For our Wednesday ‘Live from Parliament”, I asked people to share one moving experience from their day.

Mumtaz: A filmmaker (perhaps the Parliament Documentarian?) came by our booth. He had pondered “What question can I ask that will capture the essence of Parliament?” The filmmaker landed on “How do you define God?” Mumtaz began his response by pointing out that even though we here at The Universal Worship booth share the commonality of being ordained, and of being Inayatiyya, Ruhaniat, and other Sufis, our answers would likely be uniquely individual.

Mumtaz also celebrates these times ( as I scribe) of Cherag(a)s coming together: sharing from the heart; telling experiences and birthing ideas; building friendships and community.

Jalila: ENOUGH. 4-foot-tall letters across one end of one of the expansive patios fronting Lake Michigan spell out ‘ENOUGH.’ Extended from this declaration are suspended hundreds of banners handwritten by Parliament attendees bearing the names of people lost to gun violence. On Wednesday, a blacksmith arrived to transform guns into garden trowels to be distributed for use in community gardens. When he invited people to take part in the process, a woman led a child of about 7years to the front. Hesitantly, timidly at first, the child took up the hammer and gingerly struck the metal. And again. And again. And again, each time harder, stronger, increasing in resolution, strength, power, and intention.

Two feelings/thoughts came up for Jalila: First, “What a wonderful connection with the past, this ancient craft of blacksmithing, still acting in our world.” 

And second, the importance of teaching the children by WHAT WE DO.

Majida noted that in addition to the many faith traditions present, presenting, breathing together at this Parliament, there are numerous groups of intention who do not represent any particular faith. There are experiences and conversations around women’s rights, children in crisis, poverty, the earth, transforming policy, creating peace (which, as Shahabadin pointed out on Monday, is NOT the absence of conflict), food insecurity, judicial equity, and so much more. And out of this gallimaufry is emerging a surge intentions, plans, the energies of change.

Rahmana was particularly moved by the crowd of souls, open hearts and outpourings of love at The Cosmic Mass. Hundreds joined in ecstatic song and dance to attune to the Divine, in as many forms as there were people. Mathew Fox asked us to greet one other person we didn’t know and to share “How I define Sacred.” He then invited us to a period of communal grieving…. for personal grief; familial grief; community grief; ancestral grief; earth grief….. And so for a time we keened and cried and howled and shrieked… and then with another dance and voices raised in song, created space for healing.

Bakia will always remember the stories of sustainable living and the partnership of humans and the earth, especially this one. In rural villages of China, the people plant mulberry trees along streams. Some of the berries fall up on the banks, and are harvested for silk (silkworms live in mulberries). Some of the berries fall into the stream, feeding the fish. Some of the fish end up on the dinner table. And the feces of the fish are harvested to fertilize the fields which grow food to feed the people.

Mana’ar Yesterday’s Dances of Universal Peace engaged with nature through dance and meditation. Yesterday was the new moon! Many traditions celebrate this celestial phenomena as a good time for new beginnings and the setting of intentions. With dance and song we drew in the energies of the New Moon.

Fattah!: For me, the most salient moments have been born of serendipitous kismet. Our Universal Worship on Tuesday, along with our daily informal devotional pop-ups at the booth, emerge from loose outlines into spontaneous expressions of praise.

At a Kirtan, When the scheduled leader did not appear the ‘audience’ came together. Each of us led a chant or song from our own traditions, with long stretches of silence between as we immersed in the vibrational frequencies of each practice until it gradually faded away, or rather, rippled out across the landscape of The Parliament and the world. I offered ‘Aman,’ sanctuary chant. 

Afterward, a minister of a church and an organizer of a community center followed me down the hall asking to the clarify practice of Aman so that they could take it back to their Sanctuary Centers.