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Living Rooms are moving downtown to Charlotte's Place
February 7, 2012
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Greetings!
It's a new year and we're trying a new location for our Living Room gatherings! Charlotte's Place is a free gathering space open to anyone in lower Manhattan, which opened last year as an initiative of Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church. We are very excited to hold our winter/spring season there and hope you all come to experience this warm, welcoming place that practices hospitality as its mission. We are tremendously grateful for our past three years, plus some of our first previews and gatherings in 2008, at Intersections International. The staff there have become friends and colleagues and we look forward to continuing our relationship and using the space again in the future.
In the spirit of newness, we will be trying various new initiatives this year and also repeating some of our past favorites. Stay posted for announcements about upcoming Kitchen Tables, a Bollywood movie night at Samir's, our 4th Annual Interfaith Seder with Romemu at St. Francis Xavier Church, and a springtime retreat at Stony Point Center.
This Saturday, our Women's Spirituality Circle will gather in upper Manhattan for an afternoon of active-mediation on winter and warmth, with quilting and noshing. RSVP for the address and bring a snack!
Finally, our friend Chris Fici, a Hindu monk at the Bhakti Center has given us an article about his winter trip home to Detroit and his Roman Catholic grandfather's blessing of his vocation. There is a selection below and the full post is on our website. Visit, participate, stay in touch, let us know what you'd like to organize or attend this year. You are Faith House, in Manhattan and the world. |
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2012 Winter and Spring Living Rooms
at Charlotte's Place
 2nd Wednesdays 2012
March 14
April 11
May 9
June 13
7-9 PM
107 Greenwich Street
btwn Rector & Carlisle St
Experience your neighbor's faith and deepen your own in this 4-part spring series presented by Faith House Manhattan at Charlotte's Place, a new initiative of Trinity Wall Street. Each Living Room gathering will create a safe, welcoming space to gain empathy, understanding, and participate in a specific devotional practice from a different religion, led by a guest host, deeply rooted in his or her own path. Snacks and time to socialize will follow each 90-minute program.
 Charlotte's Place is a free gathering space open to anyone in Lower Manhattan. At Charlotte's Place, you make the space with whatever you want to do. Come draw on the wall, water the plants, eat your lunch, attend an art workshop, listen to music, read a book, use free wi-fi, watch a movie, or whatever else comes to mind. Charlotte's Place is open to all and free to use. 
Go visit! Charlotte's Place is open from 12-6pm Monday through Friday. Tell Jenn Chinn that you're from Faith House Manhattan.
Faith House Manhattan is an inter-religious "community of communities" which believes that the time of isolated faith is over. Over the past three years, Faith House has hosted more than 60 Living Room gatherings where people can experiences the practices of another religion or path (including atheism).
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The Heart of My Grandfather
A NYC Hindu monk's blessing from his Roman Catholic grandfather and reflections on his hometown of Detroit
By Chris Fici
When I decided to pursue the spiritual path, my mom was not sure how to explain it to my grandparents. How so? Let's just say I am not becoming a Catholic priest. Instead I am pursuing the path of bhakti-yoga, the monotheistic and devotional path of the Hindu tradition.
She tried to tell them many innocent white lies, such as that I was potentially moving to California to pursue my Film degree, but eventually, for one reason or another, she couldn't find it in her heart to deceive. When my grandfather heard of my choice of vocation, he was very happy and pleased, much to my mom's relief and surprise. To him, it didn't matter whether my devotion was to Jesus or to Krishna. In fact, he could only see the common thread running towards God.
For him, to have one of his grandchildren approach the life of a priest, was also a welcome surprise from his own end. My grandfather comes from a certain "golden age" of Christian and Catholic life in Detroit, whose whispers still ring in the ears of the faithful to this day. He comes from a time when it was perfectly normal, expected even, for a member of the family to approach the priestly vocation. He comes from a time when contemporary saints such as the Venerable Father Solanus Casey and Reinhold Niebhur influenced scores of people across the city with their ministry and charity. He comes from a time when Thomas Merton was the "renaissance man" to admire.
As I sat with my grandfather this past Christmas, and as he tried to speak through the tears in his own eyes of his own realizations about the string of faith we all share, from Sufi to Catholic to Hindu and beyond, I understood that my own spiritual calling, and also particularly my calling to Interfaith work, was in a sense the best offering of love I could make to him, to my whole family, to everyone I know and have yet still to know, in the most humble and honest way I can try and do.
Burning, beating, the heart of the person who tries to soar towards God must be firmly set in the gratitude of those who have laid the path before him, who guide him with blessings, knowledge, and love. My heart beats in the same way as the heart of my grandfather. Our hearts are united in the compulsion, which draws us like a magnet, despite our meager resistance, into the loving arms of God.
Read the full post on our website
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Mid-Winter Women's Spirituality Circle
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THIS SATURDAY
February 11, 2012
3-6 pm @ an apartment in upper Manhattan
The intention of our time is to have a progression and movement-creating dynamic in the lull and numbing time of winter. Not forgetting winter, but entering into and out of it, in meditation and play. We will collectively create a warming hut of smells and warmth and song, and use this space to propel us deeper into the chill of outside, and the warmth of inside. Afterwards, we will quilt together and reflect on our active-mediation time. Bring a snack to share.
RSVP for address |
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