Faith Commons

A reverend, a rabbi and an imam serve in unity, confront the coronavirus crisis as one

The year’s holiest month nears amid one of the most somber backdrops of our lifetimes.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused, out of necessity, mandated isolation at a time when millions faithfully congregate in churches, synagogues, mosques and temples.

Houses of worship likely will remain largely empty through Passover, Easter and perhaps all of Ramadan. But in North Texas, an unlikely trinity has united in message, if not ideology, to help their communities collectively confront COVID-19.

Read Full Article on The Dallas Morning News

by Rabbi Nancy Kasten

“It’s not the end of the world.” How many of us have said something like that to someone we love when trying to comfort them, or ourselves? The phrase expresses the conviction that, no matter how challenging the trials and tribulations that assail us, there is an underlying cosmic order that allows us to hold on to a vision of a better future.

But right now, it feels as if it might be the end of the world, or at least the end of a world that made sense to us. A world, for example, in which we trusted experts with credentials in their field to develop public policy, rather than ideologues with eschatological agendas. A world in which natural disasters were rare enough that we could find and afford homeowners insurance. A world in which civil and human rights would be protected for every person, not just a select few. And a world in which people would speak to each other with respect, on- and off-line, even to people with whom they disagree.

Did we ever imagine a world in which our children and grandchildren would have active shooter drills in their classrooms? Or where a U.S. President would be indicted for multiple crimes, including many intended to overturn free and fair elections, and then be allowed to run for another term? 

Some can’t wait for this world to end. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among U.S. college students, indicating that many young people on the cusp of adulthood cannot envision a better future for themselves. 

But others are excited for this world to end so that they can experience their idea of a perfect one. In 2022 the Pew Research Center conducted a study in which 39% of American adults said they believed “we are living in end times.” That conviction is often correlated with another—that this world will end with the Second Coming of Jesus and he will establish the kingdom of God on earth. The worse things get, the nearer and sooner the end will come with the return of Jesus.

This mode of thinking is primarily associated with a particular subset of Christians, and goes hand in hand with believing that America is a Christian nation. Adherents to this way of thinking, including many who have been elected to public office, believe they should be doing whatever we can to accelerate the Second Coming of Jesus, rather than bearing positive witness to the coming kingdom by protecting the earth and one another. Mike Johnson, our current U.S. Speaker of the House and Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick are among the public officials who understand their election to be in service of this mission.

It is hard to offer a political alternative that can compete with Messianism, but that doesn’t mean that we have to capitulate to it as our only option. It is possible to fear that this world is coming to an end and to draw very different conclusions about what will come next, and what we should be doing to prepare for an unknown future.

Author and activist Joanna Rogers Macy understands the changes we are experiencing now as part of a necessary transformation from an industrial growth society to a more sustainable civilization. While Macy personally identifies as a Buddhist, the basic ideas that undergird her thinking are expressed in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other religious and spiritual traditions. They are rooted in abundance rather than scarcity, reinforce the inevitability of our interconnectedness to one another and to the earth, and call upon us to reach out to one another across all the barriers that have been erected between us, including, but not limited to, race, nationality, gender, socioeconomic status, and ideology. 

To go through this election year with a hope for a better future world, we must engage in personal practices that will strengthen our ability to face our fear of those who look and think and live differently than we do. Simultaneously we must support candidates for office who extend their hands and their hearts across lines of difference, and who are more afraid of degrading and destroying life than they are of alienating their base.

Lately we have seen some striking examples of elected officials speaking from their hearts, and expressing their faith in the humanity of their colleagues. In his speech at the U.S. Mexico border in late February, President Biden invited Mr. Trump to work with him on substantive immigration policy reform. Last week Senator Chuck Schumer risked alienating long-time supporters when he gave a speech promoting a political solution to the Israel/Gaza war, criticizing the current Israeli government and calling for new elections.

In the Book of Proverbs we find some perplexing and paradoxical wisdom for our times: “Happy is the one who is always afraid, but the one who hardens his heart will succumb to wickedness” (28:14). It is part of human nature to fear the unknown. But happiness lies in managing fear, not eliminating it. We cannot harden our hearts to one another, lest we forfeit our power and lose our hope.

by Rev. Dr. George Mason

February 14, 2024 Ash Wednesday | Woodland Church | San Antonio, TX

Scripture: 8:31-38

It would be easy to read Jesus in Mark’s Gospel as an apocalyptic figure who’s always contrasting good and evil, right and wrong, divine and human as binary choices. It’s either this or that, faithful or faithless. 

And here in chapter 8, we have plenty of reason to think this is what Jesus is doing. He scolds Peter for having his mind on human things not divine. He then tells the crowd and his disciples that if anyone would try to save their life they will lose it, but if they would lose their life for his sake and the gospel’s they will save it. He finishes with a flourish about the whole lot of the generation: if they are ashamed of him and his words before the world, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory. 

This or that. Either, or. No gray area, no nuance. You’re sold out for Christ or you’re a sell out to the world. That’ll preach, don’t you know?! Let’s go straight to the altar call. Randy and Daniel, can we get I Have Decided to Follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back?

It must have confused Peter to hear Jesus’ rebuke. After all, wasn’t he doing exactly that in following Jesus? He was willing to die for him. He was ready to call on the people to march on Jerusalem and confront the evil empire of Rome. He just knew in his bones that this was the moment. If we don’t fight, we aren’t going to have a country. We’ve got to be strong. We have to take back the country for God. Let’s go!

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s the kind of appeal that Christian nationalists are still making in our country. They have absolute moral clarity. The Right is right, and the left is wrong. Compromise is complicity with evil. We have to secure our border against immigrant invaders. We have to have dominion over the seven mountains of society for Christ: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. We have to take back control of all things in the name of Jesus. And we have to stop being afraid of using power to achieve God’s will.

Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today magazine, used to work for Southern Baptists in their Ethics and Public Policy agency. He left the SBC in disgust and has written a book about his experience titled, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America. In it, he talks about how time after time multiple pastors would tell him essentially the same story about when they would quote the Sermon on the Mount parenthetically in their preaching—turn the other cheek—only to have someone come up after and to say, Where did you get those liberal talking points? “And what was alarming to me,” he said, “is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ, the response would not be, I apologize. The response would be, yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.”

Doesn’t that sound just like the Peter who Jesus rebuked in this passage? Peter wanted Jesus to be strong, not weak.

But what if Jesus wasn’t weak, but meek? What if Jesus understood that meekness isn’t weakness; it’s a subversive kind of strength that alters everything by using an alternative power that is eternally renewable energy?

Alternative power. Renewable energy. That right there is controversial, especially in Texas today. Although Texas is the leader in wind and solar energy, we are so committed to the fossil fuel industry that state law prohibits investment companies from doing business with the state if it moves away from fossil fuel investments. But these polluting energy sources are overheating the planet and depleting our natural resources. Once you burn carbon-based coal or gas or oil, it’s gone forever, save for the negative effects left in the atmosphere.

The same is true of human power that makes everything a zero-sum game of winners and losers. But what if the way of Jesus is an alternative form of power that creates a healthy environment in which everyone is able to flourish?

If we look closer at what Jesus is saying here, I think we will see the power of meekness that Garrett is going to focus on in this season of Lent. Meekness is a third way that transforms us and the world. It changes our perspective by teaching us his subversive way of power. 

When Jesus contrasts divine and human things, he isn’t saying that if you serve God, you will defeat your enemies by subduing them; he is telling us that we will transform enemies into friends, seeing them first as opponents and humanizing them rather than demonizing them. And this is crucially important, because in the end, he will die for the sins of the world in order to include Every Body, not to exclude any of them in favor of us. And this is the real scandal of the gospel, isn’t it? That all means all!

When Jesus tells us that we must deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him, this is the power of meekness we have to learn. It’s a meekness that works, despite what we assume.

The interfaith organization I lead in Dallas is called Faith Commons. We recently put a post on social media about the way we do our work. My partner, Rabbi Nancy Kasten, wrote this: “The animating spirit of Faith Commons is a conviction that there will always be forces, in the world and in ourselves, that will attempt to separate us from one another.” Someone who read that commented that such a claim revealed a massive lack of self-awareness on my part, given that I led a congregation in the most divisive move that split the church I pastored. He was referring to my leading the church to be inclusive of LGBTQ+ persons, a decision that caused hundreds of people to leave the church within months of the vote. 

But that’s just way we fall victim to the zero-sum game of the world’s power politics. It assumes that including the excluded means excluding the included. In truth, all we did was to say that we had one class of membership that applied equally to all. That all means all. That difference doesn’t have to divide. 

Every Body is dust and Every Body is divine—both at the same time. This is a third way of thinking and acting. It’s the power of meekness that suffers on behalf of our neighbor rather than making our neighbor suffer on our behalf.

When we take up our cross, that’s meek power at work. It’s giving up self for sake of selves. And when we give ourselves up for others, we find ourselves in the company of others.

My daughter, Cameron, is a public school advocate and a guardian of the right of all children to feel welcome in our schools, regardless of their religion or lack of it. She recently wrote a column for the San Antonio Express about the pending deadline issued by the Texas legislature that every school board in the state vote as to whether they would allow paid or volunteer religious chaplains to serve in our schools. She is against it if you didn’t know. She wants every school board to say no to what she rightly sees as an unconstitutional attempt to bring evangelizing foxes into the public henhouse. But as she considered this either/or decision, she realized it has the potential to play right into the hands of our polarized society. Instead, she praised a third way—what we might call meek power. 

In this approach, a school board could pass a resolution that affirmed that it would not discriminate against religious volunteers participating in our schools, without endorsing their attempts to dominate in Jesus’ name. Here’s the way she put it: “My initial beef with this option is rooted in these districts’ unwillingness to stop the intrusion of religious influence into public schools. But I’m starting to like it. Finding a workaround to the Legislature’s demands is deliciously subversive. By refusing to play their game, these school boards are protecting their districts from political polarization, which is the biggest problem facing public education today.”

When we take up our cross voluntarily, we are subverting the binary of those who would either put the cross on others against their will or accepting defeat by weakly having the cross put on us. When we take up our cross and follow Jesus, we will find that by the logic of the gospel, we will find our life again and again and again. 

The power of meekness is eternally renewable energy.

by Rev. Dr. George Mason

January 7, 2024 | Church of the Transfiguration | Dallas, TX

Scripture: Mark 1:4-11

Do you see what he did, your good rector? He looked ahead at the liturgical day on the calendar for the Baptism of the Lord Sunday and invited George the Baptist to preach! Next thing you know, he’ll install a tub in this beautiful sanctuary and start immersing you baptismal candidates.

Well, probably not, but I should say thank you for the invitation and confess that I relish the chance to preach today on a subject dear to my denominational heart. We Baptists didn’t name ourselves; we were named … by the likes of you. It was a bit of a slur at first, the name Baptist. We had broken off from the Church of England in 1609, right about the time the King James Bible was being translated. We weren’t Protestants, strictly speaking; we were Dissenters and Separatists—two things we have all but mastered through the years, for good or ill.

Baptists thought that as long as the church was wedded to the state, we would always get confused as to where our loyalties lay. When you baptize a person into a Church whose supposed head is a human monarch, you end up with a Church serving the State as its handmaid instead of serving as its moral conscience.

Now, to be fair, that was 400 years ago, and you Episcopalians have figured that out for yourselves just as well or better than we Baptists have. I mean, I would bet you there were more Baptists than Episcopalians who marched on the Capitol on January 6 claiming they were claiming the country for Christ and his man, the former president. So, don’t let me get all high and mighty on you about how our baptism is better than yours, just because we wait for the age of consent or use more water.

Don’t tell the Baptists I said this, but it’s not the amount of water that makes the baptism, it’s what the water amounts to. That is, it’s what baptism means. And the short answer is that we are all in with God by being all in with the Jesus way of life in the world.

The practice of baptism by full immersion in water is a vivid picture of being all in. We don’t dip our toes in the shallow end; we go all in. And even if you sprinkle, just be sure to realize you are truly diving in. This a complete turning from an orientation to self, as if faith were a way to get God’s favor for you at the expense of others. 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it well: Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol. So, to those of you being baptized today and those of us remembering our baptisms: I hope you hear the same words in your spirit that Jesus heard at his baptism: You are my Child, the beloved; in you I am well pleased. But understand that Jesus is a stand-in for all humanity, not just for you. You are baptized into a church where all equal in the eyes of God and one another. We are all in with one another. And we are all in defending and protecting every other person made in the image and likeness of God. Which is, of course, every human being.

As we pick up our Gospel lection today, John is out in the wilderness where he is at home with the jackals and eats locusts and wild honey. He is a Baptist separatist, don’t you know?! He is not in Jerusalem cozying up to Temple priests and Roman politicians who have a neat little arrangement to keep the peace and close their eyes to injustice. When religion serves the empire, it baptizes the values of inequality and the violence necessary to maintain it.

The historical details of this story are fuzzy if not disputed, but some stories are too good not to be true. Ivan the Great—not to be confused with his grandson, Ivan the Terrible, was tsar of Russia in the Fifteenth Century. Ivan had arranged to marry Sophia of Palaiologos, a Byzantine princess. But this would mean that Ivan would have to baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church.

So, a priest was dispatched to Moscow to instruct Ivan in Orthodox doctrine. Ivan was a quick student and learned the catechism in record time. 

Arrangements were concluded, and the tsar made his way to Athens accompanied by 500 troops—his personal palace guard. He was to be baptized into the Orthodox church by immersion, as was the custom of the Eastern Church. His soldiers, ever loyal, asked to be baptized also. The Patriarch of the Church assigned 500 priests to give the soldiers a one-on-one catechism crash course. The soldiers, all 500 of them, were to be immersed in one mass baptism. 

Crowds gathered from all over Greece.
What a sight that must have been, 500 priests and 500 soldiers, a thousand people, walking into the blue Mediterranean. The priests were dressed in black robes and tall black hats, the official dress of the Orthodox Church. The soldiers wore their battle uniforms with of all their regalia—ribbons of valor, medals of courage. and their weapons of battle.

But there was a problem that had to be negotiated first. The Church prohibited professional soldiers from being members; they would have to give up their commitment to bloodshed. They could not be killers and Church members, too. In the end, the interests of the Empire prevailed over the doctrine of the Church, as it inevitably does. A compromise was struck.

As the words were spoken and the priests began to baptize them, each soldier reached to his side and withdrew his sword. Lifting it high overhead, every soldier was totally immersed—everything baptized except his fighting arm and sword.

John’s baptism, we are told, is a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Jews baptized proselytes—Gentiles who wanted to become Jews. Jews didn’t need baptism for themselves the way Gentiles. They were already the chosen people. But this is what makes John’s baptismal call to Jews so radical and compelling.

They understood in their bones that something had to change. And change is what repentance is all about. John is telling Jews that God demands that they come apart from their complicity with the Empire and religious leaders who looked the other way at injustice, employing or defending violence to keep the peace of Rome. This was the sin that needed repentance and forgiveness. It wasn’t thinking impure thoughts about your girlfriend or boyfriend or overcharging for your pomegranates at the market. It was a massive unfaithfulness to the covenant of Israel that called for an alternative way of life in the world. 

In his baptism, Jesus shows his solidarity with God and with us sinners who are called to renounce the destructive ways of the world. When the heavens are torn open at his baptism, that language suggests a break with settled realities of earth. Heaven is coming down. The power and glory of God are being released. The Spirit descending upon him in the form of a dove indicates that the values of heaven are rooted in peace and justice. 

You are my son, the beloved; in you I am well pleased is not a sentimental blessing of God the Father to Jesus the Son. It is the combining of two passages from the Hebrew Bible that indicates the meaning of his mission. You are my beloved son comes from a coronation psalm of Israel’s kings. In you I am well pleased comes from the Suffering Servant passages of Isaiah. Jesus understood that he was a leader of a different kind. He would embody the way of revolutionary love that would fulfill Isaiah’s prophetic vision of a world of abundance and blessing for all humanity.

To see that through, he himself would suffer at the hands of sinners rather than take up sword against his enemies. Only by exposing the folly of violence and the futility of injustice can the world be saved from its warring ways.

This is what it means to follow Jesus in baptism. We are all in with God and the way of Jesus in the world. Not only must we baptize our sword-bearing arms, but we must also speak and act nonviolently as agents of peace and justice in a world that won’t go down without a fight.

Friends, we are living in a violent culture with enormous social inequities that fuel that violence. Those who are left out and pushed aside are apt to take up arms in the cause of their freedom. And those who retaliate do the same to put down rebellion in the name of their own survival. 

This is vividly demonstrated in Gaza. Hamas’s horrendous attack on October 7 with more than 1,200 dead and many others raped and wounded. It provoked a massive retribution that continues to this moment with more than 21,000 Palestinians dead, 80% of them women and children. And where do you think Israel has gotten those weapons of death? From us, paid for by our tax dollars. So, when we say we unconditionally support Israel in their fight against Hamas, we are effectively denying our baptisms, not to mention abandoning our Palestinian Christian siblings in the process.

And what about the ongoing slaughter in the U.S. due to gun violence? How will we ever see an end to school shootings of children if the church doesn’t speak up? We are more committed to our legal right to bear arms than to the moral right of our fully baptized arms!

On this day when we remember that in Jesus’ baptism he was all in with God’s way of peace and justice, the question is ours to answer: are we who are baptized in his name all in too?

by Rabbi Nancy Kasten

In January of 2023 Faith Commons invited a group of people to a meeting to discuss how to reduce food insecurity in Dallas. To be honest, we were frustrated. Feeding the hungry is one of our foundational responsibilities as people of faith, but the way we have been doing it has not reduced food insecurity, nor has it decreased food waste. How might we do better?

The invitation went out to the usual suspects, such as the North Texas Food Bank and VNA/Meals on Wheels, but we also invited people who work in the city and the county. We invited funders and policy experts. We invited educators and elected officials. And we invited people who are growing community as they grow food security. We were particularly interested in listening to those working in community-driven, neighborhood-based organizations to learn more about their resilient, sustainable, and accessible responses to hunger. Dallas has many such organizations, each of them producing, collecting, and/or distributing food as well as a range of other resources. 

Last week’s meeting, our ninth, was held at 4DWN, an urban skate park where food is rescued, produced, served, redistributed, and sold. Representatives from BridgeBuilders, For Oak Cliff, Paul Quinn College, and West Dallas Multipurpose Center attended. Staff from the North Texas Food Bank, Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL), and Dallas County Department of Health and Human Services came to the meeting. Two experienced nonprofit strategists joined the group for the first time. 

Our format is informal. Each person at the table shares the strengths and challenges of their organization’s operations. When a need is expressed, more times than not, someone at the table has an idea for how to meet it.

  • When 4DWN and BridgeBuilders shared their frustration about being in a tech desert in South Dallas, Paul Quinn and West Dallas Multipurpose Center knew where they could get tablets donated with a year of free data.
  • BridgeBuilders described their collaboration with Kroger and Bonton Farm to bring Grocery Connect, an online shopping service designed for traditionally underserved neighborhoods, into South Dallas. Paul Quinn asked for a contact so they can become a distribution center.
  • For those who are building a “food as medicine” element into their programs, North Texas Food Bank shared information about their Nudge program, designed to encourage healthy choices about food, physical activity, and other aspects of wellness.
  • We learned that Dallas County HHS has mini-grants that are available for community gardens in zip codes where food insecurity is highest.
  • West Dallas Multipurpose Center shared the need for a therapeutic horticulturist to work with veterans, and the North Texas Food Bank has a former employee who might fit the bill. 
  • CPAL shared that over well over a billion dollars’ worth of federal benefits go unused in Dallas County right now. CPAL works with community organizations to increase access to those benefits for food and rent. They can bring their services to any of these organizations. One of the nonprofit strategists at the table pointed out that Texas lost $26 billion in federal benefits due to a flawed census count. She is developing strategies to help Texas get a better count next time around. 

The give and take that takes place at these meetings is our goal. We have no other agenda, or desired outcome. Yet no one wanted the meeting to end. Several participants offered to host the next meeting. The next morning, we received this note in our inbox:

“What a straight-up blessing that gathering was yesterday. I don’t even have words. I do want to say thank you, though, regardless how inadequate the words. I am really looking forward to listening and learning how I might contribute. “

Food rescue is the practice of gleaning edible food that would otherwise go to waste and redistributing it to those who will use it. At Faith Commons, we also work on faith rescue—gleaning the faith that motivates people to do good in the world and redistributing it to those suffering from disillusionment and despair. Our experience reinforces our conviction that hospitality disinfects fear, and collaboration reveals abundance. We hope this strategy will reduce food and other less visible forms of insecurity, through strengthening our trust and faith in one another. 

Learn more about some of these organizations here:

Good God Podcast | Season 11 Episode 1: Joey Darwin: A grocery store in South Dallas that nourishes body and spirit while nurturing autonomy and dignity

Good God Podcast | Season 11 Episode 2: A different kind of Sunday Service: 4DWN’s food rescue and recovery

Good God Podcast | Season 11 Episode 3: City of Dallas: Sustainable Hunger Solutions through Food Distribution and Education

Good God Podcast | Season 11 Episode 4: Restorative Farms: Community Supported Agriculture in South Dallas

Originally sent from the Office of the Chaplain at SMU

Dear Faculty and Staff:

SMU is rooted in the Christian tradition of Methodism and celebrates religious belief and practice that nourish the life of the mind and spirit.  As spring unfolds, many religions observe holy days that bring the community of faith together.  In this season, we remind you of the University’s religious observance policy and religious holy days taking place in the Spring semester.

Students who need to miss class for religious observance are expected to notify faculty in advance of their absence and are required to make up any missed work.  While students are expected to notify faculty at the beginning of the term if they will need an adjustment to assignment dates or exams, we would encourage faculty to work with students throughout the semester to make proper arrangements for accessing course materials and making up missed work in a timely manner.

Faculty should anticipate requests from students observing the following holy days:

  • Islam:
    • Ramadan:
      • The anticipated dates for Ramadan are March 10-April 9, culminating with the Eid-al-Fitr holiday on April 9.  These dates are based on the sighting of the moon and may shift by one day (earlier or later).
      • During the blessed month of Ramadan, observant Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, abstaining from food and beverages (even water).  Observant Muslims eat a substantial meal (suhoor) before dawn and break the fast (iftar) with a feast at sunset.
      • Late afternoon classes and tests may be challenging for students who are fasting.
      • The final ten days (March 31-April 9) of Ramadan are the most auspicious days.  During this time, following the iftar meal, many observant Muslims pray and recite the Quran late into the evening with their religious community.  Early morning classes and tests may be challenging for students who participate in these rituals.
    • Eid-al-Fitr
      • Eid-al-Fitr is expected to begin at sundown on April 8 – and families will be celebrating the full day of feasting on April 9.  The exact date is determined by the sighting of the moon in the last days of Ramadan.  Student may request to be excused from class on April 9 to ensure that they can celebrate the holiday with family.
  • Christianity:
    • Good Friday/Easter
      • Most Western Christian traditions will be celebrating Good Friday on March 29 and Easter on March 31.
      • Orthodox (Eastern) Christians will be celebrating Good Friday on May 3 and Easter on May 5.
      • You can anticipate requests from Orthodox students who plan to attend services on Good Friday, which may take place throughout the day.  Please note that this year, Good Friday (Orthodox) is an exam day, and you may receive a request to reschedule an exam.
  • Judaism:
    • Passover:
      • The Jewish community is celebrating Passover April 22-30.
      • This year, the first two nights of the Passover Seder celebration fall on Monday and Tuesday nights, April 22 and 23. The Jewish community observes April 23 and 24 and April 29 and 30 as holy days, which traditionally one would be unable to attend class or go to work.
      • You may receive requests for excused absences on April 23, 24, 29 and 30.

Thank you for your commitment to support holistic student growth that nurtures the mind, body and spirit.  Each religious tradition is diverse, and the summary above does not speak to every variation you may encounter.  …

Lisa Garvin, Chaplain and Minister to the University

Sheri Kunovich, Associate Provost for Student Academic Engagement and Success

by Rabbi Nancy Kasten

Last week someone asked to meet us at our location. We had to explain that Faith Commons is not a brick and mortar operation. Our location is outside of sanctuaries and religious schools, in places where you need to look, sometimes pretty hard at first, to find God’s presence. 

But once you start, you can’t stop. Meeting people where they are. Listening to the story under the story. Asking questions. Being willing to consider new approaches to intractable problems. We are beginning a new year at a time when what was once familiar has become strange, what once felt safe no longer seems that way, and it’s hard to feel hopeful about the state of humanity. But we have an antidote. At Faith Commons the world opens up through connections with people you didn’t know before, and places you never visited before. Comfort and calm enter hearts and souls again. 

When George founded Faith Commons, he did not know that a tornado would soon rip North Dallas neighborhoods apart, or that a global pandemic would send us into exile behind walls and screens, or that a winter freeze would isolate food deserts from essential services and supplies. When we planned a “What Makes This Land Holy” trip to Israel/Palestine, we did not know Hamas would brutally attack southern Israel two days before the tour was scheduled to begin, rupturing assumptions and alliances that, until then, had knit families, communities, and nations together. 

But the animating spirit of Faith Commons is a conviction that there will always be forces, in the world and in ourselves, that will attempt to separate us from one another. And given that reality, faith calls us to find and reveal the transcendent presence that unites us nonetheless. God’s holiness is constant, even when hidden in people, ideas, and circumstances that are foreign, disturbing, or even gut-wrenching. Our role as human beings in partnership with God is to confirm that presence, and to reflect it as best we can. When grief, fear, and anger threaten to paralyze us, or turn us against each other, faith challenges us to look elsewhere for our next best step. Faith is not a solution to a problem. Faith is a way to make our way forward when we are overcome by the morass of darkness, disappointment, and despair. 

At Faith Commons we make our way forward by seeking out our neighbors, both proximate and remote, and developing authentic relationships with them. 

  • Our Good God podcast lifts up the work that people throughout our community and beyond it are doing to refasten ties that bind neighbor to neighbor. 
  • Our monthly newsletter, Thoughts from the Commons, features written reflections on current events, along with links to resources that expose readers to other reflections on the same or related events. 
  • We bring together leaders from different sectors of our community who are addressing needs such as better access to healthy and sustainable food, access to the polls, and access to essential health care, so they can do their work more effectively and comprehensively. 

Faith Commons offers a perspective that never denies differences, but affirms and insists on interdependence. We see diversity as a manifestation of the divine, rather than an aberration to be controlled or accommodated. And in our work as an organization we encourage others to do the same. 

So as this new year begins—a year when global, local, and interpersonal conflict is impacting each and every one of us physically, emotionally and spiritually—we invite you to join us. We may not have the power to directly influence leaders or foot soldiers who are literally blowing up the world and its foundations, but we do have power over our own thoughts and actions. We do have the ability to seek out new and different perspectives, perspectives that might connect us to individuals and groups we did not know before. We do have the power to speak and act in ways that affirm human dignity and protect human life and limb. 

Some of us may be asking ourselves (with good reason) “What will become of us in 2024?” 

The answer, in a nutshell, is, “It’s up to us.” This year and every year we can be healers and unifiers, true to our faiths and the Source of all faiths.

Faith Commons will continue to provide suggestions and tools for how to do this. We are sharing some of them below. And we welcome you to share with us those you find.

Getting To Know The Concerns Of Your Neighbors:

Municipal Meeting Recommendation

City of Dallas

Meet Immigrants and Unhoused Persons:

At Oak Lawn United Methodist Church

Spend Some Time Somewhere You Haven’t Been Before:

Restorative Farms

4DWN

Changing The World Begins With Changing Our Minds:

Transforming Minds, Mind & Life Institute

What Does It Actually Cost You To Be Kind?

“Do It Anyway” by Mother Teresa

Compassion vs Empathy:

That Numbness You’re Feeling? There’s a Word for It, The New York Times

This article was originally published on Preston Hollow People. You can access the original article here.

by Maria Lawson

Rabbi Nancy Kasten, chief relationship officer at Faith Commons, works to develop relationships for the interfaith nonprofit and build on ones she’s established during her 35 years in Dallas.

She coordinates conversations among different faiths regarding issues such as voter protection, welcoming of refugees and asylum seekers, access to reproductive health care, and free speech protection among others.

Her advocacy earned our admiration, making her Preston Hollow People’s Person of the Year.

“I love meeting people … and also connecting people to each other to work on issues, people who may not know each other already (or) may not know what each other is doing to address the same issues, ” Kasten said.

She’s recently been involved in a Faith Commons initiative to address food insecurity in South Dallas through sustainable solutions. The nonprofit has convened people from organizations and agencies addressing food insecurity to bring fresh produce, healthy food, and nutrition education through local gardens, corner stores, and bodegas.

Her involvement with Faith Commons came shortly after it was founded by Dr. George Mason in 2018.

“It was just a way to do everything that I was already doing but with an incredible platform and resources,” she said. “And of course, George has his own wonderful reputation in the community and his own relationships that could be built upon.”

Interfaith work is especially important now for Americans to work together in the interest of the country’s founding principles—freedom of religion and the welcoming of people from different faith traditions—Kasten says.

Continue reading this article here (page 12).

by Rev. Dr. George Mason, Second Baptist Church, Lubbock, Texas

2nd Sunday of Advent, December 10, 2023 |  Isaiah 40:1-5; 2 Peter 3:8-15a

It’s an occupational hazard, I suppose. Whenever bad things happen—9/11 terrorist attacks, COVID-19, Hamas’s savage massacre of Israeli citizens and Israel’s bloody retaliation in Gaza, someone will ask me if I think we are living in the End Times. Usually not just one someone. All the signs are there, they say. It just feels like the end of the world. You’re the preacher, George, what do you think?

To be honest, I don’t think they want to know what I think so much as have their feelings confirmed: fear of coming judgment on the world; hope that they themselves will escape it by their faith.

On this Second Sunday of Advent that is both Peace Sunday and Bethlehem Sunday, we feel both things, don’t we? Hopes and fears. In his carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Phillips Brooks gave us that memorable line: … the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. I’ll bet every one of you can tell us about both hopes and fears you harbor right now. Maybe they are personal, maybe global, maybe congregational. But what’s going to win out, the hopes or the fears?

The writer of 2 Peter felt them both in his day, probably after the turn of the 1st Century and under persecution from the Roman Empire. And in times before then and since, the world has indeed felt dark and worrisome.

A hundred years ago, the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, penned a poem titled The Second Coming, borrowing and twisting Christian themes. Scholars have analyzed it to death, without much consensus, but the first part isn’t hard to figure:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while
the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

You can almost feel things falling apart in his language, can’t you? Yeats expresses the fear that what we call civilization is threatened on all sides. The falcon is on its own in the skies, untethered from its disciplining master. The rules of society aren’t holding us together anymore. Morality is failing. Religious ceremonies of innocence like baptism and confirmation have lost their force in the face of the violence that tears us apart. 

Some of that violence is literal and some relational. We have wars in Ukraine and Gaza. We also have a national election 11 months away, and whether you lean right or left hardly matters in the face of democracy itself being on the ballot. If you can even get a ballot, what with voter suppression becoming more real with every election.

Trust in leaders is hard to find everywhere. We used to think our country was the exception. We used to think our churches were the exception. No longer.

Yeats was writing during the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1919. Ireland’s bloody conflict with England was fresh in his nostrils, and the West was still reeling from the Great War in Europe that took so many lives. He believed Christianity had failed. The values of justice and mercy could no longer stem the tide of bad actors who were gaining control over the future.

Sound familiar? Many today feel the same. In fairness, I have heard this jeremiad from people on the Right and Left both.

The Right bemoans that the stable world they knew where America was Christian and noble and, well, right, is being torn apart by people who don’t have the values that made our faith and our country great. They think every religion gets a pass except Christianity. They believe public schools have become secular and undermine their faith by teaching tolerance toward gay and transgender youth. People seeking equality and justice in the streets and in Congress are really trying to impose immorality on everyone in the name of freedom. So, they look for a strong leader to stand

up for them and rescue the world as they have known it before it’s too late.

The Left cries for freedom and a new order after centuries in which some people have been oppressed by those who have held the reins of power and privilege from generation to generation. They want to smash systems that have kept women, people of color, immigrants and LGBTQ+ persons from full participation in our society. They often find fault with Christianity for propping up these systems and not proclaiming a gospel of liberating power that brings justice and equality for all. They see those who have profited by these ways of organizing society as the biggest threat to the common good. They aren’t looking for a strongman to take us back, they are looking for a revolution that would move us forward to make the promises of democracy real at last.

In other words, people across the cultural and political spectrum all feel the hopes and fears of our time. So, where is God in all of this and what is God calling us to do?

The writer of 2 Peter uses language similar to Yates in saying that things are falling apart and that the world as we know it will be judged. Like the prophets of the Hebrew Bible and the Hellenist Stoics of his own time, he talks in cosmic terms about the dissolution of the heavens and the earth, the burning fire of judgment that will bring an end to things as we have known them. But what does he mean by this sci-fi sounding imagery?

Apocalyptic language was commonly used to speak about coming moral judgment in which the righteous would endure and inherit a new heaven and new earth. It was their version of end-of-the-world horror movies that are so popular now. While some take all this literally—and God knows, climate change makes me wonder if we shouldn’t, we should ask what the spiritual meaning is inside it. The message is this: God is coming to fulfill God’s promises of enduring shalom. The world set to rights. Justice and peace. Justice first, then peace. Always justice first.

The Rev. William Barber is an African-American minister who leads the Poor People’s 

Campaign in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. He believes God is at work to bring a moral revolution to the world, but the means by which that comes is by a knife that cuts. Figuratively, that is. There has to be division for healing, he says, citing Jesus when he talked about how being his follower will cause division between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law. Sounds like many a family Thanksgiving table, don’t you know?! How did yours go this year?

Peace will not come by patting each other on the back and being nice in the face of evil. It won’t come from being less passionate about important things and just trying to get along as moderates. There’s no [part of] scripture, Barber says, that ever speaks to a peace that is with the absence of justice. Even in the Hebrew language, shalom is “peace.” But shalom is not just the absence of tension; it’s the presence of justice. And … Jesus never discussed some way of people being okay spiritually but still broken physically.

2 Peter counsels us to holy living and patient waiting upon the Lord’s coming. That doesn’t mean we retreat and wait for Jesus to show up and deliver us in the Second Coming. It means we actively wait by being living witnesses to the new creation God is bringing. Holy living requires patience and self-discipline.

Some of us become impatient and undisciplined with tragic results. One of the saddest stories I heard during COVID was a Michigan couple in their 70s who died together in a hospital room within one minute of each other. She had been a nurse, and they had been vigilant about staying home and wearing masks, doing all the right things during the pandemic. But they got tired of waiting and went out to a restaurant where people weren’t wearing masks. They both contracted the coronavirus and died side by side in the very hospital where she worked. Their children buried them side by side, prematurely.

The lesson is not just about COVID precautions. It’s a spiritual parable for Christians to hold on to their faith and not to give up in the face of a world that is falling apart. We must stay vigilant. Holiness and patience combine to overcome fear with hope.

Yates looked at the world a century ago and said Surely some revelation is at hand;/ Surely the Second Coming is at hand. But his hope was in some rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ [who] Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? He used the imagery of the Savior being born in Bethlehem, but in this second coming he saw a different creature altogether who would emerge to deliver the world on terms other than what Jesus preached and promised.

The phrase slouching toward Bethlehem is apt, nonetheless. It suggests a slowness and plodding rather than a swift and violent coming. And 2 Peter says something like that too. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

Today we light the Bethlehem Candle of Peace. We believe the Prince of Peace was born in Bethlehem and the promise of peace still radiates from that little town. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight, we sing. 

I was in Bethlehem at the beginning of October. I attended a conference on the plight of the Palestinians who have been living under Israeli occupation for 56 years. Little did I know that two days after the conference, while I was in Jerusalem awaiting a group to arrive from Dallas for a nine-day tour on peacemaking, Hamas would strike with such brutal inhumanity that the world would lose its collective breath. Hamas got tired of waiting and opted for savagery of historic depths.

Christians have cancelled Christmas in the Holy Land this year. They will observe it religiously in their homes and churches, but not in public celebrations out of deference to those who are dying in Gaza.

My friend, Pastor Mitri Raheb, is a Palestinian Christian and theologian who likes to say that Jesus was born across the street from where he lives. Twenty-six years ago, Dr. Raheb started the first and only university of arts and culture in Palestine. He knew that the occupation wouldn’t last forever. None ever has in the history of the world. But he also knew that taking up arms wasn’t an option for Christians who claim the child of Bethlehem as their savior. Dar al-Kalima University brings together Palestinian Muslim and Christian young people, teaching them creative ways to reimagine the world beyond the politics of domination and exploitation that God is bringing judgment upon and that will dissolve at long last. What will endure are people who know how to live together in peace and care for one another with respect.

“Hope is what we do,” Mitri says over and over.

It’s slow work—slouching toward Bethlehem, you might say. But it’s where and how hope overcomes fear, whether in Bethlehem this very day or in Lubbock, Texas this very hour.

by Rabbi Nancy Kasten

In 1870 Ulysses Grant signed a bill establishing “December 25th…commonly called Christmas Day” as a federal holiday, along with January 1, Thanksgiving Day, and the Fourth of July. Christmas was celebrated by both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, so Grant felt that the day represented reconciliation, unification, and peace for a country that had just been torn apart from the inside out.  

To date, the law of this land upholds the constitutionality of Christmas as a national holiday, making a distinction between the religious nature of the holiday and the more universalist intention with which it was established. Rob Boston, senior advisor at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, offers a way to see Christmas as an opportunity to exercise our freedom of religion:

“How wonderful it is to have the choice (of whether and how to celebrate Christmas)—and we have it because in our country, unlike some other nations, the government does not presume to tell us how, where, when or if we ought to worship. That means what we do on Dec. 25 is left to individual conscience, which is exactly where it belongs.” (Source)

At this time of year most of us choose to make a special effort to connect to our family, our faith and our community, whether we celebrate Christmas or not. But many of us may be finding that harder than usual right now. Differences of opinion have become existential arguments. Fear and anger rule the airwaves, incessantly calling on us to respond in kind, not in kindness.

Joy Harjo, the first Native American named Poet Laureate of the United States, offers an analysis and an antidote for our current affliction in her poem, “Once the World Was Perfect.”

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.
Then we took it for granted.
Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.
Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.
And once Doubt ruptured the web,
All manner of demon thoughts
Jumped through—
We destroyed the world we had been given
For inspiration, for life—
Each stone of jealousy, each stone
Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.
No one was without a stone in his or her hand.
There we were,
Right back where we had started.
We were bumping into each other
In the dark.
And now we had no place to live, since we didn’t know
How to live with each other.
Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another
And shared a blanket.
A spark of kindness made a light.
The light made an opening in the darkness.
Everyone worked together to make a ladder.
A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,
And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,
And their children, all the way through time—
To now, into this morning light to you.

Today we feel ourselves bumping into each other in the dark. Lines are being drawn between allies and foes, and it seems harder and harder to differentiate between the two. There is a lot of light being lit on lawns and in shopping malls during this season, but not so much in our hearts and souls. The bigness and brightness of light displays are beautiful, but they don’t leave us with the feeling of safety and comfort that we are yearning for. For that, we need empathy and compassion—a spark of kindness.

As we approach our national holiday on December 25, we at Faith Commons are sharing some gifts with you. These videos, webinars, and other resources highlight how some of the organizations and individuals we admire and/or partner with are building ladders by bringing people together to listen to one another and to affirm the humanity of one another. Watching and listening to them will require time, and likely some discomfort. But reconciliation, unification and peace are not accomplishments or aspirations to be achieved once and for all. They are practices which individuals and groups must engage in repeatedly, in varied times and under varied circumstances, not just when it feels natural, but most especially when it does not. We invite you to practice with us, in this holiday season and in every season.

May your homes and hearts be filled with light, and may you share that light with a world that needs it desperately.

by Rabbi Nancy Kasten

Several years ago, an Israeli friend participated in a vacation home swap with an acquaintance in Europe. When she returned to her home in Jerusalem, she noticed a bus timetable on her kitchen table. To her surprise, it was not the schedule for Egged, the Israeli bus company that is ubiquitous throughout Israel. Rather, it was a schedule for Arab buses that run in her neighborhood. My friend had never noticed the Arab buses. Half of her work colleagues are Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, but she had never seen the Arab buses that ran by her home, nor the people who rode them. Once she acknowledged her blind spot (with heartfelt shame), she began to use the Arab bus line at times herself, avoiding the more crowded Egged buses on some of her regular routes. 

We all live among people we don’t see. Our blind spots are built in—they are part of being human. Only God is omniscient. But when our eyes are opened and we see other human beings living separate and often invisible lives beside and among us, we are faced with a choice. One option is to re-shut our eyes in an effort to return to a more comfortable, familiar, and separate past. Another is to try to silence or erase those who enter our field of vision, maybe even employing violence to force them back out. The third option is to integrate their lives with our own, enriching and expanding possibilities for a shared future. 

As Thanksgiving approaches, non-Native Americans who believe that our country has acted unjustly toward native people are confronted with a choice about how we will celebrate this beloved holiday. Martin Scorsese’s recent film adaptation of the novel Killers of the Flower Moon brings just one story of an indigenous community to light, one of countless examples of non-native Americans acting both intentionally and unintentionally to rid our country of its indigenous population. The survivors of the Osage people still live among us, and Scorsese cast some of them in his film so we would see them as they appear today. The film was not made to be a guilt trip for non-Native Americans, but it does open our eyes to some of what was and what is. Our faiths teach us that witnesses have a responsibility to correct injustice. We don’t have to wait for a meaningful collective process to begin to right the wrongs of the past. We can and should change our own assumptions and habits based on new awareness and knowledge. 

Dennis Zotigh, a Kiowa, San Juan Pueblo and Santee Dakota Indian and Cultural Specialist and Writer at Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, calls Thanksgiving “a national holiday that romanticizes the 1621 encounter between (my) ancestors and English settlers, and erases the deadly conflicts that followed.” In light of that, and perhaps in spite of that, he asks:

“Do I celebrate Thanksgiving? No, I don’t celebrate. But I do take advantage of the holiday and get together with family and friends to share a large meal without once thinking of the Thanksgiving in 1621. I think it is the same in many Native households. It is ironic that Thanksgiving takes place during American Indian and Alaskan Native Heritage Month. An even greater irony is that more Americans today identify the day after Thanksgiving as Black Friday than as National Native American Heritage Day.”

It may not ever make sense for non-Native Americans to observe Thanksgiving in the same way that Native Americans do. But as Americans who feel grateful to our ancestors for leaving their native lands and coming to these shores, we can observe it in ways that acknowledge and show gratitude to those who were here before 1621. Doing so involves creativity, and a willingness to give up some components of the holiday that we may have felt were essential in the past. You can find some suggestions here.

Toward the end of her most recent novel, The Future, Naomi Alderman writes: “Nothing can be permanently settled or solved. No state is perfect; no utopia exists but that it leaves someone out. All we can be is alert … to the changing winds. To ask ourselves in each new situation: What would we hate anyone to do to us? And: Who have we forgotten? To exist in motion, falling forward, trying to bend our own histories toward what is fair and kind, what is sensible and good. We will keep failing, but final success was never the point.”

This is the human enterprise—the enterprise that keeps us humble yet ambitious. We can celebrate this Thanksgiving by bending our own histories toward a future that includes those we see and those we don’t see, and by asking God to bless us all with compassion and protection as we make our way, imperfectly, toward a world of greater vision, wholeness, and peace.