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To All Relations: The Art of Weaving Faiths | |
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By Mayumi Kodani At 6 am on Saturday, February 4th, 25 or so people from various religious and cultural traditions gathered at Senshin Buddhist Temple in South Los Angeles for a two-day interfaith retreat organized by Great Leap (an LA-based multicultural performing arts organization) in an effort to step out of their comfort zones into a kind of spiritual supra-comfort zone. I am not an avid supporter of leaving my own comfort zone. For one thing, it is difficult to do, whatever it is – singing a cappella on stage before a packed room or learning to tap dance without any convincing aptitude for it – basically really living without surrendering to an ego that often puts up so much arbitrary resistance to really living. These efforts might make a person less uptight, more engaged in life, a better friend. On the other hand, they can be rewarded with little more than a sense of absurdity and a vow to find some less humiliating way to grow as a person. It is a tricky game. Which is why I was pleasantly and humbly surprised to observe how transformative was this retreat in its easy ability to draw participants out of their respective comfort zones. “To All Relations: The Art of Weaving Faiths” began with a day of exercises that would by turns make us feel silly, joyful, solemn, like children, and like a quickly congealing unit. We did exercises that loosened up our voices and bodies, such as breathing and stretching movements; creating a whole body gesture to express our names; and breaking into groups to create a human moving sculpture, always in contact with at least one other person. These deceptively simple activities made tangible and artful all of the talk one hears as an American about the values of diversity, teamwork, and tolerance. These large, abstract notions are rendered small and more intimate in meaning when you realize in the process of making a human sculpture that it is difficult to maintain eye contact with a roomful of people you’ve just met or to figure out boundaries of personal space when you must constantly be touching at least one other person somewhere on his or her body. In another exercise, we broke into groups of seven or eight people and stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle. Our task was to count to 20 as individuals without simply going in order around the circle, counting off to 20. Also, if two people happened to say the number at the same time, we would have to start the count all over again. This is more difficult than it sounds. Success relies upon a very intangible yet collective sense of rhythm and simply being tuned in to the people around you. The people who were around me are quite remarkable – some of the most open, reflective, and accomplished men and women I have met. Our group also included out-of-town members of the Beloved Communities, an initiative that aims “to identify, explore and form a network of communities committed to and practicing the profound pursuit of justice, radical inclusivity, democratic governance, health and wholeness, and social/individual transformation.” By the end of the first day, I found that as a group, we were relying less and less on learned rules of behavior than we were on a sixth sense of a collective energy. We had also become a kind of family. Although I may not meet some of my fellow participants ever again in my life, I know I will remember some compelling detail from each of their lives that they were gracious enough to share during our time together. On Sunday, we met again at Senshin and walked the few blocks to Masjid Omar Ibn Al Khattab, one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse mosques in Los Angeles. Our host and guide Sumaya, in addition to participating in some of the exercises, gave a brief introduction about Islam and showed us how to perform the wudu, or ritual washing of the hands, arms, face, head, and feet before prayer. Our day at the mosque was especially interesting for me because I felt introduced to Islam for the first time. Until I was able to meet and learn from some of the Muslim members of our group, learn to perform the wudu, and think about what it means when I touched my head to the ground during prayer, I did not realize how little I knew of Islam as a deeply personal relationship with the divine, but how much I hear everyday about it in pejorative terms as a political ideology. So I am very grateful for this opportunity to learn in this most concrete and human way. This retreat (the first in a series of gatherings, planned by Great Leap, at different spiritual centers around Los Angeles) aimed to “deepen awareness of ourselves and our connection with others” – a defiant act in this increasingly hostile and fractured human world. If the pen is mightier than the sword, this whole experience seemed to say, then so is the moving body, the singing voice, the family history, the shared and unseen forces that bind individuals into a community and help them understand one another with compassion. Back to "Art of Weaving Faiths" Main Back to Home Page
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