m.facebook.com/hospitalityinitiative/.


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Image: "Elemental Garden," by Karla Joy Huber, 2010; Prismacolor marker, Sharpie marker, Sharpie pen, and highlighter

Stay tuned for the upcoming Hospitality Initiative Summit first weekend of May 2013

One of the biggest events the Michigan Professional Communicators with interest in religion and cross-cultural issues have been promoting and preparing for since this time last year is the first summit of the Hospitality Initiative. The Initiative has already hosted a few smaller events throughout the past year to both introduce people to the concept of hospitality as an integral part of cooperation and peacemaking in a multi-faith world, and to promote the larger summit to be held this upcoming weekend, May 3rd through 5th, 2013, at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.

The summit kicks off at 7 p.m. on Friday with a free introductory session, “the promise of hospitality in a multi-faith world.” The use of the term “multi-faith,” rather than the more common “interfaith,” throughout the flier for the event brought to mind an article I read an issue of the WISDOM Window, the monthly e-newsletter of Women’s Interfaith Solutions for Dialogue and Outreach in MetroDetroit. The author was discussing the marriage of a Christian and a Jew, and explained she prefers the term “multi-faith” because it implies more than one faith cooperating, whereas the term “interfaith” to some people sounds more like an attempt to blend traditions rather than celebrate and synergize their complementary differences.

I don’t know if that’s what the program coordinators for the Hospitality Initiative Summit had in mind when they chose the term “multi-faith,” but it fits the theme of accepting that people of different faiths are indeed different from us, and that this is not a bad thing.

Rather than being cause for fear and mistrust, these differences create an opportunity for expanding our knowledge and appreciation of the diversity of the human experience, and for learning from people who see things differently than we do, while at the same time finding out we do inevitably have some things in common, because we’re all human.

The program for Saturday May 4 lasts from 8:30 a.m. through 5 p.m., and the cost for the whole day of seminars is $15. Topics include hospitality and business in a multi-faith world; “G/hosts, guests, strangers and enemies in a multi-faith world;” and the importance of hospitality in everyday life, including overviews of hospitality in core religious traditions.

The seminars are followed by a dinner from 5:30 – 7 p.m. at the nearby First Congregational Church (admission $15), then a theatrical performance called “The Good Person of Szechwan” from 7 - 9:30 pm in the church’s sanctuary (admission $10).

Sunday May 5 is a two-hour follow-up meeting from 2 – 4 p.m., which will serve as a recap of the summit and discuss ways of using what everyone has learned to generate ideas to help increase cooperation and a sense of welcome between diverse faith communities for a more peaceful society.

If you can only make it to part of the summit, which may be the case for me, I’m thinking the best session to attend would be the last one of the seminars, which is the one discussing multi-faith hospitality in daily life and the role hospitality has traditionally played on the major faiths of the world. Check my blog next week for my take on what I learned at the summit.

For more background info about the Hospitality Initiative, please feel free to check out my previous blog entries regarding the Michigan Professional Communicators meetings, particularly the June 2012 one.

Pre-registration for the summit is available at the Hospitality Initiative Web site, http://essentialcore.org/; you can also find the address of and directions to the venue on there. Pre-registration for the whole summit is $35, and on-site registration is $40.

Please feel free to share this with everyone you know who you think may be interested—including your temples, schools, and workplaces! I hope to see you there.

Peace!


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Illustration by Karla Joy Huber, 2010; Oil pastel

Holy Bread: Exploring Diverse Faith Traditions from a Culinary Perspective

Lynne Golodner took an interesting approach to exploring faith traditions in her newest book, The Flavors of Faith: Holy Breads. On April 14 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Royal Oak, she gave a presentation to promote its recent publication by Read the Spirit Books.

I first mentioned Lynne Golodner in my blog entry about the June 2012 Michigan Professional Communicators with interest in religion and cross-cultural issues meeting. In addition to having published several books, she leads workshops and retreats on writing, parenting, and yoga, is the founder of Your People, LLC, a public relations, marketing consulting, and business development firm, and is a mother of four children.

Somewhere amidst all those responsibilities and accomplishments she managed to do the first-hand research and writing, and some baking experiments, required to compile this lovely book about the role bread plays in the gatherings and prayers of various religions.

The event lasted from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., starting with a presentation by Golodner regarding the history behind and content in Holy Breads, including what inspired her to write it. Golodner recounted how she became intrigued with bread as she was getting back in touch with her Jewish roots, and found that preparing food was an important part of her faith tradition.

Bread is mentioned in so many Jewish, Christian, and other prayers, she said, and it plays a very important role in community-building and hospitality.

The subject was even more fascinating to her because it required some reconciling of beliefs about this particular category of food—our society has all but demonized bread with fad diets and food trends, she said, but grains have always been a staple of the human diet, even able to sustain people for periods of time when no other food has been available to them.

The book discusses and gives recipes for some of the most popular among Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Native American breads. Golodner explained how she got several of the stories, and clarified why some breads people initially expected to see in her book are not featured. The book’s scope is breads with a religious context, she said, and she conducted extensive inquiries to determine that East Indian breads such as nan, for example, are cultural rather than tied to particular faith traditions.

Golodner also told some anecdotes from the book’s development phase, including about her visit to the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn where women bake bread every week to sell as the mosque’s primary source of revenue, and how she had to get details and recipes for the Native American breads in a sort of roundabout way.

The talk and was followed by a social reception in which attendees were able to sample several of the types of breads mentioned in the book, including soft pretzels (Christian), challah (Jewish), tortillas (Native American), cornbread (Native American), king's cake (Christian), and pita bread (Muslim). The breads were all provided by local bakeries and vendors with the exception of the king’s cake, which was ordered and shipped from a special bakery in New Orleans.

This presentation was yet another example of the wide variety of interfaith events going on in southeastern Michigan, and the first one I’ve attended which focused specifically on interfaith awareness in the home. Golodner emphasized that the recipes chosen for the book are “simple,” making it feasible for people to try making types of bread developed in other faith traditions, and learn something about those traditions in the process. Golodner had fun experimenting with bread-baking with her children, and encourages others to give it a try with their families.

The event was sponsored by Women’s Interfaith Solutions for Dialogue and Outreach inMetroDetroit (WISDOM) and DION (Detroit Interfaith Outreach Network).

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Illustration by Karla Joy Huber, 2011; Prismacolor marker, Sharpie marker, and Sharpie pen

The Network of Networks: Spreading the Awareness of MetroDetroit’s Increasing Intercultural competency

2013’s first meeting of the Michigan Professional Communicators with interest in religion and cross-cultural issues (MPC) started the year of interfaith networking with great foreshadowing of the Detroit area’s future of cultural competency. The host venue chosen for its regional cultural and religious significance was the Bharatiya Temple in Troy.

The Bharatiya Temple, a place of worship and community life for Troy's substantial Hindu community, had a busy weekend—in addition to its regular daily schedule, it hosted the MPC on Friday morning, and the 14th annual World Sabbath for Religious Reconciliation on Sunday the 27th.

MPC meetings start with a one-hour guided tour of the host venue, and it was helpful to get an idea of the layout of the complex before the Sabbath event, especially since the place is big enough to get lost in. Padma Kuppa, Executive Council Member of the Hindu American Foundation and co-founder of the Troy Interfaith Group, gave us a tour of the main sanctuary, briefly described the Temple's history, and answered some of the most frequently-asked questions about Hinduism.

Following the tour was the two-hour roundtable discussion portion of the meeting. One of the major themes was cultural and religious competency, which starts with knowing how to separate truth from stereotypes, which I wrote about in more depth here.


Cultural Competency

Helping to create this understanding and thus improve relations among different faith groups in Michigan is one of the primary purposes of the Interfaith Leadership Council of Metropolitan Detroit (IFLC), which also happens to be the parent organization of the MPC.

The IFLC is currently seeking media professionals—including college students—to assist with various interfaith and intercultural directory information projects that have been requested from various institutions, such as school districts, to assist them with developing their cultural competency to best accommodate the increasing diversity of their workplaces and classrooms.

Robert Bruttell, Chairman of the IFLC, reported receiving a request from a local school district for a calendar of fasting days, and information about food restrictions, for the different faiths their students represent. He realized the IFLC does not currently have such a list. “The IFLC refers to itself as a civic organization,” Bruttell said, “and that is the kind of civic duty an interfaith organization should fill.” So, he determined to see what kind of record could be created of this information, and how it could be shared with schools and other organizations in a more contemporary format than simply mailing out a printed piece of paper.

It’s important not to reinvent the wheel, he said, but instead find out what media these types of information are collected in, vet them for accuracy (for example, information about Ramadan aggregated in 2012 would not be valid for 2013, since the dates of Ramadan change every year), and package them in the most user-friendly and up-to-date format.

If you’re interested in helping out, you can contact the IFLC by clicking here. Much of the work for the IFLC can be done by remote (as opposed having to work from the IFLC office).

Also on the subject of cultural competency, Joe Grimm presented about his new intercultural competency class he teaches in Michigan State University (MSU)’s School of Journalism. The goal for the class is to create a new cultural competency guide each year, to answer about 100 questions regarding a particular group.

The decision for the 2013’s topic population, East Indians, was prompted by the news that Consumers Energy, a major natural gas service provider, intends to bring over a few hundred East Indian IT workers to staff its Jackson, Michigan facility. Until now, Jackson has experienced very little cultural diversification, so citizens of this small south-central Michigan city need all the help they can get for learning how to coexist with their new neighbors. The IFLC has been a valuable resource for helping the students gain access to credible sources of information about the groups they seek to write about.

This guide will be the first in a series of cultural competency books. Read the Spirit and Joe Grimm are also planning revisions for a cultural competency guide that Grimm co-wrote previously regarding Arab-Americans. He and David Crumm, MPC’s facilitator and co-founder of Read the Spirit Books and ReadTheSpirit.com, are also in the process of acquiring publishing rights from the Native American Journalism Association to a Native American guide produced by the Wichita Eagle, to revise and incorporate into the series. To learn more about the cultural competency guide series created by Joe Grimm and his team of MSU journalism students, please click here.

These cultural competency pioneers are aiming for a national audience, which is a realistic goal after the fast success of their 2012 release, The New Bullying (which I discussed in my post about the July 2012 MPC meeting, located here). The promotion for that book, with which Joe Grimm’s students pulled off the amazing feat of going from initial concept to published book in about 100 days, took off after someone in the popular media noted the words “MSU School of Journalism” on the back of the book, and called MSU. MSU was more than happy to claim the project and promote the book.

David Crumm pointed out that, though it wasn’t Joe Grimm or Read the Spirit the press contacted, it’s best not to make an issue of who or how many people claim credit—the more people who claim it, the more people there are promoting it.

Another great resource for accurate information about different religions is Read the Spirit’s “Religious Holidays and Festivals” column. Written by Stephanie Fenton, this column is the only consistently-supported resource of its kind for actual articles, not just dates and a descriptive sentence, about holy days around the world. The articles even sometimes include a description of how a holy day is observed in different places (for example, how a particular Muslim holy day is celebrated in Iran versus how it is observed in Indonesia).

There are aggregator software programs that compile information about holy days around the world, but even if this information is correct, it’s only a list, and doesn’t help a person who knows nothing about it really understand how to accommodate an employee, student, or neighbor during the time of that observance.


Personal narratives from Michigan’s diverse religious landscape

Other recent Read the Spirit publishing highlights include Debra Darvick’s This Jewish Life: Stories of Discovery, Connection, and Joy, and Heather Jose’s Every Day We are Killing Cancer.

Darvick is a local Michigan writer whose book was originally published years ago and went out of print, and she worked with Read the Spirit for over a year to get the manuscript polished up and re-published. This Jewish Life features 54 people’s stories about their personal connection with their religion, arranged to show the progression of Jewish festivities, rites, and other Hebrew cultural and religious markers throughout the calendar year. 

Jose’s book is about her personal experience with cancer, in which she derives strength from her practical application of her Christian faith. Another significant feature of her experience is it brought her and her husband closer together—whereas more often than not this particular struggle has opposite effect. Jose enlisted her husband’s help in her treatment and recovery by being her information manager: She told him to tell her only what she needed to know, so she wouldn’t be bogged down with more details to worry about.

Also in Read the Spirit news, I noticed that the first book in the series regarding spirituality and caregivers, which I blogged about in my entry for the August 2011 MPC meeting, has been published. The book is Guide for Caregivers: Keeping Your Spirit Healthy When Your Caregiver Duties and Responsibilities are Dragging You Down, by Dr. Benjamin Pratt.


Interfaith news and events

The MPC is a great source of news about events the mainstream media ignores. Three major interfaith events were discussed at this meeting: the 14th Annual World Sabbath for Religious Reconciliation held at the Bharatiya Temple, the 2014 North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) conference to be held in Detroit, and the Hospitality Initiative summit to be held this upcoming May 2013 at Oakland University.

The World Sabbath was founded fourteen years ago by Reverend Rodney Reinhart, who was present at the meeting and described what led him to create it. Reinhart created the World Sabbath as a response to the hypocrisy of religious support for wars, and to help build solidarity between religious groups by giving us all a shared holy day. Please click here to read more about Reverend Reinhart’s inspiring comments from this meeting.

The second major upcoming event discussed was the Hospitality Initiative summit scheduled for May 3rd through 5th, 2013, which you can read about here. 

The third major interfaith event described in detail at this meeting is the 2014 conference of the North American Interfaith Network (NAIN). Detroit will be hosting the 2014 gathering, to be held Sunday through Wednesday August 10-13. The conference will include site visits to different places of worship around the Metro Detroit area, in addition to seminars in which local organizations invited by NAIN will present on interfaith themes.

Organizers of the 2012 NAIN conference in Atlanta were impressed by the report given by Gail Katz and Paula Drewek--past present and current president, respectively--of WISDOM (Women’s Interfaith Solutions for Dialogue and Outreach in MetroDetroit) regarding Detroit’s interfaith activities, and as a result Detroit was suggested as a good site for a NAIN conference. The conference will place a big emphasis on youth, including college students. Scholarships for conference attendance will be available. “Building bridges and breaking down barriers” are the big themes, Katz said. “Detroit is one of the most segregated cities in the U.S.,” and we want to show “what we are doing to build bridges.”

To tie NAIN in with the cultural competency discussion from this meeting, an organization like NAIN, though small, will be very important to help recommend and filter authenticity of resources for information regarding different religions—like a version of the IFLC at the continental level. 


Striving for the critical mass needed for mainstream awareness

Dr. Olaf Lidums, one of the Hospitality Initiative’s founders, pointed out that this work is not taking place in a vacuum, nor is it the only of its kind. “We’ve tapped an aquifer,” Lidums pointed out, drawing on the concept of quantum physics to describe how we’re all connected at some deep level and drawing from the same well. This well is what Carl Jung referred to as the Collective Unconscious.

These concepts may sound very cosmic and far-out, but they are really quite accessible when we know where to look. David Crumm spoke about the development of “a network of networks,” the gradual convergence of all these different interfaith and intercultural initiatives and activities springing up in southeastern Michigan.

If it’s happening here, it’s likely happening in other states, too, and eventually they’ll reach the critical mass for mainstream acknowledgement—meaning, a time will come when we’ll actually hear about them on the news, and people in the mainstream will be able to say they’ve heard about them, rather than “How come we never hear about any of this?”

We’re not hearing about this phenomenon in the mainstream because it simply hasn’t reached that critical mass yet.

There is a tendency to dismiss community movements that are based on cooperation and peacemaking rather than on the old models derived from conquest and control. The environmental conservation movement was originally not taken seriously by governments and other people in power, and look where it’s at now.

David Crumm pointed out that these intercultural and interfaith events are being created, organized, and attended by many diverse professionals, from different disciplines within the communications, community-building, and even technology fields. As their work progresses and gains more attention, people will realize that, just because this is all happening at the grass-roots level, it isn’t being done by a bunch of low-tech or disorganized hippies with a lofty idea they can’t sustain.

The interfaith and intercultural work being done in southeastern Michigan (and wherever else similar movements are developing) will eventually achieve the critical mass required for the wider society to notice and take it seriously, and be drawn to it as a more humanity-friendly alternative to our current “us-versus-them” thinking, and campaigns for “tolerance” which often feature an undercurrent of condescension rather than a sincere interest in integrated coexistence.


Additional resources for interfaith bridge-building

There were also some brief mentions by both regular attendees and newcomers to this MPC meeting. Kari Alterman of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) spoke at the meeting about a site dedicated to fostering understanding and better relations between Jews and Arabs. The AJC Web site includes a link to it (which is in Arabic), and also features a descriptive article in English by Kenneth Bandler of the Jerusalem Post about the Web site.

Another newcomer to this MPC meeting was Brad Seligmann, who is working within the University of Michigan’s Ginsberg Center (Service Learning Department). For more information about the interfaith work he is helping to coordinate with U of M students, please contact him here.

Reverend Roger Mohr, Minister of the First Unitarian-Universalist Church in Detroit, spoke of an upcoming interfaith event to be held at Henry Ford Community College, April 5-6. He is in the process of developing the Web site for the event, and more details will be forthcoming. In the meantime, you can contact him at his email address here.

As always, thanks for reading, and I am honored that the members of the MPC are reading my posts about the meetings now, thanks to David Crumm faithfully posting a link to my blog in his follow-up e-newsletters about the meetings.


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Image: "Earth Woman" by Karla Joy Huber, 2007; Colored pencil, gold gel pen, crayon, planet Earth stamp