An Interview with URI Global Council Member Kathy Sandoval
July 22nd, 2007
In February 2007, Global Council Trustees, P.K. McCary and Kathy Sandoval participated in a dialogue introduced by the URI at the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery in Northern California. The purpose of the dialogue was to reflect upon religious experiences leading to interfaith work and to discuss the future of URI. Part 1: Kathy Sandoval.
These interviews with Kathy Sandoval, P.K. McCary, Rev. Heng Sure, and Stephen Fuqua, can be watched in two installments on YouTube: Reflections on Faithful Experiences Leading to Interfaith Work and Reflections on Strengths and Hopes of the United Religions Initiative.
Kathy looks at her studies with her tribal teacher and reflects upon how that experience has affected her view of interfaith:
“She is a woman who has been given all this wonderful wisdom passed down through the generations,” Kathy begins. “She has a wonderful way of helping you to discover which direction you came into this world. When I started studying with her, I thought I was studying with her simply to work with my own people and she told me, “Oh no, Kathy, you’re supposed to work with all people.” That was a sign for me that there is something going on with interfaith,” Kathy continues.
“The other thing that happened was that I began to find people along my path of different faiths and different traditions and I began to listen to them. I began to hear that their faith was very important to them. I was curious about that so I began to ask questions and then I discovered that because my faith is something so important to me, we had some commonness, some connection. That was what made it so easy for me to transition into the interfaith conversation. I saw that I was related to everyone, an idea which comes from my tradition.
My tradition of the Ahoshimom is that we are related to all things and all people and there is actually a prophecy in our tribe that we are to share our knowledge of how we relate to the earth, with all people, not just among ourselves because if we just shared it with ourselves what good would it do. Because there are so many people in the world, we need to share that wisdom with others.”
Kathy then shares her thoughts of where URI and interfaith can fit into the world of today:
“One of the things that I say or that I talk about is that we must always remember that everyone must be included in this conversation. Whether or not they choose to participate in this conversation is really up to them. We must always have a space for them; whatever that would be, whatever faith that would be or tradition, there must always be that place at the table, so to speak.”
“What I’m mostly interested in is how people relate with each other and what I see is that the URI has created an opportunity for people to be in relationship. It’s actually a really powerful structure, if you can call it that. It is just two people talking, and then two more people talking, and two more people talking, and two more people talking, until everyones talking and we’re having this incredible dialogue. It’s local as well as well as global.”