Organized by interfaith spiritual leader, Chava Gal-Or based out of Houston, Texas.

Portraits in Faith conducted its third “Sacred Listening Workshop” recently, this time being our first pilot of the workshop virtually.  Organized by interfaith spiritual leader, Chava Gal-Or based out of Houston, Texas, 12 people participated over two Sunday night sessions.   Chava had this to say about the experience:  Daniel Epstein’s Sacred Listening Workshop was profoundly spiritual. Gathering people with different religious practices and backgrounds allowed us to see that we have so much more in common than we ever realized. I believe all of us walked away seeing the commonality of the human experience.   Portraits in Faith is extending the impact of our foundation to this activity.  We define Sacred Listening as “receiving the story of someone you perceive to be the other.”  This is the third pilot, the first two being in Cincinnati New Thought Unity Church and the 2nd being for the Interfaith Council of Charleston.  We were very pleased that the virtual format worked exceptionally well which bodes well for scaling this and for gathering more and more diverse individuals.  Of note, our founder, Daniel Epstein, integrated a wonderful exercise he learned only a few days earlier from theologian Matthew Fox whom he met at the Louisville Festival of Faiths.  The exercise had each individual write a series of “I AM…” statements and then each person wrote the “I AM…” statements they thought their listening partner would have written.  The outcome was a very profound acknowledgment of empathy, honoring the other person, and sharing of gifts.  PIF Foundation offers these Sacred Listening workshops free of charge, and we are looking for more communities to help us pilot and perfect the approach.  Please reach out to Daniel Epstein if interested in either an in-person or virtual Sacred Listening workshop. He can be reached at danielkepstein@gmail.com.