The Jewish Star of David on Blake Winn's handwritten name tag caught Terri York's eye, Thursday night, as participants in a religious roundtable filled their plates for dinner with their Baha'i hostess.
"Ours is harder to draw," York said, referring to her faith's symbol, a nine-pointed star. "Ours is three triangles and yours is two triangles."
Justin Baker/News-Journal Photo |
Terri York, standing left, brings more food to the table as Mike Wat, standing right, gives his opinion on things different faiths have in common during dinner at York's home in Overton.
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Winn did not indicate whether that was news to him, but it's OK if it was, because this was a Dinner Dialogue.
"It's nationwide and happens on the same day all across the country," York said as she her Southern Baptist husband, Mike, welcomed 17 followers of diverse faiths to their home north of Overton.
Jewish, Baha'i, Buddhist, Christian and Unitarian Universalist believers soon were feasting on an international menu. They came from Longview, Pittsburg, Tatum, Kilgore, Upshur County and Tyler. (York, a teacher at Kilgore College, hopes to attract Muslim and Hindu adherents to a second East Texas Dinner Dialogue in 2010).
"There is a lot of misunderstanding about other religions," York said. "And it's important that we come together to understand all religions have same basic teachings. And unity is of the utmost importance in striving for world peace."
This was the first night that East Texas homes joined an annual event that's spread from Houston since 2007. Similar dinners also were scheduled Thursday in Nacogdoches.
"It's a community cohesion project to create interpersonal relationships and friendships between people of all faiths and no faith," founder Jill Carroll said, earlier in the week by phone from Houston. "It focuses on friendships that aren't going to happen otherwise. This project puts people together that don't know each other — they're strangers."
They weren't for long, thanks to questions drawn from a stack supplied by The Amazing Faiths Project.
Bob Everett, a substitute teacher from Tatum, drew a question asking whether he meditates and what prayer and mediation mean to him.
"I pray daily and, probably like many of you, many times a day," said Everett, a Christian. "I've learned through my growth in my faith that the prayers don't have to be long, drawn-out things. ... I've caught myself saying, 'Lord, be with this person.' "
Everyone got to know Stephanie Eijsink a little better as the Tyler Baha'i described growing up in a town of 5,000 in Montana. She had been asked to define a miracle.
Beginning to doubt the miracles described in Sunday school, she recalled, she had assumed the weekly offerings at her church invisibly rose to heaven from beneath the altar cloth where the deacons placed it.
"I was really tempted to go up and look under the cover and see if the money was still there," she said to laughter around the table. Then she leapt to her college years when she attended a Baha'i gathering and saw people of many races living and worshipping together.
"And they just really touched my heart," she said. "And, to me, that was the miracle. That's the type of miracle I was looking for in my heart."
These were the type of testimony Carroll and the Amazing Faith Projects envision.
"They're very open-ended questions," Carroll said. "And they are focused on somebody's experience, which no one can argue with."
The first Dialogue Dinner took place in Houston in January 2007, and Carroll expected 95 of them to happen Thursday in that city. There are 10 host cities, including Chicago, Austin, San Antonio and Washington, D.C.
About 1,500 people participated in Dinner Dialogues in 2008.
And now add East Texas to the mix.
"It has been an urban movement so far," Carroll said, adding a challenge has been the seeming homogeneity of religious views in rural areas — it's easy to find a Baptist, but not a Baha'i. "That's been one of the surprising and wonderful things about the East Texas project. They have people coming to participate that are in that community that (mainstream religion followers) didn't even know were in this community."
A practical payoff comes when communities face crises. When Hurricane Ike struck in September 2008, Carroll said, a city-wide response was simplified because people of differing faiths, who move in different social circles, knew and trusted each other and could coordinate actions.
Houston Mayor Bill White first approached Rice University's Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance about a citywide multi-faith movement. Nacogdoches Mayor Roger Van Horn spearheaded the East Texas dinners.
"These types of community cohesion projects bring people together so that, when the community experiences a crisis, they can come together and get things done," said Carroll, an adjunct associate professor of religious studies in the Boniuk Center. "That's why this project has been an easy sell to the mayors. ... When you spend three hours with strangers, talking about those intimate things, you come out of it closer than ever. The goal is to connect with people you may or may not understand or agree with — that's not the point. The point is to have a connection."
Mike Watt of Pittsburg welcomed the Dinner Dialogue as recognition that East Texas people come in all creeds including his Baha'i faith.
"Yeah, we are isolated as believers," he said. "But it doesn't mean we feel cut off."
