DREAM CITY 2020: Springs needs unity among all faith traditions

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the 14th in a series of columns about the future of the Pikes Peak region written by community leaders and visionaries. It's part of the ongoing community initiative Dream City: Vision 2020. Share your vision at www.dreamcity2020.com.

I have been in Colorado Springs for all of a year and a half, so an expert on our future I am not.

However, you don't need to be a longtimer here to notice the lines: political lines, cultural lines, racial lines and, of course, religious lines.

We can't get rid of those lines, those boundaries between us. Maybe we wouldn't want to. But if those lines keep us apart and keep us from working together in finding common ground, how can we move forward to create a Dream City?

I recently participated in quite an extraordinary event, one which gives me hope that we can, with the cooperation of us all, continue to evolve into a rich and diverse faith community.

The Community Thanksgiving Service was sponsored by PPIRCA (Pikes Peak Inter-Religious Clergy Alliance), a group that meets every month to break bread together, to learn about our different religious traditions and, most important, to enjoy each other's company.

The Thanksgiving service took place this year at Temple Shalom and was conducted by my fellow PPIRCA clergy. Many faiths were represented among the leadership, who were Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Baha'i, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Disciples of Christ, Eco-Spiritual/Pagan and Unity.

The topic for the service was the need for unity in America in the aftermath of such a brutalizing and polarizing election-year campaign. We wanted to help bring America back together, after we had been so separated by our political party structure and the bruising emotions that had surged during the campaign.

At the center of the service, three reflections on unity were presented by the Rev. Marlene Urban-Funk (Disciples of Christ), Ahriana Platten (Eco-Spiritual/Pagan), and me. We spoke from our hearts to the 200 or so attendees. Our minisermons addressed our personal feelings about unity and diversity.

We each spoke of the pride we felt that day at being able to share our various faith traditions, of coming to a holy sanctuary with gratitude for the life-gifts we had been given.

At the same time, we were passionately honest with our congregation as we shared some of our personal hesitancies and difficulties of sitting together, and praying together with members of other faiths who had, at times, spiritually and physically oppressed us and our peoples, others who had denigrated us and treated us as less than holy - at times, even as less than human.

How do you sit together with someone who feels that his/her way is "the only way"?

How do you express your own faith when you know you are speaking to someone who "knows" you are wrong? Who really has no interest at all in hearing the truth of your soul?

How do you hold back your anger at someone who treats you and your faith tradition as irrelevant? Who tells you that you are surely going to hell if you don't believe "the right way"? Who attacks those you love in a faraway land?

Saying all this might have filled us with fear, made us afraid of potentially angry responses to our heart-wrenching words.

But after the service, there was only love and joy and appreciation for having been present that day to hear the Holy Spirit praised in many forms and in many languages, and support for us in our honesty and forthright presentations.

Our worries were all in vain. For all those present, that service became a moment of truth and hope. That Thanksgiving service was a time when we, your community clergy, could come together and say: We want - we need! - to create a faith coalition in this city which does not shy away from truth-telling, honesty, passion or disagreement.

We want - we need! - to create a welcoming faith community, one where all feel invited to come home to faith, to bask in the joy we experience as we share the bounty we have been given by the Holy Blessed Ones of our faiths.

It won't always be easy, and it will take time to create, perhaps, but that was our Thanksgiving dream.

Not a bad dream for Dream City, is it?