U-Night Against the Bite (alternately, Art and Cookies)

The Art

The Cookies

How do you bring people of diverse faith traditions together around a common theme? Answer: Art and Cookies.
Heavenly home made baking, dazzling dances and majestic music all came together to draw people in for one evening on Monday, April 15th in support of the eradication of malaria through Spread the Net.

There's something about home baked desserts that makes everything around just seem... right. Laying out three tables full of baked goods before the event began was an open invitation to people to come together and to get to know one another. People came for the show, stayed for the food and left all the richer for having met new people of different faith traditions as well as having contributed to a really good cause. We had a packed evening, being serenaded and mesmerized by an acoustic guitar, Baladi dancers, a celtic fiddle, a choir, a hoop dancer, Israeli dancers, a jazz quartet and a klezmer band.

Altogether we raised nearly $500 for the Spread the Net campaign, all of which will be matched by Tony Blair. We also collected a large grocery bag full of canned goods for the Benedict Labre House as part of the admission fee - all part of the vision of "acting local, thinking global". During the intermission, a large crowd gathered in the upstairs room where both veterans and newcomers to the interfaith scene shared their faith-based calls to action.

The calibre of the acts too was phenomenal. While the event was of course what many would consider a "fundraiser" for "charity", many of the performances were of professional quality and definitely merited more than the $10 cover that was charged at the door. At one point one of the performers remarked that she'd both  attended and participated in a number of these shows and this was "the best". I like to think that it had to do with the spiritual connection, people drew on their spirituality to inform their art and then they brought it together to form an evening that was both profound and exciting - it was the mosaic at its finest.

Nick Pang
~Faiths Act Fellow