Winter, 2 0 0 6                                                                      VOLUME 3, NO. 1

periodic e-news about spirituality, wellness, and the common good
from Interweave Center For Wholistic Living, Summit, NJ

Fostering Abrahamic K I N S H I P*
by Lisa Green

*Knowing Interfaith Neighbors Shapes Helpful Institutions and People

“If there's one new year’s resolution I would suggest people make,” says Rabbi Irwin Kula, “it would be to read a book by a person I really disagree with. When we read with an open mind, our own thinking is affected. We begin to come to solutions from the synergies of the things we most deeply disagree with and our own views.”* 

An eighth-generation rabbi, Kula is president of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership and host of a PBS series Simple Wisdom. Encountering him on DVD through his short documentary “Time for a New God” has been one of many blessings of my work so far with Abrahamic KINSHIP, Interweave’s new interfaith network. I’ve been serving on the planning committee for “Talking Their Language, Teaching the Faith,” a February 8 gathering of Jewish and Christian religious educators. We’ll be showing Kula’s film and hearing a response from Allan Wright, a Roman Catholic high school teacher, college professor, and author. 

“Talking Their Language” is just one of several events KINSHIP will be presenting this year. The network is our new effort to deepen communication and cooperation among Jews, Christians, and Muslims (the three traditions who recognize Abraham as a common ancestor). We’re partnering with the American Jewish Committee, the Muslim Women’s Coalition, the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, and many local congregations. Made possible in part by a generous grant from the Trinity Grants Program, the project’s goals are to develop a larger, more cohesive interfaith leadership network in Northern New Jersey, increase cooperation and interfaith discussion leadership skills among clergy and lay leaders, and deepen mutual understanding among individuals and congregations.

We’ll be addressing these goals in several ways: a “Lunch and Learn Dialogue” series at Interweave for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim clergy and congregational leaders that began January 12 (another one is coming up in May in Bergen County), a February clergy training in interfaith dialogue for the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, “Dine and Discuss” evenings for lay leaders, and an annual symposium.

Although so far Rabbi Kula is only participating in the project digitally, he would certainly approve of its aims. The more we connect with those different from us, he teaches, the more we talk to them and learn from them, the more our “connection reflex” deepens. “And,” he says, “what we need more than anything else in this world right now are connection warriors.”

 
*Quoted in “A Real Fresh Start,” originally published on Beliefnet in December, 2002. http://www.beliefnet.com/story/119/story_11930_1.html 

For more about Irwin Kula, see http://www.simple-wisdom.com/about_ik.htm 

Q&A with Sallie Glomb-Reinmund

Molecular biologist Sallie Glomb-Reinmund will be presenting two events at Interweave this semester—“Sex, Time, and Power,” a Feb. 4 workshop with me about the intriguing connections among female sexuality, time, and human culture, and “Beyond Chance and Design,” a March 23 evening with Robert Corin Morris about emerging paradigms of cooperative biological systems, a subject she will be exploring in an upcoming book. On what turned out to be her birthday, I asked her to share some of her ideas. –Lisa Green

I saw you across a crowded room at “Ground for Hope” [a conference on religion and ecology at Drew this fall]. Is there hope for common ground between science and spirituality?

Yes—it’s very possible to develop what I like to call “a biological theology,” a sense of the sacred in the web of life. Consciousness and intelligence increase through cooperation and synergy, not just competition, and we can find evidence of this kind of symbiosis even at the cellular level. 

Does this point to a new view of evolution “beyond chance and design,” as the title of your workshop suggests?

The evolutionary model of random mutation followed by adaptation is really mostly used by things like bacteria—organisms with a short lifespan and high reproduction rate can use those mechanisms to adapt and evolve. But there have to be other mechanisms for more complex cells and organisms. We don’t have to go all the way to a Supernatural Designer to recognize the cooperation going on that allowed more complex life to evolve.

Can you give me an example?

Chloroplasts in plants and mitochondria in humans are examples of how two cell types came together, took on different roles, and worked in a symbiotic relationship that allowed for increasing complexity. At one time, mitochondria were single-cell organisms, so at some point in our history, there was a co-habitation. This kind of cooperative, symbiotic relationship is the power of our animal life.

And does this play out in relationships among humans as well?

Sure—it tells us that cooperation is as much a part of human nature as competition. In “survival of the fittest,” the fittest are not just the most dominant, but those most able to work synergistically. In Sex, Time, and Power [the book that inspired our upcoming workshop], Leonard Shlain theorizes about how males and females cooperated to address the emerging problem of childbirth mortality. I think he stresses the importance of hunting in our survival more than seems likely, but he definitely shows how a cooperative male-female relationship is very important. 

So we’ll have a lot to talk about on February 4?

I’m looking forward to it!