Making Connections - Life in Interfaith Land

Today is December 3, at least in Melbourne, Australia. I think it's still yesterday in Illinois, where I live. Eight members of our church, along with thousands of other folks from all around the world, have traveled to this appealing and welcoming city to meet each other, share our stories, and make connections that we hope will have lasting and healing effects. Officially this gathering is called the Parliament of the World's Religions.

We have already been experiencing the delights of meaningful coincidences, or synchronicity as some call it. Our nearly eternal flight from LA to Sydney was full of people traveling to the Parliament, but we were truly blown away when a young man we met purely by chance in the Sydney airport, who is not involved at all in the Parliament, turned out to be the son of an Interfaith Alliance friend of ours back home. Then this morning in an apparently random coffee shop in Melbourne, we sat down next to another UU minister who is also here for the Parliament. Here are Tracy from New Jersey and I doing our email and blogging side by side. These are delightful and intriguing experiences.

The Parliament opens this evening and we will be there. There is no place else I would rather be at this moment. It's partly just fun, but it's also a rare opportunity to get to know people who are usually not part of my daily life, people who live far away and practice different faiths but with whom I share more in common than the surface differences would suggest. Each such meeting opens up a new spectrum of opportunities that lead in ways we cannot foresee, but which offer much hope to us as individuals and as a lovable but contentious human family. We are grateful to be here.

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