Tag: Nick Polaschek

Keep our sacred spaces sacred

Dave Moskovitz

In the wake of the recent shootings at places of worship at Bondi and San Diego, the Wellington Abrahamic Council of Jews, Christians and Muslims calls on all humans, religious and secular, to keep our sacred spaces sacred. All three Abrahamic religions believe in the sanctity of life. Killing people is wrong. Killing people as they gather to pray and express their spirituality is evil, no matter your religious or secular stripe.

The Abrahamic Council also calls on organisations, schools, governments, businesses, and places of worship to discuss and encourage their members to engage with people who are different to them, and get to know them. We believe that building real-life connection with “others” is the long-term solution to these acts of hate.

Jewish co-chair Dave Moskovitz says “Our society is increasingly fragmented, where we don’t have face-to-face contact with people that are different to us in real life. Many people spend most of their time online where they often interact with people like themselves, and objectify others. Judaism calls on us to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, so we should go meet and get to know our neighbours. If they know us, they’ll better understand us and will be less likely to want to kill us.”

Christian co-chair Nick Polaschek says “Contrary to one current strain within Christianity, we affirm as Christians that Jesus’ teaching and example challenge us to respect those from cultures and traditions that are different than our own”.

“It always strikes hard when your family, neighbor, or even strangers are taken away abruptly in the name of hate,” said Rito Triumbarto, Muslim co-chair. He also suggests that more human interactions will suffocate prejudice and wash away hatred. As he notes, “We are created as nations and tribes that we may know one another” (Quran 49:13). Social cohesion is a way to keep us humane – let’s work harder on this.

Kopua Monestary visit

Dave Moskovitz

On the last weekend in May a small group from the Wellington Abrahamic Council visited the Abbey of Our Lady of the Southern Star, also known as the Kopua Monestary, near Takapau in Central Hawkes Bay.

Made up of a group of Jews, Christians and Muslims, the Abrahamic Council seeks to promote understanding and acceptance between members of the three faiths that trace their roots back to our common father Abraham, and also tolerance of all faith communities within the wider New Zealand society. Having heard about Kopua at one of our meetings, several Council members were interested to come to the monastery, as this particular form of spiritual life is not present in their traditions. 

While at Kopua we attended several of the Offices and the Sunday Eucharist. One even got up at 4 am for Vigils. They meditated with the monks after Vespers and in the morning before the Eucharist, a shared spiritual practice in silence that transcends the symbolic framework of each faith tradition. They spent some time with Fr Niko Verkley before breakfast on Sunday. Around a warm fire in the evening in the peaceful atmosphere of the Guest house common room we had time for a good conversation with each other. We all appreciated the vegetarian food the cooks had gone to the trouble of providing for us.

The visit highlighted certain similarities in the faith practice within the three traditions. All share, in their own style, the rhythm of prayer throughout the day. Each involves, in their own form, ascetic practices to help us become responsive to God as the source of our lives and being. All are based on devotion to God through response to the gracious divine Word that is heard, in its own way, within each of the Abrahamic traditions.

Appreciating what we share with each other as Abrahamic peoples not only helps us to understand others from different traditions, but also appreciate more deeply the divine gift we have been given.

Nick Polaschek

Sharing our scriptures – a series of informal meetings

Dave Moskovitz

Sharing our scriptures: an Abrahamic interfaith dialogue

When: 7.30PM Wednesday 29 March and monthly thereafter
Where:
 Nick Polaschek’s home at 12 Everest Street Khandallah
RSVP: http://bit.ly/sos-rsvp

The Wellington Abrahamic Council is sponsoring a series of evening meetings to help foster understanding and friendship between people from the three Abrahamic faith traditions in Wellington.

We will meet in each others’ homes to reflect together on a theme expressed in a selected passage from the sacred scriptures of each of the three Abrahamic faith traditions.

Each of us will listen to the other participants sharing their understanding of the selected scripture from their faith traditions, in turn sharing our understanding of the scriptures from our own tradition.

The evenings will use Scriptural Reasoning, a tool for interfaith dialogue developed by the Cambridge University Interfaith Programme and now used in a number of countries. We will use the guidelines and text packs, available at their website.

For the first meeting we will use the first text pack, Abraham’s hospitality, which can be found in the Resources section of the Scriptural Reasoning website.

Our shared aim is to understand more deeply the perspectives of the other Abrahamic faith traditions and, in this light, to understand more deeply our own faith traditions. From this we hope to better recognize our shared understandings and values and appreciate positively our differences as faith traditions that come from Abraham, our father in faith.

Do consider coming along on Wednesday 29 March 2017 at 7:30pm, and don’t forget to RSVP.

For more information, contact Nick Polaschek, nandlpolaschek@gmail.com or (020) 479 7956