Yesterday, several of us from the South Bay attended “Taking It to Melbourne: Preparing for the Parliament of the World’s Religions” at the Presidio Interfaith Center in San Francisco.
The event was an official “Pre-Parliament Event,” and included reflections and slides from Bishop David Ponedel of his experiences at past meetings of the Parliament, a brief video from the interfaith community in Melbourne inviting folks to attend the Parliament in December, and talking about the importance of the gathering.
The core of the afternoon, though, was taken up with reports from local religious leaders of workshops that they had proposed for the December Parliament, ranging from panel discussions on indigenous religions to social justice action as prayer to a project to launch a “prayer wheel” satellite containing scriptures from the world’s religions that would orbit the globe.
We were there to talk about the work we have been doing in applying as a Partner City of the Parliament. For the past year, we have been working steadily to analyze the demographics, relational dynamics, and challenges of Silicon Valley and to explore a vision of interfaith cooperation in our area.
The event was webcast live on the Interfaith Center website, and one of the viewers worldwide was Robert Siegel, Interfaith Spirituality blogger for the San Francisco Examiner. You can read his comments below.
Registration is still open for the Parliament, December 3-9, 2009, in Melbourne Australia.
