KCIYA- Faith Always Wins Interfaith Leadership Blog

Sion Friends Hugging before Heading to their Worksites This morning prayer was about communal love and why communal loving is important and what are some of the barriers in why we may not show it as often as we should. I believe that it is our human nature to judge and perfect people that creates an instant barrier to our ability to fully love. I decided that I was going to spend the morning in the garden again because it is the chore I enjoy most in the morning. It's a way to connect with the natural resources we have been given and with people that are not in my work crew at the service sites during the day. We planted sweet potatoes and the did some weeding. Later, we went to our service site and we worked and were in service to a lovely homeowner, Ms. Davis. She was extremely nice and so hospitable. She is a retired nurse which I think is really cool. We have a medical conversation about arthritis. We chatted and talked about the shared experience of having aches and pa...

   Today was insanely hot. I felt like I wanted to give up about 800 times but I managed to push through every time. I kept thinking about who we were helping and why. In all honesty, doing something for someone else's sake is a heck of a lot easier than doing something for myself-at least in the present time. In situations like these, maybe the motivator could be boiled down to a simple risk of shame or fear of disappointment, but I would like to believe it's the simple human kindness alive in my heart. In all honesty, being here can be incredibly hard. It's hard labor, learning new skills, and being uncomfortable with new routines. Physically at times. Emotionally at times. It's a place and experience that forces you into awakening and creating discomfort surrounding the luxury of our lifestyle, no matter how mundane you may consider your life to be. I always leave with a refreshed sense of place in the world alongside the people in it. This place is truly specia...

  I pulled into the parking lot of the Missouri Innovation Campus on a Tuesday afternoon in July, and, as I did so, I couldn’t help but admire the snazzy building that stood before me. My 2:30 (which ended up being a 3:00, so I was early, a lucky-strike-extra) was a quick meeting with our interfaith programming czar, Clare Stern. We mapped out our event space and checked A/V capabilities for what would be an evening of cinema and civil discourse. So, lots of circular tables, open space for cheesy icebreakers, a linear corridor for our buffet traffic, and fun rolling chairs were in order.  Readers may know that the Kansas City Interfaith Youth Alliance, Faith Always Wins Foundation, and Global Ties KC join forces for our Movie Night event series. Acknowledging that faith-based systems do not exist in a vacuum, our Movie Nights focus on the nonreligious factors that intersect our identities and shape our lived experiences. It’s always a pleasure to share a m...