I found the discussion interesting and the chanting to be very powerful, I wish we had time to go longer with it.  First of all, the introduction of the poet Rumi really connected with me in the brief amount of time that we spoke about him.  I will definitely will be reading more of him in my spare time, which at the moment is almost nil.  I found the imagery of his words very appealing and his philosophy connected personally; it was only an introduction, but intriguing none the less.

I feel I gained some insight into the Islamic Sufi culture, specifically why men and women hold different positions in society/ what their roles are.  I don’t think I realized, as some others in our class, the extent to which we would be delving into other cultures, religions, and practices, and spending time on social justice issues.  The last time I was at University was about 15 years ago and a lot has changed since then.  Personally, I think I’m slowly starting to get what we’re after here.  Simply put, as community music facilitators our role is not only to get some people together to play music, there is a much bigger picture, and the music is just the vehicle to grow, learn, and heal ourselves as a community. We ‘need’ to broaden our perspective and our awareness of the world around us and in order to do that it might get uncomfortable at times.  How can we foster an inclusive environment without knowing anything about the diverse backgrounds of the people within it? Understanding where people are coming from (and I don’t mean just physically) is vital to creating a safe, inclusive space for everyone.  No longer are we able, if we ever were, to ignorantly think that what we want and need is what everyone else needs.  If I don’t try to grow and learn in this way my own biases will direct the facilitation and it will end up being exclusive.  That’s just the beginning I believe; a starting point for growth…

Speaking to what I could see was some others reaction to the class…I can only say, from my own perspective that I am not at all bothered by discussion and participation in religious cultural activities, but being asked to participate in certain religious acts may go to far for me, but I don’t feel it has reached that point in class yet.  It does bring up the question, is what we were doing sacrilegious?  It didn’t really feel like we praying to me, so I was fine with it. Trying to connect with a higher power/ the universe/ god in a mystical way is real, it can be done because I have felt it.  It is like Sparks said, talking and studying something will only get you so far, but empirical knowledge is really is true knowledge; participating in the chanting is the best way to gain an understanding of it.  I don’t have any strict religious beliefs, so I just look at these activities as an outsider getting a peak into another culture, and while I’m doing so I’m trying to learn something of the essence of it so that I can have some perspective and use that to engage people in the future as I described earlier. I think just being open minded is important.  We all have our own beliefs, even not believing in something is a belief, and I think we  have all showed tolerance and acceptance.  I have been impressed by the fact that we have been able to do what we have done in class considering that we are a diverse group with different beliefs.  We all need to reach out to each other, help each other, and learn from each other.  If we can’t then it doesn’t speak well to our futures as community musicians.