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Today’s post is by Nic Cable, a senior at Depaul, pursuing a double major in Religious Studies and Peac, Justice, and Conflict Studies. He is serving his second year as an Interfaith Scholar at DePaul University and is the Director of the Better Together Campaign at this institution.
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As the crowd grew quiet that Monday night nearly two weeks ago, I realized the interfaith movement was truly alive. Fifty students gathered on the eve of final exams and papers not because they had free time, but because they felt something powerful was going to happen that night. And it did.
A new era began at DePaul University during the What IF? Speak-In. Students stood unanimously sharing the belief that religious, spiritual, and non-religious people need to come together in the 21st century to respond to the unfortunate realities that face the world. Attendees were guided through the night by the simple yet profound question: What IF?
However, I was quick to posit that this question is not intended to be a question at all. I recall suggesting that “What IF?” “is an expression of imagination, an invitation to dream; it poses a possibility of that which one day may be a reality. What IF? is just the beginning, it is the spark that gives an idea a path to travel and grow.”
To me the most important element that makes the interfaith movement both vibrant and relevant is this invitation to dream. We live in a world where dreaming is sometimes a necessity because the world we see in a daily basis feels like a nightmare. It seems at times that violence and death bleed out of the television set during the nightly news and on the front page of the daily newspaper. So, we choose to disengage to turn away and live superficial, non-threatening lives. We choose to live in that dream.
Where the Better Together Campaign goes further than your night or day dream is its potentiality to turn these dreams we share (peace, justice, etc.) into a reality. We must wake up, though, return to the nightmare, but look at it rather as an invitation to act, an invitation to unite and serve, to mend and heal and restore it to its original state of harmony.
What IF? DePaul University students came together, both religious and non-religious, to take action to change the world? The possibilities and rewards are endless. Come January we will be tacking this campus by storm raising awareness about our interfaith social action campaign. We will not be alone. Thousands of young people across the country will be mobilizing students on their campuses as well. Together we ask What IF? We invite you to dream with us and to transform that dream into a beautiful reality.
The Better Together Campaign at DePaul University: http://on.fb.me/9jL4jY
The National Better Together Campaign: http://on.fb.me/hpQId1
-Nic Cable
Interfaith Scholar 2009-2011