Hello Faith House Friends,
What a year this has been! And what a year this will be! We are looking forward to a year of activism, service, and community building. Thank you for journeying with us!
In the past, the main dividing line of our society has been race. We have made some progress these days! It seems that now and for foreseeable future, the dividing line of exclusion will be religion. The struggle for the dream of one, diverse, and interdependent world is far from over. But there is hope. What Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about racial divisions of his day can be applied to painful religious divisions of today,
"No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of brotherhood ...
Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God's universe is made; this is the way it is structured." (from A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration From the Great Sermons of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.)
We are in the process of organizing the efforts, programs, and leadership of the Faith House community in order to be a part of such interdependent future. More about that in our next newsletter! Stay tuned. Thank you for your prayer, encouragement, advice, and support. Enjoy reading, Samir Selmanovic, Faith House Manhattan
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