Archive for the ‘events’ tag
Upcoming event hosted by State of Formation
Personal Narrative in Interfaith Dialogue
Featuring Rabbi Or Rose and Pastor Samir Selmanovic
Or Rose is an Associate Dean at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College and writer on Jewish mysticism, social justice, and inter-religious cooperation. Samir Selmanovic is author of the widely read book “It’s Really All About God” and Founding President of Faith House Manhattan.
What: State of Formation communal panel discussion
When: Sunday April 10th, 2011; 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Where: Stewart Room of Auburn Theological Seminary (3041 Broadway New York, NY 10027; www.auburnseminary.org)
Moderated by Emerging Leaders Stephanie Hughes and Garfield Ali Swaby.
Jerusalem: Violence, Peace and the Religious Imagination
“JERUSALEM: VIOLENCE, PEACE AND THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION”
National Broadcast by C-SPAN
Wednesday, March 9, 2011, 11:30–1:30 PM
A conversation and official book launch of James Carroll’s new book “Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World (Houghton Mifflin)”
James Carroll
The Rev. Dr. Serene Jones (Union Theological Seminary)
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (Cordoba Initiative)
Rabbi Burt Visotzky (Jewish Theological Seminary)
Moderated by Lisa Miller (Newsweek)
The Interchurch Center (Ground Floor)
475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115
Please RSVP at www.utsnyc.edu/jerusalemjerusalem. Space is limited.
Light lunch provided
This Week is World Interfaith Harmony Week
The UN General Assembly in 2010 unanimously passed a resolution to recognize the World Interfaith Harmony Week annually during the first week of February. The world is currently celebrating its first IHW with meetings, devotions, the publication of academic papers & of religious statements, & with special press coverage in a number of countries.
This initiative, started by H. M. King Abdullah II of Jordan & supported by many civil & religious leaders from all over the world, is a constructive & structured manner for people of faith to harness religion for the common good, through an emphasis on tolerance & a deliberate discovery of what mankind has in common.
It comes as an extension of other Jordanian initiatives in favour of religious peace, such as The Amman Message & A Common Word.
“Religious harmony does not happen easily or spontaneously ; it requires a conscious decision to patiently seek & build convergence between different traditions.”
Click here for more information on World Interfaith Harmony Week
An Interview with Tony Blair on Interfaith Dialogue
From The Huffington Post
In a recent interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, we discussed his attendance at the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative held earlier this year, the work of his Faith Foundation, and the importance of understanding religion in a rapidly globalizing world.
…
Rahim Kanani: While your Faith Foundation’s primary goal is to promote and foster understanding amongst the world’s major religions, and the Face to Faith initiative you’ve described focuses on secondary school students engaging in interfaith and intercultural understanding, what is the role of colleges and universities in tackling interfaith education? Should such instruction be required learning in such a setting?
Tony Blair: My Foundation believes that young people have a pivotal role to play in building a harmonious modern world. After all, they are tomorrow’s leaders. It is therefore vital for students to have a firm grasp on the relationship between faith and globalization. So as well as a schools program my Foundation also has a universities program – the Faith and Globalization Initiative.
Seven universities around the world are currently part of the network: Yale University in the USA, The National University of Singapore, The University of Western Australia, Technologico de Monterrey University in Mexico, McGill University in Canada, Peking University in China and Durham University in the UK. The Faith and Globalization students who are drawn from a huge range of disciplines including international relations, law, theology, economics and business studies are examining the impact of religious faith on politics, business, society, and development in an increasingly globalized society. The focus here is on making the research findings from the university network accessible, meaningful and relevant to policymakers through publications, conferences and policy papers.
Each university customises the course to suit their local contexts and explores aspects of globalization which are particularly relevant to them, for example the key themes in Religions in the Contemporary World at the National University of Singapore are Religion and Technology, Urban Religiosity and Merchandising Religion which reflects the importance of technology in Singapore’s rapidly expanding economy.
Melbourne to Celebrate One-Year Anniversary of Parliament
One year after the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions was held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, the city has changed for the better. The world’s largest interreligious event brings people together from all over the world, and certainly has a global impact, but nowhere is that impact more noticeable than in the host city itself.
Join the celebration of a newly-invigorated interreligious movement:
“A World of Difference…Just Around the Corner”
Sunday 14 November 2010
Sacred Spaces: Inside a Buddhist Rite Fire Ceremony
From CNN
For the last several years Shinnyo-en Buddhists have conducted the Saisho Homa fire rite ceremony in Taiwan, Paris and Berlin. This year, for the first time, the rite was brought to Shinnyo-en’s head temple in Redwood City, California.
A homa ceremony is Buddhist prayer ceremony. Saisho is a reference to the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha.
“The Saisho Homa ceremony is really a prayer for world peace,” said Nichelle Blanco, an ordained Shinnyo-en priest. “It is a rite that includes various elements such as fire and water.”
Shinso Ito, who leads Shinnyo-en, traveled from Japan to perform the rite. “The water is the symbol of being able to use what we have for other people and to remind people that everyone is so valuable,” she said.
Shinso is only one of a handful of women who are Buddhist priests.
Shinnyo-en Buddhism was founded by Shinjo Ito in Japan in 1936. Shinjo was an aircraft engineer but developed a desire to study Buddhism.
Conservation Joins Religion To Save Ganges Dolphin
From Reuters
As the sun sets over a serene stretch of the mighty Ganges, a pair of smooth, grey dolphins arch gracefully out of the water, bringing hope that wildlife can again call India’s great river home.
Millions of Indians along the banks of the 2,500 km (1,550 mile)-long Ganges depend on the river, but unchecked levels of agricultural, industrial and domestic waste have poured in over the past decades, threatening the wildlife.
Five kilometres upstream from Narora, a five-hour drive west of New Delhi, the 350 megawatt nuclear power station that put this sleepy town on the map looms as a reminder of India’s unrelenting drive for industrialisation.
In Karnabas, a small village just upstream from Narora, a local drama troupe performs for more than 150 villagers.
“Humans are polluting our river!” an actor playing a Hindu god declared, a WWF banner celebrating World Dolphin Day hanging over the makeshift stage.
“The life of our Mother Ganga is endangered! Please do something!”
Distinguishable from its ocean-going cousin by a long, pointed snout, the Ganges dolphin is one of only four freshwater species in the world. The total population across India, Nepal and Bangladesh is estimated at 2,000, down from 4,500 in 1982.
But along a northern stretch of the holy river, a Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) project is leveraging the religious importance of the Ganges for Hindus to teach villagers the virtues of conservation and protection of its sacred water. The upper stretch of the Ganges, from Rishikesh in the foothills of the Himalayas to Ram Ghat in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, holds great religious significance for Hindus.
Locations along the river figure heavily in the Hindu holy text, the Ramayana. A bathe in the river is a rite of passage.
“The religious sensibilities of the people are interlinked with the conservation of the river,” said WWF-India project leader Sandeep Behera as he stood on the river bank in the shadow of a Hindu temple, while young boys chanted hymns on a nearby pier.
Pope Says Science Can Unite Humans With God
From Huffington Post/RNS
By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI told scientists that their research can lead to knowledge of God by revealing the natural order of the universe.
The pope made his remarks on Thursday (Oct. 28) before a plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican.
The evident logic governing the universe “leads us to admit the existence of an all-powerful Reason, which is other than that of man, and which sustains the world,” Benedict said.
“This is the meeting point between the natural sciences and religion,” the pope said. “As a result, science becomes a place of dialogue, a meeting between man and nature and, potentially, even between man and his Creator.”
Can Meditation Change Your Brain?
From CNN
Can people strengthen the brain circuits associated with happiness and positive behavior, just as we’re able to strengthen muscles with exercise?
Richard Davidson, who for decades has practiced Buddhist-style meditation – a form of mental exercise, he says – insists that we can.
And Davidson, who has been meditating since visiting India as a Harvard grad student in the 1970s, has credibility on the subject beyond his own experience.
A trained psychologist based at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he has become the leader of a relatively new field called contemplative neuroscience – the brain science of meditation.
Over the last decade, Davidson and his colleagues have produced scientific evidence for the theory that meditation – the ancient eastern practice of sitting, usually accompanied by focusing on certain objects – permanently changes the brain for the better.
“We all know that if you engage in certain kinds of exercise on a regular basis you can strengthen certain muscle groups in predictable ways,” Davidson says in his office at the University of Wisconsin, where his research team has hosted scores of Buddhist monks and other meditators for brain scans.
“Strengthening neural systems is not fundamentally different,” he says. “It’s basically replacing certain habits of mind with other habits.”
Contemplative neuroscientists say that making a habit of meditation can strengthen brain circuits responsible for maintaining concentration and generating empathy.
One recent study by Davidson’s team found that novice meditators stimulated their limbic systems – the brain’s emotional network – during the practice of compassion meditation, an ancient Tibetan Buddhist practice.
Faith In Film
From By Stephen Whitty
Religion News Service
(RNS) The New Testament warns about trying to serve two masters. But lately Hollywood’s ordered up a rewrite.
Moviemakers would prefer to have it both ways. And so multiplexes have been crowded with films that wrestle with spiritual questions even while battling for box-office attention.
These aren’t tiny indies, like the evangelical films that sprang up after “The Passion of the Christ” in 2004. Nor are these holy terrors like “The Last Exorcism” and “Paranormal Activity 2,” a subgenre that’s replaced Freddy and Jason with demons from hell.
These are the mainstream pictures — Woody Allen character studies like “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” audience-friendly dramas like “Secretariat,” and big star-driven pictures like “Stone” and “Hereafter,” that explore subjects like spiritual awakenings and the possibility of an afterlife.
Faith-based film fans used to be seen as a niche audience. Now, in Hollywood, they’re just seen as the audience.
“I think audiences are often smarter than they’re given credit for,” said actor Edward Norton, who co-stars in “Stone.” “And I think they’re often drawn to films that raise genuine questions about our lives that demand a real ponder.”
