I have been blessed with an innate love of cultural diversity and excitement to learn and explore different faith traditions. What the year-long program at The Chaplaincy Institute for the Arts and Interfaith Ministries (ChI from this point on) did was allow these inborn qualities to blossom into a passion for ministering to others as an interfaith chaplain.

In the early 1980’s, in the early Reagan years, when the nuclear threats were rattling and the country was sinking into economic troubles, I went to a peace gathering in a burned-out section of Camden, New Jersey. The neighborhood seemed to have neither street lights nor street signs, so I followed the sound of the bells to the Roman Catholic church. I went in through the kitchen door.