As a college student studying art history and Jewish literature, I am particularly interested in how language and art create the stories that we tell about culture, community, and faith. Words and images cannot exist in a vacuum; almost anything we create is influenced by where we are, who we are surrounded by, and what ideas we hold.
Global Grassroots Interfaith in a Room
Funding Grassroots Interfaith in San Francisco
Interfaith Young Adults in Urban Community
Seventeen young adults, mostly in their twenties, gathered in San Francisco on February 2 for an urban field trip with a unique mission: to explore what a thriving interfaith young adult community would look like in the city. Through United Religions Initiative (URI), I was organizing the trip as a part of our Bay Area Young Leaders Program.
Shinnyo-en Memorial Ceremony Draws 40,000
More than 40,000 converged on a beach in Hawaii to witness and participate in Tōrō Nagashi, the floating lantern ceremony on Memorial Day this year. Millions more witnessed it on television and the internet. Veterans, city officials and state legislators, clergy from various traditions, and thousands of children, gathered at Ala Moana Beach Park on O’ahu’s south shore at dusk Monday, May 28. They joined in a day of memorial observances culminating in 3,300 lantern-bearing paper boats floating into the sunset with prayers for lost loved ones and for peace.[Ala Moana Beach Park on Memorial Day 2012]
Rita Semel’s 90th Birthday
San Francisco’s new mayor came to the 7:00 am interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast this year. So did the city police chief, the fire chief, half the city’s supervisors, San Francisco’s own Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and 400 clergy and lay leaders. For a prayer breakfast in San Francisco?!
It was also the 90th year birthday party for the woman who made such an event possible. The theme for the day tells the story – “Healing the World: Honoring the Work of Rita Semel.”
URI Leads Non-Violent Elections Campaign in Uganda
On January 4th in a hotel conference room in Kampala, Uganda, youth political leaders and leaders of Uganda’s security forces came face to face for a highly unusual meeting: a national consultation to prevent violence in the upcoming elections on February 18.