Religious ritual cannot substitute for the hard work of building a better world.
“All of us have rituals and traditions that are dear to us. Interfaith gatherings are not meant to water them down,” said Father Gary Lazzeroni, the pastor at St. Joseph Catholic Church in central Vancouver. “Our diversity is something to be celebrated.”
He emphasized that the people of other faiths visiting his church on Wednesday night were his friends.
But ritual without real action becomes empty, Lazzeroni said. It’s tempting to turn inward and care only about oneself; it’s even tempting, he said, to adopt a “divisive, self-centered narrative” as a whole nation.
The 200 or so people who gathered at St. Joseph’s church to sing, pray and listen to local faith leaders were “telling a different story than what we’ve been hearing lately,” Lazzeroni said.
Action demonstrating unity and providing for people in need creates such strong light, he said, that darkness simply doesn’t stand a chance.
St. Joseph’s hosted the second annual Interfaith Service of Thanksgiving on the night before the national holiday. Muslim, Episcopal, First Nation, Sikh, Baha’i, Jewish and African Methodist Episcopal Zion leaders took turns praying and introducing some of their religious scriptures and rituals to their friends of other faiths.
The Traveling Day Society of All Saints Episcopal Church in Vancouver pounded an Indian drum while singing traditional songs of traveling and greeting the morning. Pawneet Sethi of the Guru Ramdass Sikh temple in Vancouver said that community meals are one important way that his faith strives to create a more egalitarian world. He described the massive community meals that are provided daily, free to all, at Sikhim’s holiest site, the Golden Temple in India. As many as 130,000 meals are sometimes served on a single day, he said; on a special holiday, make that 180,000. That’s not just a huge, ongoing social occasion — it’s a political statement and a challenge to divisions between people, he said.
After Sethi spoke, a pair of musicians from his group played a hymn on tabla and harmonium.
The notion of one day dedicated to giving thanks for a universe of bounty is odd, said Khalid Khan of the Islamic Society of Southwest Washington.
“For a Muslim, it is constant and continuous practice of giving thanks,” he said. “Not a day of thanks, not a season of thanks. All your waking moments are supposed to be giving thanks.”
Rabbi Elizabeth Dunsker of Congregation Kol Ami pondered the opportunities offered by a troubled world. “Our beautiful world is also broken, which is one of the ways it is beautiful,” she said. “We know this. We know it’s broken and we know it’s our job to heal it.”
Dunsker passed the microphone to a member of her group who sang the late Leonard Cohen’s soaring ballad, “Hallelujah.” Cohen “always wrote from his Jewish place “as he described his struggles with that broken world, Dunsker said.
The event at St. Joseph was a meaningful but mostly somber procession of speakers and musicians. So it was a real change of pace when the The Rev. Joyce Smith of the Community AME Zion Church rose to the pulpit and flashed a thousand-watt smile — just before her Disciples of Praise choir launched into a rousing, swaying version of “Child of God.”
“When I look around the room at all the beautiful faces, I can only imagine what it will be like in heaven,” Smith said. “We do live in a beautiful world. Let’s celebrate!”
