URI President and Founder the Rt. Rev. William E. Swing and Executive Director Rev. Canon Charles P. Gibbs joined more than fifty of the world’s most visionary interfaith leaders at the Temple of Understanding in New York City on Tuesday, October 19 for a Call to Action Conference on Sustainable Development. Twenty environmental advisors, including Cynthia Sampson of URI’s Environmental Satellite, were also invited to attend this historic summit, part of the Temple of Understanding's 50th anniversary celebration.
The Temple of Understanding was founded by the late interfaith pioneer Juliet Hollister, who along with the Temple’s UN Representative Sister Joan Kirby and Executive Director Allison Van Dyke participated in URI’s chartering process.
The conference opened with a keynote address by Van Jones, author of The Green-Collar Economy and former advisor to President Obama on green jobs. He spoke on the need for a spiritually mature activism, based on both science and faith, to grow an economy that is morally, ecologically and economically right, and highlighted three practices he feels are critical: loving our neighbors and standing in solidarity with them; recognizing that the children of all species are precious; and believing that miracles are possible.
Following his remarks, participants broke into small groups to explore their own role and that of their organizations in bringing religion to bear on the ecological crisis, and the possibilities for individual and collective action.
“The conversations I shared in were characterized by deep commitment, wide-ranging expertise and an almost overwhelming sense of the fierce urgency of this moment in our history,” wrote Rev. Gibbs, in his account of the event.
“In one haunting comment a person compared humanity’s current level of consciousness and action in relation to an impending environmental cataclysm to that of a person with worsening heart disease. ‘A doctor told me,’ he said, ‘that most people only wake up and do something after their first heart attack. Are we being called to prepare our communities for that first heart attack while also offering hope?’”
The conference was followed by a gala dinner celebrating the visionaries’ work and honoring four recipients of the annual Juliet Hollister Awards: His Royal Highness Prince El-Hassan bin Talal; His All Holiness, Bartholomew, Archbishop and Ecumenical Patriarch, the “Green Pope”; Archbishop Desmond Tutu; and religious scholar Karen Armstrong. Only Ms. Armstrong was there to receive her award in person.
“The high point of the evening for me came from the young people,” wrote Rev. Gibbs. “Each one spoke with insight, energy and commitment that inspired and challenged me; that made me want to try harder. He cited a poem, Being Human, offered by climbing poeTree, a team of two young Brooklyn women with roots in Haiti and Colombia:
I wonder if the wind just wants to sit / still sometimes / and watch the world pass by….If rivers ever stop / and think of turning back.
“May we take our guidance from the wind and the rivers who keep on,” wrote Rev. Gibbs, “and from our youth, who have an endless capacity to inspire and challenge us to offer our best in service to this glorious and wounded world.”
