The Covenant of the Goddess Interfaith Report
Don Frew, National Interfaith Representative

GLOBAL INTERFAITH WORK

Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions (CPWR) http://www.cpwr.org

• Rowan and I were CoG’s official representatives to the last Parliament in 2004 in Barcelona. Several CoG-members attended. I serve in the Parliament Assembly.
• Andras Corban Arthen of EarthSpirit has been appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Parliament! Congratulations, Andras!
• The next Parliament of the World's Religions will be in Melbourne, Australia, in December 2009.
• The Universal Forum of Cultures in Monterrey, Mexico, will run 90 days starting on September 20th, 2007. EarthSpirit, Circle, and CoG have talked about being involved, but we need more info from the Forum planners. (http://www.barcelona2004.org/eng/monterrey)
  • The Parliament-sponsored Encuentro Interreligioso Mundial (World Interreligious Encounter) will be held as part of the Universal Forum of Cultures in Monterrey, México, September 21-24 2007 (the Forum itself officially opens Sept. 20) . There should be more details available by mid-February both on the Parliament’s website (http://www.cpwr.org) and the Forum’s (http://www.monterreyforum2007.org) --- if the page loads in Spanish, there’s a place on the left where you can change the language to English.
    
• Goldin Institute for International Partnership and Peace (http://www.goldininstitute.org/)
  • I represented the interfaith community of the SF Bay Area at the 2003 and 2004 Goldin Institutes in Manresa, Spain (focused on "Social Cohesion in the Midst of Diversity and Migration"), and Taipei, Taiwan (focused on "Water: the Common Element").
  • The Goldin Institute is a branch of CPWR that focuses on bringing together interfaith councils from all over the world to work together on issues of common concern and to share resources and experience to build capacity. The 2007 meeting of the Goldin Institute will be in the Fall in Cartagena, Colombia, and will focus on the crisis of the use of child soldiers in armed insurgency, militia, and resistance movements. I plan to participate unless other conference plans conflict.
    
• Wiccan Youth Interfaith Essay Contest
  • Rowan created and coordinated this project.
  • We should give thought to holding a second competition in anticipation of the 2009 Parliament.
    
• Lost & Endangered Religions Project (LERP)
  • I am LERP’s founder & Director.
  • Created as an interfaith "Gift of Service" at the Parliament Assembly at the 1999 Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, LERP continues to grow slowly, acquiring projects, staff, and advisors. LERP now has five staff people (most of them Pagans) and a committee of seven academic advisors at four universities (about half of them Pagans). We are looking into grant money to support some of our projects.
  • Our projects in India -- preserving the liturgical teachings of the Araiyar priesthood and the temple dance traditions of the Devadasis -- continue with great success. We were recently entrusted with the oldest copy of the Araiyar rituals -- written on palm leaves -- for conservation, digital preservation, and transcription.
  • Our projects in Turkey proceed slowly. I am still working with academics in both Turkey and the US on arranging for surveying and excavating the Pagan city of Harran and the Pagan temple complex of Sumatar Harabesi. There is renewed interest in having a conference in UC Berkeley, and the local Turkish community has expressed great enthusiasm in the projects.
  • Our "Wiccan History Project" is getting organized. Three of the largest collections of early Craft documents in the world have agreed to be partners. We are working on enlisting the support of two more.
  • We plan to soon have a LERP website as part of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio site.
  ___________________________________________________________________________________

Pagan Federation International (PFI) (http://www.paganfederation.org/)

Foreign participation in the Hekatesia fell apart last year when our local contact in the village of Turgut came down with malaria while doing archaeological fieldwork. We will try again this year. So far, about 6 of us are planning to attend at end of September, 2007.
_____________________________________________________________________________

United Religions Initiative (URI) (http://www.uri.org/ or http://www.uriglobal.org/)

Many CoG-members, including myself, Rowan, Deborah Ann Light, Rachael Watcher, Katya Madrid, Diana Paxson, and Nancy McKinney, are members of URI Cooperation Circles.

The URI has now grown to include over 350 Cooperation Circles in 70 countries. Through its participation in the URI, CoG continues to support interfaith literacy efforts, reforestation, peace work, AIDS education, microcredit for women, etc. all around the world.

• Global Council (GC)
  • I am serving my second term on the URI's Global Council (aka "Board of Directors").
  • The next GC meeting will be in Antwerp, Belgium. There are plans to hold an interfaith service at the European Parliament.
  • The Global Council will be holding a fancy, black-tie "Circles of Light" fundraising dinner in San Francisco on February 3, 2007. This is where a significant part of the URI's funding comes from to support our $1.5 million annual budget.
  • Next year, the URI will be holding elections for the 2008-2011 Global Council. Having served two terms, I am ineligible to serve again. We should consider another Wiccan who might be willing and able to serve on the GC.
    
• Expressing the URI in Music & the Arts CC (EURIMA) (http://www.interfaithdesign.org/)
  • Rowan, and I are members of this URI CC.
  • We will be meeting soon to start work on the 2nd volume of the Interfaith Songbook. The first volume is still available at www.interfaith-presidio.org/storeindex.html <http://www.interfaith-presidio.org/storeindex.html> and is doing well.
  • We are discussing whether we have the resources to hold a 2nd Interfaith Sacred Space Compet 2) next Sacred Space Design Competition. The first one cost about $45,000 and we expect the next one to cost more like $100,000. Much depends on whether our connections with The Prince's Trust and the Aga Khan's Foundation bear fruit. The designs from the first competition are still online at http://www.interfaithdesign.org/.
    
• Indigenous MCC (http://www.uriindigenous.org/)
  • Rachael Watcher and I are members of this URI group.
  • Rachael has been helping this group, currently composed primarily of Indigenous CCs in Latin America, to get connected online. She built and maintains its website.
  • The group has decided to proceed with plans to have the Indigenous MCC be a "multiregional" group in the URI, whose members will be CCs in the Regions. This will aid in their plans to expand beyond Latin America to include other indigenous traditions around the world. To do this, they will need to learn English. Last year, Rachael and I arranged for their coordinator -- Rosalia Gutierrez from Argentina -- to come up to San Francisco and spend a month learning English and computer skills. Now, the entire Amaru CC, located in Ayacucho, Peru, wants to learn English. I am working with them to arrange for an English teacher to go to Peru to stay for a month at a time to help them learn English.
  • Two of the CCs in the Indigenous MCC -- Amaru CC in Peru and Qewna CC in Argentina -- have been involved in counseling indigenous groups in Bolivia. With the election of an indigenous person as President of Bolivia, there has been an indigenous backlash against the Church -- closing churches and driving priests out of villages. There is concern locally that this could escalate. The Indigenous MCC is bringing its interfaith experience into conversation with the indigenous Bolivians to share that there is another way to assert indigenous identity, but live in peace with one's neighbors. They have asked me to attend an important meeting on this in Bolivia coming up this March and I will try to do so.

North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) (http://www.nain.org/)

• Rowan, Rachael, Greg Harder, Michelle Mueller and I have represented CoG at NAIN.
• NAIN is a network of Canadian and US interfaith councils. For most of its history, CoG was its only Pagan member (through the Berkeley Area Interfaith Council). Recently, other Pagans have been getting involved.
• NAIN's annual meeting -- NAIN Connect -- will be in Richmond VA this year, July 13-16, 2007. (http://www.nain.org/Connect07.mov ). Several of us plan to attend.
• NAIN Connect 2008 will be in San Francisco, hosted by the Interfaith Center at the Presidio. We already have the University of San Francisco booked as a venue. For attendees sharing a double room, room-and-board will be $27 per night.

New, Revised Edition of A History of Witchcraft (http://www.amazon.com/History-Witchcraft-Second-Jeffrey-Russell/dp/0500286345)

• I edited the new chapters for this book.
• Jeffrey Burton Russell's "A History of Witchcraft" has been a staple of popular reference works on the Craft. The new edition, with revised chapters on the modern movement by Brooks Alexander, will be out in April of this year. I have a copy and it looks great! CoG is mentioned at some length on 10 pages.

REGIONAL INTERFAITH WORK

Interfaith Center at the Presidio (ICP) (http://www.interfaith-presidio.org/)

I have served on the ICP's Board of Directors for seven years, most of them as Secretary.

The ICP is a consortium of 23 Bay Area interfaith councils and seminaries that maintain the Main Post Chapel in San Francisco's Presidio as a permanent site for ongoing interfaith work. We host about 1000 events each year.

• McDonald Windows & Capital Campaign (http://www.interfaith-presidio.org/mcdonald/)
  • I serve on the ICP's Capital Campaign Committee.
  • The story of the McDonald Windows is long and fascinating. I highly recommend checking it out at the URL above. The exhibit of the windows -- "Remembered Light" -- opened at the SF Presidio Officer's Club opened last Sunday to rave reviews:
    • http://www.sootoday.com/content/arts/details.asp?c=17123
    • http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndm
      ViewId=news_view&newsId=20070110005035&newsLang=en
  • The exhibit will be up for two months, before going on tour around the country. Rowan will be docenting the Presidio exhibit on Fridays.
  • The Windows are a central part of the ICP's renovation campaign. We need to raise $6 million to renovate the building and bring it up to ADA codes. Since the McDonald family wants to see the windows find a permanent home, they have pledged the first $1 million, but we need to raise another $1 million by this July. Needless to say, there is a lot of pressure on the Capital Campaign Committee and this is taking a lot of my time. There is some info about this online at http://www.interfaith-presidio.org/mcdonald/homeprep.htm
    
• Interfaith Academy (IA) (http://www.interfaith-presidio.org/academy.html)
  • I serve on the IA's Coordinating Committee.
  • This is the educational arm of the ICP. We have started an evening educational series called "Meeting at the Commons: Faiths learning about Faiths", which I coordinate. Our next programs are:
    • "Islam and Sufism" with Amineh Pryor, International Association of Sufism (February 27)
    • "Grassroots Interfaith Work in Washington DC" with Mike Goggin, Assoc. Director of the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan and President of the North American Interfaith Network (March 27)
    • "Wiccan / Evangelical Dialogue: a 20-year Interfaith Friendship" with Elder Don Frew, Covenant of the Goddess, and Brooks Alexander, founder of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project (April 24).
  • Upcoming programs will include:
    • Music as Healing Art
    • Sacred Text, Sacred Violence
    • The "Self" in Sufism
    • Appreciative Inquiry as a Tool for Interfaith Communities
    • Hekate in Turkey: Past Meets Present
    • Inner Jihad: Striving Toward the Divine
    • Christian Identity in an Interfaith World
    • The Psychology of Interfaith Relations
    • Recent Discoveries in Pagan Mesopotamia
    • Spirituality, Interfaith, and Games
    • The Tarot as a Description of the Involution & Evolution of the Spirit
    • Paganism & Islam: the Legacy of Harran
    • Mindful Eating in the Faith Traditions
• Bay Area Interfaith Connect (http://www.interfaith-presidio.org/icpnewsevents.cfm)
  • The ICP puts out a monthly calendar of interfaith concerts, lectures, projects, and other events in the nine Bay Area counties. Each calendar typically includes some 30-50 events.

LOCAL INTERFAITH WORK

Graduate Theological Union (GTU) (http://www.gtu.edu/)

Earl Lectures (http://www.psr.edu/page.cfm?l=84)

Each January, the Pacific School of Religion (part of the GTU) hosts the annual Earl Lectures and Pastoral Conference, a three-day event that addresses critical theological, pastoral, and social issues of the day. The lectures were established in 1901 to bring prominent religious leaders to Berkeley's university community, and have featured such international figures as Theodore Roosevelt, Elie Wiesel, Howard Thurman, Maya Angelou, Paul Tillich, and Alice Walker.

The 2007 conference just ended and was titled All the Rivers of Paradise: Christian Responsibility in an Interfaith World. I was invited to do a workshop on Wiccan/Evangelical Dialogue and to be part of the opening ceremony.

The service was about two hours long, including comments on the importance of interfaith work from reps from Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Catholicism, and me. Each of us had been asked to end our comments by teaching the audience of 500 some ritual movement and/or chant. The others didn't do much in the way of movement, e.g. the Buddhist monk taught a hand-clasped bow. I had dancers in the 4 directions prepared with large cloths of the elemental colors. I moved to the center of the room, got everyone to stand and turn to the East and prompted a tape of "Invocation" by MotherTongue. In time with the verses of "Invocation", the crowd faced each of the directions, making an appropriate ritual gesture (East: arms outstretched, palms up. South: arms up, fingers pointing up. West: hands cupped. North: hands pointed towards the earth, palms down.), as dancers made appropriate motions with the colored cloths (East: waving back and forth. South: flicking up in the air like leaping flames. West: held flat by two dancers and rippled like waves. North: held vertical by two dancers and gently rippled like wind over a field of wheat or grass.). As "Invocation" segued into "Air I Am", all turned to the center as the dancers converged. Everyone joined in the chant and danced in place, reaching out to touch their neighbors.

It all went perfectly and everyone loved it.

---

Pantheacon (http://www.ancientways.com/pantheacon )

I will be doing a workshop on Wiccan / Evangelical Dialogue with Brooks Alexander.

So... the interfaith life can be all-consuming. New interfaith opportunities arise almost every day, but each new group means ongoing meetings and each event means months of special meetings leading up to it. Even so, the work is endlessly rewarding. As always, I am deeply appreciative of the Covenant’s ongoing support.

Thanks and Blessed Be,

Don Frew
National Interfaith Representative
Covenant of the Goddess