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Thousands receive good luck Shinto blessing for new year 

January 2, 2020

About 5,000 people headed to a Nuuanu Shinto shrine on New Year's Day for a popular cultural tradition. They had a priest gives them blessings for the new year, and they could also buy good luck charms to keep that luck going through the year.

Organizers say the crowd was bigger than usual at the Daijingu Temple of Hawaii. Our Diane Ako volunteers there as a priestess or "miko" and spent part of the...

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Sheridan VA employs sweat ceremonies in holistic health program

January 2, 2020

From the sacred circle on the outskirts of the Sheridan VA campus, the historic brick buildings that were once known as Fort Mackenzie are obscured by trees covered in blooms of hoar frost. A light snow materializes and mingles with floating specks of ash. The ash comes from a large fire banked against cinder blocks and covered in a layer of igneous rocks. Five-gallon buckets of water sit nearby, some with bundles of grass soaking inside. Others line the edge of a small domed structure covered in blankets: the sweat lodge.

Original Source: Laramie Boomerang
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Rose Parade 2020: Sikhs roll out a float to sow seeds of hope, generosity and harmony

January 2, 2020

Miles Lhotka has performed in at least four musicals and knows how to capture attention with dramatic movements. But this was the 12-year old’s first time on a float at the Rose Parade, and it was a much different beast. To begin with, Lhotka had to sit for over two hours on a slowly moving object, waving at people more interested in the design of the float than the people atop it. To get their attention, he needed to wave. But “you can’t just move your wrist. You have to move your entire arm,” the La Cañada resident said. “Waving normally is not going to cut it.” Source: ... Read more about Rose Parade 2020: Sikhs roll out a float to sow seeds of hope, generosity and harmony

As Jewish enclaves spring up around NYC, so does intolerance

January 3, 2020

For years, ultra-Orthodox Jewish families priced out of increasingly expensive Brooklyn neighborhoods have been turning to the suburbs, where they have taken advantage of open space and cheaper housing to establish modern-day versions of the European shtetls where their ancestors lived for centuries before the Holocaust.

The expansion of Hasidic communities in New York’s...

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When Disasters Hit California, Sikh Temples Provide Meals and Refuge

January 3, 2020

ON A CLEAR FALL MORNING earlier last year, Kashmir Shahi received an urgent call from the Salvation Army. The organization wanted to know if he would be able to provide food for over 700 people at a Santa Rosa shelter who had been displaced due to the Kincade Fire burning through California’s Sonoma County.

“They called me at 11 a.m.,” Shahi remembers. “They needed the food at 4 p.m. I live in Union City, and Santa Rosa is an hour and a half drive from there. They asked if it was possible...

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At Gallaudet University, deaf culture and faith mix

January 3, 2020

When a student stood to read from the Bible during a Catholic service at Gallaudet University earlier this year, she conveyed the sacred words in a language the group would understand: American Sign Language. The psalm — often chanted or sung — was signed as well.

And when the priest addressed the worshippers, he signed: “The Lord be with you."

A flurry of hands signed back: “And with your spirit.”

 

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State sets aside $1m for grants to help keep houses of worship safe

January 7, 2020

After a national wave of anti-Semitic incidents in recent years, including a stabbing at a Hanukkah celebration in New York last month and the murder of 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, Governor Charlie Baker pledged Monday to protect the ability of people in Massachusetts to worship without fear.

Baker said state government leaders “have the backs of those who are here to practice their faith, to live their lives without worrying about being assaulted or, in some cases, severely injured or even maimed or killed because of those beliefs. And we’re going to stand...

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Latino atheists gather as a secular group, rejecting religion

January 7, 2020

Once a month, a very particular Sunday service unfolds on a patio outside a Starbucks in El Monte. When jets fly overhead, members of the congregation have to shout across the table at one another.

Some days, there’s a small crowd, and the conversation lasts for hours. On other days, Arlene Rios waits alone.

It’s not easy being an atheist raised in a devoutly Catholic culture. But here in the San Gabriel Valley, you don’t have to doubt God’s existence all alone. You can head to the monthly meetup of secular Latinos and share a latte with Rios.

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‘Seeing our common humanity’: New Yorkers march against anti-Semitism

January 7, 2020

Aaron Steinberg is standing in the middle of Manhattan’s Foley Square, holding up a handmade sign that, for him, most clearly states the fundamental reason he and his family have come to stand shoulder to shoulder with around 25,000 others this Sunday morning.

“All humans were made in the image of God,” his sign’s taped-on words proclaim, a reference to the first chapter of Bereshit, or Genesis, in the first book of the Torah, which expresses both a bedrock theological principle in his faith as well as a basis for his civic ideals.

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‘Muslims in my house’: A tribute to a beloved centenarian

January 8, 2020

In 2002, our 4-year-old, 50-student school was homeless. We had been renting rooms in an office building in Herndon, Virginia, and our lease was up. I had started the school with my teacher friend and fellow parent Pervin Divleli to be a place where we could be creative and innovative in our teaching while building an environment in which our students could seamlessly be both American and Muslim.

Waiting lists were long, and we were adding a grade a year with what we called an “organic” expansion plan. With renovations planned in the building, however, our preschool-through-...

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