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Continuation of 2009 Parliament for the World's Religions by David Rounds For six days I attended two to four sessions a day and took a lot of notes There was every sort of presentation, such as the one on Paganism, defined as resuscitated Euro-Indigenous spirituality (\"We worship the earth, not Satan; Satan is a character in somebody else's narrative\") I attended a guided meditation hour taught by Laurence Freeman, a much-in-demand English Benedictine who travels the world teaching Catholics how to still their minds, and who filled the packed hall with a spiritual energy that hit me like a wind, something I'd only encountered before with our own teacher, the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. There was an American Cardinal who with a South African Rabbi and a Sikh preacher from Michigan described their joint interfaith projects; (\"If you want interfaith dialogue,\" the Sikh said, \"just walk down Main Street in an American town wearing a turban and you'll have your dialogue immediately\") A law professor from the Dakota Nation spoke of women's roles and men's roles among the Plains Indians A daughter of American black nationalists told of her struggle before finally adopting her parents' faith in Islam (whilst getting her Master's Degree at Harvard); she said she couldn't shake the feeling that \"One whom I cannot see sees me.\" There was also music. I heard a diminutive Indonesian lady who despite her advanced years belted out the Qur'an in various styles and ranges and degrees of warbling turns and trills, all sung entirely on the notes of our minor scale (I suspect that this scale came across the Pyrenees from Muslim Spain) An ensemble of Balinese dancers stepped about as they bent their wrists and fingers into eloquent and impossible positions. There were also two or three awe-inspiring diggeredo players. The digereedo, which neither I nor my spellchecker can spell, is a six to eight foot long tube, capable, when rightly wielded, of making a deep trombone-like toneless but somehow seductive blat. For those who attend, the Parliaments of the World's Religions are sufficient to open the eyes, and it would be hard for a diligent participant to depart still blind to the multitudinous diversity of human spirituality – and not only its diversity, but also its validity. Outside the vast Melbourne Convention Centre, where 4500 people were keenly seeking their own truths, or attending to the truths of others, a handful of protesters stood all day holding aloft handwritten signs which read \"Jesus is the only way\" I kept thinking of going outside and saying to them, \"My friends, if you think there is only one way, how little you know\" |