Tri-Faith News and Updates

Mark your calendar for July 25 rain or shine — The Tri-Faith picnic will be held at Temple Israel, 7023 Cass St., from 12:30 to 3:30.  We’ll provide kosher hot dogs for those who want them. Bring a dish to share.  Beverages will be provided.  Some ideas for things everyone can eat;

• Fruit Salad
• Rice with meat and vegetables
• Hummus with pita bread or pita chips
• Corn chips with salsa
• Fresh vegetables trays with dips or dressing on the side
• Vegetarian lasagna
• Samosas
• Cookies, cakes, pastries

Things that many cannot eat:

• Pork and pork products (bacon, ham, pepperoni, sausages)
• Shellfish — shrimp, clams, mussels, oysters, lobster, crawfish, langostinos
• Gelatin based products — Jello, aspic, marshmallows
• Foods made with alcohol
• Foods made with aged/molded cheeses — blue cheese, gorgonzola

Fresh foods that grew from the ground are always safe — think fruits and vegetables.

Look for kosher and halal labels for meats.

Bread in almost any form you can imagine is safe.

We’ll have a bounce house and games for the kids.  Kimberly Fretz, our coordinator for Interplay, the Tri-Faith Toddler Program, is organizing activities for the 2-6 year olds. 

Creighton Medical School is providing their Health Fair and staff again — free blood pressure screenings and the chance to talk with a health professional about wellness and healthy living.

Invite a friend or friends who haven’t experienced a Tri-Faith event yet.  It’s a great way to build relationships among the faith partners.

For planning it helps to know how many are attending.  Take a minute to send an email to nancykirk@trifaith.org and let her know your name and the number in your party so we can make sure to have enough tables and chairs.

In case of rain, we will move indoors.  So make plans to come, no matter what the weather.

Islamic scholar Steve Scholl of Oregon will present a lecture called A Clash of Theologies or a Profound Kinship: Where Judaism, Christianity and Islam Meet on March 25 at 7 p.m. at St. Martha’s Church in Papillion (72nd St. just north of Giles Rd.).

Scholl will identify areas of theological convergence and common concerns between the Abrahamic faiths while noting their diverse approaches to major theological questions.
 
But the heart of this presentation is to highlight the work taking place in Jerusalem, sacred ground zero for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It is in Jerusalem that a courageous interfaith band  - women and men; Jews, Muslims and Christians, known as the Abrahamic Reunion - share their lives and work together to bring peace, shalom, salaam, to the divided and war torn Holy Land.
 
This is a provocative and inspiring presentation that reveals a side of interfaith relations and the Middle East conflict that is often overlooked by the media in this country.
       
Steve Scholl is an independent scholar of Islam and  comparative religion and mysticism. He has lived and traveled extensively in the Middle East after doing his graduate studies in Islamic philosophy and history at McGillUniversity. Steve was the founding publisher of White Cloud Press and is the editor of several books including The Peace Bible: Words from the Great Traditions and Common Era: Best New Writings on Religion. He writes on religion and culture for newspapers and magazines and is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Religion (ed. by Mircea Eliade).
 
Through his company, Imagine Adventures, Steve leads trips to Morocco and the World Sacred Music Festival every June and is launching tours to Turkey and the Holy Land (Israel and Palestine) in 2010 and 2011. For more on this work, visit www.imagine-adventures.com.
 
Steve has presented lectures and workshops around the world on Islam, Sufism, “Rumi and the Religion of Love,” interfaith dialogue, the intellectual and spiritual problems posed by religious fundamentalism and the new atheists (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens).  He can be contacted by email at: steve@imagine-adventures.com 

Wendy Goldberg, Bilal Khaleeq and Nancy Kirk from The Tri-Faith Initiative spoke March 4 to The Young Professionals Summit at the Qwest Center.

Also presenting at this event was Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes, as Keynote Speaker;  and William Taylor, founding editor of Fast Company, as the Closing Speaker. 

Blake Mycoskie, founder and chief shoe giver of Tom’s Shoes.

Sunday evening, Feb. 21, Executive Council of The Episcopal Church hosted an evening with members of the Diocese of Nebraska, including their deputies to General Convention and their bishop, the Rt. Rev. Joe Burnett, as well as the leaders of the Tri-Faith Initiative, a Jewish, Christian and Islamic effort to honor the witness of each faith community to the God of Abraham and to find new ways to work and pray with one another and serve the wider community.

The Tri-Faith Initiative provided us a powerful image of renewing and redemptive faith that overcomes barriers of prejudice and fear.

This article from the New York Times tells of a friendship between and Sufi sheik, a UCC pastor and a Rabbi in Washington State who are deeply examining their own and each other’s faiths, much as we are in the Tri-Faith Initiative.

Read more about their experiences here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/us/24amigos.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

While Thanksgiving in the United States is officially a secular holiday, for people of faith it is a time to express our gratitude to God for all the blessings in our lives.  It is celebrated on Thursday, November 26.

Immediately afterwards, the winter holidays of the Abrahamic faiths begin:

Eid al-Adha is celebrated on November 27 this year — although officially it starts at sundown on November 26. Christians start observing Advent on November 29.  This period of four+ weeks of waiting and anticipation leads to Christmas, observed on December 25.

Chanuka, the Jewish Festival of Lights, starts on Saturday, December 12 and is observed for eight days ending on Saturday, December 19.

Each of these holidays is marked by traditional celebrations, special foods, hospitality and religious worship.  A great way to get to know more about the faiths other than your own is to learn the meanings and traditions of their holidays (holy days). Consider attending a worship service of another faith to observe and learn.  As we do this “the others” become “the friends.”

One of the observations I hear often, is that learning more about another religion deepens our curiosity and commitment to learning about our own faith and its traditions.

In a roundtable discussion, host Ray Suarez interviews author Reza Aslan (No god But God; How to Win a Cosmic War) and Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and co-author of the groundbreaking book Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think. This program draws upon Ms. Mogahed’s book and reveals major findings of the unprecedented Gallup World Poll, which represents the views of more than 90% of the world’s Muslim population, making it the largest and most comprehensive ongoing study of contemporary Muslims being conducted. The results are fascinating, and often counterintuitive.

If you collect American Express points through their reward system, you can support the Tri-Faith Initiative youth programs by using points to purchase small Flip video cameras for our youth group to use and for college students who are working on the web site to borrow.

Through today Amex is having a 25% off sale on cameras.  The Flip MinoHD chrome is available for 26,000 points rather than 34,600.  The item number is PRM2949. To order one, call 1-800-297-3276.

The cameras will be checked out to specific students who will be responsible for caring for them and returning them.  Ideally we would like to have six cameras eventually.

If have points you can donate to help make this happen we will appreciate it greatly.

If you have questions, feel free to send an email to the office: nancykirk@trifaith.org.