Friday, March 18, 2011

Hopeful plans for 9.11

The soul, body and mind are spent. We have given all of our selves, kenosis, for the good work of developing interfaith peaceful gatherings for the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

The Rev. Dorothy Saucedo, Imam Ahmad Shqeirat and the Rev. Gil Stafford made some preliminary and tentative plans for our community. For Tempe, we made an offering of hospitality. On Sunday September 11 our plans are hopeful. Imam Ahmad Shqeirat will be the guest preacher at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Parish on the morning of September 11. We want to encourage our interfaith young adult group iMagine to engage in a service project on the afternoon of September and then we will all gather in Tempe for our second annual Abrahamic Traditions Storytelling event.

The blessed experience of these three days is to know that we in Tempe, the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, are doing a good work – a work that is unique across the communities of America. I am very proud to be friends with Dorothy and Ahmad and I am filled with the joy of God and inspired by their personal commitment and leadership in our community. I know that our actions are risky and dangerous – but I believe that our new imagination can foster peace and healing in our community.

Thank you to the Luce Foundation and to Virginia Theological Seminary for these blessed and power filled three days of being in the presence of God and our sisters and brothers of Islam and Christians.

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