Interfaith Compassion: Closing Celebration

December 21, 2025 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM (detecting timezone...)

Virtual

Event has concluded

About This Event

For the last 21 days, people from dozens of countries have gathered to deep-dive into interfaith practices of compassion. Every day featured a unique faith tradition — with "hands" practices, "head" insights from scripture, and "heart" music and art. We've stretched into Sufi zikr and Buddhist metta, Sikh seva and Indigenous ceremony, Franciscan simplicity and Jewish tikkun olam. Thousands of reflections later, we discovered what we suspected all along: beneath our different names for the sacred runs a single river of compassion.

This Sunday, we gather one last time — not to close a chapter, but to ask: Now what?

We've downloaded 21 practices. But what does it mean to upload presence into our lives? When the challenge ends and Monday arrives, how do these seeds take root?

We'd love to have you join this closing call — broaden our circle, and help carry these ripples forward. Please RSVP below.

We're honored to be joined by some remarkable voices:

  • Fawzia Al-Rawi — Born in Baghdad, initiated into Sufi wisdom by her grandmother, Fawzia has spent 25 years building bridges between cultures from her House of Peace in Vienna. Through whirling, zikr, and the Divine Names, she opens a space where traditions don't collide but dance.
  • Cortland Dahl, PhD — From years of solitary retreat in Himalayan caves under revered Tibetan masters to earning the first-ever Ph.D. in Mind, Brain, and Contemplative Science, Cort bridges ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience. What happens in our minds when compassion practices from different traditions land in the same heart?
  • Grace Dammann, MD — A physician who signed over 1,200 death certificates in San Francisco's AIDS ward, Grace's life was transformed when a devastating car accident on the Golden Gate Bridge left her with 17 broken bones and 48 days in a coma. Her brain injury became an unexpected doorway to profound presence. Now directing a meditation-based pain clinic from her wheelchair, she embodies her own teaching: "You can't control what happens, but you can control how you behave in response."

Weaving through our time together: poetry from Chelan Harkin, who once sat in Baha'u'llah's cell and heard the words "Let us dance" — alongside some sacred invocations by Bijan Khazai. Holding it all: Rev. Charles Gibbs, founding director of the United Religions Initiative and a lifelong pilgrim at the intersection of traditions.

This is a public call — so feel free to share with friends who might be curious about what happens when faith becomes bridge instead of a fortress.

To join us, click RSVP below and you'll receive call details by email. If timezone conflicts make it hard to attend live, RSVP anyway to receive the recording.

Thank you for practicing with us — and for the courage to let 21 traditions stretch your heart.

Transcript

Charles Gibbs: 21 Days

Full Transcript

Charles Gibbs: For those who have been on this Interfaith Compassion Pod journey, there's been an experience of 21 days of encountering at a head level, at a heart level, at a hands level. Teaching and practice from a wide array of our spiritual neighbors, an invitation to deepen our experience, to open our embrace, to learn from people who may have grown up in a completely different tradition from ours, or in no tradition at all. A rich climate of sharing and growing together, and you might say that today is the completion of that. But I would rather say it's the beginning of the onward journey.

Charles Gibbs: You know, it's said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Today, I would like to say that the beginning of a journey of a lifetime begins with 21 days spent together in rich community. Or perhaps in a near-fatal accident on the Golden Gate Bridge. Or perhaps in journeying from hermit's caves in the Himalayas into the world of Western science and helping to transform that. Or perhaps in a cell where the prophet of the Baha'i faith, Baha'u'llah, was held. The journey can begin anywhere if we're willing to say yes and then follow that yes with commitment and openness. So let's let today be a birth or a rebirth day, rather than a day of completion.

Charles Gibbs: There are at least two kinds of time. There's clock time. I know I've got a little clock in the upper right hand of my computer. I've got a clock on my phone. Some people don't wear a watch, but there's also sacred time that transcends the ticking of each second. The richness of this call is inviting us into sacred time, so I would invite you, if you're like me, sometimes wanting to regularly check the time, you might want to just turn your phone upside down or take your watch off. Do whatever you need to to be as fully present in the flow of this time as you and we can be.

Charles Gibbs: The spirit moves where, when, and how she wishes. And I know she will be moving richly in this call, and to start us in that movement.