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Interfaith Math
Greetings, friends. We here at Spirituality and Practice enjoy meeting regularly as a team. Lately our team meetings have been both challenged and inspired by this question, “What can we offer the world this holiday season? What does the world need?”
We talked about the need for lament. The need for time to mourn. How do we address [insert atrocity here]? We filled that blank with what felt like an unprecedented number of wars, genocides, ethnic cleansings, displacements, and dire social and political issues.
We also talked about heartbreak. All around the world, our hearts are breaking because the lives we once lived are passing away. We find we can no longer live with the same confidence and hope. Where do we put our ideals?
Our Editorial and Program Director, Rev. Julie Davis, metabolized these conversations and felt that the essential problem right now was that we are not seeing one another. We just are not seeing other humans as humans. It’s as if our actual sight is failing, and we need glasses or a new prescription to correct for the near-sightedness or far-sightedness we are inflicting on our neighbors.
That feeling became a reflection called “Interfaith Math,” in which Julie encourages us to maximize our ability to see by practicing this holiday season keeping our interfaith world in mind. This feature includes links to five Naming the Days pieces with practices to guide you through the winter holy days (Advent, Hannukah, Bodhi Day, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa).
We invite you to read the piece and embrace the challenge Julie sets out: “This holiday season let’s give ourselves over completely to our desire to see through the darkness. Let’s do the most logical thing towards that great end and dissipate the darkness with all the light at our disposal…”
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