A microphone and oyster shell passed from hand to hand in a circle of folding chairs as neighbors spoke about their own spirituality and listened to others’ without interpretation.
The Natick Freedom Team, a volunteer anti-bias, racism and bigotry organization, gave residents the chance to explore their neighbors’ belief systems at an interfaith listening circle March 25 at the First Congressional Church of Natick.
“Our goal is to listen and help create an opportunity for people to share,” said Don Greenstein, an ombudsperson at Brandeis University and member of the Natick Freedom Team who led and moderated the circle. “It was met and then some.”
Greenstein said he was trained in conducting listening circles, a “restorative justice” practice with roots in Native American tradition, where participants sit in a circle with a talking stick to ensure one person speaks at a time without interruption. Greenstein has organized several listening circles with the Natick Freedom Team.
Christine Guthery, a member of the Natick Freedom Team and founder and executive director of Spark Kindness, an anti-bullying organization, underscored the importance of listening in a time of surface-level judgment, exacerbated by social media.
“The first step to empathy is listening, and empathy is the first step to preventing harm of all kinds,” she said.
Freedom Team volunteers Greenstein, Rev. Cindy Worthington-Berry and the Rev. Becky Binns created Wednesday’s listening circle as a part of Natick’s World Interfaith Harmony Month, according to Binns.
World Interfaith Harmony Month was a celebration and a way to connect with neighbors’ spirituality. The Natick Interfaith Clergy Group, a coalition of faith leaders across congregations and faiths, held 11 events, from Friday night service at Temple Israel of Natick to a visit to the Hindu Sri Lakshmi Temple in Ashland, among others, from Feb. 26 through March 26.
“None of it stands alone. It’s all part of a broader tapestry of us really honoring one another with presence and truth and respect,” Binns said.
Greenstein opened the listening circle with a speech laying out its purpose and the rules for participation: listen respectfully, no dialogue, use “I” statements and remain mindful about generalizations and microaggressions.
He then asked the first question — “What do you wish people knew about your religion, faith or spirituality?” — and passed the talking stick, a microphone and oyster shell, to the first person to his left, and so on around the circle.
Swati Dave, a member of the Interfaith Clergy Group from the Hindu Sri Laskshmi Temple, began in the outer circle, quietly observing participants’ responses until she felt inclined to speak, and moved to the inner just in time to catch the talking stick, rubbing the shell between her fingers as she shared.
“It was a beautiful experience that everyone heard me,” Dave said in an interview after the meeting, describing what it was like to speak about Hinduism without being “judged or questioned.”
The Rev. Binns of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church said that when she suggested the circle, she hoped it would facilitate a deeper dive into faith discussions that the Interfaith Harmony Month events only touched upon.
Binns said she appreciated the honesty participants showed in speaking with one another about their faiths.
“There’s something unique and powerful about the way that Natick really spends time listening to each other and spending time with each other in this kind of way,” she said.
Tim Lathwood, a Satanist, said he’d been to similar events as a member of the First Congressional Church but nothing quite like Wednesday’s interfaith listening circle, calling it a “unique experience.”
“It’s important to use your spiritual knowledge,” he said. “When speaking about spirituality, you speak to everybody. When speaking about spirituality, you speak to nobody.”
Jay Poropatich, Natick communications director and member of the Natick Freedom Team, said while he is not particularly religious, he participated in the listening circle as a Natick resident and neighbor, as well as the town’s communications director.
“The reason I communicate is to inform and build community,” Poropatich said. “And in order to communicate, which is fundamentally talking, you really have to start listening.”
For the Rev. Cindy Worthington-Berry, a pastor at First Congressional Church of Natick and member of the Natick Freedom Team, the circle both gave her a chance to listen to her parishioners speak and gave them the “powerful” experience of articulating their own faith instead.
Worthington-Berry said she wants more diversity at events like the listening circle. She said she always wants to ask herself, “Who’s not there and what would make them feel comfortable?”
Binns said she was glad to see the listening circle giving neighbors a chance to hear about others’ belief systems in a way not always possible in a church, temple or other establishment.
“We so often get together in these interfaith settings, and we neutralize ourselves a little bit in order to not offend one another and to feel like we’re in a place where we have a common knowledge,” Binns said.
“But what sometimes gets lost is the deeper beauty and deeper honesty of really loving and talking about and celebrating the differences of our faith journeys and traditions.”