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Peace and every blessing,

Steve Fitzgerald, Ph.D.

City of Angels URI-LA,

Coordinator URI North America Regional Support

At our May 2002, City of Angels members agreed to focus on youth engagement

in interfaith through 2002 and possibly beyond. At that point our only youth

member was Jason Bloedorn, and he enthusiastically raised his hand and said

“yes!!” At our June meeting, Chris Chappell of Loyola Marymount U. suggested

the possibility of a college intern to work with us, and Linda Maxwell and Jose

from We Care for Youth brought several young people and we envisioned together

youth dialogue for peace.

In July a miracle happened as one of City of Angels founders, Norma Foster,

referred Rambhoru Brinkmann, a graduate student at Claremont School of Theology,

to us for a possible internship, and the rest is history!

YOUTH-PEACE L.A. - REPORT FROM PEACE SUNDAY EVENT

DECEMBER 15, 2002

by Rambhoru Brinkmann

From September through November, we focused on developing relationships with

the leaders and members of youth groups at diverse L.A. faith communities. In

late November and early December, a youth planning team met twice to create a 3-hour youth interfaith peace workshop as part of Peace

Sunday at the L.A. Convention Center, held on December 15.

The week before the event, another miracle happened. Award-winning L.A. artist

Gayle Gale was referred to us Stephen Longfellow Fiske. Known for her creative

peace-art, founder of “Kids For Peace Mural” Gayle Gale assisted the youth in

crafting and displaying their message of peace on an interfaith collage/mural.

As we held our collective breath in anticipation on that day, not knowing

who would show up, forty youths, representing nine different faith traditions,

poured in, full of enthusiasm to participate in an interfaith youth event for

peace. We were delighted!

Once everyone arrived, we began the workshop with an opening circle joining

hands while a youth from each religious faith offered a blessing. Then, we divided into groups of six people from different religions.

Before beginning our paired-off interviews with the person sitting next to us,

we enjoyed a lively musical offering from a group of lady-teens from the Church

of Scientology youth choir.

After getting to know the person next to us by asking them a series of pertinent

questions regarding how they would go about creating peace in the world from

their religious perspective, we rejoined our group of six and shared what we

had learned from each other. Next, several young men from the SGI Friendship

Center (Bhuddist) shared a chant for peace with us. It was very inspiring. That

was followed by one youth speaker from each faith group (Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian,

Hindu, Muslim), in turn, stepping to the mike and sharing with all of us a message

of peace from their spiritual teachings. Then, a group of Hare Krishna (Hindu)

teens sang a chant with drum and cymbals — the Hare Krishna Mantra: the great

chant for deliverance.

As a close, we all joined hands again in a large group circle and went around

and said what we would be taking away with us from the workshop closing with

another blessing from a member of each religious group, and Gayle Gale stepped

forward to give us a Jewish blessing. Upon leaving the event, all participants

were given gifts of wrapped nut mixtures put together by both the Brahma Kumari

and the Hare Krishna organizations.

Later that afternoon, the youth presented their peace mural and message on

stage in front of an audience of thousands assembled to hear speakers from a

variety of religions and peace organizations, and featured speakers Congressman

Dennis Kucinich and Congresswoman Barbara Lee. This is the statement that the

youth read to the assembly:

“We, young people of diverse faith communities, value voices that respect

others.

We believe that sharing the values, wisdom, joys, and blessings of our faith

traditions can lead us to act for the good of all.

Therefore, as young people rooted in our faith traditions, we unite to build

cultures of peace, justice, and healing for the earth and for all living beings.

We value one another, and together we can be the change that we wish to

see in the world.”

When asked, all the youths agreed that they would like to participate in more

such interfaith youth events and were very excited when we made the proposal

of having an interfaith youth retreat some time during Spring 2003.

And a very special thank you to all of our youth leaders, including Khaled,

Amanda, Sasaneh, Takao, Samia, Andrew, and Farbod, who made this wonderful event

possible!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2003 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Youth Movement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.