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Finding Hope in Difference

Photo of retreat participants by Kristen Nobis Cervantes. Used with permission.A Baptist, a Muslim, an Episcopalian, and a Jewish law scholar walked into a Methodist retreat center on Lake Texhoma. It sounds like the first line of a joke, but that’s exactly what happened last week when about 50 people gathered for the Interfaith Retreat put on by the Multicultural Alliance of Texas. And while we enjoyed plenty of laughs and casual fellowship, we were all aware of the very serious need for dialogue between people of faith in our country.
The challenges to having genuine conversation vary depending on the tradition we are coming from. As Christians in a predominantly Christian country, we can choose whether or not to pay attention to the challenges facing people of other faiths. Jews cannot ignore the anti-semitism which often crops up in our culture, and Muslims must navigate an environment full of Islamophobic rhetoric. So the Christians participating in this retreat were challenged to truly listen as the Jewish and Muslim participants found the courage to speak about their lives and faith.
Yet at a certain point, we Christians had to have courage too. We had to be faithful in witnessing to the diversity of opinions within our own tradition. We had to risk disagreeing with one another, and we had to acknowledge that there are some basic points of disagreement between ourselves, Muslims, and Jews about how God has been revealed in this world.
After late nights in deep discussion, we would gather the next morning at breakfast and notice the beauty of the light on the lake as the sun rose. We began to see the beauty in each other’s tradition not because of the ways in which we are similar but because of the ways in which we are distinct. Each of us, Jew, Christian, and Muslim, found hope through our faith in God, and this is the gift we share not only with each other but with a world gripped by fear.
Have you had the courage to listen to someone different recently?
Can you see the beauty of someone distinctly different from you?
How do we offer hope to a fearful world?
 
J. Clarkson HeadshotJ. Clarkson is an M.Div. student in the Class of 2017 and a postulant from the Diocese of Western North Carolina.

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