Report on Alice and Mas Kawahatsu’s visit to Peninsula/S.F. CC
April 13th, 2006
Hello, I want to introduce myself, my name is Alice Kawahatsu and I serve at the URI Global Staff office here in San Francisco. I work with Mary Kelley in the development office as a part-time Development Assistant. I also happen to be married to a minister of the Konko faith who serves at the San Francisco Konko Church located in San Francisco’s Japan Town. His formal title is Rev. Masato Kawahatsu, Senior Minister. However, since many people have trouble pronouncing his last name, he usually asks people he meets to call him Mas or Mas Sensei (Sensei means “teacher” in Japanese and in the Japanese culture, ministers and teachers are called “Sensei”).
I wanted to share insights from a recent visit my husband, Mas, and I made to the San Francisco Peninsula CC. Overall, the diverse representation and openness to understand various faith traditions was amazing. I felt that though people came from many different backgrounds, there was this deep intent of each member to really listen fully with an appreciative and open heart.
Everyone was really intrigued with the talk Mas shared about gratitude and the 1,000 thank yous a day which is part of the Konko Church practice. I recall that a gentleman from the Shinyo En temple was there and he said that the first step toward enlightenment in his faith tradition is the expression of gratitude.
There was a gentleman from the Christian faith who asked the question of how Mas employs gratitude into the counseling/mediation work that he does at church. Mas replied that the balance of understanding and expressing three things are very important in helping people spiritually. The three are: Appreciation, Apology, and Request.
This person was a minister in a church, but was going to seek to help people as a hospital chaplain and he was very comforted to know that Konko had some universal themes that carry out to many religions. One of the things that Mas also stressed to this person was that helping people “let go” of their own selfish desires and understanding the desire of God or the Universe was a major force in helping people to heal, whether it was from a bad relationship or when someone passes on.
Many of the members thanked Mas for sharing what Konko faith is and most importantly, how he came to realize his calling, and how, through this, he is able to help so many people. I think that Margaret Jones, who is the coordinator for this CC opened up the evening wonderfully by having someone read the URI principles for dialogue and also sharing a teaching from their faith tradition. This reminded me of how we begin our meetings here at URI and it sets the tone for a safe place to share with each other. As the meeting came to an end, Mas was able to close the session with everyone chanting “Arigato gozaimasu”.
At the end of the evening, we both felt so thankful to be in the URI community and very comfortable and accepted. This remarkable group is a true model of how a CC can serve their own participants while maintaining a deep intention to educate clergy and lay members from the wider community. Margaret’s passion for peace, justice, and healing has made her a wonderful leader for this CC as she is so focused on issues of the world today and takes command of organizing ways for people to come together in very meaningful and spiritual ways.
Mas and I applaud the Peninsula SF CC for all their great work. Margaret mentioned to the group that URI was going to put their principles for dialogue on the URI website as a model CC for others to use. Thank you to all the CC’s out there in our URI global community that do powerful daily work towards peace, justice, and healing.