Interfaith Leadership Institute: Day 2

What a great experience we're all having! Even after just the first full day, I can already tell that I will miss the relationships that have been made through this conference, the diversity and openness that everyone has contributed, come Monday morning when we're back in Moorhead. Sigh...

Today, the big theme was brainstorming specific projects our delegations could focus on. These could be events to promote awareness of an issue, or just the local Better Together group itself, it could be a service project, field trip kinds of experiences. Also, we discussed what were the best ways to advertise and get the word out to the community. We deduced that the crazier the stunt, or the catchier the poster/flyer ad, the better response you would get. So, dress all campus statues in Better Together t-shirts and apparel to gain attention-- t-shirts that you stenciled yourself at your hands-on/crafty interfaith event! Always provide pizza! Make a silly video about your campaign! Put flyers of useful information in the bathrooms! And most importantly, use social media. Facebook and Tweet it up big time with quotes from interfaith leaders in history, or statistics about the issue that you're focusing on, like homelessness, hunger, immigration/refugees, or environmental stewardship. This was a really great time for our group, because our creative juices were really flowing. And also, we did something called asset mapping. This was basically a flow chart of all of the support we have on campus, be it from faculty and administration, student groups, outside community, and even who let's us rent a room for events. We realized that we have tons of people at Concordia who've got our backs!
Other things that happened today was that we could attend a service to celebrate the Jewish tradition of Shabbat, and a Muslim call to prayer. I went to both, and it was one of those goose-bump inducing experiences.
Our Dorothy Day group is pretty awesome, I'd say. Yesterday, our delegations were all at different tables, but today, we tried to see how many people could fit around one table, and when we realized, "Oh, awkward, there's 8 people who won't fit," we jumped to action and brought our tables together, to the surprise of the IFYC staff who were leading our session. I'd have to say, our enthusiasm and humor has been making this such an awesome group to be in. (And thanks to one delegation, the phrase of the day has been, "Dorothy Day FTW!")

What I'm loving about this conference is that I have always been interested in diversity but because of where I live, I was always reading about those things instead of experiencing it first-hand. Most of the people that I encounter in my life are white Christian Lutherans--it's a kind of sad fact. Here, I'm meeting people who are Sikh, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Agnostic and Athiest, and not only are we bonding over deep stuff like our beliefs, but also through the goofy random flow of conversation that tends to happen between 9pm and Midnight when a lot of candy has been consumed and someone has a deck of Uno cards.

It's a goal of ours to make our school a more welcoming place for that type of relationship-building. And I think our school's ready for it.

Interfaith Leadership Institute: Day 1

I know it's midnight,and I'm tired, and it's been a day of information overload, but I'm going to try and make this blog post make sense. Please bear with me.
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Our group of 4 students and 1 professor arrived safely in Atlanta yesterday afternoon. The conference started off this afternoon at Emory University's conference center, with an overview of what Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) is all about, then afterwards we had our first break-out session. This meant out of us 150-some people, we broke into groups made up of 5 or six college delegations. Since it's the first day, we all got up and introduced ourselves, and intentionally talked about the differences of our faith. Some of us were Christian, some were Muslim, some were Hindu, some didn't identify with a religion or believe in a higher power at all. And that's what's so great. What I love about IFYC is that it's not an organization that wants to dumb things down, ignore our differences and sing Kumbayaa together. It wants people to know that we are different, and that we can learn from our differences. I myself strongly believe that learning from these different faith traditions helps me reassess what I really believe, and therefore strengthens my own faith. What's also very cool about this Leadership Institute that they put on is that everybody who's here actually wants to be here. Everybody's eager to know how they can build bridges through interfaith dialogue and service instead of maintaining walls.
We talked about how our college communities have responded to our interfaith-ing, both positively and negatively. For our group from Concordia College, while we love the positive response we're getting from students and faculty, we're also glad that we have encountered opposition from others--that means that our mission and message is being heard, and that the dialogue has been sparked, and the diversity of our community is being reflected.


I want to summarize a few of the things I've picked up here from various speakers. As members of an interfaith movement, IFYC believes that we should

~Voice our values. This means not being shy about our diversity.

~Engage with others! I shouldn't have to explain why: nothing gets done, no understanding is made, if we do not communicate with and learn from one another.

~Take action. So, with the knowledge and understanding that we now possess, we then should go out in the world and start making some positive changes.

And just like that, you change the world :)

~~~

These break-out sessions with other colleges that I talked about: each of them are named after an interfaith activist from throughout history, such as the Ghandi Group, The MLK Group, the Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Group. Us? We're in the Dorothy Day group, which made me a bit too excited. I did a pretty emphatic arm-pumping motion,a la Napolean Dynamite.

Then of course, the highlight of the day was hearing IFYC founder Eboo Patel speak at dinner. He knew that in a way he was preaching to the choir by talking about how important interfaith dialogue and service is. I wish I could tell you more about the content of the speech, but I was so enamored that I didn't really take notes at all. And geez, I always take notes. And there was an overarching music metaphor, which was awesome! So, I'm hoping someone recorded it, 'cause I'd love for y'all to be able to Google or Youtube it. He did say that our job is not to ask, "Eboo, what are you going to do about this? When are you going to get something started in my community?" It's our job. We start it. We should mobilize ourselves and other people, we should be teaching people, and serving together.
Our delegation got to meet Eboo Patel and talk with him--we're really excited, because he'll be speaking at our school next year! "I'm not coming in the winter, though," he said, right up front. He doesn't know what he's missing. So, we got our picture with him, I got my copy of his book "Acts of Faith" signed, and it was very cool. All I can say is that he's the real deal.
Later in the evening we did more mingling activities, and I started hanging out with a few new people, and hey, there's a piano in the lobby, we said, so we started playing it. Me and someone else were just improvising tunes for a good 45 minutes. It's amazing how that always seems to happen to me. Music follows me everywhere; I can't seem to shake it. It brings me together with people that I never thought I'd encounter, ever. I feel so blessed by this.

Ok, that's all I can manage tonight. Stay tuned for more tomorrow!

Milwaukee

So, on the top of the screen it says that we mostly blog about music, our travels and wonderings.
I've talked about music and wonderings, but I don't really have too much traveling planned--no Africa this year.
Mom goes off to Tanzania for three weeks in August with a group from our church, and I will be keeping things together at home with my family. College hunting, of course, is my main priority right now, but at the same time I'm trying to manage those decisions in a way so that I won't go crazy.
I tell you, Dear Reader, it is impossible.

But I am getting excited for one brand new experience: Building a house in Milwaukee for Habitat for Humanity. On Sunday morning me and a bunch of other kids and adults from my church will wake up bright and early (well, more just early) and be on the road to Milwaukee at 5:30 AM. We're leaving at that insanely early hour to make it to a Brewers game at 1PM, so they better win.
We'll be framing a house in the city, with help from local volunteers, young AmeriCorps volunteers, and the future owners of the house. That's one of the cool things about this organization, that the family is expected to work a certain amount of hours to build their own house. Imagine the sense of accomplishment and pride they have to be living in a permanent home that they built with their own two hands.
None of us going have extensive construction skills; we can hammer, drill, measure, sand, paint and lift things, simple things, but that doesn't matter. We'll be learning a lot on the job, working hard, having fun, coming back tired in the evening, then doing it all over again. I'm excited to get to know my fellow travelers and also the people we'll work with in Milwaukee, excited to see this city, and to make myself useful, being one piece of the puzzle in helping a community.

We hope to be witnesses to amazing things during this next week, and I can't wait to find out what they'll be.

Bonhoeffer and the 15 Foot Angel

Last summer I was part of a group of high schoolers who spent a week at Augsburg College learning about Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a truly amazing individual, who worked and died for justice at the hands of Hitler near the end of World War II. He spoke out against Hitler's treatment of Jews, and for overtaking the churches with anti-semitic propaganda.
Part of the week's studies involved a service project in Minneapolis. We were at a Lutheran church in the Phillips neighborhood, where many of the parishioners are immigrants from Latin America, and some of them shared their stories of immigration (They were all legal, but told of neighbors and families they knew being torn apart because they were undocumented) They gave us a better understanding of how hard it is to make it in a new country. The pastors there were a husband and wife team: soft-spoken, petite Pastor Luisa, a native of Chile, and tall, outgoing, white, Minnesota-born Pastor Patrick. I was in awe of his seamless Spanish.
After talking with the church members, the pastors showed us two storage sheds outside behind the church, an alleyway going between them. The one on the right had a mural on it, a beautiful green garden that said "God's Creation" in yellow and orange letters, and Spanish words.



The shed on the left side of the alley had also been painted, but by the ugly spray paint cans of local gangs. An incomprehensible symbol of squiggles covered the whole thing. Our job was to cover it with a mural of our own, with 17 people in our group and and hour and a half to work with. When we thought of our design, we got down to business: There was a tree, a big white and yellow daisy, and the words Paz and Alegria, peace and joy in big bright letters.



We were sweating in the sun but enjoying our task and the people we were serving with. But a little later, something really odd occured. A short man in a purple polo shirt and khakis approached us. He carried a plastic bag that I could see had bibles in it. "Oh geez," I thought.
A street preacher.
"Can I have a couple minutes of y'all's time?" He asked us. "Can I tell you about Jesus?"
We students took a pause from our painting and looked at him. "Um...well, see, we're kind of doing this for Jesus. We're doing a service project," we told him. Our leader and professor, Jeremy, a young thirtysomething with a tough-guy look but a good humored personality said to the man kindly, "We're kind of in a hurry to get this done, we only have half an hour until we need to leave." We did indeed, and still had lots of work to finish. "Could we paint while you talk?" Jeremy asked. The street preacher shook his head gravely. "I would not disrespect God that way. I need your full and undivided attention." "Well, ah, sorry," replied our professor, shrugging his shoulders. It was getting awkward. Jeremy went back to our mural, which was coming along nicely by the way.



"What would you say if a 15 foot angel was standing in front of you right now?" The man said heatedly. At that point, we all stopped painting and watched Jeremy and the man. We were all thinking the same thing: What the heck? Jeremy, clothes flecked with paint, face shining with sweat and sunblock, strided over to the street preacher. He was a good deal taller than the man, more intimidating for sure, and it really would be a much more entertaining story if the Augsburg College professor of religion had thrown a John Wayne-style punch right then and there. But this is not an entertaining story. Alas, we were trying to live out not only our Christian principles, but Dietrich Bonhoeffer's as well, one of which was pacifism (for awhile, at least). Jeremy looked the street preacher in the eye. "You are not a 15 foot angel."
And let me tell you, the street preacher didn't look so confident anymore. He went on his way, and we finished the tool shed mural half an hour later.
Bonhoeffer makes this point, which he called 'Christ existing in community.' It basically means going out into the world to see Christ in action through other people, and to experience Christ's love through others. We were trying to be Christ existing in our community that day by just painting a mural. See, in Bonhoeffer's German-Lutheran 20th century, people knew Jesus advised them to be more in tune with the problems in their community, but they were generally more interested in getting themselves to heaven. Making that your life's goal can be blinding. This street preacher we encountered certainly was blind to the fact that we were trying to do something good with God in mind, even though it was something as little as making an alleyway tool shed brighter. He seemed to have his head so deep in the book that he couldn't see God around his world, too. I hope that we all can learn to see Christ existing in our communities.