News and Media

The Karen Armstrong event hosted by Buxton Initiative on November 15, 2011 was certainly one I will remember for a long time. As the event came to an end, I was observing people in the room wondering what it was about the event that made me feel so wonderful.  I eventually realized I was inspired by the warm and welcoming family-type atmosphere that was filling the space. 

As I discovered later, the beautiful sense of companionship running from top to bottom sprang from the Buxton Initiative’s unique approach to dialogue.  It suddenly clicked that I had found here that which I had relentlessly been seeking in the last months: the opportunity to contribute my best to an organization that would allow me to gain skills essential to inter-faith work .That this ideal place could also feel like a home was something I had not envisioned.  I am so grateful that the end of my search has far exceeded my expectations. 

As a Masters student from the Paris school of International Affairs with a new passion for inter-faith dialogue and general peace-building, I had not experienced the acceptance and willingness to explore one’s faith with the same depth that I found here in America. The one spiritual place in which I felt at home in Paris was in Ile de France, France, at the Zen Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh’s La Maison de l’Inspir. There, I had found the peace and unconditional acceptance for which I had long searched. However, the focus there was different: I was simply being me with people that had become close to me, in a place that felt like a home. What I have found here in Washington, DC is the openness and freedom of dialogue between people that I had not met before and that often did not know each other in places that were new to me.\

Here, in America, for the first time and on more than one occasion, I was asked to talk about my faith. As a deeply spiritual person with no religious affiliation, finding the words to describe that which I had never explicitly articulated was definitely a challenging and somewhat awkward experience at first. However, as I processed through those conversations, I noticed how the translation of my experience into human terms brought more clarity and precision to my inner vision, which in turn allowed me to connect with people more easily.