"So great is peace that G-d's Name is Peace .... So great is peace for all blessings are to be found in it."
- TALMUD

In her Forward to the book, The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, Karen Armstrong reminds us that “the kind of confusion, fear, and dismay that so many of us are experiencing [today] can be the start of a new religious quest”¹  ... a quest that reveals (we can hope) that all of us  [Jews, Christians, Muslims] are on a common spiritual  journey … to discover, and experience, an All-Loving, All-Embracing God:  present, active, involved … in the world today, in our families and communities, in our personal relationships with one another, and in our struggle to ‘become human’.

As people of God – people desiring to know and live God’s will in their lives – our challenge in life, in creating lives that reflect compassion and love for one another, begins with recognizing our common humanity.  Not the broken humanity that focuses on differences, and conflict.  But the healing humanity that seeks understanding, tolerance, and acceptance:  exploring, among all people, our universal bond to God.

The divisions that divide Muslim from Christian, Christian from Jew, and Jew from Muslim, are not created by God – they are born from the beliefs and prejudices, imaginations and misunderstandings, that men and women have produced, and reinforced ….over centuries of conflict, hardship, and struggle:  opinions that run deep within our veins.  Strong beliefs ….. that often leave damaging, painful scars. 

And yet, our personal choices – everyday, man-made (woman-made) human decisions – are rarely forced upon us.  The paths that we choose to follow, and the values that we culture within our hearts, usually develop freely, democratically:  ours to decide, ours to embrace, ours to promote.  We choose (or rather can choose) to turn our lives toward peace, understanding, tolerance, and outreach.  Or, we can build walls and fences that drive ourselves toward solitude, insecurity, fear, and darkness.  It is our choice.  And the consequences are our responsibility.  Light or Darkness.  Understanding or Intolerance.

Experience tells us that coarse feelings and bitter attitudes are not easily purged;  the process of renewal – “rebirth” – requires time, and healing.  But, over time, in time – with committed effort and sincere devotion – the pains of the past can die with the past ….. yielding (with God’s blessing) a New Beginning.  A Restored Life …..that breaths and inhales a purified love ….shaping, and producing, a better – a more forgiving, more understanding – future.

Consider, just for a moment, the choice that creates a brighter, and more beautiful, life-possibility:  an end-goal that shines with the richness of a common (compassionate) brotherhood and sisterhood.  A captivating, radiant image …of a healed family – of a world that shares in the joys of peace and the comforts of caring.  A humanity serving one another regardless of position or stature, wealth or poverty.  A dream.  A hope.  A challenge.  Realistic and reachable…….driven by desire, choice, and action – the fuels that provide forward momentum, and the realization of change.  A better world.  A better vision.  An Orchard of Peace …where possibility has become something Remarkable, Universal, Divine.

The birthing process of the future doesn’t have to be mystical.  The needed skills to break with the past have always existed in us.”²  In pursuing the ‘Heart of God’ we can, and we should, travel hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, ….reaching out – with compassion and healing – as Jew, Muslim, Christian …..to brothers and sisters that, as yet, cannot see the bonds that we share. “In our banks, our kindergartens, our picket lines and voting booths, as we worship in our graceful sacred buildings and in our quiet forests and on our frenzied streets, through the seasons of our joy and of our sorrows – in all these, we must remember to welcome ourselves, each other;  and all who begin as strangers into the Tent that is open to all.”³ 

We all live in God’s Tent, “the tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah, open on all sides, a tent of welcome to the ‘other’.”⁴  In this dwelling (the ‘Home of God’) there are no strangers;  there are no barriers;  there are no un-welcomed guests.  All are seen as one – equal before God, beloved children within His Cherished Family. 

Our loving God does not see the stripes that we paint on one other.  In His World, our distinct, different lives are all part of a mosaic that shifts and moves and struggles to show itself in the original beauty of God’s creation:  a picture that could live anew... but only if people choose to seek, and create, Peace ... and Unity... and Love.

The seeds of hope reside within the dreams, and desires, of all people that choose to seek God with forgiving, open hearts... compassionate, caring people who reflect kindness, humility, and tzedakah [charity] toward each other, and for one another.

In his book Peace is the Way, Deepak Chopra writes “If you shift your allegiance to peace, war ends for you today.  This happens one person at a time, but it works.  A million tiny earthquakes move more ground than a single cataclysmic quake.  There is no better or easier way to live than by catching the wave of evolution.  How hard is it to look up and say, Today is a good day for war to end.”⁵

The hope, and dream, that I hold for this website is that people from all faiths will discover (and affirm) that the journey towards God is a wide, collective passage... with many entrances and multiple starting points – all leading to one avenue:  the ‘Heart of God’.

I can imagine (and I would hope that we all can imagine) a world void of intolerance, bigotry, and prejudice:  a New Garden – a sacred ‘Orchard of Peace’.  And if we can picture, and inspire, a planet – a civilization – that embraces dignity and respect and love for all people... while [at the same time] respecting, and preserving, individual ethnic and traditional customs, and religious beliefs.  Then we can shape a world that experiences the joys of peace and the comforts of caring – caring for one other regardless of religion, or race.

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Today is a good day to begin our new spiritual quest.  All religions together.  All as one – distinct, yet collective.  A New Beginning.  One person at a time.  One community at a time.  One nation at a time. All journeying, together... towards God.

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1. Chittister, Joan, and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chishti, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow.  The Tent of Abraham:  Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  Boston:  Beacon Press, 2006.
2. Chopra, Deepak.  Peace Is the Way.  New York:  Three Rivers Press, 2005.
3. Chittister, Joan, and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chishti, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow.  The Tent of Abraham:  Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  Boston:  Beacon Press, 2006.
4. ibid.
5. Chopra, Deepak.  Peace Is the Way.  New York:  Three Rivers Press, 2005.