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Ordination as an Interfaith Minister |
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 On 12 June 2005 Stephanie was ordained at St John the Divine in New York as an Interfaith Minister.
She says,
For me this was a wonderful celebration of my long-time commitment to
interfaith - to respecting and honoring the teachings on love,
tolerance and compassion from all paths, and the "holy longing" that
goes beyond denominations. Like most of my classmates, I continue to
have a "home faith" but I have benefitted hugely from my contact over
several decades with teachers from many paths, and from the scriptures
and insights of different faiths. I will continue to offer spiritual
teaching, retreats and days of reflection from an interfaith
perspective. And I also see writing as central to my interfaith work,
bringing together the psychological with the spiritual and the social
with the personal. I have been studying the different paths for many
years - and will continue that throughout my lifetime - but for details
of the Seminary where I did my formal interfaith ministry training, you
can visithttp://www.newseminary.org
My feeling about interfaith sings in these lines from the great
13th-century Sufi poet, Hafiz:
I have learned so much from God
that I can no longer call myself
a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew...
and in these lines, from the equally sublime Sufi poet, Rumi
The sun's light looks a little different
on this wall than it does on that.
But it is one light....
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. |
