For the Calgary Interfaith Council (CIC), having conversations is the key to building connections between faith communities.
Although taking a bus might not seem the obvious choice to facilitate conversations about what it means to believe, for the CIC, it actually presents a very real opportunity to encourage Calgarians to reach out.
Quite literally, on Oct. 26, the CIC organized a Communities of Faith Bus Tour that invites attendees to visit the Hindu Society of Calgary and the Al-Madina Mosque.
“We wanted to take advantage of every opportunity to help people talk to each other. To use a bus as a way to bring people together in proximity with one another, having a shared experience together, felt like a kind of another layer of creating that chance for conversation,” said Sarah Arthurs, Executive Director for the Calgary Interfaith Council.
“The other thing we know that helps conversation is food. So, at both locations, there will be some food provided, with snacks at the first place and then a light lunch at the second place.”
As part of the experience, Calgarians will be encouraged to discuss what they see and experience while on the bus.
The tour is part of a larger effort this year by the CIC to pilot new ways of reaching different people of faith and helping to remind them of what they share.
“Whenever we have events like the interfaith breakfast or [United Nations] Interfaith Harmony Week, people’s reaction as an event has concluded has been, ‘oh, that is cool, or that just felt like a beginning,'” said Arthurs.
“So, there’s this sense of a hunger for warmth, and so that is why we’re doing this bus tour event, and why we’re doing the Happy Holy Days Potluck, which will be happening in November, is because we have heard from people that they want more opportunities to be with people from different faiths and explore commonalities and discover differences.”
The October bus tour was a start of CIC’s desire to do more tours to different faiths across the city, she said.
“We’re experimenting with how many sites can visit it in a day, and what seems like the right numbers. So we’re exploring all that because certainly we had other people say, ‘oh, you could come and visit us. You could come and visit us.’ So there are opportunities,” Arthurs said.
The initial selection of the Hindu Society and the Al-Madina Mosque came about from their participation as board members in the CIC, but Arthurs said that in the future they’re looking to include other faith communities that might not yet be members.
Hopefully they can all share the message of compassion and connection that all of the world’s major faiths share, Arthurs said.
“We do know that there are regular human beings who are living regular lives, who are generous and kind, and of course, they are, because most of the world’s religions invite their adherence to be kind, to do no harm, and to have compassion. Those are the primary values of most of all of the world’s religions,” she said.
“Now, things get worked and complicated but that is the backbone of most of the world’s religions, is kind of an attitude of do to others that you would have them do to you.”
The cost for participants is free for children and $10 for adults. Registration is not required but requested, and can be done at www.calgaryinterfaithcouncil.org/communities-of-faith-bus-tour.
