My friend Ethan Vesely-Flad, who works for the Fellowship of Reconciliation and with whom I helped start the East Bay chapter of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship some years ago when we were both living in the San Francisco Bay Area (East Bay means Berkeley, Oakland, and environs), is in Iran with an interfaith peace delegation.
You read that right, Iran. One of the members of the delegation is Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and she recently stood before an Orthodox Jewish congregation in Tehran, a historical first.
Ethan, who edits FOR's magazine, Fellowship, is reporting on the trip. You can read about it on the FOR blog here.
Make sure you click the "read more" words so you can read the full stories. The home page of the blog just shows the first paragraph of each blog entry. Read the one about Lynn under "Climbing mountains, making history." (Direct link to the story here.)
Blogging will be scarce in this space for a few days again while I take some more writing time to work on a Big Theological Tome (and also on the required year-end reports - more of the romantic life of academe), but Ethan's writing is much more worthy of your attention right now than my writing, so enjoy and ponder.
It's worth exploring the whole FOR homepage and links too. Scroll all the way down on that page, there is a wealth of information.
A few prayers for the interfaith delegation wouldn't hurt, either.
5 comments:
Wow! If you have read any (too little time to link) Bruce Feiler (highly recommended) - in his book about Abraham, he speaks of what it is like to be a Jew traveling in Iran. Fabulous stuff- and quite amazing what he found there.
This is great to read about. I will read more later, when time permits.
FOR is based in my recent hometown of Nyack and is a great organization!
I heard him on NPR a year or so ago -- loved the interview and am dying to read the book.
It is must read material.
Yesterday I took a course called Islam and Purity of Heart and it was so great. Tomorrow the same instructor has one on Abraham and I talked to said instructor about Feiler.
Now I think I must skip my committed to class (it is with my pastor, so I can probably make it up) and go to the Abraham class.
This rocks!
I have read "Abraham" by Feiler and it is excellent. There is a book I rate higher though. It is called "The Tent of Abraham - Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians and Muslims" By Chittister, Shakur Chishti, and Wasko." Beautiful!
I have just finished an online course at the University of Saint Francis Xavier in the Spirituality Certificate. The course was called Interfaith. A wonderful course and it gave excerpts from books about all the world's religions. I completely recommend it.
Paul Harbridge
Author of "Helena's Voyage"
An Interfaith Book for Children.
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