I had the privilege of attending a 3 day interfaith conference this week. It is kind of hard to explain but the Centre for Dialogue at La Trobe University is running a leadership program for young Muslims and as part of that they put on a 3 day conference entitled ”Prospects for Peace in the Middle East” (right up my alley). They got a whole pile of people together from the 3 Abrahamic faith backgrounds to discuss the issues. It was really nice for me to be in a room where the dominant religious group was not my own. A lot of the women were wearing hijab and they all looked so beautiful. My dreads looked more crazy than there hijabs by far. They asked me lots of questions about how to make dreads.

We looked in detail at the Israeli Palestine conflict and Lebanon and Iran and Iraq. (Iran benefitted from America’s war in Iraq as much as America benefitted from WWII). It was a really fascinating 3 days. The lecturers and facilitators were really clever, articulate,  passionate and caring people. I felt smart just listening to them. I guess on a less positive note the issues in the Middle East are so complex especially relating to Israel and at the present time things are as bad there as they have ever been. (It amazes me we are talking about an area with a land mass a quarter of the size of Victoria). However I hold out a lot of hope for the area. There are people on both sides committed to the process of peace and dialogue. I feel honoured to have got to do my own dialoguing about the issues here in Aus with people much more affected by the issues than me. However it was certainly raised, it is one thing to discuss it here in Australia, it is a whole other thing to have to live it.