It was so nice meeting you, and good luck with your table giving information to the community about the plight of the Arabs. I will be thinking of you and wishing you well, smiling at my own memories of being the only one pioneering in a new project. YMCA, 1930, meetings with black people. 1950. Garden Club activities which are now called ecology. 1960's Demonstrations on Viet Nam, Civil Rights, and more recently, 2000. Interfaith work in DC. 

I am so proud to have met you and remind you that today's radical is tomorrow's conservative. When you are my age, 82, your pioneering efforts will have brought so many people around to your way of thinking, you will have gone on to new pioneering efforts.. And today, Reconstructionist/Renewal is certainly pioneering, from my experience of trying to get Orthodox and Reformed Jews in an annual worship service! 

I do not know your rabbi's e-mail, but I was very interested in his comments on the Chosen people and the covenant. I have thought about this, too, and am happy to tell you the Franciscan movement is based on a small note in Ezekial (sorry, do not have the reference on hand) that during the diaspora to Babylonia and the destruction of the Temple, certain people were marked as keepers of the covenant. 

Francis of Assisi in around 1200 who must have known his Bible, used that reference for the founding of the Franciscan Order. The cross of the Franciscans is different from other crosses, because we (and I am a secular Franciscan) believe we are keepers of the Covenant, by our own choice, not the other way around!. 

Rabbi Jesus, too, in the Gospels, is mentioned, with his followers, as keepers of the covenant. 

In other words, rather than God selecting us, I feel we have selected Him. And many people are saying that God is not so separate, away in heaven, but really right inside of us. And during your life time, you will have heard this message more and more! This is why I love the Interfaith Conference in DC. We are all keepers of the covenant, Catholic, Jews, Buddhists, Hindu, all who accept that God in within us and connected with the universe. How do keep the Covenant? "Obey my Commandments" sayeth the Lord. 

"Where does God live? The Brain links with the Universe" , by my son Dr. Melvin Morse, has just come out on this subject. I consider this very timely, because there is a stirring in the religious community along the same lines. 

Please keep in touch! 

mTg