Earth Spirit

– (title and content inspired by an Eboo Patel speech earlier today :D)

Day one at the interfaith conference, and already my brain is spiraling for things to write about (that DON’T pertain to my complaints of how the Sims 3 updates won’t download…). Naturally, it’s only fitting to start with my thoughts on some things said at our dinner speech today.

Essentially, Eboo Patel summed up both the press and the interfaith group in the form of song lyrics. We see news all the time about how people of different religions are always going to fight and how there is just no feasible way for them to get along. It’s just what they do. It’s ‘natural.’ As he said (directly) – “Society prints religious ignorance.”

You know it’s true. It’s something we see on a daily basis.

It leads people to believe that there is no way we can ever really have peace. It breeds apathy, and a huge lack of caring and lack of hope.

Our goal in interfaith is to write and publish and sing different lyrics.

To remind the world that those stereotypes don’t have to be reality.

But there’s another problem we face. It’s that not everyone, even in interfaith, knows what they’re doing. AND there is a huge hurtle we have to leap, that being actually talking about it. We’ve made religion into an extremely uncomfortable topic, ostracizing the devout and ostracizing the loose and those who are searching and those that know…Everyone suffers. So many are quiet. The ones that are the loudest are those that aren’t afraid to be heard. Unfortunately, the loud ones don’t tend to be the people we should be listening to (Westboro Baptist Church anyone?).

So where do we go from here?

We talk.

We talk, we talk, we talk. We are all humans, and we can’t let things like this divide us. Besides, most religions tell us to love one another, to care for each other. Not to rip each other to shreds because we’re different.

That’s our goal here. At the conference that is. To learn how to tell other people about it.

(And you can check out my other blog for how this feels pertaining to my Christian background.)

– Cami