A High Time

I was invited to attend a program that I attended today. I was headed to a place that I had never known about, Fabric Forge, on Hillcroft and High Park near Sharpstown. I took the 9 bus, catching it at Milam and Elgin at High Fashion Home, and the bus dropped me off literally right at Fabric Forge. I went from High Fashion to High Park.

Fabric Forge, which used to HTX Sewn Goods, is part of Connect Community, and it helps train people to enter the textile manufacturing world. It is a 9000 sq. ft. textile lab, catering to local talent. It was a beautiful spot to host the event, which started at noon and ran until 2:30.

The event, sponsored by Bridges, which used to be the Minaret Foundation, was the Muslim-Jewish Christmas Roundtable. This has been going on for a while, but this meeting was going to be different from the others. When my rabbi, Steve Gross, reached out by email several weeks ago, I learned that it was invitation-only and that "We are only choosing a very limited number of individuals who have the capacity to engage in dialogue at the highest levels of diplomacy, and I consider you to be gifted in your abilities to listen and engage with honesty in a way that is non-threatening and open minded." This was the 15th annual gathering, and the big news was that its goal was to "engage each other in heartfelt interactions around the Palestinian/Israeli conflict."

I have been involved with the executive director of Bridges, Shariq Ghani, for many years and like and respect him. I talked to him today about why he was so nervous, as I didn't share his concern. It turns out that there were no big issues of argument at all. I think the crowd did a very nice job of listening to each other and learning. I was in a group with five others (three women and two men), and our little group was split equally between Jews and Muslims. To me, everyone is very sad about what has been going on in Israel for all the people there, and we all shared concerns about how our state and federal government are mishandling the situation here.

The world needs more of this! I am glad that Jews and Muslims can sit down and discuss this tough thing, but I see a much bigger opportunity. Our nation feels so torn apart. There is a huge middle of it, though, that doesn't hate others. I think that Bridges needs to go broader and work with a larger and more diverse group of people working together to have productive conversations. Bridges wants to build relationships and does a lot to do so. As one who thinks that no one should be rejected by society for their race, religion, gender or sexuality, I am all for taking steps to help move the world in this direction.