PhD Student Marks International Day of Peace at Interfaith Event
21st September - UN International Day of Peace 2021
Dublin City Interfaith Forum (DCIF) at the Lord Mayor’s Garden, Mansion House, Dawson Street, Dublin
Reflection by Gugun Gumilar, PhD Student
With the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Alison Gilliland
How great it was to meet in person again on September 21, 2021 to mark the UN International Day of Peace 2021 with interfaith reflections and prayers at the Lord Mayor’s Garden at Mansion House in Dublin. Along with various religious leaders, I shared spiritual reflections to celebrate this day of peace. We reflected on the importance of peace and expressed ways to help others not only build resilient communities but to spread love and kindness to everyone.
That Tuesday evening, we spoke of the power of words to heal, to guide, to forgive, and to love. Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Baha’i, Hindu and Sikh representatives shared interfaith reflections and prayers on this Day of Peace, designed as an opportunity for religious leaders to discuss their variety of experiences and commonalities in their different faiths and experiences.
Among the participants were Alison Gilliland, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Hilary Abrahamson, Member of the Jewish Progressive Community, Mudafar Al Tawash, Member of the Islamic Foundation of Ireland, Stephan Arras, Senior Pastor of the Luteran Church in Ireland, Dr. Jasbir Singh Puri, Senior leader within the Sikh Community Ireland, Reverend Myozan Kodo Kilroy, Founding Teacher of Zen Buddhism Ireland and Founding President of the Irish Buddhist Union, Swami Purnananda, the Spiritual Director and Founder of the Éire Vedanta Society, the Revd Abigail Sines, the Dean’s Vicar at Christ Church Cathedral Dublin, Michael O’Sullivan, Member of DCIF, and other religious leaders.
I want to share four lessons I have learned from interfaith prayer and engagement. These lessons learned, gleaned from my journey of interfaith reflection and friendship at the UN International Day of Peace in Dublin, would be especially important in my home context of Indonesia. First, I got the opportunity to talk and share through interfaith reflection and prayer. As a Ph.D student in a theology program, having a dialogue of religious experience is vital. I have learned from the members of different communities who shared about their religious prayer and experiences at the UN International Day of Peace in Dublin. I admitted that the self-discipline and genuine goodness of these members from different people challenged my spiritual maturity and moral character. This is the dialogue of life: I recognized that many of the members from different religious communities get together to know one another better and have gained enormous strength from their own traditions.
With Hilary Abrahamson, Chair of the Dublin City Interfaith Forum and Chair of Rites and Practices with the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation, Dublin, Ireland and Rev ABIGAIL SINES, Dean’s Vicar, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.
Second, Dublin City Interfaith Forum has shown dialogue of action, as interreligious communities join together to accomplish “projects of mutual interest” at the UN International Day of Peace in Dublin. Therefore, I should encourage religious leaders, stakeholders and NGOs to promote dialogue of action and accomplish projects of mutual interest in Indonesia. With interreligious prayer and engagement, it is vital to foster relationships with members of different religions. Perhaps, the project of dialogue in Indonesia may begin by sharing traditional food and culture or doing an act of service together. These different actions and volunteerism allow members from different communities to see the shared humanity in the religious other.
Leaders at the event
Third, interfaith friendship and engagement is my passion. I reflect now on my journey toward interfaith friendship and engagement in Ireland. Such experience happened at the UN International Day of Peace in Dublin where I lived my goal of interfaith friendship and engagement, which is not to declare one’s religious tradition superior to another’s. My goal of interfaith friendship and engagement is to learn and involve how to live more peacefully and compassionately with one another. I believe that we have the very same dreams, hopes and victories that mark all human life. Interfaith friendship and engagement are inspiring. This is another lesson learned on a journey of interfaith reflection that I must share in Indonesia.
Religious Leaders at the Event
Fourth, the common values such as interreligious prayer and reflection will be proposed as the context for interfaith dialogues of life and of common action in Indonesia. Interfaith prayer shows gratitude to God for all the graces and blessings received. The interfaith gathering in Dublin provides the platform for living a virtuous life through seeking of God’s grace to be a good Muslim for myself.
I admit that the purpose of such common interfaith prayer in Dublin is primarily the corporate worship of the God of all who has created us to be one large family. I recognize the vital need of respecting their own beliefs and the beliefs and convictions of others. Such interfaith prayer and listening attitudes are key factors for this new setting of the interreligious dialogue. Through interfaith prayer and reflection, we experience God’s love together unfolded through different texts and expressions. Although the prayers are different in every religious tradition, my vital goal is an experience of union with the Divine. Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī says “though the lamps are different the light is the same”, (Hick in An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, 2004).
What a great day to reflect on how we can all be a part of this global initiative. We celebrated peace by standing up against acts of hate and by spreading words of compassion, kindness and hope. In the face of a worldwide pandemic, we work to recover from its devastation. I am very grateful for this opportunity that I had with DCIF. I hope that this reflection might provide a ray of hope in this polarized time and also would be important in Indonesia.