This is the way I live

It has been a while! Since I've gotten positive feedback recently (that's you, Josh) and in the past (Adina the First) on posts with limited content, I will attempt to succinctly review my life in the past few days:

Friday: I found out that I am going to be an RA in Risley, the performing arts program house on campus! I am going to love living there and working there...I will definitely use the dark room and art studio facilities, perhaps I will experiment with my sexual orientation too, who knows!

Friday night: Shabbat services and dinner followed by a super fun mixer at some fraternity for which I can't remember the correct ordering of Pi's and Phi's but I know it was great and I danced the night away! The theme was CORNELL! so much school spirit!

Saturday: chilled with L, went on our traditional walk to BAGELS. Then I napped (what can I say, my life is luxury) and did some work. Then my toga party was canceled (RUDE, Fiji, just rude) and a new party was scheduled with a different frat but when we got there they had smoked out the basement and were having an "Iron Man" competition that required each team to consume a certain amount of pizza, beer, liquor, and weed before the other teams. Peace out!

Sunday: INTERNATIONAL ETHNIC DANCE; we dance ETHNICALLY.

Monday: classes and an MLK Commemorative lecture by Eboo Patel, an Indian born Muslim man who is super duper smart (Rhodes scholar, no big deal) and writes books and is pretty famous. I don't feel like retyping my notes from the lecture, so they are included at the bottom of this post. It was a pretty good lecture (I especially enjoyed the gospel choir intro) but a little too soon on the Wael Ghonim (spelled wrong in my notes, oops) comparison to MLK. The jury is still out on Egypt...and the complete unrest in that entire area of the world. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

They did have excellent creme puffs at the reception afterward though, I must say.

Tuesday: amazing eye-opening lecture on virology in bio, then a meeting with Eboo and others to form an Interfaith Youth Corps. Great, lofty ideals of creating a beloved community through interfaith and multi-faith programming. I am skeptical. I'll let you know how it goes.

Tuesday afternoon: learn bio, test bio, eat dinner with Adina and Ben (who had just climbed the Clock Tower, as he does before every one of his prelims...), take calc prelim! Success, and sleep

TODAY: I woke up without my alarm at 8:15am which is great because my alarm wasn't set! I took a test in Hebrew, a prelim in Gerontology, ate lunch with the Cornell Daily Sun, did my math homework, and I am going to a Hillel E-board meeting in a few minutes! SUCH JOY!!!!!!

Eboo Patel MLK Commemorative Lecture-Acts of Faith: Interfaith Leadership in a Time of Global Religious Crisis

7pm Sage Chapel 2/21/11

today is the 46th Anniversary of the death of Malcom X

Chosen Generation Gospel Choir- “ride on king jesus” no man cannot hinder thee

Patel is a Muslim with Indian background

He has won a million awards and is very important, Rhodes scholar etc

Patel’s speech:

-Montgomery Bus Boycott

-compared with Egyptian riots

-Beloved Community

-Wael Ghonim

-"Muslim, Christian, We are all Egyptian"-cooperation during the riots

-Religion news narratives

-any religious moderate is a failed fanatic

-religions are fated to fight

-the Muslims are coming to get you (previously the Catholics, before then the Jews-it is simply the reincarnation of hate)

The way the world is imagined will govern at any given time what human beings will do

Faith as a bridge of inspiration and cooperation

Next chapter in history will depend on how we think of the past

MLK as an interfaith hero

What is it in Christianity that might give me the strength to love the way Hinduism gave Gandhi the strength to love?

-How MLK becomes leader of Bus Boycott (he wanted to be head olf the local NAACP chapter but he didn’t get that job)-Montgomery Improvement Association leader-divine hand in this or chance?

-not a lot of people get that opportunity

1959-MLK goes to India to see Gandhi-ism in action

-Oh God, we call you by this name, but we know others call you Allah, Bramah, Elohim, the Unmoved Mover

-Rabbi Heschel- “the soul of Judaism is at stake in the Civil Rights Movement”

-I felt like my legs were praying-Heschel in Selma

-A Time to Break Silence-King at Riverside Church

-universal religious notion of love, recognizing a common value across faith but returning to your own to show the scripture and support and inspiration of it

-How can you help someone who isn’t Christian? Because I Am.

-We’ve seen rolling history these last 20 years-Nelson Mandela, Barak Obama, Egypt free

-Big beautiful message: dream your dream-do your work, when the moment comes, be ready

History says don’t hope on this side of the grave, but once in a lifetime, that longed for tidal wave can rise up

4 Important Pieces to Inter Interfaith Literacy

1. Theology of Interfaith Cooperation-what it is from Christianity that compels him to engage positively with other faiths-Know chapter and verse
1. Koran: God made us different nations and tribes that we might come to know each other
2. What values do we share? Hospitality, compassion, service, mutual exclusivities, religions have an awful lot in common
3. Knowing positive appreciative things about other religions-there aren’t enough people who have at the tips of their tongues something positive about other religions-what is positive about Islam
4. Know examples of interfaith cooperation (Civil Rights Movement, Egypt, Gandhi’s India, etc) “They’ve always fought so they’re always going to fight” = just not true
5. Practice how to talk about that-we have to figure out how to tell this story

ifyc.org addresses lots of questions

Preaching to the choir but the choir is not singing

There are enough people who believe in the idea that religions shouldn’t kill each other-but why isn’t that song loud enough?

Each of us has a community-how do we make this important in our community?

Give them vocabulary and vocal chords

Tell the alternative story-that’s not how the world needs to be, this is how the world can be

What is more inspiring than advancing a movement that desperately needs to happen?

Our job is to move the world a millionth of an inch

“We know we are not on the doorstep of democracy but we believe in laying the groundwork” about Egypt

Tony Morrison-New Yorker

How do you engage atheists?--the end result is good for everyone

ask Rabbi Jason about a verse that expresses the need for interfaith dialogue

I don’t want to spend my time in the various layers of Dante’s circles wondering why people are the way they are, I want to spend my time hoping

Reactions: q+a much more effective than the speech itself, he talked a lot more candidly and about himself (he is a very inspiring person in and of himself), as opposed to his speech which focused on MLK (not a perfect person...) and Wael Ghonim (getting into the politics of Egypt kind of turned me off, or at least made me skeptical to his message)