Details about Monday's Memorial Day Service

"Interfaith Paths to Peace in cooperation with a number of local groups will host a unique interfaith Memorial Day Service at 11 am on Monday May 31 at Christ Church Cathedral at 421 South Second Street in Louisville. What makes this Service unique is that it honors not only military dead but also civilian dead in all US wars."

This is the 26th annual Memorial Day Service and will include a special emphasis on youthful presenters (see list below).

This event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception at which those attending can meet and converse with the presenters.

Here are the program details:



Memorial Day Service



Reception Immediately Following in Bishops Hall



Prelude................................................................................... Micah and Nancy Harris

"American Trilogy"



Welcome and Opening Prayer.......................................... Elizabeth, Hannah and Sarah Bourlakas



Introduction......................................................................... Fiona Grant



Musical Reflection.............................................................. Desmond Anderson and Emanuel Potts

"Lift Every Voice and Sing"



Reading from the Baha'i Faith.......................................... Evan Mortazie



Prayers from Hinduism and Islam................................... Sepideh & Sharzaud Karimi and

Priya Matadar



Interpretive Dance.............................................................. Burmese, Caran and Thai Dancers



Reflection on International Peacemaking.................... Lyla Wasz-Piper



Litany of Battles................................................................. Mitzi Friedlander

Music by Nancy & Sam Harris



The Importance of Remembering the Holocaust......... Alyssa Fromeyer



Musical Reflection.............................................................. Andrea Davidson

"Natchez Trace"



The Importance of Non-violence Education................. Nathan Hagan



Candle Lighting for the Fallen........................................ Aaron Payne

Lighting of First Candle by Lee Thomas

"How Great Thou Art" performed by Anderson & Potts



Closing Remarks and Invitation...................................... Terry Taylor



Postlude................................................................................ The St. Clair String Quartet

Beethoven's Harp Quartet in E flat major



Please join us for a Reception in Bishops Hall

with music by Brendan Grant






Sponsors for the event includ:

Sponsors include:



The Kentucky Council of Churches



Baha'is of Louisville



Kentuckiana American Indian Advocates



Fellowship of Reconciliation, Louisville Chapter



Drepung Gomang Institute (Tibetan Buddhists)



U.S. Department of Peace Campaign



Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral

Friends Meeting (Quakers) of Louisville

Hindu Temple of Kentucky

Independent Muslims of Louisville

The Islamic Cultural Center of Louisville

St. William Catholic Church

St. Agnes Catholic Church

Speaker tomorrow at 11:30 am on resistance to war

Bill Galvin, Counseling Coordinator at the Center on Conscience & War in Washington, DC, will be the featured speaker at the Third Thursday Lunch at 11:30 am on May 20, 2010 at the Rudyard Kipling.

Through his work over many years beginning with the Vietnam War, Bill has counseled many soldiers and draft resisters. He travels widely, holds workshops and supports conscientious objectors (COs) who are speaking out and standing up in the ongoing effort to move this country to the day when conscience is respected and wars end. He worked directly with most of the COs interviewed for the new award-winning documentary

Soldiers of Conscience which is to be shown in Louisville on May 29 at St. Matthews Episcopal Church, 330 N. Hubbards Lane, 6:00 pm.

Everyone is invited to the buffet lunch ($6) beginning at 11:30 am at the Rudyard Kipling Restaurant, 422 West Oak Street. For reservations, call Jean Edwards, 458-8056.

Sad milestone: 1,000 US dead in Afghanistan

I just saw an article in the NY Times that says we have now reached 1,000 dead among US service men and women serving in the war in Afghanistan. I have yet to hear anyone explain how we would know if we have won (or lost) this war. How many more Americans and Afghanis will die before we take a deep breath and make the tough decision to end the war...not next year or the year after, but now.

Here's a link to the NY Times Story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/19dead.html?hp

Here's a link to images of the US service men and women who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sadly, we have no images of the hundreds of thousands of of Afghanis and Iraqis who have died.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/faces-of-the-dead.html?ref=us#/rivers_thomas_e_jr

Dalai Lama, Rabbis, Klezmer, an Islamic Reformation and more

It was quite a busy weekend for the executive director of Interfaith Paths to Peace.

I'm not often this busy, but the following items illustrate what a rich variety of interfaith opportunities there are in Louisville (or within a short drive).

On Friday, I drove to Indianapolis for a public presentation by the Dalai Lama at Conseco Fieldhouse. As I said to someone after the event, I have heard the Dalai Lama speak a number of times, and I rarely hear anything new, or anything I didn't already know. But I do hear from him reminders of important spiritual matters to which I should be paying attention. Here's a link to the Dalai Lama's official web site so that you can explore his ideas for yourself.

http://www.dalailama.com/

On Saturday, I drove over to Lexington for that city's annual Peace and Global Citizenship Fair, an outdoor exposition of groups and vendors associated with peace or spirituality. I meant many wonderful people, one of whom reminded me of the words of someone who is not often thought of as a spiritual master. A woman approached my table, saw a copy of my book, A Spirituality for Brokenness, and said to me, "We grow stronger at the broken places." I said to her, "You know who is credited with saying that, don't you?" She didn't. "It was Ernest Hemingway. I am the only person I know who uses that quote citing Hemingway as a Spiritual Master."

Later that evening I had the opportunity to lead a book discussion for a local Jewish group that gathers once a month. We discussed a book by a friend of mine, Rabbi Irwin Kula, who is the head of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. We explored his book called Yearnings: Exploring the Sacred Messiness of Life. In this powerful work Irwin shares an amazing array of stories, wise words, and interpretations that have really opened the eyes of my heart. In the book the Rabbi says that over the years his vision of the mission of his organization has evolved to the point where he now sees CLAL's major task as sharing Wisdom and Practice across religious lines. In many ways I see that as the mission of my own organization.

Here's a link to learn more about Rabbi Irwin and his book.

http://yearnings.irwinkula.com/index.html

The next morning I spoke to the Adult Sunday School Class at First Unitarian Church in Louisville. My topic was "An Emerging Velvet Reformation in Islam." That religion is beginning to undergo major changes that are reflective of a long hidden (or ignored) concern for values embraced by the mainstream of other world religions. A key figure in this Reformation is a Turkish spiritual leader named Fettulah Gulen who is like the Christian master Thomas Merton in that he embraces a deepening of spirituality, a concern for social justice, and a commitment to genuine interfaith dialogue. Here's a link to information about Gulen.

http://www.fethullahgulen.org/

Sunday afternoon I attended a wonderful "Klezmer Fest", a celebration of a Jewish style of music that has all of the liveliness of Dixieland Jazz. If you would like to hear a little, here's a link to a short performance by The Java Jews, one of the bands that performed on Sunday.


I finished my Sunday by attending a religious service at St. Agnes Catholic Church honoring the Louisville Association of Community Ministries on the occasion of their 40th anniversary. These ministries (that provide a wide array of social services in every area of Louisville) were the first in the nation and established a model that has been duplicated in cities across America.

http://www.louisvilleministries.org/

And then came Monday morning and a meeting with the visiting Abbot of the Drepung Gomang Monastery in India...

Gray Henry, Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists

Our friend Peter Smith at the Courier Journal is at a program with the Dalai Lama in Bloomington, Indiana. He just blogged about IPP's friend and emerita Board member Gray Henry, her Fons Vitae Press and how the Muslims and the Tibetan Buddhists have leraned to cooperate over the Years...with Gray's help. Here's a link to Peter's story.

http://faith.courier-journal.com/2010/05/long-road-to-common-ground.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+courier-journal%2FDqbI+%28Faith+%26+Works%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

Muslims DO denounce terrorist acts

We frequently hear in the news media cries from folks who claim that Muslims do not denounce terrorist acts by their coreligionists in the US and other parts of the world. You should know that Muslims publicly and loudly denounce violence undertaken in their religion's name.

I don't know if you saw Peter Smith's article in the Courier Journal this week about a local Pakistani group condemning the May 1 attempted car bombing in New York and that group's efforts to support law enforcement. There is a link to the story below.

Please note that several US Muslim organizations have also condemned the attempt. Links to their statements appear after the link to the CJ article.

Here is a link to the Courier-Journal article about a local Pakistani Muslim group condemning the attempted car bombing in New York on May 1.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20105070365

Here is a pulbic condemnation from the Islamic Society of North America of the attempted New York terrorist attack.
http://www.isna.net/articles/News/ISNA-Commends-Efforts-of-Law-Enforcement-Condemns-Attempted-Bombing-at-Times-Square.aspx

Here is a public condemnation from the Council on American Islamic Relations of the attempted New York attack:
http://www.cair.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?mid1=777&&ArticleID=26384&&name=n&&currPage=1

Praying for an End to Nuclear Weapons

Friends, you can still be part of an interfaith service that was held on May 2 in New York at which those gathered prayed for an end to nuclear weapons.

You can be part of it by using this link to watch a brief video of the Service. Below is some text that explains what the service was about.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/by-topic/international/praying-for-an-end-to-nuclear-weapons/6263/

As you know from my recent blog, I was part of a conference ten days ago in New York focused on Nuclear Disarmament. The conference concluded with an interfaith service in a chapel across the street from the UN that also marked the begining of a month of nuclear disarmament activities.

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly recently covered the service and has posted a short video from the service on its web site.

Here's the Religion and Ethics Story:

The United Nations opened a month-long conference in New York this week to review ways to contain the spread of nuclear weapons. Prior to the conference, leaders from several religious traditions gathered at an interfaith chapel across from the UN to pray for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others offered prayers, chants, songs, and special readings. Watch excerpts of the service, where some of the participants included Buddhist peace activists; Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki, Japan, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing, who brought a scorched piece of a statue of Mary from the cathedral that was destroyed in the attack; a Shinto chant leader; Rev. Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches; a Native American prayer-song leader; Buddhist and Muslim readers; and Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.