Souperbowl of Caring

My fiancée recently brought the Souper Bowl of Caring to my attention as a possibility for our junior high youth group to participate in.

I have to admit that I said "sure thing" and kind of put it on the back burner at first. But she persisted and when I went to their website and researched what they were about, I was struck by two things. First, I was struck the fact that the Souper Bowl of Caring insists that everything you collect go directly to a local charity—the Souper Bowl of Caring defines itself as a movement. Second, it hit me that this was a perfect first project to kick off the interfaith youth program I'm trying to get off the ground.

The interfaith piece is happening on January 23rd; a panel discussion featuring representatives from Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Unitarian Universalism. I am elated and excited by the prospect of it going off—and terrified that something will go horribly wrong! Ah, the joys of being in charge...

In any case, here's a wonderful video about the history of the Souper Bowl of Caring movement and the effects it has on its participants. My experience with it so far is absolutely fantastic, and I would encourage any group at all to try out the Souper Bowl of Caring!



Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
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Busy, Busy Boy

I have indeed been a busy, busy boy. And you must be dear and faithful readers indeed if you are seeing this apology for the infrequency of my blog posts! But maybe if you see just a little bit of what I've been up to, you'll forgive me?

One of the things I've been doing is educating myself in how to do interfaith dialogue. To that end I recently attended an event held at Hartford Seminary that focused on dialogue between Christianity and Islam.

We were greeted by this looping video:

World of Islam

Krista Iman | MySpace Video

We watched the first few minutes of this video:


And we watched all of this one:


We also had the opportunity to speak with and ask questions of four eloquent and intelligent Muslim folk—each with their own background and experiences ranging from growing up Muslim in Turkey to growing up Catholic in California and converting to Islam later in life!

We even got to eat some awesome Mideastern food! Omnomnom! Seriously though, I was touched and inspired by these people—and one concept that really resonated with me was the idea of working towards a more fair representation of Islam in all media—not just the news but also movies and television. It reminded me a lot of Jay Silverheels working towards finding more and better roles for Native Americans in movies and television.

Just to show you how quickly I have to shift gears at times, I was also working on a sermon for Palm Sunday! And no, I did not find a way to link Islam or Jay Silverheels to Palm Sunday. I did, however, end up utilizing My Chemical Romance, believe it or not. For the online posting of the sermon, click here or click on Rev. Josh's Sermon Archive in my sidebar under the heading "Church."

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
032910