Contributed by Qalvy Grainzvolt, the Shinnyo-en USA New York Temple
The Center at Mariandale, a Catholic sacred space, in Ossining, New York, became the centerof this year’s United Nations (U.N.) World Interfaith Harmony Interreligious Prayer Service gathering for the region of Westchester County on February 4th. For the Shinnyo-en community, I felt deep gratitude to have participated in this service as the Buddhist representative for now over a decade. This notion of centering interfaith harmony has been a concrete pillar of the U.N. for the last 24 years. To engender nonviolence and peace, the World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW), was first put forth for consideration at the United Nations in 2010. The U.N. General Assembly (resolution A/RES/65/5), declaring the first week of February each year as the World Interfaith Harmony week, became the platform that formally centered this aspiration.
One reflection that I find myself dwelling in is that while finding the center of anything sounds simple in theory, the center can also move. Many factors and variables are responsible. To re-center oneself around the concept of interfaith harmony may seem like the same locus each and every year. In fact, in the cold of early February wearing liturgical vestments and walking to this venue, I felt like I knew the formula of what to expect in the interreligious prayer service that I was headed to. However, in truth and application, finding “the center” or locus may not look the same year after year. Depending on what is going on in the world, in our minds, hearts, and communal aspects of life, we are reminded that context is everything. I have seen many attendees and participants of this service for a decade now. We have become friends, trusted faces, and/or sources of hope to one another. Even though we meet under the same banner each year and in a different physical and geographical sacred space, I have seen the last ten years as something of a longitudinal study in how world interfaith harmony requires us to hold dialogue and strive toward compassion, lovingkindness, peace, non-violence, and acts of care from where we are currently in our lives each year, no matter where we are. The prayers that we share with one another and sacred statements we make in public all have hold existential quality. This is a vital point, I believe. How do we as human beings embody an existence that is immersed in care and meaningfulness? I am not saying that the World Interfaith Harmony Week is a therapy but it is one of the few times of the year where we all uplift our ways of being existentially aware and oriented such that what we do, what we say, and how we live life all make a difference in finding our grounding and our centering activities each day. I found it fitting then that the namesake of our venue this year has embedded in it the same core of my own spiritual aspiration in this annual week, namely: finding not just the center but my center for harmony, peace, and non-violence in an ever-changing world. Perhaps in this view, the Center is indeed in Ossining, New York…but it is also everywhere else we embody our intrinsic goodness through acts of peace both in individual and communal expression.
