Note: This post is written by Amanda Quraishi, a member of Texas Impact's board. The blog was originally posted at MuslimahMERICAN.com.
In a time of significant national and global transitions, religious communities, faith leaders and those on a spiritual journey will play a central role in determining the future of our country, with global implications. We believe when individuals and communities articulate and embody their personal religious and spiritual values in the public arena this country is best able to fulfill its promise as a refuge for the outcast, provider of opportunities and mobility for all, and fulfill the promise of a robust democracy where power is held in the hands of the many.
On October 7-10, 2013 The Nathan Cummings Foundation will host leaders in their twenties and thirties to explore strategies to create a U.S. society by the year 2030 where our religious diversity leads us to act collaboratively for a more just, fair and compassionate country.
A couple months ago I took a long shot and applied to participate in this 2030 Faith in America Challenge hosted by The Nathan Cummings Foundation. I’m pretty sure I have a few guardian angels and some benevolent people in high places looking out for me because I was one of about 50 people selected to meet at the Garrison Institute in Garrison, NY for this national interfaith gathering.
I’ve never been to New York and I wasn’t altogether clear about the purpose of this gathering, but the prospect of spending three days at a cool old monastery with a bunch of interfaith folks geeking out about religion and social justice sounded like my definition of a good time. I was not to be disappointed.
First of all, the Garrison Institute is amazing. It is a former monastery built in the 1930′s and is now used as a place for spiritual and meditative retreats. Garrison is about an hour north of New York City, but it feels like a million miles away, nestled in the rolling hills along the banks of the Hudson River. The weather that week was insanely beautiful–just cool enough to sleep beautifully, but warming up enough during the day to walk around outside in short sleeves.
While en route to Garrison, I actually met up with three folks I already know from other interfaith groups — Josh Houston (General Counsel at Texas Impact, where I sit on the Board of Directors), Hind Makki and Ndidi Okakpu (both of whom I know through the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute.) We took the train together north from Grand Central Station.
Arriving at Garrison, we were assigned our refreshingly sparse rooms. We settled in and went down for dinner in the main dining hall and then headed into the main meeting hall to dig right in. That first night we spent time breaking down barriers between ourselves as quickly as possible. We did group work where we revealed things about ourselves, and made intimate connections through some strategic exercises designed to help us do just that.
After breakfast the next morning, we continued that same process of getting to know one another. Then around midday, we began working on problem-solving using a unique design technique being developed by Nadia Roumani at Stanford University. We were assigned a simple challenge and asked to solve it using models and a very specific process. This stretched us to not only come up with alternate ways of addressing a single issue, but it also challenged us mentally AND physically in seeking out the best solution.
As the day progressed we were assigned more complex challenges that we had to problem-solve for. (My group was working on a hypothetical scenario of organizing faith leaders to avert the next government shutdown.) We only had 90 minutes to come up with a solid, workable plan. Then we had to do a couple iterations until we were ready to present it to the other groups Round-Robin style. This session definitely had a ‘reality show challenge’ aspect to it!
The next morning we started on a new direction. The entire gathering talked about different ways that we, as people of faith, could take on unique challenges in our country. Following that rousing discussion, we self-organized into groups, identified a problem, and brainstormed on a creative solution to it for the rest of the day.
My group chose to work on an online portal for collecting, curating, organizing and cataloging faith stories by individuals. Our purpose was to combat the Christian Right’s hegemony of religious messages in public and political spheres, and to allow for the democratization of religious definitions by the people who are actually part of those respective traditions.
The final morning of the retreat, we took turns presenting our projects to the whole gathering. It was fun and amazing to see what these different groups of talented, brilliant people produced in less than a day.
I left the Garrison Institute with a lot of new friends and with a renewed sense of hope for our country. I found that there are lots of people like me–young, dynamic, ambitious folks that want to impact our society for the better in the social and political spheres, and who are not willing to leave behind one of the most important aspects of who we are: Our Faith.