Threaded Wisdom is an opportunity to foster our interfaith relationships through a sharing of prayers, meditations, and practices from diverse faith traditions—a threading together of wisdom that allows for a greater depth of appreciation and understanding of others’ faith traditions.
Each month, we welcome community members to share words and practices that are related to a particular theme. Submissions can be a prayer, an excerpt from a text, a meditation, or an embodied practice.
Submissions don't necessarily have to be from a particular religious figure or tradition. We welcome shares from texts or individuals outside of a spiritual context who have offered inspiration and insight, which could be a philosopher or even a neuroscientist.
Thank you for joining us as we honor each other and ourselves through this threading together of wisdom.
With gratitude,
Wyoming Interfaith Network
MAY'S THEME: CHANGE
Katrina, a member of the Bahá’í faith and WIN Board, offered the following:
For this month’s theme of Change, I want to make room for the kind of change that goes deeper than symptom relief. This reflection honors the value of many paths while also calling us toward a fundamental transformation:
"All the spiritual and social movements existing in the world, and undoubtedly there are many of them, have some spark of the divine truth. Their very existence shows that they have something to offer to man and fulfill some purpose. But what the world needs, at such a critical moment in its history, is not a mere palliative. It needs a movement that goes deep into its social and spiritual illness and brings about a complete, fundamental change - a change that will include in its scope both the social and spiritual reform of man."
Shoghi Effendi, Extracts from the US Baha'i News
Change: A Meditation by Rev. Dr. Sally Palmer:
Change is constant and cosmic and real. As I turn 82, I am mindful of all the changes in our lives, and in our world. When my husband I looked down at all the Denver-Boulder traffic, I stated fifty years ago that we should not have children in such a chaotic world. Mike said: “We need children to carry on what is important in our lives.” Now, fifty years later, it is our children who will look down, or out, or inward and decide a future we cannot see.
My wise professor, Dr. Harvey Potthoff, a process theologian, taught about change in every class, whether it was “The Theology of the Body,” or “The Theology of Death, or simply “Process Theology,” the principle was the same—“God is in the river, as well as on the rocks. As believers, we are free not merely to cling but also to swim.”
Now, as I have been asked to think about change, I am overwhelmed. One reason is that the world seems to revolve SOOO fast around us. Another is that as I grow older, I am slower and I treasure those values—like hope and love and truthfulness and relationships—teachers and students, family and friends –all who change and some pass away...
And, after years of teaching the Bible, I treasure the changes described in Genesis—that God created things in their ordered place...gradually, one act at a time, until we humans were made in an image from the One Who is beyond change.
So, I think about the fast pace of our society as I read a meditation every morning from a Twelve-Step book entitled “Each Day A New Beginning”, which gives me hope in the coming day.
Now I conclude with a true story: My “process theologian”, Dr. Potthoff, deeply loved his brother, a physician. And, when Harvey got the news that his brother had died, he didn’t go to the Bible, to a pastor, to Nature, but to his hymnal and sat down to sing:
“Abide with me, fast falls the evening tide.
The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
O, Thou Who changeth not, abide with me.”
Rev. Elizabeth, who belongs to the Unitarian Universalist faith, shared the following:
The enfleshed ministry writes and published for GLBTQ people primarily, though it also holds deep wisdom for straight and cis allies. They write,
"To become is a life long process.
Nothing is constant,
not even the self.
We evolve in the midst of narratives meant only for some
and ways of being made narrow by fear and power.
We must, then, have the courage to listen to the truth of our own lives,
to the wisdom that comes from within—
responding without resistance or need to control,
but with welcome and curiosity.
This is what ensures our becoming is an unfolding
of our truest self.
This lifelong labor cannot be carried out alone. It requires help
from friends, and lovers, family, and creaturely companions
who bear witness to what makes us come alive.
And say to us, “Listen. Look. Feel. Pay attention to that.”
This is loving and being loved."
In seminary, I learned about Process Theology, a way of naming the manner in which humanity partners with the divine, creating creation in the ways we choose to respond to the happenstance events of life with good or evil, care or indifference or hatefulness. When we choose after a hurricane to house and help, as I did as a worker for Islamic Relief, we change the indifferent destruction of the hurricane's wind and rain into a chance for connection, courage, community-building, growth.
I met a woman named Laverne at a shelter I helped staff in Houston... her home had been flooded and filled with over a foot of mud, and she couldn't get back into her street, much less the house itself. But instead of lamenting her fate, she chose to focus on the blessings around her... that there was shelter, that good food was being provided at no cost to her, that the Bretheren Church had come to offer childcare to those who were in the shelter with their children. She couldn't go to work, so she made the most of her vacation, and when we wouldn't let her prep meals or make the coffee and tea to "be useful," she asked for a card table and a few extra chairs and started teaching teens and other adults waiting on calls from various aid organizations to play Spades in the meantime. A few years later, there was a second hurricane that hit Houston, and I found myself back in the area, this time moving supplies. While doing a drop off at one of the area's shelters, I saw a familiar face, Laverne! Turns out, she had chosen to sign up for the Red Cross as soon as she got back on her feet, turning the care shown to her into caring for the world and her neighbors and spreading that gift further and more widely. This choice, made out of the simple gifts of paying attention and finding the good in hard times, is for me, one of my favorite and most clear examples of how we may partner with the universe to bring more Love, more compassion, more good into the world.
I try to live my life like Laverne, knowing that however we may name the sacred, whether Love, G-d, Connection, Allah, Great Mystery, Creator, Blessing... that we are partners in change and becoming. We make good or evil in our smallest choices, and what we bring to each moment can bring the divine into the world and expand the footprint of all that becomes more Love for the future. May I pay as much attention to good as Laverne. And may we each and all find ways to partner with G-d to instigate the changes that bring good into the world each day. May we be a blessing to this world.
Liz, who is a Druid, sent the following:
[And interfaith group of religious leaders have smuggled information out of Earth, which has slid into fascism, to the titular station, which stands in opposition.]
Commander Susan Ivanova: So the Resistance is still alive back home?
Reverend Will Dexter: [laughs] President Clark wants folks to think otherwise, but the Resistance is very much alive. It’s all there.
Captain John Sheridan: Thanks. This‘ll help.
Commander Susan Ivanova: What do they say about us back home?
Rabbi Leo Meyers: That you’re a bunch of renegades, that you’re pirates and traitors working with aliens to subvert Earth.
Commander Susan Ivanova: You took a big chance bringing this to us. What if they would have been right about us?
Reverend Will Dexter: I didn’t think so, but if I was wrong, I was wrong. I'd rather do something and make a mistake than be frightened into doing nothing. That's the problem with they back home. Folks have been conned into thinking they can't change the world, have to accept what is. I'll tell you something, my friends, the world *is* changing every day. The only question is, who's doing it?
“And The Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place,” Babylon 5
Almost 20 years ago now, back when I was a Druid who didn’t know it, I had what I call my Green Awakening, the most profound moment of my life. I was already wandering the abyss of my twenties, trying to figure out how to get to where I was going in my life, and then I broke my arm in a really bad way. While my arm was healing, I spent a lot of time feeling more powerless than usual, ruminating about all the problems of the world: war, poverty, famine, climate change, social inequality, bigotry, and so on. I kept thinking about how these same problems had existed for as long as I could remember; nothing had really changed. Then one day, I had an epiphany: the *only* person whose actions I had control over was myself. I needed to examine the ways that my personal actions were contributing to these intractable problems and learn how to make different choices in order to make the world a better place. I believe this understanding is what Reverend Will Dexter is getting at in the scene above. It was a lesson in the interconnectivity of all beings, of personal sovereignty, autonomy, responsibility, and accountability. This revelation is what got me out my quarter-life crisis. I discovered sustainability, the green movement, the food movement, osteopathic medicine, and permaculture, worlds of possibility I previously had no idea existed. Over time, I profoundly changed the way I lived my life, from the way I eat, to how I dress, to how I clean house, and more. This newfound understanding illuminated my path and clarified my calling in life. There is a direct throughline between my Green Awakening and eventually discovering I had been a Druid all along.
Kim shared the following quote by Harriet Tubman:
Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars, to change the world.
Next month's theme — Equity
We want to hear from you! Please feel free to share your words or practices.
Submissions are due by the 15th of each month.
Please use this Google document form to send us your contributions, or email them directly to Kim for inclusion.
