During the second week of February this year, my book Life Journeys: Stepping Back and Moving Forward was published. The work of writing the essays in this book and in fashioning its total effect was done over the course of about a decade, reflecting parts of lessons, observations of events in my life personally and in our public domain and so much else. It was in every sense of the word a process and it still is a process with each chapter ending with questions for discussion that I hope will be taken up in this forum or in another one at a future point. It is my hope that we will all join together in understanding that the questions we ask are often more important than answers we take on, and in fact, approaches may be better suited to the complexity of our queries. We acknowledge that to one such inquiry there may and no doubt will be a plethora of approaches, all worthy of consideration and thought. The discussion in which I hope you will join me concerns religion, our foundational beliefs, the history and the chapters of that history attributed to others that form the basis of our reality today and our concerns and hopes for our present situation and the future. At the center of this discussion is religion – those beliefs and truths that each person, each people, each collective hold onto as part of their humanity.
I do not have illusions about this book becoming a best seller or achieving the type of popularity that would place it on the front of Barnes and Noble’s book displays. I will humbly say it would be nice because I think the message is critical. As critical as that indicated by Omar Saif Ghobash in his book Letters to a Young Muslim or in Charles Kimball’s book When Religion Becomes Evil and other treatises that look at what has gone so terribly wrong with the very institution that is supposed to inspire us to be our best and want the best for all of humanity. The focus is both as true to the value and legitimacy of holding onto a system of beliefs while recognizing and appreciating the good in other such systems as the Dalai Lama or Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and so many others would ask of us to do. I do think it would be an important read for those who are concerned with interfaith relations, with how we hold onto what is wonderful about our religious traditions while being honest about potential challenges and shortcomings, and for all of us who are so concerned about what is going on in our world today around the increased perceived danger of holding an ideology. I think it would be most valuable in classes as a text for advanced high school students, college and graduate school courses on the Value of Religion in our Society Today.
It is the conversations begun here that I hope will spark other conversations that we all engage in as we purposefully and intelligently realize that religion can be gentle and kind and not, as the extremists and radicalists amongst all of us would have it, vicious and vindictive. It is about the religion that I love as an observant Jewish woman; it is about the ideology I share with so many monotheists and about the ethical core that is the possession of the collective called humanity who believe that what is in your heart is as valuable as what is in mine. I ask you to join me on this journey and to use this space to share your perspectives and thoughts as you read through the pages of these thoughts and ideas that I bring together from the arts, from the different Monotheistic Faiths, from Native Americans, from the Eastern world and from my own spiritual home, the faith that we trace all the back to Abraham in Canaan.
For ordering information please go to https://www.amazon.com and search for Life Journeys: Stepping Back and Moving Forward by Dr. Saundra Sterling Epstein. It is available both as a paperback and as an e-book on Kindle.
Please use this space to begin discussions that will be continued… And for more thoughts and writings from my blog, please go to http://callingalljew-jus.blogspot.com/ May we all continue to work for a peaceful world of understanding and sharing of humanity, accountable to The Creator of All (or to whatever Source you deem appropriate for you). And now, please do discuss in our virtual room without walls …
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