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Religious leaders host discussion, show solidarity

Ohio University sophomore Omar Kurdi speaks about violence at a panel that brought together members of five different religious institutions. (Sara Kramer | For The Post )

Five members from different religious institutions in Athens came together Monday night to start a dialogue about violence and faith in regards to their different belief sets as part of Ohio University’s Better Together campaign.
The panel included representatives from five faiths: Rabbi Danielle Leshaw, director of Hillel at OU; Omar Kurdi, communication chair of the Muslim Student Association; Rob Martin, reverend at First Presbyterian Church; Tiffanie Shanks, director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries at First United Methodist Church; and Stephen Kropf, assistant director of the Athens KTC Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center.
Allison Schoeppner, campus organizer of the Better Together campaign at OU, said having these leaders in a room together while discussing a topic such as violence helps relieve the preconception of division between religions.
“(This) is not an image of faith that we see a lot in the media in our society,” said Schoeppner, a junior studying international studies and war and peace. “It shows solidarity, the fact that there are similarities between religions; it shows that there are issues that we can find commonality on and work together on to help end.”
Evan Young, moderator for the panel, which hosted about 15 attendees, said the event fostered a type of discussion necessary for bridging gaps among religions.
“It’s a challenge sometimes to have a panel where people don’t speak in the abstract, where they don’t talk about big ideas and grand philosophies but instead speak from a place of personal experience and their own struggles,” added Young, minister at United Campus Ministries and the Universalist Fellowship of Athens. “That was one of the aims of the panel, and I think we got there.”
The panel focused on a variety of aspects on the topic of violence as interpreted by different faiths. The conversation began with Young asking questions to participants and then opened up to audience participation. Discussion ranged from recent events like the verdict of the highly publicized Steubenville rape case to the fundamental causes of violence.
“Faith should be the place where people find answers,” Shanks said. “(It should be) where they can find comfort, and where they find peace. All faith traditions (should) take time to address these kinds of questions.”

Written by Richard S. Gilbert

The human race is a vast rainbow bursting into view.
of white and black, red, yellow and brown. Yet for all blood is red, the sky is blue, the earth brown, the night dark.
In size and shape we are a varied pattern
of tall and short, slim and stout, elegant and plain.
Yet for all there are fingers to touch, hearts to break, eyes to cry, ears to hear, mouths to speak.
In tongue we are a tower of babel, a great jumble of voices grasping for words, groping for ways to say love, peace, pity, and hope.
Faiths compete, claiming the one way;
Saviours abound, pointing to salvation.
Not all can be right, not one.
We are united only by our urge to search.
Boundaries divide us, lines drawn to mark our diversity,
maps charted to separate the human race from itself.
Yet a mother’s grief, a father’s love, a child’s happy cry,
a musician’s sound, an artist’s stroke, batter the boundaries and shatter the walls.
Strength and weakness, arrogance and humility, confidence and fear, live together in each one, reminding us that we share a our common humanity.
We are all more human than otherwise.

Source: http://www.uua.org/worship/words/readings/142764.shtml.

“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

Most people have heard of Dr. King’s “I have a Dream” speech. But did you know that he gave a speech stating his opposition to the Vietnam War exactly one year before his assassination? This speech, entitled “Beyond Vietnam, a Time to Break the Silence,” was the most controversial speech of his career. He openly questioned U.S. foreign policy, asking why our country was fighting to “secure rights” for Vietnamese people that the American soldiers were unable to enjoy in their own country. He also criticized the war because it consumed all of the money that the government could have used to improve life for poor Americans. This speech caused Dr. King to lose a significant number of his supporters, including his support from the government. He knew that he would lose popularity; however, as he emphasized in his speech, he could not remain silent. He knew that he could not be an icon of peace and be silent about Vietnam. 

So what? 

Are you willing to stand up for peace? In the words of Dr. King, “Peace is not the absence of war but the presence of justice.” If you stand for peace, you do not stand for injustice, regardless of whether or not it directly affects you. In your daily life, are you standing up for justice? 

Excerpt from “Beyond Vietnam”

Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything on a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years, especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, “What about Vietnam?” They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

During the holiday season, I take time out to consciously ponder what I am thankful for. Of course I’m thankful for my family, my friends, my education, my opportunities, and my “stuff.” I’m not wealthy, but I live a relatively privileged life. With all of the privilege that I have, I have little room to complain about anything.  But like most people, I do occasionally slip up and whine about things that many people wish they could lament.

For example, I sometimes catch myself complaining about being tired and hungry at the same time. Then I feel silly after remembering that those are two of the best possible complaints to have. In fact, those complaints are so good that they shouldn’t be complained about at all. When I’m hungry, I can eat; there’s food in my refrigerator waiting to be devoured. When I’m tired, I have the option to sleep at some point in the near future.  How many people are hungry, but have no means to obtain food?  How many people are tired, but cannot sleep until they finish their 16 hour shifts? If someone in such an unfortunate situation sleeps, their families starve.

I’ve noticed that people complain about things that most people in the world wish they could grumble about. Many college students gripe about their homework, but most don’t spend enough time appreciating the fact that they have the opportunity to get an education. I am intensely critical of the government, but sometimes I forget how thankful I am that I have the freedom to voice my opinions.

As the semester concludes and the holiday season gears up, try to make a conscientious effort to balance your complaints with the brighter side of each situation. If you think of everything in relative terms, then you’ll realize just how lucky you are to actually be complaining about whatever is upsetting you. Taking time out to appreciate what you have is a gateway to happiness.  

Spirituality- understanding and experiencing ourselves in relation to something larger than ourselves, of which we are a part, on which we depend, and which consequently we are called to serve

This is Reverend Evan Young’s definition of spirituality.  How does that compare with your personal definition of spirituality?  How does it affect your feelings about your spirituality?

On Walking for Peace on 9/11 ~ Rev. Evan Young

These are the words with which UCM Campus Minister, Rev. Evan Young, started the 9/11 Interfaith Peace Walk on and around the campus of Ohio University.

Eleven years ago terrorists commandeered four commercial airliners and used them to perpetrate attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the days, weeks, months, and years since that event, we have often been encouraged to think of and to try to understand those events through the lens of religious difference.

The events of September 11, 2001 were by no means the first acts of violence to be perceived and explained in terms of religion; neither have they been the last. Since that day, especially, it has been dangerous to look “different” here–turban-wearing Sikhs have been attacked by people afraid of Muslims; Arabic-looking people have been harassed and detained, their rights and freedoms abridged, because they seemed to resemble some class to which the attackers were thought to belong. Just this summer we heard with shock and dismay about the shootings at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin; closer to home, we heard about the South Bloomingville Christian Church, whose building was destroyed by arson. The idea of people responding to religious difference by committing violence against the persons and property of the different has, I fear, become the dominant narrative in the public discourse about religion.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. As a community, we have imagined together another story–a story of people living out their faith, enacting their principles, embodying what they value in each other and in the great “us” to which we all belong by rising together, lifting their hands, raising their voices, and moving their feet in the service of another vision. We envision something better together. We see an Ohio University, an Athens, indeed a worldwide human community in which the great range of our ways of believing, worshiping, and engaging with others is seen not as a threat to be feared or a problem to be solved, but as a precious resource to be treasured and shared and an abundance of gifts to be celebrated.

So I hope you put on your praying shoes. Because today we’re going to take that vision throughout Athens, from door to door on campus and among the houses of worship closest to campus. We’re going to be better together by walking together, by expressing together our hope for peace and our commitment to doing the work of peace in our town and in our world. We know we don’t have to think alike, or believe alike, or worship alike to love alike–and so we’ll walk. And I believe that along our route, today and in the days to come, we’ll find others who will join us because they share our vision of an earth made fair, and all her people one.