Shared Stories & Common Ground: The Gifts of Our Interfaith Community

By Rev. Jennifer Nichols

Star-gazing from our Spring Break campsite, we spotted the crescent moon. “Look, it’s Ramadan!” I said. “Happy Ramadan,” said my third-grade daughter. Then we went on, trying to pick out constellations. As Christians, we don’t celebrate Ramadan, but we do celebrate our Muslim friends. This is a gift we have received from Moravian Academy.

Ours is an interfaith community. We welcome and include people from all faiths, and none. We don’t just make room for one another, we celebrate and learn from each other. From student panels and presentations to class projects and community events, there are many ways that we celebrate and share.

Holidays tend to come in clusters, as diverse cultures experience similar longings at similar times of year. In the fall, as days grow shorter, there are beautiful celebrations of light. Spring holidays share common themes of liberation, hope, and renewal. We have a choice when we talk about religion and culture: to focus on what separates us, or on what we hold in common. Holi, Ramadan, Passover and Easter each occur on a lunar calendar (making their Gregorian dates change every year). Think about our ancestors, hundreds and thousands of years ago, all marking time by the moon, by the meaning and mystery of the night sky. When I look up at night, I feel a spiritual connection to those whose stories I inherited, and to those whose stories belong to my students, colleagues and friends. These stories call us toward remembrance and renewal, liberation and love, and a greater balance with the rhythms of the universe.

When we consider our distinctives, toward a more complete education and a fuller sense of belonging, we have another choice: to set ourselves apart from one another, or to learn from and celebrate one another. In 1632, early Moravian thinker, John Amos Comenius, wrote: “The sun sends its rays upon us directly, paying no heed that we look askance at one another. The rose smells sweetly to the Jew and the Christian and to the Muslim too.” It’s a gift to have such forward, inclusive thinking as a building block for our modern school, especially as we seek a common identity from three unique and beautiful campus cultures.

We don’t all see or understand the world in the same way. Ancient Greeks looked up at the night sky and saw Orion. The Navajo called these stars “Atse Ats’oosi,” pictured sometimes with a bow and arrow, ready to defend, and sometimes with a digging stick, ready to plant and grow food to feed his people.

We don’t all see the world in the same way, but because of that, we can be one another’s teachers. We are, after all, a community dedicated to learning and growth. It’s a great privilege of our diverse community that we can learn from one another’s stories, and then return to our own with greater depth and insight.