Blog

A mosaic celebrates both the uniqueness of an individual tile and the collective pattern of many tiles together. This is the driving vision behind  Interfaith Youth Neighborhood Mosaic ; it is a celebration of an individual’s identity and the richness that identity brings to a diverse community. This past June, 20 middle school students from South Philadelphia spent a week exploring their own identities and the diversity of their neighborhood. Here are some reflections from our staff who crafted this wonderful program.  Elizabeth Royer – Community Programs Associate & Mosaic  Co-Facilitator  One of my favorite moments of the week was our visit to St. Thomas Aquinas Parish. Mosaic gives campers a way to learn about other faith communities that they might pass everyday, but may not know much about. Some campers had never been inside a Catholic church before this visit, while others were members of St. Thomas Aquinas and attended services there. Though St...

On June 6 th , Interfaith Philadelphia’s wide circle of friends gathered at Tabernacle United Church in University City to celebrate the Rev. Nicole Diroff. Nicole, who served our organization over nearly the whole of its history in roles from student intern to Associate Director, stepped away from her work to move with her family to Scarborough, Maine, where her husband, Dr. Jeremy Diroff, is a new member of the staff of the Maine Veterinary Medical Center. It was an occasion that can only be described as bittersweet as those who came together from so many different parts of Nicole’s life came together in Nicole’s home congregation space to honor the amazing leader Nicole has been – celebrated her successes – and blessed her going forth to new endeavors not yet quite fully imagined. Several speakers offered their praise and thanksgiving – these words from Milan Kunz, a member of Interfaith Philadelphia's Religious Leaders Council, certainly resonated for many of us –  ...

For the last eleven months, I have been privileged to serve at Interfaith Philadelphia as a Quaker Voluntary Service fellow. QVS is “a one-year experiment in intentional living” where young adults across the country choose to volunteer full-time at a nonprofit organization and join six or seven other fellows in intentional community. For me, what set QVS apart from other service programs was their promise that the experience would not be a “year off” from regular life, but instead a year of preparation for a whole lifetime of service.  I remember hearing once, back when I first started to become interested in Quakerism, that “there are no Quaker beliefs, only Quaker practices”.  The Religious Society of Friends is a non-creedal religion, meaning that it has no official statement of faith. This means that Quakers hold a wide diversity of beliefs about the Divine, the world around us, and how one should live in it--in fact, some Friends would almost certainly disagree with ...