Communal Fast in a Time of Calamity: Liturgy/ Press conference For A Multireligious Call

How do we announce a major religious event, such as the October 8 Fast to move America from conquest to community, from violence to reverence?

When the steering committee of the Fast began discussing this, our first response was the conventional one in American society –- a press conference.

But then we recalled that there are ancient traditions for making the announcement of such a religious act itself a religious act. In the Talmud, for example, there is described a way of Calling a Communal Fast in Time of Calamity. (The calamity might be a drought, a famine, a war.)

For a multireligious event like the October 8 fast, we of course should draw on the symbols of several traditions. And in our society, we should see “the media” as themselves a kind of trumpet, a conch shell, a ringing of bells — to reach the wider public.

So we offer you the following outline of a ceremony intended to invoke God’s presence and the community’s commitment for the Fast.

We recommend that in each community where the Fast is planned as a public commitment to turn away from the Iraq War and other forms of violence, religious leaders agree to meet and speak for the following ceremony, and the media be invited to cover it and report it.

Feel free, of course, to modify this ceremony to meet your needs.

Multireligious Call to a Communal Fast in a Time of Calamity:

A “master of ceremonies” welcomes the religious leaders, the media reporters, and the community; explains that the leaders will speak in the context of religious ceremony, and that reporters will be welcome to ask questions at its end, as in a regular press conference.

Ceremony begins:

The ram’s horn blows the sacred notes of grief and alarm.

A muezzin calls the world to prayer.

The foreheads of the leaders and the sacred instruments of the different traditions — the cover of a Torah Scroll [others?] are daubed with ashes.

A bell begins to toll: ten strokes. It is tolled again as shown below.

Then the leaders say one by one, paragraph by paragraph:

In grief we see that our culture, our society, our public policies, are honeycombed with violence. Daily murders in the streets of our cities, recurrrent mass murders in our schools, violence in our families, on our television programs, our films, our computer games – and in Iraq.

Today we gather to focus on the last and bloodiest of these. We must end the shattering of Iraqi and American lives by offering American generosity and support — but not control — for international and nongovernmental efforts to assist Iraqis in making peace and rebuilding their country, while swiftly and safely bringing home all American troops.

A bell begins to toll: ten strokes.

Today we call for Americans to join in a fast from sunrise to sunset on Monday, October 8, to bring the spiritual renewal and empowerment of fasting to bear on healing ourselves –

To help us move from conquest to community, from violence to reverence.

A bell begins to toll: ten strokes.

Just as Isaiah called the People Israel to hear the Yom Kippur fast as God’s call to feed the hungry; just as Jesus fasted in the wilderness, just as Christians through Lenten fasting and Muslims through Ramadan fasting have focused on spiritual transformation, just as Mahatma Gandhi, Cesar Chavez and others drew on fasting to change the course of history, so we call on all our communities of faith to draw now on fasting as a path toward inner spiritual transformation and outward social transformation.

A bell begins to toll: ten strokes.

Ending this war can become the first step toward a policy and a society that embody a deeper, broader sense of generosity and community at home and in the world.

By turning away – even for a day — from filling our bellies, we more easily open our souls to the One, our hearts to compassion, our minds to wisdom, and our hands to acts of peace. Today, we ask the question — what acts of turning do we want to turn to, in light of this calamity of war?

A bell begins to toll: ten strokes.

Individual leaders speak their own messages, for a maximum of [two? five?] minutes each.

All join in this chant/ song (to the melody of “Dona nobis pacem”):

Grant us peace, God of peace, grant us peace – Grant us peace, God of peace.

Dona nobis pacem pacem – dona nobis, pacem.

Shalom aleichem, shalom aleichem —

Asalaam aleikum –

Namaste, shantih om, shantih om –

Grant us peace, God of peace, grant us peace – Grant us peace, God of peace.

Ceremony ends. Opportunity for questions from media.