{"id":920,"date":"2013-02-11T14:16:20","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T19:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/?p=920"},"modified":"2013-02-11T14:57:49","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T19:57:49","slug":"faith-matters-interfaith-trip-to-trinidad-january-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/2013\/02\/11\/faith-matters-interfaith-trip-to-trinidad-january-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith matters: Interfaith trip to Trinidad, January 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently returned from a week-long “interfaith” trip to Trinidad, in the West Indies, with some of Trinity College’s Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. In short, it was a beautiful and fascinating experience. Below is a post<\/a> that I also published on the blog for the participants in that trip…<\/p>\n

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Imam Adeel Zeb, Trinity's Muslim Chaplin, has a conversation with a man we met outside of St. Joseph's mosque in Trinidad before the Friday prayer service called jumu'ah. Photo credit: Lisa Kassow.<\/p><\/div>\n

I am so grateful for the opportunity to have taken part in the Interfaith trip to Trinidad for a whole number of reasons. The one I will focus on in this post is something that keeps coming to mind as I return to my thesis work after a nice week off in the warm Caribbean. If there\u2019s one thing that observing the inter-faith working of Trinidad showed me, it\u2019s that faith matters<\/em> for millions of people–and it also matters far beyond the individual who worships. As I said in conversations with a few people on the trip: faith, religion, and\/or spirituality drives so much of what the world\u2019s people think, do, say, vote for, work on behalf of, and donate to. It influences the communities that we form, the friendships we make, and the families that we raise, the alliances we seek and avoid, and the type of healthcare we prefer. It shapes the financial, institutional, political, and philosophical patterns of so much of the world.<\/p>\n

Like it or not, faith has a massive presence in the world, and despite its ups and downs, it\u2019s not going away any time soon. \u00a0U.S. Americans live in a society that likes to think it is secular. Many U.S. Americans, likewise, do not associate with a religion or no longer practice despite some religious upbringing. Actually, the day that I returned for Spring semester, I came upon an NPR show (part of special series, in fact)<\/a> that brought to light this trend by interviewing young adults who had moved away from a faith tradition. Regardless, I think that it is very much within our best interest to respect faith as one of the major \u201cmovers and shakers\u201d of our society. One may or may not personally have a relationship with God that takes the form of a faith tradition. Either way, it is very much within our best interest to understand the power of individuals\u2019 faith connections to bring together, divide, heal, hurt, explain, or otherwise color a community.<\/p>\n

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Clockwise from top left: 1. The group watched a practice performance of Exodus, one of the island\u2019s best-known steel pan groups, at a \u201cpan yard\u201d near the guest house were we stayed. 2. The colorful doorway to a Hindu temple. 3. Traditional Hindu flags left by visitors to the Temple by the Sea, a Hindu temple situated on a hand-built causeway butting into the ocean. 4. Headstones in a mixed-faith cemetery remember some of the departed members of the small Jewish community of the island.<\/p><\/div>\n

I mentioned to many people on the trip that I am in the middle of a thesis that uses case studies of two Catholic faith-based organizations in Hartford to understand their role in incorporating Latino immigrants in the city. \u00a0Since I began my project, I noted that I am not out to state that a faith-based pathway to immigrant accommodation is any better or worse than a public-based pathway. Rather, I\u2019d like to say that the phenomenon of faith-based incorporation happens<\/em>\u2014and we should pay attention to it because it has very significant consequences for the future of human rights in our city, Hartford, and, perhaps, in the rest of the nation.<\/p>\n

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Residents of St. Vincent de Paul Home for the Aged, a Catholic faith-based organization in Arima, Trinidad, wave goodbye to the Trinity group after we completed two days of painting at the home. Photo credit: Lisa Kassow.<\/p><\/div>\n

In Trinidad, we were lucky enough to have first-hand encounters with Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Orisha, the First People of the island, and Hinduism. Though all of the experiences were fascinating and beautiful, I was particularly interested in the community service visits that we made to the St. Vincent de Paul Home for the Aged<\/a> in Arima, as it is a Catholic faith-based organization. Remarkably, members of each of these communities consistently made the comment that these faith groups \u201cget along\u201d very well, with a few exceptions. This extent of acceptance might be due in part to a norm of observation, learning, and respect for one another\u2019s cultures\u2014values that we practiced during our week in Trinidad. As we return to another semester and move on from our trip, I hope that our group will keep our eyes open, mindfully and rationally observing the presence of religion in every day life in ways large and small. After all, that was one of the starting points of my thesis work. I would observe signals of faith in Hartford, like gritty signs on a recently sprung-up church saying “Dios se salva<\/em>” (“God saves”) or “comida aqu\u00ed” (“food here”). I was curious to know if the signals of hope and charity had any real meaning for human rights, so I investigated. This same curiosity guided us in Trinidad.<\/p>\n

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Clockwise from top left: 1. A performer sings Trinidad\u2019s national anthem and \u201cSweet Trinidad\u201d at a show arranged just for our group, intended to showcase the diverse cultural history of the island. 2. Indian dancers perform at the showcase, which took place at the gathering hall of a Roman Catholic church. 3. Young girls from a local dance company perform a dance to represent Trinidad\u2019s African roots. 4. Members of a local parang group (foreground), including three of our groups\u2019 tour guides, and one of their sons, perform a traditional song in Spanish, accompanied by drummers in the background.<\/p><\/div>\n

I found another parallel to my thesis work during one of our group’s reflection discussions. We had just completed our second day of service, so I asked Lisa Kassow (Director of Hillel), Muslim Chaplain Imam Adeel Zeb, and Christian Chaplain Allison Read to explain to us how each of their faith traditions understood service as a part of a faithful person’s life. I was already familiar with Christians’ ideas about service, such as Catholic liberation theologists’ “preferential option for the poor.” Hearing about the Jewish imperative to service really resonated with me. Jewish people believe in the value “tikkun olam,” or healing\/repairing the world. Social justice is important to the Jewish people, and motivates much of the service and justice work that individuals and organizations do. Lisa told us the story of Rabbi Hillel, a man who worked hard to promote justice and good in his life. I really appreciated our leaders’ meaningful answers to my questions. I felt re-focused to follow my curiosity in learning about the intersection of faith, compassion, and service.<\/p>\n

All photos by Lisa Kassow.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently returned from a week-long “interfaith” trip to Trinidad, in the West Indies, with some of Trinity College’s Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. In short, it was a beautiful and fascinating experience. Below is a post that I also published on the blog for the participants in that trip… I am so grateful for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":466,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/466"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":953,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions\/953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/cli-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}