DONATION: Carbondale Interfaith Council

This week, I'm making a donation to the Carbondale Interfaith Council.

http://www.cdaleinterfaith.org/

The purpose of the Carbondale Interfaith Council is to make God’s love visible in our community by fostering interfaith cooperation, sharing religious experiences, engaging in service, discovering unity while respecting our differences, and speaking with courage and strength for justice.

I started going to the Carbondale Interfaith Council board meetings in 2009 and am happy to be involved in the organization. Two of our most prominent programs include our support for the Good Samaritan House and the Ralph Anderson Interfaith Dialogues.

The Good Samaritan House was established in 1985 by the Carbondale Interfaith Council to provide services to the needy in the Carbondale area. They provide an emergency shelter, a transitional housing program, a soup kitchen, a food pantry, and an emergency assistance program.

The Ralph Anderson Interfaith Dialogues offer a series of public panel discussions on a variety of social and spiritual topics. Each dialogue features a leader or spokesperson from several different faiths who discuss their perspective on the topic of the day in light of their faith. After the panel discussion, speakers are open to questions and ongoing dialog with members of the community.

In addition to these long-term programs, the Carbondale Interfaith Council and members of the interfaith community also recently sponsored a small delegation to the Parliament of the World's Religions in Melbourne, Australia. This delegation allowed local people of faith to interact extensively with members of the global interfaith community, sharing their experiences of faith and service here in Southern Illinois and bringing back knowledge and wisdom from the conference to the Southern Illinois community.

Even if you are an atheist or agnostic, you may find common ground with the Carbondale Interfaith Council's commitment to public service and promotion of dialog and peaceful co-existence among people of all faiths (or no faith).

These programs are certainly reason enough to support the organization. However, I'm also making this donation on behalf of the Southern Illinois Pagan Alliance.

The Carbondale Interfaith Council is primarily composed of members of the Abrahamic faith traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. However, they are open to engaging in dialog and shared community service work with people of all faith communities that are present in Carbondale and Southern Illinois. As a member of the Pagan community, I intend to make an annual contribution to the Carbondale Interfaith Council on SIPA's behalf in order to demonstrate our community's willingness to engage in community dialog and share in community service work organized cooperatively by people of many faiths.

If you're fortunate enough to have money in your pocket after you've paid for food, shelter, utilities, and so on, consider making a donation to the Carbondale Interfaith Council or the Good Samaritan House ( http://goodsamcarbondale.org/ ).

Thanks for listening, and thanks for any support you can send their way!