Interfaith Forum – Moderated by Rev. Judy Ranniger-Meza
This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
DESCRIPTION
Join us for an Interfaith Forum where faith leaders from diverse spiritual paths come together to share their beliefs and explore what unites us as people of faith. Our conversation will focus on cultivating peace within ourselves and in a world longing for peace.
SUMMARY
An Interfaith Forum on the Path to Peace and Spiritual Oneness. This interfaith forum brought together spiritual leaders from five faith traditions to explore the foundational teachings, communal practices, and paths to peace within their respective paths. The event coincided with World Interfaith Harmony Week and featured panelists representing Christianity, Taoism, Sikhism, the Bahai Faith, and Science of Mind/New Thought teachings.
The discussion explored how each tradition conceptualizes the divine. Christianity grounds itself in love of God and neighbor, with Jesus extending the definition of neighbor to include the poor, sick, and enemies. Taoism presents the Dao as the source of all things and the unnameable mystery, emphasizing living in harmony with nature. Sikhism teaches that God exists everywhere in everything as a formless, eternal presence. The Bahai Faith emphasizes that God’s essence is unknowable but can be understood through the qualities and attributes revealed by divine messengers. Science of Mind teaches that God is all there is, expressing through all life, with individuals as expressions of the divine.
Communal worship and spiritual community play significant roles across these traditions. Sikhism gathers in gurdwaras, temples open to all, emphasizing the company of the holy. The Bahai Faith meets every 19 days for feasts devoted to prayer, worship, consultation, and community. Christianity emphasizes corporate worship, meditation, and mutual care and support. Taoism, while having both philosophical and religious expressions, includes temples and communities focused on living with kindness and yielding to one another. Centers for Spiritual Living gather for teaching, music, prayer, and meditation.
A central theme throughout the forum was oneness. The Bahai concept of progressive revelation—that God has sent many divine teachers through the ages, each valid and without superiority—reflects the understanding that mankind receives spiritual education incrementally. Science of Mind teaches that oneness is foundational, with all beings as individual expressions of the divine. Taoism describes the path to peace as returning to oneness, understanding the interdependence of all things rather than separation.
The forum addressed the relationship between inner spiritual transformation and collective responsibility for peace. While acknowledging the importance of inner peace, panelists emphasized that spiritual practice must also engage with the world. Sikhism practices selfless service (seva) without judgment, responding to world disasters and human need. Science of Mind adherents work toward “a world that works for everyone,” engaging in sacred activism across various forms. The Bahai Faith holds that world peace is not only possible but inevitable, requiring individuals and communities to root out the prejudices that divide humanity.
The forum concluded with recognition that despite theological differences, these faith traditions share common spiritual cores and commitments to love, compassion, justice, and peace].
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Welcome everyone. I’m Reverend Judy Ranniger Meza, and my pronouns are she, her and I will be moderating today’s interfaith forum. We had our first one last August, I believe it was, and it was really well received and so had lots of requests to do it again. So here we are. You may or may not know that this first week of February is World Interfaith Harmony Week, so we pick this Sunday particularly to coincide with these other interfaith events happening throughout the world. I’m going to be introducing our panelists in just a moment, but first I want to offer my welcome to everyone who is in the room, perhaps for the first time today, and especially those who are here to support the panelists, whether they’re in the room or online. So hello to everyone and let’s just give a big cityside welcome to all of our guests and to our panelists.
In a normal run of service, we have one of our spiritual practitioners come up and offer a reading. Lead us in a brief meditation and open with a prayer, but in the interest of time and to devote as much time as possible to our panel. I’m going to short circuit that process a little bit and just offer a reading. Now, this reading is by Ru. It’s a beautiful poem that you may be familiar with and I think it really expresses what we are doing here today with the forum. It is called One song. What is Praised is one. So the praise is one, too many jugs being poured into a huge basin. All religions, all this singing one song, the differences are just illusion and vanity. Sunlight looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall and a lot different on this other one, but it is still one light. We have borrowed these clothes, these time and space personalities from a light, and when we praise, we are pouring them back in. What you’re looking for has many names and one existence. Don’t search for one of the names, move beyond any attachment to names. Every war and every conflict between human beings has happened because of some disagreement about names. It’s such an unnecessary foolishness because just beyond the arguing, there’s a long table of companionship set and waiting for us to sit down.
So at this time, I’m going to invite our panelists in the room to come up and sit at the front of the room, and you should be seeing our remote panelists coming online. You guys can put your cameras on now. So I’m going to start, and they’re coming online in just a minute. I’m going to start with our remote panelists. So joining us from St. Louis is the Reverend Paris Coffee, she’s on the left here. After 35 plus years as a retreat leader, spiritual director, and parish priest having been raised Presbyterian, she fell in love as a teenager with the Episcopal Church, which encouraged questions and has always found the questions to his be as important as he answers. As the poet Rilke wrote, live the questions now, perhaps he will then gradually, without noticing it live into the answer.
We are happy to have Reverend Dr. Diane Rooney with us today from New York City. Reverend Diane has a doctor of Oriental medicine and is ordained as an interfaith interspiritual minister and holds a doctorate of ministry and Daoism and self-healing practices from New York Theological Seminary. Her passion, in addition to studying and practicing Taoism, is teaching self-healing techniques, which include Qigong, Ong, breath work, meditation, visualization, reiki chakra healing, mental color therapy, and internal alchemy.
With us in the room is Shadur Kaur Kalsa, who has lived a Sikh lifestyle of devotion and service for over 30 years. She’s a minister of Sikh dharma, a licensed psychotherapist and certified yoga instructor. She’s active in the Punjab Sikh community having been a founding member of the Gudhara Sahib of Chicago.
Also joining us is Jerry Woodall. Jerry lives in Evanston and discovered the Bahai faith 50 years ago. Coming from a Roman Catholic background, his favorite Bahai activities include guiding at the Bahai House of Worship and leading a popular Bible study group twice a month, which explores a variety of spiritual themes found within holy scripture. He has been involved in interfaith activities, which have included studying Unity, teachings and Science of Mind, which his wife Marguerite introduced him to 30 years ago.
Finally, we have our own Reverend Linda Jackson representing new Thought and Science of Mind Teachings. Reverend Linda is an ordained Religious Science minister serving as Director of Education and Community Engagement at Cityside Center for Spiritual Living, an artist teacher, conscious leadership and spiritual living coach and an advanced certified hypnotherapist, Reverend Linda is passionate about supporting people through life’s greatest transitions, transforming limiting beliefs, encouraging creative expression, and cultivating inner peace in service of purposeful lives and a more peaceful world.
I asked each of these panelists to condense their bios into two to four sentences, so you should know that there is more experience and more accomplishments that can fit in two to four sentences, but they were faithful to the beatitude that I learned in Interfaith Seminary, which is blessed are the brief, which I’m thanking them in advance for adhering to that throughout their answers in the forum. So finally, before we get started with the forum, we had so many questions last time that we’re putting the Q and A at the end of the service. We’ll take a 10 minute break to have bio break and get some food and then resume with the Q and A.
There are not, we forgot to put out the cards, which we will get on your seats, but there will be index cards for you with some pencils so that you can write down questions for the panelists. If you have a question of a particular panelist, please indicate that on your card, people online get those questions, hello people online. Get those questions in the chat and we will get those into the room. When the q and A starts, you’re going to get this reminder later as well, but please get your food as quickly as possible if you attend to, if you plan, excuse me, to attend the q and a portion of the forum. And whether you are staying for the forum or just getting food and leaving, whatever, please be as quiet as possible once we start so everyone can hear. With that, I think we will begin the questions for our panel.
To start off our questioning, I asked each of the panelists to develop their two minute elevator speech about their faith path, and I’m using faith path as the word you’ll hear me most often used throughout the form rather than religion because not every path is referred to as a religion. So Reverend Paris, I will start with you. When I sent the questions to the panelists, I said, assume you’re talking to someone who has no knowledge of your faith path. I think that’s a little hard for Christianity since so many people are familiar with Christianity, either having come from a Christian background themselves or just Christianity’s prevalence and influence throughout the world throughout history. So having said that, do your best, Reverend Coffey, what would you want people to know about Christianity?
Rev Paris Coffey:
Well, you probably already know that a part of Christianity is the claim who was a first century Middle Eastern itinerant rabbi who grounded the Christian faith even though he didn’t come to start a religion. I think he’d object to Christianity the word, but it’s grounded in Hebrew scriptures basically love God with everything you’ve got and love your neighbors yourself. The difference is he really extended the definition of neighbor to include the poor, the sick, the least among us, and even our enemies, which makes Christianity a very difficult religion to follow. You may not recognize it when you see it in the world. I often wonder if we all have read the same scriptures, but Jesus came to challenge the religious leaders of his day and to reveal God in love of neighbor. You can’t have Christianity, you can’t love God if you don’t love your neighbor
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Saying with our remote panellist. Reverend Diane, your path may be unfamiliar to people here today. Can you give us an overview of Taoism please?
Rev. Dr. Diane Rooney:
Good morning everyone. Dao is both a religion and a philosophy, so it’s very unique that way. The Dao is the source of all things. It’s the primordial oneness that all things spring from. It’s the unnameable mystery, it’s the all pervading sacred presence. The character for Dao is actually a verb because Dao means the way it’s walking with the Dao. Daoism means to live your life at one with nature, to see nature as a transformative process and live that way to respect your own nature and the nature of others. It’s also the study of the heart and to live by and through the heart. It’s, it’s a truth of life that we walk as inseparable from all that is all that natural in the universe and we are one with it, and there are ways to do that, which we can get into at a later time.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Thank you, Diane. Shabad, please give us your two minute understanding of the Sikh religion, which I will do my best to pronounce correctly, which is Sikh and not Sikh, I believe. Correct, yeah.
Shabad Kaur Khalsa:
Correct. So in the West we are Sikhs, which means seeker of truth or student. The true pronunciation is actually sick, but if you say I’m sick, then what’s wrong with you? So we tend to say Sikh most times to Westerners and the path, it’s monotheistic. So we believe that God is existing everywhere in everything, even inanimate objects. So it’s all about vibration in a way, and it’s very progressive for genders and for women. Women. We can do anything the men can do and maybe even better. But anyway, it’s very equal. It’s just one of the reasons that I took the path and we believe that righteous living is important. Service is important, which is why we stand out with what’s called bonna. So many of us wear turbans. We stand out as a path of service so we don’t proselytize. So we’re not knocking on any doors per se, but we advertise a little. So people come up and ask me about myself. I’m happy to tell you, but we don’t convert. So what I say is that I adopted the faith and this path and other reasons that we, or things that we do, we have daily prayer. So it’s a lifestyle in a way. We’re vegetarian. We don’t smoke or drink or use any substances, recreational substances. So we believe in leaving the body natural and we have a strong emphasis on meditation. So it’s a lot about overcoming the mind and living from your soul. And music is a big, big piece of what we worship in a way. It’s wahe guru, and that’s the vibration in everything. And we believe in echo and car that God is everywhere and in every one. So those are some basics about this path. Thank you,
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Jerry. You’ve been a practitioner of the Bahai faith for many years. Can you share your understanding of this faith path with us?
Jerry Woodall:
Thank you. Thank you for doing this. This is
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Wonderful.
Jerry Woodall:
The Bahai faith is a new world religion begun in Iran in 1844. It’s based on three basic principles, the oneness of God, the oneness of religion, and the oneness of mankind. We have the concept that God has sent many divine teachers through the ages, many of them we know, some we don’t. All of these teachers are valid and good. There’s none better than the other. They’re not in competition. One is not superior to the other. This is a concept that’s called progressive revelation. The idea that mankind has received its spiritual education through the ages incrementally over time, through different divine teachers, through the ages and according to man’s capacity. But the social laws may change from age to age as the needs of society change, but the spiritual core, which is found in all the religions, it’s basically the same as we’ve heard from these different souls, and it’s quite nice to hear that.
So what changed through time is not the teacher, but the student’s capacity us. So the Baha faith is really just the new chapter in God’s evolving plan. If you look in all the holy books, they all express the same light. They all express the same spiritual ities in all the Holy books. They have the expectation, the promise that someday in the future the shepherd will come together as flock and usher in a time of peace and reconciliation. In the Baha faith, Baah, the founder of the Baha faith, Baah in English means the glory of God or God’s glory. Baah has claimed to be the return of the Christ spirit, the shepherd come to gather his flock and to usher in this time of peace and reconciliation because mankind has finally come of maturity where he can understand the idea that we are one, that we are all God’s children, that we have to somehow come together and build God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
So finally, we have Reverend Linda to give us her two minute elevator speech on science of mine and new thought teachings. Some of our guests here today might not be familiar with this path either. And even if you’re here from Cityside, you might want to pay close attention to Reverend Linda’s two minute elevator speech because it’s nice to have one right in case people ask questions of you or you want to explain about your faith. So go ahead.
Rev Linda Jackson:
Thank you, Judy. So you heard in the opening remarks that we’re part of Centers for Spiritual Living, which is an international organization that is based on the teachings of Ernest Holmes. It’s a philosophy called the Science of Mind. You may also hear the term Religious Science, which is the practice of the Science of Mind. So Religious Science came out of the teaching. It was intended by Ernest Holmes to be a philosophy, not a religion, but people do what people do, and it has become identified as a religion. It was intended though as a philosophy so that it would be applicable to people from all traditions, any faith tradition or non-faith tradition to be able to apply the teachings to your life to change your experience. It’s essentially teaching that there is one divine presence that is expressing as all life, and that our thoughts and our beliefs and our consciousness shape how we experience life. So it is our work to take dominion over our consciousness and look at clearing out any limiting beliefs so that we can more intentionally create our experience. And I’m sorry, I have my back to these people over here.
I do want to say a lot of what I am hearing from everyone is also very familiar and resonant with Science of Mind because Ernest Holmes drew on many faith traditions and even psychology when he wrote his philosophy. And something that is particularly appealing to me is the idea of remaining “open at the top” was the phrase that he used. And so we’re not a closed set of dogma. We’re open and always receiving new information and being willing to learn and grow and expand in our consciousness.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Thank you, Linda. Reverend Diane, for those familiar with Taoism, there isn’t really a conceptualization of God per se in this path. Is there anything that we might call a higher power or within Taoism, or is even that a misleading term?
Rev. Dr. Diane Rooney:
Well, Taoism as a religion does look, there is meditation, there’s prayer, there’s altar work, there’s lighting of incense, and who are we praying to? We’re praying to the Immortals. The Immortals are maybe the equivalent of angels in Christianity and Immortals are, this is our goal is to become one of these immortals. And that doesn’t mean we live forever. It means we live as that which is immortal within ourselves. So the higher power here is ourselves. The higher power is the nature that we are. The Tao is no thing, which is why it’s hard for people to grasp. It’s not an anthropomorphic God. It’s a no thing what we do on the path of Taoism. Is it echoing in there? I can’t hear you.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
No, you can. You can can He knows. Okay. Okay. Can you hear me? Yeah.
(technical difficulties… echoing) See, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see
Rev. Dr. Diane Rooney:
Into the non separation.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
She can’t hear me. Hear me. You now?
Rev. Dr. Diane Rooney:
Okay. I’m not sure what you heard or what you didn’t hear, but do you need me to repeat it? Did you miss stuff?
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Most of it. I’ll come back to you. Okay.
Rev. Dr. Diane Rooney:
Okay.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
There’s tech issues. Okay. So where are we? Okay. Yeah. What I understand Shabad from my limited, and this is going to be for you, study of Sikhism, is that Sikh believe in a single formless and eternal God. Can you expand on that?
Shabad Kaur Khalsa:
Yes. So we believe that it’s a universal faith. So we believe that again, that the existence of God or the divine is within all of us. So it’s within all beings, all even I said inanimate objects like it’s a vibration. And so it’s formless in that way. So in other words, we see no stranger. We believe that everyone is part of us and we are part of everything and there’s no judgment of others. And that we believe very much in equality and equanimity that is within us. So yeah, so that’s really what it is. So it was started as a young religion. It’s only 500 years old, but it threw off the caste system in India. So it started by a person named Gutnick. And he believed that the caste system and putting down of women was not righteous. And so that’s how it began, and that universal aspect is really beautiful.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Okay. Could you hand that to Linda? Yeah, absolutely. Reverend Linda, I wonder if any of these descriptions, and I think you mentioned that already, that we’ve heard already about God resonate with the idea of God within Science of Mind. And please add whatever else you want to share about this faith path.
Rev Linda Jackson:
Well, one of the core concepts in the science of mind is that God is all there is, which is pantheism. Really God equals universe. But it is more than that. It is really panentheism, although Ernest Holmes did not call it that. But panentheism is that we are in and of God. So God is imminent, but God is also transcendent beyond us more than us. And we also teach and believe that we are individual expressions of it. It operates through us. So it can only do for us what it can do through us. And so it is up to us to clear our consciousness and our limiting beliefs in order to have a clear expression of the divine. And I did have a quote here. This is a famous Ernest Holmes quote. “There’s a power for good in the universe, greater than you are, and you can use it.” So it’s about us tapping into the spiritual power of the divine.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Thank you. This idea of God is formless or more like an energy or a force rather than a personified God seems quite different from the way Christianity has conceptualized God. Reverend Paris, the way Christianity has written about, talked about and depicted God in art throughout history has been primarily as a male Father God. How do these conceptualizations of God, we have just heard square with Christianity, understanding of God. Is there any overlap, any commonality with Christianity?
Rev Paris Coffey:
Absolutely. In fact, everyone I’ve heard speak, I’m echoing. All I can hear is an echo of my voice.
Hello? Can you hear me? Anyway, I guess. I guess I’ll try and keep talking. Oh gosh, it’s so distracting. Well, technology is not, I’m not finding technology as a way to God at the moment, but I’ll do my best to hope that you’re hearing and over this echo that I’m hearing. Obviously Christianity has understood to claim Jesus as its center at its heart. I should say that’s not entirely here though. What Jesus came to do was to reveal God and to reveal that God knows what it means to be human, so knows what it means to forgive, to be betrayed, to be taunted, to be human, and to experience the best and the worst of humanity. And that through that, what Jesus does is continue to love Christianity. God got love, love of God, love of neighbor. But I know if you ask someone else’s definition of Christianity, they might put other things in the center.
I don’t always understand that. I don’t feel like there’s an official definition of Christianity, but I’m sure there are definitions that people would like for me to give that aren’t necessarily how I would describe it. One of the things I do like about Christianity is something that most clergy dislike, especially when they have to preach on it. And that’s the idea of the Trinity, the Godhead of three manifestations as God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, most of what holy scripture was, it was written by men, and for men were written by faith and for faith. So I think sometimes I’m losing the fact that feminine is in the Holy Spirit in my understanding, it can be translated in either way. And that concept, that’s what they would call doctrine. The Trinity for me, allows me to approach God in three different ways and to understand God in three different ways, so that if I feel overwhelmed, I might turn to God as I understand a force that will fill me with what’s needed for the situation in Jesus.
We have a brother who reveals what it is to be human, and then the Holy Spirit, the feminine is the relationship. It’s the relationship between God and Jesus. It’s the relationship between us and God and us and Jesus, and especially us and one another. Someone once said that Christianity, it’s not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and never tried. So I think our understanding of God is not necessarily what Jesus would have us if Jesus was the founder. Religion, I’m not sure this is what he want to found. When Reverend Diane was talking about Taoism as the way Christianity, in his earliest days, he was called away. And that meant a way of life. And so what Jesus really revealed to us was a way of life in which we can approach God, understand God, but mostly heal the long God and humanity. Both. Both are divine. Both are human.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Do you Reverend Paris? We’ve had some technical difficulties, as you can see. I apologize for those. This is more complicated than we were expecting. Thank you. There’s a quote that I ran across in my preparation for this forum. It is by the founder of the Bahai Faith. And say the name again.
Jerry Woodall:
Baha ullah
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Baha. Baha ullah. And it says, all praise to the unity of God and all honor to him the sovereign Lord, the incomparable and all glorious ruler of the universe who out of utter nothingness, have created the reality of all things. Who from not hath brought into being the most refined and subtle elements of his creation and who rescuing his creatures from their basement of remoteness and the peril of ultimate extinction hath received them into his kingdom of incorruptible glory. This description, Jerry, seems kind of to my ears, to point to a God that again exists outside of oneself, like almost like a being similar to how Christianity or Judaism or maybe Islam would describe God. Is that an accurate statement? How do you describe God from a Bahai perspective?
Jerry Woodall:
Well, there’s many quotes in the Bahai faith about God. We don’t know. We can never know God’s essence. I’ve got two little quotes here that come from the writings of Bahai alluha. Oh children of the divine and invisible essence. He’s talking to mankind. He shall be hindered from loving me, and soul shall be turd as they make mention of me. For minds cannot grasp me or hearts contain me. It’s kind of poetic, but that’s how we have to talk about spirit. Another small quote, the divine reality God is unthinkable, limitless, eternal, immortal, and invisible. So in the Baha faith, we understand that God, our brains, our minds, no matter how great and brilliant we may think we are, can never contain or understand God. God is not a thing, not a person, not a, it has no essence. But we can know of God the qualities of God through his messengers, a Buddha, Muhammad Jesus, and others through time and today through alah. So it’s through their messengers and their holy books that we can understand the qualities, the attributes of God, the characteristics of God, but we can never know God in his essence. That’s beyond us.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Okay, thank you very much. My next question to our panelists is how important is the communal worship in your path? Please describe your sacred spaces and the importance of the spiritual life of your communities. We’ll start with Shakar. Please explain what the gurdwara is and maybe a brief understanding of what the structure of Sikhism is as well. And also please tell us what it means to be a minister of Sikh Dharma.
Shabad Kaur Khalsa:
Okay, so the GWAR is our temple or a place of worship. There’s several around the Chicago area, so talk to me afterwards if you’d like to come. It’s again, a universal faith. The word guro means open on the four doors, the four directions. So anyone can come and experience our worship services at any time. And again, we will not proselytize. We just welcome all again that universality aspect. And then there’s a wonderful Indian meal, Indian meal afterwards. So please come if you’d like. And the idea of the SGI is really important. So that’s our company of the holy. So we had a succession of 10 human gurus in our history of that 500 years. And at one point, guru Gobin sing was the 10th guru, the human guru. And then he said, this is it. This is the end of the human succession of us. The guru is in all of you. So the light of God is within all of us, and our sud sung it. We call it the company of the Holy. So when we go to worship, it’s all about the people and each other. And as a minister, I can do weddings and funerals or remembrances and things like that. And I also counsel, so I counsel those in the community. So yeah, thank you.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Thank you. Jerry. Please explain how adherence of the Bahai faith gathered together at their houses of worship. Now, are there services of some kind and how do they take place without ministers or clergy, which the Baha faith does not have? And just briefly explain Baha faith structure, if you will.
Jerry Woodall:
Well, in every Baha community, they have a different calendar. It’s based on the solar lunar calendar and every 19 days the Bahai community, and there’s Bahais in Chicago, Evanston, Wilmette all over the world, they do the same practice. You might say, we don’t have clergy, as you said, we meet every 19 days and something we call a feast. And it’s devoted to come together as a community, to pray, to worship, to consult and to socialize and to eat and have fun with each other. We’re all the behe are also told when we embrace the Baha faith to be in some way of service to mankind. Now, for every person that’s different. And I agree exactly with what everyone else has been saying here, we’re all to partake in somehow building a better community, a better family, a better life for ourselves. That’s why every day we’re supposed to pray and meditate, to build up the individual.
Of course, you build up your family, of course, you build up your community, of course, in your country and hopefully the world. So being of service in some capacity, if you’re a carpenter, be the best carpenter you can be. If you’re a teacher, be the best teacher you can be. Alah says that when we act in service in this manner, it’s like praying to God. It’s a form of worship to God. So we all have a part to play. And there’s no real churches, there’s no real Bahai churches or synagogues or mosque. There’s the Bahai house of worship here in WellMed, but that’s not a Baha, primarily a Bahai function right there that was built as a gift to mankind. So any of you here, if you ever have a desire, you’re always welcome to come to the Baha House of Worship. It’s for everybody.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Thank you, Reverend Diane, when I hope you can hear me. When I think of Taoism, I think of more of an individual path than a collective one. Is that a misconception? Are there regular communal spaces and times within Taoism? Is there a former leadership structure within Taoism?
Rev. Dr. Diane Rooney:
Yeah, it’s not a inception. Again, as a philosophy, one does walk the path and practices wwe, which is not interfering with anything, not going against the grain, moving with the flow, yielding to one another. And so in that sense, there’s the community. I’m wondering if you mute that computer that you may not have the feedback one on your right, Judy, the computer on your right. If you mute that, you may not have the echo feedback from me. I dunno. So that’s a philosophical way of living. The Tao is you yield to one another as humans, and that’s the community you’re yielding to one another’s innate nature and allowing things to be as they are, whether we determine them as bad or good or right or wrong, to live in communities to live paradox as a philosophy. In other words, our teachers, Dwan Za, they would say to us, there is no right or wrong, but to say there’s no right or wrong.
You’re saying it’s wrong, that there’s no right or wrong, which puts you back in right or wrong. And that’s the paradox. So to live in community is to yield to those who are exactly who they are to live in Taoism as a religion. There most certainly are temples. There’s community, there’s praying, there’s hierarchy. And that there are those who have studied, lived it, become priests before others and are the teachers. So there is definitely DAOs communities, and I find that the communities within themselves are all about living in kindness and kind of like what everybody’s talking about here. All the religions live kind to one another and don’t lie to one another. Allow somebody to be who they are without trying to change them or judge them and just move with the flow of the dynamic of the community and accept it as it is. I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s basically Dao from a community perspective.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
You’ve answered as well as Daoism answers, questions like this. It kind of gets a little complicated sometimes. But you did. Thank you. Very, very good. Reverend Linda Cityside does not call itself a church. Can you explain why that is and how we gather together at Centers for Spiritual Living communities? You might have to explain what CSL is, and you touched on this, but this was a question from last time. Is science of mind different from religious science? And what about unity teachings? And then there’s new thought. I mean these terms can be used interchangeably. And I know I’m asking a lot of questions here, but remember, blessed are the brief. Which one do you want me to answer? And also no pressure.
Rev Linda Jackson:
Okay, well, let’s see what sticks in my mind there. We are called Centers for Spiritual Living. So we identify as a spiritual center, a spiritual community, not as a church, although many people will still call it church, and that’s okay. It feels like church to them. And like I said before, Ernest Holmes did not intend for this to be a religion. He intended it to be a philosophy that would be applicable to all faith traditions or even those without a faith tradition that studying these principles and practices and applying them to your life would be transformative to everyone. And anyone, you don’t have to be of a certain dogma or tradition. It works if you use it and if you believe it. So that’s why we don’t identify as a church, at least part of why there’s probably other reasons.
This is just me and my perspective. Everyone is an individual expression of the divine. So we will all experience this differently, but I can only share what is true for me. In terms of how we gather here on Sundays, our normal service partly like this, except that we have a speaker who teaches. We have beautiful music, we have prayer, we have meditation, and those are all some of our practices. Affirmative prayer is a really important piece of our spiritual practice as is meditation, spiritual study and celebration, inspiration, experiencing spirit move through the musicians. Musicians is a demonstration of the creative process. That is also another one of our principles. So was there another thing that you wanted me to touch
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
On? Well, religious science, it’s a mind. What’s the difference?
Rev Linda Jackson:
Science of Mind is the name of the book. That is the philosophy that Ernest Holmes wrote and it was published in 1927. I had to look that up. I don’t carry that kind of knowledge with me all the time. So it’s the philosophy, and it was originally the science of mind and spirit, and then it was shortened to just science of mind, which makes it more about mind. But another thing that I have understood about Earnest Holmes, there’s sort of three qualities or aspects of God. There’s mind, law and form or consciousness unconsciousness and our experience in the world, and it moves through that. That’s the creative process. And I just sort of lost my train of thought.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Well, you were going to tell us what religious science was as opposed to science of mind. You said science of mind. So what’s religious science then?
Rev Linda Jackson:
So religious science is just the practice of the science of mind. It’s the organization that was developed to house the science of mind teachings and to come together. And I don’t know how far we’re going to get in all the questions because a later question I was going to address the fact that even in our organization, we had two factions that split go figure, an organization that teaches oneness, two factions that couldn’t agree on how to organize this philosophy. They did come back together as centers for spiritual living. So science of mind is the philosophy, religious science is the organization that houses it. And then there were a couple of branches of religious science and it came together as centers for spiritual living.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Okay.
Rev Linda Jackson:
Did that answer it?
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Yeah, we’ll keep it with that.
Rev Linda Jackson:
Yeah, there’s so much more. And I had a point there I was going there with the creative process, and I apologize, I lost it.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
It’s okay. For those of us who raised Catholic, I think it is refreshing, I’m assuming for us to see that there are women clergy in the Episcopal church, Reverend Paris. What is community like in the Episcopal church? Is it any different or the leadership structure than in other Christian denominations?
Rev Paris Coffey:
Well, you probably have seen lots of Christian churches wherever you go. So obviously communal worship is important, but I will add that, and I’ll talk more about this when we get to division, but we don’t always agree on what the rituals are, what the practices are, where the emphasis is. So it’s sometimes difficult to try to be the spokesperson for something that is so broad in its definitions, in terms of corporate worship coming together to worship. I think it’s the reminder that we’re not in this alone and that not only are we practicing our faith with one another, but that we are called to care for one another, to understand one another. And so as important as worship, I believe I love worship, I love the rituals, I love the singing. The music is a way that really draws us closer to God. There’s time for corporate meditation, corporate confession. So we know that yes, I’m human. I screwed up, (technical issues) recognize our own
Imperfections and to have some tolerance of ourselves and one another. So we need places where we can. And the Episcopal Church tries to create places where we can study and learn together, where we can meditate and pray together and where we can care for and support one another. But to do that, you kind of have to know who the other person is. So we need places that we can gather, whether it’s social settings or study sessions or worship where we can get to know who we really are, who the other really is. And then I guess the other component is what does it mean to serve together? So we’re each called to serve in whatever gifts with whatever gifts in whatever particular areas we are called to serve in. But we also have a responsibility or call in Christianity to serve together. And so it’s important to come together not only to serve others, but to receive from others, which in our culture, we seem to have a harder time receiving than we do giving.
And Jesus understood how to do both. And it was one of the things that he tried to model when he was modeling God. I would also say that I think at least in the Episcopal church, and I know this has been one of the reasons that we have broken off into many denominations, Christianity has broken off into many traditions because for example, Quakers come together and experience things in the quiet and in simplicity. But in the Episcopal church, aesthetic seems to be really important, smells and sights and beauty and sounds. So I was worshiping once in a Catholic cathedral with some friends. We met, some Episcopal clergy, met once a week or once a month at different places and prayed together. And so we prayed one week we prayed at the cathedral in St. Louis, which is very elaborate, lots of gold leaf. And I’m always shocked by that.
It always seems to distance me from God. And so I’ve been judgmental of that at times. But while we were praying, there was a homeless woman on the pew in front of me, several pews in front of me who was just wrapped in attention with, she just raised her hands up because for her it was an expression of God’s glory of something beyond her own circumstances. And I think that’s part of what we do in worship and in community, is that we’re expanded and not just our own community. I’m so grateful for opportunities like this because some of what I’ve learned most about my faith has been learning it from other faiths
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
From Paris.
Inaudible…
I think we need to keep going. Sorry. So an interfaith forum can’t really be considered complete unless we touch on the concept of oneness for our panelists then how does your faith teach about oneness? And I’m going to start with you, Jerry, because I know that oneness is a major tenant about the Baha faith. Can you expound on that for us? And again, touch on the progressive revelation idea.
Jerry Woodall:
It’s one of the main ideas that attracted me to the Bahai faith growing up Catholic, the whole concept that God hasn’t forgotten anyone. We’re all God’s children. He loves all, we are, all his children. We’re not to be in conflict with each other. So the concept that God has sent teachers through time, different teachers with different names, but they had different missions at different time. We had the Buddha, we had Abraham, we had Moses, Jesus Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad and others. We know there’s been many that have been sent through the ages to mankind. God has never left his children shepherd lists. And he says in all of the holy books, he never will, that he’ll always give guidance to mankind. Now, we’ve kind of forgotten as mankind, especially here in America, it seems to be a pervasive idea that we’re in a muddle and there’s no way out. Well, that’s just not so if you look at all the holy scriptures, all of the holy books say that God will always send messengers to guide us than to get us out of our stuckness. And so in the Baha faith, it says that from age to age, God will send teachers and messengers to guide mankind, to educate us. It’s like we see through history in, if you look through history, we see mankind’s infancy. It’s late infancy, it’s childhood, it’s late childhood, its adolescence which we are painfully going through right now,
And we’re becoming adults spiritually. That means that we can finally understand our oneness. We can finally understand that mankind is one, that the separation we have is based on our prejudices, our religious prejudice, our racial prejudice, our economic prejudice. All these things are obsolete notions that must go away. And God sends a new messenger from age to age to give us kind of a roadmap, or they’re kind of like divine physicians. They take the pulse of mankind, they take our temperature and they say, ah, you’re sick and your sickness is your divisiveness, your separation from each other. Here’s the prescription. He writes, a prescription gives it to mankind and says, follow this prescription and all will be well. Well, alah came to give mankind a prescription of how do we come together and become one? And that attracted me immensely because the diversity, the divisiveness, and it’s untenable, it’s obsolete.
It has to go. We have to find common ground and just listening to each other, we’re all agreeing with almost everything everyone else is saying. There’s so many common elements in all the religions of God. It’s really quite astonishing when you look and read other people’s books, you’re amazed at how much similarity there is that there’s very, very little difference. The difference comes from how people have interpreted the written word, the scriptures, and they say, I think it means this. And another person says, well, I think it means this. And they argue about it. Well, they both could be right. They’re just different perspectives.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
So Jerry, I’m going to ask you to wrap it up there.
Jerry Woodall:
That’s it.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Okay, good. Thank you. Sorry, just moving us along. So Reverend Linda, it’s a major principle within science of mind, oneness. Can you expand on that for us?
Rev Linda Jackson:
Sure. I mean, oneness is one of the foundational teachings, and as I said, we are individual expressions of the divine. It expresses through us and as us .and through all life. And I find it challenging to speak of oneness because naming it sort of creates separation because it becomes something to talk about instead of just understanding that it all is one thing, we are all connected. And the idea of us being individual expressions sort of supports the idea of the multiplicity and the diversity. It is God in its infinite expression. We are it. I’ll stop there.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Thank you. I don’t know how we’re doing on time, John. Way past
John in audience:
1136.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Okay, I’m going to skip some people here. I’m sorry. Just so that we can briefly touch on the path of peace, because we’ve been discussing what the foundational teachings or just an overview of what these paths are. And so we just want to touch on what is the path of peace within each of these faith paths? And as religion and spirituality has evolved over time, a focus on our own individual connection to the divine source and our own inner life has been very much needed as opposed to reliance on dogma or church teachings or tradition. And on a continuum of the faith paths represented here, there’s some emphasized inner transformation more than others. Is there a danger in emphasizing inner transformation as it relates to peace of the world? And where do each of your paths fall on the continuum of the inner peace of the individual and the collective responsibility of your path to seek peace in the world? So Diane, how does Daoism address the peace of the world vis-a-vis inner peace?
Rev. Dr. Diane Rooney:
Well, this overlaps with the oneness question. The path to peace is the path to oneness. In Taoism, there is the one, not unlike the science of mind, it is, it just is. There was the one that separated into the two which then separated into the 10,000. What they mean. Chinese mean by that is infinite things. And what I’m on about here is the path to peace is to go backwards into the one. So the two is the yin and yang, right? It’s the this and that, but it’s interdependence. And when we understand that things are not opposites, but interdependent, then we start to walk the path of peace. We can’t have night without day cold, without dark, empty, without full. We don’t know these concepts unless we have the other. But the concept does not exist without the other. When we see that interdependence of all that is we start to walk the path of peace.
When we walk the path of peace, as I mentioned before, and as the reverend mentioned about naming, it’s the first chapter in the Da de Ching. As soon as you name something, you are separate from it. So the path to peace is unning. The path to oneness is undoing. It’s trying to change something. It’s un controlling. And if we have a whole world of people that undo all the naming and the labeling and the calling and just go back to that center, that piece, then we stopped having conflicts because we start to recognize that there is no separation between any of us. That we are interdependent beings needing each other. Not opposites at all, but understanding who we are in relation to the other, knowing that we’re all going back to the one, and that is the path of peace.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Thank you, Diane. I think for me, I have the most trouble recognizing oneness within Christianity. Reverend Paris, given the history of Christianity. So kind of oppression and Oh, I’m asking the wrong question, I’m sorry. In my spiritual journey that began as a cradle Catholic, I very much appreciated the collective responsibility there was in the church teachings to work for peace and social justice that came through the Catholic teachings. I don’t worship in the Catholic church anymore, but I really appreciate that foundation. So how do you see the inner search for peace and the collective responsibility to work for peace within Christianity? Reverend Paris?
Rev Paris Coffey:
I think it starts with acknowledging that every religion has the same components and that we are all trying to figure out why we’re here, what we’re supposed to do, where we came from, where we go when we die, how do we get along, how do we respect one another, love one another? And I think that when we lose sight of what we have in common and think that we have all the answers, that’s the path away from peace. This will probably date me to quote Carlos Castaneta, who was quoting Don Juan. But when Don Juan talked about the enemies of wisdom, one of the four was clarity. And I think when we think we’ve got everything all wrapped up so that it’s my way or the highway, that’s when we go from seeking and living in God seeking and living in love, being channels of love and peace to wanting power and control, to have everyone look like us and think like us. And it’s so foreign to the gospel, but I guess it’s part of human nature, so it’s something we’re always fighting individually and as. And together.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Sikhism, since its inception, I’ve read in one of my many sources I’m quoting here, has maintained a progressive and inclusive worldview that strongly emphasizes respect, tolerance and peaceful coexistence among people of faith. Can you explain then how the practice of SVA and selfless service and other Sikh principles help to create inner and collective peace? Shava?
Shabad Kaur Khalsa:
Yes, we work to make a strong difference in the world. So we say that we are not in a cave meditating, we’re householders on this path. So we’re out in the world working and righteous work, honest work and serving. And so there’s organizations we’re associated with calls to aid. When there’s a world disaster we send out, it’s almost like World Central Kitchen. So we’ll just make meals, meals, meals, and help people help them out when things happen. So there’s always a response to make a big strong difference in the world, and it comes from that base of oneness. So just even follow up on your question, it’s because we’re not judging. We’re like, okay, okay, you’re in need. Here we are. So we’ll be there as soon as we can and respond. So it’s definitely a big, big piece of what we do is SA is that means selfless service. You’re not waiting for something in return. You’re just giving and you’re not judging that person.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Okay. To Linda, please. So Reverend Linda, science of mind focuses on uniting with the one mind with higher consciousness to connect with one’s inner peace. How does this principle or process work for peace in the world? Is it enough for people to embrace one’s own peace or do science of mind adherence have an obligation to work for collective or global peace?
Rev Linda Jackson:
Yeah, I do think there’s a hazard in focusing on the inner realm and forgetting, escaping, if you will, what’s going on in the world. And you’ve probably heard the Chardin quote, we’re spiritual beings having a human experience. And I believe that’s very applicable in science of mind. We have to work in both realms, both in our spiritual nature and in our human experience out in the world. And the CSL global vision has a line at the end of it that is “a world that works for everyone”. And I do believe there has been a focus or a push in more recent years for the organization to participate or become more involved in sacred activism. And just as we are all expressing the divine differently, that may look different for different people. We may have someone that is called to march for peace. We may have someone that is called to serve in a soup kitchen or someone who teaches nonviolent communication or whatever that may be. So I do think it’s a both/and the work of the individual impacts the collective. Okay,
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
So Jerry, just to add briefly your thoughts that from a Bahai perspective.
Jerry Woodall:
Well, I agree with everything everyone has said. It’s beautifully said in the Baha faith. Balah says that world peace is not just possible, but it’s inevitable. I brought a little pamphlet over there that explains a little of this and I have, you can download the same thing. There’s only a couple of ’em over there, but the BAHAs have great faith that eventually mankind will get there. Now what we see in the world looks pretty discouraging, but what we don’t see is that within people’s hearts from all over the planet, you don’t see this on CNN or tv, but there’s a deep hunger and a hope and a desire for peace. Well, you can’t have peace unless you have justice. Well, how do you have justice? Well, you have justice when you get rid of all the things that divide us, the way I spoke of it earlier, the prejudices that divide us. These are the things that we all must go deep within ourselves, individually and collectively to root out because they separate us. What’s also happening in the world is a great coming together. We see it here today and it’s happening all over the world. People’s consciousness are beginning to understand that we have to get over our garbage, this stuff that divides us, and I think that’s happening, but we don’t see it on tv, but it’s happening and it’s real.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
Thank you very much. We are going to have to leave it here. There are so many questions we did not get to. We could talk about this for hours, but there is a q and a coming up, so I invite you to stay for that and for people who are online, please come back. We’ll break in a few minutes for 10 minutes or so and then regroup for the Q and A. But I would just want to take this opportunity to thank our panelists, thank you for participating, lending your wisdom, and for tolerating all of the tech issues. Thank you for being patient in the room and online with our tech issues. Before I ask the panelists to sit down, I want to end our form with a prayer. As we always do, this is going to be a written prayer. It’s by Jane Goodall and it’s the prayer for peace.
And so I invite you to just settle your minds and bodies and open yourselves to receive this prayer. We pray to the great spiritual power in which we live and move and have our being. We pray that we may at all times keep our minds open to new ideas and shun dogma that we may grow in our understanding of the nature of all living beings in our connectedness with the natural world. That we may become ever more filled with generosity of spirit and true compassion and love for all life, that we may strive to heal the hurts that we have inflicted on nature and control our greed for material things, knowing that our actions are harming the natural world and the future of our children, that we may value each and every human being for who he is, for who she is, who for they are reaching to the spirit that is within knowing the power of each individual to change the world.
We pray for social justice, for the alleviation of the crippling poverty that condemns millions of people around the world to lives of misery, hungry, sick, and utterly without hope. We pray for the children who are starving, who are condemned to homelessness, slave labor, and prostitution, and especially for those forced to fight to kill and torture even members of their own family. We pray for the victims of violence and war for those wounded in body and for wounded in mind. We pray for the multitudes of refugees forced from their homes to alien places, through war, or through the utter destruction of their environment. We pray that we may learn the peace that comes with forgiving and the strength regain in loving that we may learn to take nothing for granted in this life that we may learn to see and understand with our hearts that we may learn to rejoice in our being. We pray for these things with humility. We pray because of the hope that is within us and because of a faith in the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. We pray because of our love for creation and because of our trust in God. We pray above all for peace throughout the world, and we will end this prayer as we do all prayers in cityside. Please say it with me, and so it is and ever shall be. Amen.