Faith, like a River

Welcome to Headwaters/Delta Interfaith! We’re pleased to meet you. Our website is new and we would love to hear your comments and suggestions.

Headwaters/Delta Interfaith is a partner in the holistic revitalization project of The New Orleans Healing Center. Headwaters/Delta is in the process of becoming a new 501 (c) 3 organization. We have been active within New Orleans' interfaith community for more than three years and look forward to opening our non-denominational Spiritual Space in the NOHC building, which is under construction and opening in 2011.

Headwaters/Delta Interfaith brings diverse groups into dialog and cooperative projects based on holistic sustainability and social justice. We work with local, national and international communities and organizations, to address common concerns. Although most of our work is focused in the wonderful but struggling city of New Orleans, we are also based in Minneapolis, MN. These cities are connected by the great Mississippi: we are symbolic of all rivers connecting all people. The background image of our website is taken from an 1880 map of the Mississippi River Valley.

Rivers are a good analogy for the spirit that inspires people, either as religious faith, secular humanism, or both. We all need water to survive; we all have spiritual thirsts. Each river is unique; each faith is different, yet all rivers, all faiths, share common features, define culture and nurture life. You don’t have to live on the river to use the water, just as you don’t have to be of a particular (or any) faith to have spiritual curiosity.

Rivers can be the center of controversy. They are often barometers for other environmental and social challenges. No one owns a river, but people can fight fiercely over what goes into or comes out of it. Rivers are relied on by many people; and can spark territorial disputes or support reciprocal trade. Often they do both. Rivers flow into each other, but each is distinct. It can be a matter of convention or controversy where one leaves off and another begins. Rivers are not static, they are fluid and although their course changes over time, they are still recognizably themselves.

Rivers, and faith, are part of a greater landscape. Every landscape has been shaped, at some time in its history, by the flow of waters. There is so much under the surface. Religion, faith, spirituality, ethics, humanism, social justice, all flow from the same source.
Rivers connect us. They can be borders without being boundaries: they define us, yet can carry us to each other.  

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Please join us Sunday June 27th for Riverbank Ceremonies in Minneapolis and New Orleans.
Currently, we are partnering with other groups to invite all communities up and down the Mississippi, or any other river, to join together in Interfaith riverbank prayer ceremonies on Sunday June 27. We need to acknowledge our part in, and send our apologies down to the Ocean for, the oil spilling into to Gulf. If your community, no matter how large or small, plans to gather for this purpose, please let us know at info@headwatersdelta.org. 
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Headwaters/Delta’s  Mission:
To foster local, national and international community cooperation via intergroup dialogue and popular education; to provide for the spiritual needs of the New Orleans community by maintaining a non-denominational worship space open to the public; to support the revitalization of the New Orleans area and our world, based on holistic sustainability and social equity.

Objectives:

1. Foster individual and community spiritual expression and discovery.
2. .To maintain an urban worship sanctuary, open to all.
3. Document faith and cultural diversity in NOLA.
4. Provide education about faith and cultural groups in order to replace ingrained misunderstanding and social schisms with curiosity, cooperation and concord.
5. Bring faith and spiritual leaders together to work on common concerns.
6. To support New Orleans Healing Center and other local, national and international organizations through reciprocal relationships.