Press release for upcoming interfaith Thanksgiving event

11/3

A Rabbi and Reverend singer-song writers to orchestrate global Thanks Giving

 On Friday, November 20, two New York spiritual leaders will conduct an interfaith online music service to celebrate the bounty of our earth, give shared thanks for our blessings and connect citizens worldwide as a step towards peace.

In 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in search of religious freedom, traveling for sixty five days with bibles to practice their faith without persecution. On November 20, Sim Shalom founder, Rabbi Steven Blane, and the West Park Presbyterian Reverend Robert Brashear, although not donning Pilgrim hats, will join together for an online Thanks Giving music and prayer service to inspire gratitude for the earth's abundance and celebrate diversity of
spirit with a message of acceptance and pluralism.  Unlike the Mayflower voyage the program seeks to bridge connections rather then escape from them and no travel is required. Congregants of all faiths and citizens from around the world can simply join in for the free event and participate via the live chat by clicking on at www.simshalom.com at 7:00 pm EST.


Creating uplifting music has been an integral part of Rabbi Blane's and Reverend Brashear's work both within the pulpit and in less traditional settings such as jazz clubs. West Park Presbyterian Church has build a dialogue of interfaith harmony with its authentic mutual conversation outreach program. Sim Shalom the world's only virtual Synagogue has connected individuals around the world with its weekly online service platform.  According to Rabbi Blane " Combining our musical voices and experiences to build universal discourse rooted in mutual respect and compassion is a  perfect vehicle to elevate the conversation. Music transcends languages. Loving they neighbor, starts on the local level and grows exponentially. "
Reverend Brashear has years of experience in spiritual policy development in Mexico, Central America and the Middle East, and locally as a founding member as Westsiders for Peace and Justice located in New York City. He is the Chair of the Interfaith Assembly for Homelessness and Housing. The reverend sings and plays the ............................... and has performed with a variety of artists. His recordings include the Movement Music Project of the Peace poets.  

Rabbi Blane, who is also a Cantor, has dedicated his work towards a vision of inclusion. Most recently he spearheaded a new movement of Jewish Universalism that embodies the principles of non judgement acceptance.  Rabbi Blane has performed in iconic venues including The Bitter End in Greenwich Village and performs regularly in jazz clubs as a singer and piano player. He has released several CD's including "Live Jazz High Holidays".

This event brings full circle the rabbi and the reverend's music collaboration. They have performed together in the Home ( Away ) Band. 

Further reflections on the state of the church

7/17

Time for a visit from our Presbytery Executive, Bob Foltz- Morrison. First, an update on how things are going at West-Park. His support for what we are doing, from his first day on the job, has helped us to completely turn around our relationship with the  institutional church. For years, we had to contend with an old narrative. Accepted wisdom about who we were. That our story was, essentially, over. Bob took the position that it was time for a new narrative. And let the past be the past, regardless of what was true or not true. He was essential to helping our story be told and finally winning approval of our plan last November.

It's still hard to get used to the idea that I can go to a Presbytery meeting without having to worry about another challenge. For years, our existence was on a month to month basis, always a threat of hostile take over dismissal. Now that's over. I can't imagine what that must have felt like, he says, how you stuck it out.What set Bob apart was, well, a humility by which he didn't assume he knew what was best for us. Treating us (and me) with dignity and respect. Not a touch of condescension. It makes a difference.

So far, he's had no direct push back from the organized Jewish community regarding our divestment. Not surprisingly, the push back has come from tall steeple liberal churches and allied institutions. We're agreed that this is a struggle that will best be carried out at the grassroots, neighborhood level among those who work with each other on our shared community life. 

I talk about the difference between my experiences in Tulsa and Pittsburgh, the diaspora, so to speak, where the Jewish community seeks out allies in the Christian community out of their own vulnerable minority status and self-interest. In a neighborhood, city, like ours, they simply don't need us. No need for dialogue just to promote understanding. In a neighborhood like ours, understanding comes from working together, like in our shared work, model work, in the area of food justice. 
He has spent most of his time working to strengthen our own vulnerable community, not riding the ecumenical circuit. 

He passionately hopes for a day where our congregations will reach out and connect with our communities. Our need for more leaders. Like Patrick O' Connor, from Jamaica, Queens, who has become a major spokesman against gun violence in the Metro New York Industrial Areas Foundation. Or my now retired friend (and another Pittsburgh guy) David Dyson from Brooklyn who would say to me, It's time to get arrested. We can sit in jail and talk about the Steelers. I thank Bob for taking on the tough job of transforming the structure from gatekeeping to that of facilitating mission. Ending the absurdity of trying to tightly guard a door that no one's trying to break into anyways. Like the more we decline, the more we try and control, As Sharon Welch says, we need an ethic of risk.

He also agrees with me that the old liberal/conservative paradigm is over. The emerging struggle around race and class, big and small, the impact of emerging immigrant communities with their different cultural assumptions. The withholding of funds by the big monied churches has stripped the presbytery of its traditional mission creating role. So it's got to be grass roots up now. Neighborhoods. Ecumenical. And interfaith.  We talk about our late colleague, Annie Rawlings, embodiment of old school organizing. Her memorial service was a witness to interfaith as a way of life, not a strategy or tactic. What we can learn from Presbyterian Welcome which was created to bridge those divisions in the lgbtq inclusion struggle. And Bob is insistent that there be no dialogue around issues like Israel and Palestine without the direct involvement  the Muslim community. 

And we talk about Harlem. About the courage of churches who struggle on when only one of our churches has a full-time pastor. The need for a neighborhood strategy. How the best role of our larger church should be linking peers and sharing resources. Like who out there can help me with integrating people who have serious mental illness into a small faith community? To be open without being overwhelmed?
I tell him that I appreciate the partnership he's created with our new Stared Clerk, for so many yearsa conflictual   relationship exploited by thoe with other agendas.   The rest of the church is headed to where New York City already is. We have the opportunity to create and model new paradigms. Or wither and die with the old.

                                                            * * * *

Lily and Samantha stop by. One of the softball league umpires has just lost his wife. They're headed downtown to the funeral home to bring condolences on our behalf. 

We need not think alike to love alike

10/25

The day begins with Kimberley. She shares with me that her Unitarian roots go back not only to 19th century New England but to 16th Century Romania an the court of King John Sigismund whose preacher Frances David preached  We need not think alike to love alike.

I share our conversation with Jane about relating to the New Thought religious movement. How they are not faith communities per se, but communities of faith practice with no commonly held theology but a shared practice. And that is why collaboration has been difficult to define. The interfaith project, as we have experienced it, has been predicated on relationships between/among particularities. For theologians like James Cone and Gustavo Gutierrez, this is a dialectical relationship. For Sharon Welch, it becomes more a multilectic (my word). 

In community’s like Sanctuary NYC, that encounter is already taking place internally as the community seeks to live out its life inter and intrafaith.  This would seem to call for new models of collaboration. 

KImberley’s focusing her energy on planning  next weeks’ read through of the Book of Revelation.

Martin continues to be anxious about our contract. Soledad has spent the day working with the Ukrainian Figure Skating team attempting to help them take flamenco onto ice through their skates. This is not easy.

Crisis. Someone has told our attorney that we have  serious structural and systems issues. That it is surprising we haven’t been shut down. That it will cost millions simply to be safe. And that he has ethical concerns being involved.

As angry as this makes me, I have to focus. Call on Ann Friedman of the Landmarks Conservancy who crafts a detailed e-mail reviewing the Matthew Gottsegen 10 year plan, the priorities for restoration, etc. But most importantly, that after dozens of investigations, no report has ever suggested that there were serious structural and systems issues and that it would be a waste of time and money to redo what has already been done. 

Of course it takes another high level meeting to resolve this, but Ann’s report does what is needed. Negotiations back on track. But why does this happen? What end is served  in seeking to derail our project? I don’t have time to engage in that analysis.

I’m late for our Interfaith Assembly meeting and a conversation with RL.

Back at the church, there’s someone new at the piano. Kara from Queens. The smile, the laugh, the familiarity just a little too intense. But she plays the Beckstein well. 

The St. Agnes boys are hard at work. Marc wants to get to the sermon recordings. martin is anxious. RL is waiting.....

Like is this seasonal?

8/10

Edward is sprawled out in the steps. An empty 40 by his side. Edward, man, you got to go. He looks at me, pulls himself up, walks away. The place is a mess. I call Teddy. He’s picking up some things for Martin at Home Depot. And it’s someone else’s turn to clean. Storm clouds brewing. 

Allegra comes in. It’s the last day of her internship at the Interfaith Center. She’s planning a program for other Princeton students in the fall. To explore religious diversity. And what in various traditions inspires faithful to service for others. And wants to involve the students in service when they come. 

We talk about the difference between service and advocacy and various types of organizing. Why I’m partial to community based organizing. Ideological driven campaigns define others’ reality. Charity programs of compassion do for. Even advocacy intends to speak for. I like the Freirian model where people are to become the subjects of their own history. Making, articulating their own destiny. Building community with others.

Talking to Allegra, I realize that my principles are rooted in theological assumptions. Can I define them? How would they be different for Jews? Muslims? Hindus or Buddhists? How do we carve out space to work together?  And I talk again how interfaith is a way of life, a way of being. And we’re still working on defining that. How it works out in concrete terms. And where do you draw lines? What about Falun Gong? Scientology? Unification Church? On what basis? It gets too complicated. In the end, what I want to do is work with my neighbors. Maybe that’s where it begins. We’re working on an agenda, a working itinerary for her group when  they come. I’ve got more than a few ideas. I look forward to their coming. 

The rain has started to fall. Heavy and hard. I check the steps again. Teddy’s son Ted has been cleaning things up. Then I see it.  The shit. The newspapers. And my heart sinks. Is this like seasonal? Like every August, Edward returns and I have to deal with this again? Teddy comes out with buckets of water, pine sol. He’s taken care of everything but the wasted newspapers. Bob, he says, the rain can take care of the rest. Oh the paper? I’ll come back for that. Just had lunch. I’m gonna lose it. 

‘S OK. You’ve done enough. Get me the rubber gloves. And I do my part. And like Teddy, almost lose it. Like an annual ritual. Even with the help I’ve got now, this is where urban ministry begins. Amazing how many of my colleagues responded to my Facebook post about this last year. 

One of the other neighborhood characters, an old white guy with glasses and a wide eyed vacant stare walks up and begins to sit down. Uh, that’s not such a good idea, Teddy says, not there, and he moves on.

Later in the day, I see Edward sprawled out across the street in the CVS doorway. Charlotte by his side. She’s looking fairly together. New black glasses. Charlotte, I say, you’ve got to do something about Edward. He’s in bad shape. 

He’ll be findin’a place soon, you’ll see...she says. 

That’s not it Charlotte, I’m worried. He’s in pretty bad shape....she looks at me nods.  Marty’s nearby, waiting out the storm. Marty, I say,howya doin? But he just looks at me with that look of terror and noncomprehension. Obviously in one of his episodes. Teddy had the same experience with him yesterday.  

I cross back over. Arcadia has come in with granddaughter Victoria, the bubble girl from the wedding just back from Orlando with stories of Sea World. 

I need to get to my wedding, a Chinese-Spanish affair at the Central Park Boathouse. The rain has stopped. Later I’ll join Teddy and Ted and Martin’s daughter at Flor de Mayo, one of the Upper West Side’s last remaining once ubiquitous comidas chinas y criollas restaurantes. We'll  share some food. Some sangria. The kids will take off, after Teddy’s fatherly admonitions. We walk back to the church together. The steps are quiet now. 

What we're really looking for is partnership

12/14

Ted has arrived with supplies for the upcoming  New York Creates crafts fair.  Our second annual. As we're unloading, four people walk in. They've seen the sign for the Crafts Fair on the scaffolding  and are ready for the fair. I have to explain that we're not open yet. They want to see the sanctuary. I invite them in, tell of the history. And Ted speaks of the vision of the Center. Invites them to come back when the Fair opens up. But they're on their way home. To Missouri. Turns out they're Presbyterians from Jefferson City. In town for a conference on the Middle Est with our friend Mark Koenig at the UN. I tell them how supportive Mark has been. 

Hope and Mim have arrived for our meeting with Caitlin and Daisy Kahn from the Cordoba Initiative. This is part of our ongoing discussion with the Muslim group that had come to be known as the Ground Zero Mosque even though it was neither to be at Ground Zero nor fully a mosque. Daisy is married to Imam Faisel, but more important, has a long running relationship with Mim. Together, they were part of Same Difference, an interfaith project developed by SPSA, B’Nai Jeshurun and the American Sufi Mislim Association in response to 9-11. (http://www.samedifference.org/About/evolution.htm).

This is Daisy’s first visit to West-Park. So we do the full tour. She sees the chape as a great place for book readings. Mc Alpin Hall would make a great place for jummah, or Friday prayer, the main service of the Muslim week. Caitlin point to the direction where Meccah would be. And Daisy also talks of what a great place it woud be for weddings.  Indeed, what Sarah did for our gala showed what a great event space it coud be. 

But beyond all that, what we’re really looking for is a partnership. Their vision of a community that would bring Jews, Christians and Muslims together as in the years of the golden era of Muslim Spain is directly in line with our vision. Especially when it brings two old friends together. 

The damned boiler issue is standing in the way. So we’ll begin by committing to talk again. And see where we can go programming wise.

It’s time for me to go pay the champagne bill, maybe have a drink with RL, then catch up with Jim Nedelka at the office. 

A day of khairat

Cleannup day: West-Park and NYU Muslim Association

5/21

A beautiful and sunny day. Danielle and I meet to prepare for the clean up day. We’re being joined by the NYU Muslim Student Khairat (benevolence, charity) group. 

Two young men arrive. I introduce them to the church. Get them started. Jon from the Philharmonic arrives. He  notices my New York Black Yankees shirt and hat and we talk Negro League baseball awhile. He gives me a special Rube Foster commemorative stamp. We’re going over the details of his trip to Venezuela that starts tomorrow. To work with El Sistema. My son will be going with him. Juan is there now.  I continue to believe this will be part of what we’re doing. Just not sure how yet. 

More students are arriving. And West-Park members. There’s vacuuming and sweeping. Going through boxes. Moving old mats. Filling bags with garbage. Polishing pews.

I’m outside sweeping when I hear a voice say, Hey do you want some help? It’s Nadia Miann. She’s been following West-Park as part of her doctoral dissertation. The project clearly went ways never imagined at the beginning. It was her idea to organize this day. She and her husband have come to help.

Bob and Nadia

Talk with Marty. Some speculation as to whether the world will end today. That’s all recorded in special, secret books, he says. You have to be invited to read them. But they're not admissable in a court of law he says. Talk of kabbalah. Madonna. You know, she lives across the park. How he’d like a Yankees hat. (I’ll have to remember that.) Saving baseball tickets( cards) when he was a kid. Balsa wood airplane kits. And how Rabbi Hurewitz, from the Bronx, how his son bought a $10 chemistry set and blew up the house. It said no matter how you mix these chemicals it won’t blow up he said. But he found other chemicals, other chemicals. The rabbi, Hurewitz, forgave his son. But he had to pay the super $300. And then Marty is on his way.

John Hudson stops by to congratulate  us on finding an attorney. Now we have  to take the next step on making a business plan. 

I pass by Starbucks and stop to say hi to Amanda and Jane. And of course Amelia. Then off to coach soccer. 

It’s clear I won’t get to see Ludovica’s play today, either. 

Back to the church. We take a picture of the whole crew on the steps. We feel honored to have  been chosen by the Muslim students as today’s project. Just like the Columbia Preservation Alumni last December. A lot has been accomplished. 

The day ends with a gathering to plan Andre’s concert. It’s a circle that didn’t exist before. I look around the circle, family, friends, artists, West-Park folks. I feel more that we can  make this happen. 

From beginning to end. A day of khairat.

That way of life has already begun

1/21

Snow! To my surprise, when I step outside, fresh snow has fallen, maybe 5-6 inches worth. I immediately contemplate a day’s plans derailed as i head to the church, wondering what I’ll find.  When I get there, the shoveling’s already’s been done. All the way. Even the crossing paths. OK, who do I thank ? Not Deacon James, he’s still recovering from pneumonia. It’s more than Gary Greengrass would do.I’m thinking Chuck  Mac Donald, my shoveling partner. So he went home. When I call him, he tells me that when he approached on the bus, there was a team of six guys already working away.  The city? Neighbors?  Anyways, thanks.

Someone has scattered a trail of bread along the sidewalk beyond the steps.  Given my current relationship with pigeons, I’m not sure how I feel about that. I consider sweeping all up, throwing it away. I look at the snow, decide to leave it.

Nadia meets me in my new office. She is a doctoral student at the Milano School of Urban Management and Policy at the New School. She’s made West-Park part of her dissertation. She’s been following  us and our story  for over two years, now. She’s been studying West-Park as well as my friend Heidi’s church at 100th and Amsterdam and a church in Bayside, Queens. She’s gone beyond academic interest to truly caring about how this all turns out.  

Over coffee and bagels  at Barney Greengrass, we talk. She’s been trying to figure out the big picture from blog and facebook posts and is unclear what’s going on. So I go back to the Landmarks vote last spring  and bring her up to date. This story never quite winds up where she thinks its going to. She’s clearly moved by our vision, the fact that we’re willing to take risks. That the story’s not done yet. And that we can imagine being a church beyond church. She sees a place of  interfaith collaboration. And a place where circus performers would  be welcome. (With a smile.) What can she do to help? 

She suggests that we look not only to seminary interns but to interns at NYU and Columbia and New School urban planning programs as well. What we’re doing is a model that students would  find exciting. And more, she’s part of the Islamic student group at NYU and would like to involve them in a clean up day. She wants to be part of our 100th anniversary process as well. 

I think about this for a moment. Beyond our church, we have made friendships. Many of the members of our planning team for the Centre are Jewish. Seeing something important that comes from their  own values.  Nazim from the Belnord, who says working with us is a form of prayer, and  Nadia are Muslims. There is something about this vision that goes beyond faith boundaries. That speaks to something deep and connective. Interfaith is a way of life, Rabbi Michael said. That way of life has already begun.

We need to nourish it. Be intentional. See where it will lead.

Different local, same union: Interfaith is not a strategy, it's a way of life

1/17

Large bundles of cardboard boxes flattened and bound with string. Some open, torn, laid flat in the north doorway. Did someone come here seeking shelter? In this 20 degree weather? And was taken by the police to St. Luke’s? Sometimes I feel like an urban version of a tracker, looking at clues to see what might have taken place while I was gone. What I’d see if there was a video camera recording 24/7.

Today, Steven is returning with more of his Woodshed Collective members. And John is bringing a director friend. It’s late afternoon and gathering dark as I lead the tour, beginning in the scariest part, the basement. As we go up and down back staircases to surprise arrivals in different rooms, the theatre folks have the delight of kids in a haunted house or on a scavenger hunt.  As we look at the semi-ruins of the chapel, one member says, “you’d normally have to pay a lot of money to get something to look like this.” We finish the tour. They will continue  to thjnk about “immersive possibilities.” John says to his director, “what could you do with a place like this?” She says, “What couldn’t you do.”

Earlier today I joined in  our annual neighborhood Martin Luther King, Jr Day march for peace. This year’s theme is “economic justice.”  Including a call for support of a bill to provide paid sick leave for city employees. As we march the streets , with police escort, going in and out of five houses of worship, pausing at each for a reflection, a song, an act, we weave a reality throughout the neighborhood. This  is a perfect example of what Bill Tripp spoke of in his presentation on Ritual Space. We have turned our neighborhood into living, breathing ritual space.

Walking from Holy Name to 2nd Presbyterian, I’m  joined by an older woman. She says to me, “I know you, you don’t know me,” her nam e is Ulla. She’s one of  the amazing group of septuagenarian/octogenarian committed members of Peace Action. She speaks of her many years of activity at West-Park. Wants to know if we’re finally saved from being torn down. So I have to slowly explain the realities  of landmarking.  She talks  about having  come to the Crafts Fair/Music Festival, how much it meant to her to be back inside after all these years. How beautiful and alive  it looked. She asks where the money will come from to fix things. And I say, “people just like you’." And she laughs. And then  I  say, seriously. And describe our step by step process.  

At the next stop, I’m disturbed when the pastor, after describing what an inclusive and multicultural place the school at her church was,  asks us to conclude  by singing “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, bearers of the cross.” Well bearers instead of soldiers certainly demilitarizes the old hymn. But doesn’t make it inclusive.

Out on the street, I join my friend Father Duffel,and Lutheran pastors Elise and Heidi. Good solid organizers all. Leaders in working for rights for homeless and for their issues. They share my concerns about inclusiveness. At the Franciscan church, the friar spoke of the God we call God, Allah, Adonai, Dios....Our Presbyterian hosts were Christocentric. That can’t feel welcoming when what you’ve come to attend is an interfaith witness.

I thought back to Thursday night’s event again. The imam calling us to King’s vision of ecumenicity. Rabbi Potasnik of the New York City Board of Rabbis said that we were in  “different locals, but all part if the same union.” Later, I spoke with my friend Rabbi Michael Feinberg of The Religion Labor coalition.  He shared with me his disappointment with certain leaders of this event. “I’m used to people who live interfaith as a way of life. Not see it as a strategic tactic. When they had a preservice ‘prayer huddle,’ I thought of joining in just to be there, but it felt like it wasn’t for me. I’m getting too old for this...”

Elise speaks of how one of our rabbi colleagues finds much of what we do not inclusive. FatherJohn and Pastor Heidi are in agreement. I talk about last Thursday and say, “interfaith is not a strategy, it’s a way of life.” We agree we have to make that more understood. On King Day, 2011, we should be further along than this. 

They want to know  about what we’re up to. Elise came to our Crafts Fair/Music Festival and was very moved to see life coming again. I talk about how we’re not looking for a real estate deal anymore, that it’s a new process. Hard for some to understand. How we tried to rebuild for rebirth but now know we must be reborn to rebuild.

I watch the line  of people winding its way through the streets connecting  our houses  of worship. The kind of ritual space Bill Tripp described for us goes beyond any particular tradition, is by its very nature inclusive. The immersive theatre experience being imagined by Woodshed, how it works, is yet another expression of Ritual Space.  That's the vision of the  Centre we are seeking to bring into being. A place for artists, activists, companion travelers of all kinds. This can be  our part of the emerging Beloved Community we can take responsibility to build.