On December 30th, 2016 IPSC, the Governors representative, and many fellow travelers joined in the Capitol Rotunda in Columbia, SC to launch January as Interfaith Harmony Month. My dear friend Andy and I traveled up for the event and there were throngs of people, including Gov. Haley's father Ajit Singh Randhawa and mother Raj Kaur Randhawa. The photo above is of Dr. Randhawa receiving a plaque of recognition on behalf of Gov. Haley who was out of town, and so this year her proclamation was read by her liaison Ms. Beth Webb. Behind them is a corner of my beloved C's Interfaith banner which was her birthday present to herself from the 2015 Parliament of the World's Religions. The little corner that you can see has the symbol of the Bahá'í Faith. This event spawned all sorts of Interfaith activities all across the state, several of which I participated in and there will be posts about them soon. The press loved the banner as the image highlights, and it was prominently displayed in a number of later events.

CommUnity Newsletter is a publication service of Unity of Hilton Head and serves seven Unity Church/Centers, five in South Carolina, one in Georgia and one in North Carolina. As the editor/designer of this publication I dedicate two pages of each issue to Interfaith news and commentary. I'll add them as they come out. Click on image to open each issue, these files are largish and may take a minute or so to open.​

Even though I grew up in a Mormon community in semi-rural Utah, my mother’s love of art exposed me at an early age to religious Icons. I did not find them in churches but in books and found them beautiful and moving perhaps because I sensed the divinity behind them, not because I knew anything of Saints and the role of iconography in religion. As I grew older I saw Icons from many cultures and religions particularly Buddhism and Hinduism. Several years ago while at a Contemplative Aging retreat at Mepkin Abbey I had a conversation with Sister Annie, a Franciscan Nun, about St. Francis which lead to a discussion of the work of a colleague of hers Sister Kathleen Warren, who had produced a Movie and book called In the Footprints of Francis and the Sultan: A Model for Peacemaking which lead me down a fabulous rabbit hole, but that’s another story. Although I'll provide this link to a flyer I produced for the workshop I presented on the film. The cover for the movie was an exceedingly luminous Icon of St. Francis and Sultan Malik al-Kamil. I used that Icon to illuminate Rev. James King’s evocation of St. Francis’ prayer at the end of his article in the last issue of CommUnity. The artist is Brother Robert Lorentz and these green texts are links to his Robert Lentz website and Trinity Stores where some of his work is on sale.

Brother Robert has certainly stretched the bounds of western iconography. Here is a quote from him “The majority of my critics are uncomfortable with the way I move back and forth between the cultures in which I have had to live since childhood. They want tidy, black-and-white worlds that I have never known. From childhood I have had to deal with a Technicolor world in which I was never quite sure why there were so many fences. Byzantine icons stay safely behind Byzantine walls and look out at the rest of the world. Catholic images are hemmed in by Catholic fences. My icons ignore walls. They belong wherever there is life.”

Here below are wondrous examples of his work which I view as a deep contribution to our Interfaith work. Click on image to see it fully.