At a time when the forces pulling our world apart often seem to be gathering strength, realistic hope is a precious commodity. Our conviction at Fetzer is that we as a human family can find this hope in the shared message of our great faith traditions.
Over the past two years, we have brought together teams of distinguished scholar-practitioners from nine of the world’s faith traditions to explore the traditions’ deep convergence, and we will be releasing the initial results of their work in 2024.
Their message is one of powerful existential hope! At the deepest level, the traditions converge on a set of shared affirmations that we can hold as the “shared sacred story” of the human family. Together, they affirm that there really is a transcendent reality that holds us in Love, calls us to love, and empowers us to love. This divine reality binds us in sacred relationship with itself, with each other, and with the entire community of being, and it calls and empowers us to work together in love to build a world in which all persons and all life can flourish.
If you would like to reflect further on this theme, I encourage you to take a few moments to read and reflect on an essay by the rising young public theologian Amar Peterman entitled “On Realistic Hope: A Reflection on Advent, Diwali, and Hanukkah.”
May we all step into 2024 with courage, hope, solidarity, and love, and may we all be sustained by the Love that is at the heart of the Sacred Mystery.