Baha'i Five!

Wednesday 26th May 2010
today's blog brought to you by Hannah and Kate.....after very little sleep

Wednesday was an intense and packed day for us. We started off the day with a workshop on pluralism with Nicole. We read a story about a giraffe and his super giraffe friendly house.. which featured skinny hallways and high ceilings. Which is great. If you're a giraffe. If you're an elephant, however, you're gonna have some trouble. And yes, this happened in the story. The elephant broke stairs and walls and even though the giraffe and elephant wanted to get together and talk in the giraffe's house, things were just not going to work out. Obviously, this story isn't just about elephants and giraffes (good job guessing, because you probably did). It's a metaphor for pluralism! How can people with different faiths and religious beliefs interact in a way that's fair for everyone? The giraffe had good intentions wanting to hang out with the elephant, but maybe he wasn't accomodating enough. When dialoguing with people of different faiths than ours, we have to remember that what's good for us might not be good for everyone else. We have to come to some common ground and understanding. Not just tolerance! We also talked about diversity too often being just percentages of different people, without those people interacting and appreciating/understanding each other. We decided that we should strive for acceptance instead of tolerance and appreciation of difference instead of the presence of diversity.

After pluralism fun, we drove on over to New Jerusalem Now for our second day of service with them. This day was BY FAR the hardest ... and hottest. Under the blazing Philly sun, we built two more garden beds, filled 8 beds with soil, wheelbarrowed, and dug out many many bricks from the soil. (PS, say soil instead of dirt. Soil has nutrients!) Some of us were more adept at managing the wheelbarrow than others, but we got it done in the end. The power drill continued to be a bit angry but I (Kate) loved using it and by the end felt like I truly bonded with the tool. An SAB Interfaith participant who will remain nameless came up with a creative new way to wear his t-shirt under the hot summer sun. There are pictures, but for the sake of his pride, we'll keep them to ourselves. During our lunch break, we also talked with Sister Maria about her experiences in Africa and how to approach interfaith dialogue. She had so much wisdom to share with us, and we were truly grateful to be able to talk to her and learn form her. We were also happy to have some of the residents from New Jerusalem join the conversation and share their experiences. They had a lot to teach us as well - both of the men who talked with us were Muslim, and since we have no Muslim students on the trip, it was really awesome to have this new religious perspective. One shared how he had been taught, but eventually overcame, certain prejudices in his own life. As always, the time spent at New Jerusalem was a lot of work but incredibly rewarding and inspiring. (and a little sweaty)

Speaking of sweat, we had only a little time back at Mishkan Shalom to get ready for our Baha'i encounter. But with some good planning and skillful 3-minute Army showers, all 11 of us shared the one shower in record time and successfully got ourselves presentable for a great evening.

Gity, a member of the Baha'i faith community here in Philly, graciously opened her home to us for the evening. She cooked us a delicious dinner, and afterwards, her son Cambeez gave an in-depth presentation on the history and tenets of the Baha'i faith. We were all wowed by this new, relatively unfamiliar religion that emphasizes community, social justice, and an incorporation of all religious traditions that came before it. Fun fact: a Baha'i cannot be a member of a political party!! This is because they believe that being a part of partisan politics would compromise their ability to follow the faith and truly live out their beliefs effectively. We could go on for pages on the ins and outs of this inspirational faith but it is late and we would not do it justice. Basically, we were impressed and loved learning about this community. Back at Mishkan, we had a great reflection before crashing for the night (and for some of us, "crashing" really means staying up far too late talking and THEN going to sleep)

that's all for Wednesday!
peace and love,
Hannah and Kate