Parliament of Worlds Religion 2009 Melbourne Australia

Author(s): Parliament of the World’s Religions
Publisher: USA Parliament of the Worlds Religions

Page 300

PROGRAM
Monday, December 7, 2009
A Listening Place Each Day
Kristen Hobby Lynette Dungan
Bernie Miles
Kava Schafer
Jill Manton
Nola Vanderfeen Room 217
Interactive Workshop
We welcome you to a safe place where you can simply be. This is a quiet place where you can sit and meditate or reflect on what has touched or challenged you throughout the day of the Parliament of the World's Religions. Spiritual directors will be available in this room; you may talk to them if there is anything you would like to share. Spiritual directors are trained to listen in a non-judgmental and respectful way and are available for people of all faith traditions.
2 Jews, 3 Opinions: An Open Conversation on the Implications of the Parliament for Our Jewish Communities
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield Room 218
Lay leader, clergy, or academic, Jewish or simply one who cares about things Jewish, this conversation is for you if you want to connect your experience at the Parliament to your interest in Judaism and the Jewish community. As we participate in the Parliament, hearts are stirred, spirits rise and thinking expands. But in order to help carry our experiences in Melbourne back to our home communities, there are important questions that need to be asked. What specifically are the implications of your participation in the Parliament for both your personal identity and for your understanding of the Jewish community? This facilitated conversation will explore how participation in a multifaith encounter can deepen both our understanding of, and commitment to, Judaism in particular. We will also consider the ongoing concern about continuity/durability of the Jewish community. Why does that question loom so large for so many within the organised Jewish community, and how does our experience at the Parliament shape our response? While there are no right or wrong answers to these questions, our willingness to address them will help us turn a personally transformative experience into a communally formative one.
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is an acclaimed interfaith activist described by Newsweek as 'one of America's most influential rabbis. He is the creator of Building Bridges' and 'American Pilgrimage on Bridges TV, the author of 'You Don't Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism', and a columnist for Beliefnet.com and Newsweek/ WashingtonPost.com. Hirschfield is the President of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, America's leading Jewish institution for religious pluralism.
296 PWR- Parliament of the World's Religions
4:30-6:00pm OPEN SPACE
Educating Religious Leaders for
a Multi-Religious World: Virtues and Skills for Multi-Religious Education North American Theological School Students Room 219
Panel Discussion
In this session, we want to temporarily put aside differences of doctrine or teaching and look at what might be recognised as the virtues that one must bring to the table of dialogue. In attempting this, we will draw guidance from Catherine Cornille's new book, 'The Im-Possibility of Dialogue'. She calls upon all religious persons who feel the need for dialogue to examine what seem to be the virtues needed to truly engage in a conversation with others that will bring greater insight and collaboration. Such virtues include the following: humility regarding one's own understanding and claims; commitment to the truth and values that one has found in one's own tradition; a trust in the interconnectedness that makes conversation. between religions possible despite daunting differences: empathy, by which one attempts the complex but necessary task of trying to understand the religious other from within the other's own world of belief and imagination; and hospitality, by which we truly open ourselves to learn from the other with whom we are seeking a relationship of friendship. Besides discussing the nature of these and other dialogical virtues, we will explore together the skills needed in applying them and living them in partnership with religious others.
This is part of a symposium entitled 'Educating Religious Leaders for a Multi-Religious World'. The Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, with the support of The Henry Luce Foundation, has coordinated with fifteen theological institutions to explore ways to increase education for interfaith leadership in North American theological schools. Institutions strongly acknowledged the urgency of interfaith engagement and the preparation of a religious leadership equipped with knowledge and understanding of the plurality of faith traditions in the contemporary world.
Ears Wide Open: The Art of Inloquence
Hal French
Room 220 Lecture
We honour those people who are masters of eloquence: Demosthenes, Daniel Webster, Lincoln at Gettysburg, Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou. But the masters of listening, or 'inloquence', are anonymous. Inloquence is indispensable to dialogue, and the radical character of listening requires receptivity, openness, and a willingness to change on the basis of what one hears. The first part of this presentation will discuss how we may enhance our ability to listen to the voices of nature. A hymn says, All nature sings and round me rings the music of the