{"id":30134,"date":"2024-02-13T08:45:14","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T13:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=30134"},"modified":"2024-02-13T17:12:09","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T22:12:09","slug":"interfaith-harmony-week-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/interfaith-harmony-week-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Interfaith Harmony Week promotes the art of listening to others\u2019 stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disha Patel \u201925 said she stopped believing in God at age 4, about the time her parents left for the U.S., leaving her and her brother to be raised by her grandmother in India. At age 12, after several years of only seeing her parents over Facetime, she visited the village her father came from. There, an older woman told her that as a daughter of the village, Patel could have her prayer answered by the god of the village temple.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018I don\u2019t have anything to lose,\u2019\u201d she told the group of students gathered for the Interfaith Storytelling event during Furman\u2019s observance of Interfaith Harmony Week, Feb. 5-9. \u201cThe only thing I had to lose were my parents, and I hadn\u2019t seen them for about eight years. So I told her (the village god) that if I could see my parents once before I turned 16, I would walk the 80 kilometers to her temple from our city home.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She knew she would have to deliver on her promise when her mother picked her up from school one day when she was 14. Last summer, she walked the 80 kilometers \u2013 and she reconnected with her Hindu faith on the pilgrimage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Patel’s story was one of many shared during the event, which brought together students from several faith traditions to openly discuss their own divine moments and sacred spaces. Conversations like those were one of the main aims of Interfaith Harmony Week, said Sabrina Strickland-Harris \u201924, president of Furman\u2019s Interfaith Youth Coalition.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI love that Furman promotes dialogue among students, but I think there is also so much value in just listening to the stories of others without passing judgment,\u201d said Strickland-Harris, who was raised religiously but describes herself as \u201cspiritual\u201d now. \u201cInterfaith has members who are Buddhist, Southern Baptist, Catholic and atheist, among others. We all, no matter our background, often have much in common.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The General Assembly of the United Nations established <\/span>World Interfaith Harmony Week<\/span><\/a> in 2010, said Alexis Carter Thomas, Furman\u2019s associate chaplain, at the storytelling event. \u201cSince then, it’s been an annual observance where people come to spread the message of harmony and tolerance, among the followers of all world religions, faith and beliefs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Intergroup dialogue is essential to \u201cpromote the common basis of love of God, love of good and love of neighbor,\u201d she said. \u201cIts message invites everyone, excludes no one and is purely voluntary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Fostering the art of listening is key to the mission of Interfaith Harmony Week, said Miranda Lowe, building coordinator and office manager for Furman\u2019s Office of Spiritual Life and advisor to the Interfaith Youth Coalition, and it was a major component of both the storytelling gathering and another event, a collaboration with local organization <\/span>My Neighbor\u2019s Voice, <\/span><\/a>a group dedicated to creating events in which to share personal stories, thoughts and opinions about how to best live together.<\/span><\/p>\n

During a moderated discussion in the Trustees Dining Room, a group made up mostly of Furman students, faculty and staff used the questions on a set of \u201clistening cards\u201d from My Neighbor\u2019s Voice to prompt conversations about faith.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not formulating a response in your head while you\u2019re listening; you\u2019re just listening,\u201d said Lowe. \u201cA big goal of it is to make sure that we give people the opportunity to have their own opinion and feel safe in having that opinion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAll are welcome in Interfaith regardless of their background or current faith beliefs,\u201d said Strickland-Harris. \u201cWe invite people who are questioning their faith or people who are solidly planted in their beliefs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cInterfaith encourages the ability to listen and communicate across differences,\u201d said Lila Dawson \u201926, a member of the group\u2019s executive council. \u201cMy vision for Interfaith is that the group will continue to foster pluralism on campus and encourage exploration of ideas different from those one may have started college with.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The week is an annual observance where people come to spread the message of harmony and tolerance, among the followers of all world religions, faith and beliefs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":30137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,27,30],"tags":[1313],"class_list":["post-30134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-student-life","category-top-stories","tag-spiritual-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}