good morning and welcome. i'm ron. always joy to have you with us on behalf of dr. hue and i want to welcome my fairfield community methodist church here this morning who are sure watching. i am thrilled to have the guest here this morning. two of the members of the reoriented community. great to have you. >> lovely to see you. thank you. >> great to have you chaplain. >> good morning. >> when we hear the name symbolism, what does that mean. >> i'll say something about

suphism. it's at the heart of every religious tradition. it's been called the path of love, love for god and expression through service to god's creation. it's an experience of love, love for god. because of that it's something which in every generation, in every culture is a living experience so it has to be refreshed. generation after generation in every culture. >> i see. >> sufism reoriented is a contemporary expression of this universal ancient spirit yulety

for temperature -- spirit alty. he appointed leaders to serve as guide for americans who in their point of life feel the need for a spiritual guidance or teacher. >> how did you get involved? >> well, in my case everybody gets involved. it's the inner yearning of truth and meaning like what is this all about? in my case when i was 6-years- old i grew up in new york city and watching a tv show and thought i turned on some

cartoons and instead it was a program that had a picture of manhattan island and i recognized i lived there and the person took a big black marker and circled it and said everything inside the circle would poof, dissolve into dust in a second. later i learned that it was the h bomb that had just been developed but that moment made me realize that everything, i could die in a moment. at 6-years-old i was not a happy child. i was trying to figure out what happened. people had ideas of life after death but i wanted to know. i wanted personal experience to know why am i alive?

what is the purpose of life? and became my quest that early and i went to college and graduate school studying religion to try to see if anybody really knew from personal experience. >> and you have a phd in geology, right. >> i do. during the time i dropped out i learned about mayor bubba and the questions i had were all answered on a personal speecial level and then i went back and finished my degree. >> it's not just well intention because that is where it starts. one has to use one's body to

act on what we know and the highest level of service and the unity. >> my parents had learned about it and become members. my be met him visiting the united states. both my parents were already drawn to sufism but members reoriented neither teach that to their children nor do they expect their children to follow that path. i felt very drawn to when i was a child to all the faiths. my parents opened the door to attend any church and we often

visited with our friends. i myself was very interested in buddhism. my father had lebanise heritage. >> we're going to come back to your story and the sufism reoriented here. both of you. >> thank you so much, ron. >> please join us.

we've been talking about

sufism reoriented. >> one of the ways sufism oriented members found it most lovely to express their love for god is to express it through the art. many members are artist or musicians or actors so we do have a photograph. this is, i was showing you earlier one of our concerts in celebration of st. francis. it was a free concert. >> you did all the music, it

was wonderful. >> we've also been invited to perform at union square. this is one of those concerts at union square where we can share the universal message of love and brother hood and it's just a lovely forum for us to celebrate . >> their costumes, they were dressed in white but as you can see we don't wear white as a uniform. white does have a special meaning for us. white is the color made up of all other colors. it's symbolic of that kind of

universal inclusion. the one that of all of creation, of all of life. one thing about the chorus, sufism isn't about just teaching and learning creeds, it's about love for god and then celebrating that love which is something beyond up here. it has to do with the heart. what can express love and gratitude more than beautiful music. >> i think many people say can i come and join and you have to have the thoughts around that. you can't come and be a part.

>> a distinction needs to be made between a church like yours which is a community church where people can drop in and come. you have regular members that come regularly but others come as they can. there are other kinds of spiritual organizations known as spiritual orders. catholicism has spiritual orders, islam there are orders of spiritual groups in islam and same thing in hinduism. all spiritual traditions have spiritual orders where there's a level of commitment to unfold

ones self- along with the other members. we have a program like other spiritual orders where one learns about it and it's an orientation. it's not just for us to say is this person somebody who belongs here. it's for each person to decide it's that much spiritual home. one of the things that drew made when i was young, i didn't want to belong to a group. i was very independent. not one to belong to a group. when i learned that the thing about sufism oriented is one cannot become sufi, that's not about achieving something. it's whether one is a sufi or not. it's a matter of recognizing where one's spiritual home is.

>> i remember walnut creek opened the doors for you to build that and you shared that incredible facility you shared there. i was struck by that. >> we broke ground last may and so construction has begun. >> the construction cost goes up. the important part is that what we were committed to doing, we knew when we purchased our current center just a block away where we were poking grass but it's too small for us and

we needed to have more space. no rehearsal choir. we wanted to create a sanctuary that in its symbolism, in its physical structure represented principals of unity that we tried to carry into the world in our daily lives. it's a physical representation. it's a representation of unity. >> when you talk about love and service, it definitely means

commitment. most traditional expressions of religion we tithe or we ask for offerings. we have fund raisers and ask and for give. how do you go about making the commitment of funds? >> it's very individual because even's financial situations are individual. it's not, first of all, the spiritual director of sufism oriented who is dr. carol wilen conner at this time and is, part of the relationship isn't

at all related to our financial contribution of sufism. we have things we are very committed to. >> thank you. please join us.

welcome back. if you joined us you know we've been talking about sufism oriented and schools and what terry and others have done in the schools. tell us more about that. >> one of the expressions we're mentioning is a more public service and serving god through service to his creation has

been to the schools and we are very happy that the preschool in the past two years has been identified as the best. it's very affordable. we try to keep the cost as low as we can. all of the teachers are dead dated to serving the children who living the highest principals we can, our love for god, the things at the heart of sufism. we integrate very richly into

the curriculum the art. there's a lot of music and drama and fine art. the children are the broad spectrum. >> it's the way in which we live and the energy we share. so it's not a school in that sense, it's just a small private school. >> you were asking about projects and whether or not we tithe and we do not. sometimes when we have special projects went to offer to the cities, we invite people to contribute towards it.

based on how much we have in our little bank for that project then we can offer that as we can afford. >> pictures of the choir. >> those programs are all free. those are free programs. the program was started in 2010. they have a love for san francisco and the city. they feel strongly in its name sake, sake -- st. francis, there is a healing.

by the end more than 2000. >> it starts, we bring the children at no cost to see musical plays that sell brits the life of st. francis and they get to see plays and the actors come around and chat with them and the children are part of the action. >> tell us more about the next segment time goes so fast. we're enjoying this. >> sure. >> i hope you've been with us and please join us in our last segment.

before we go back to st.

francis, you have a symbol over there. >> yes. this is a symbol that is mayor's symbol that he designed that as you can see is circular and represents the unity but within the circle are the symbols of the major world's religion. again, when we talked earlier about sufism reoriented and being spiritualty that underlines all the tradition, this is the representation. >> that's also at the heart of the st. francis program. you all know given just one school in san francisco there are sometimes nine languages and diversity. they don't know, the children don't know the sufism, there's

no reason they should know it's sponsoring that. they only know their host of st. francis of the sea sea and they think of them who loves them and unity. just the core values are celebrated and we enjoy one another. >> is it year round? >> it happens when we're able to afford it and it's often in the fall and spring after we show the children the play. we perform a play in the national st. francis in north beach and then after they see the play we take them to one of the neighborhood city parks that we transform into a renaissance fair. >> you're talking about over 2000. >> 300 at a time and overall

was the number 7-9. >> anything else you need to say? >> the kind of program you're hosting or you bringing different representatives to speak with you every week is just an example of what reorienting is about. >> we have the jewish, catholic, muslim communities. we are glad that you have come. thank you, terry. >> no, thank you. >> it's wonderful. thank you for joining us and jesus is the greatest commander. he said love god with all your heart, soul mind and strength and love your neighbor as you

love yourself. sufism reoriented has demonstrated that and we're glad they were with us this morning. i know you've been inspired. i'm ron. join us next monday. thank you for being with us. [ wind howling ]

[ female announcer ] it balances you... [ water crashing ] ...it fills you with energy... and it gives you what you are looking for to live a more natural life. in a convenient two bar pack. this is nature valley... delicious granola bars made with the best ingredients in nature. nature valley.

welcome everyone to bay sunday. we begin as we always do. if you have a show out there we would love to hear from you. scroll down to base sunday and you could connect with us. let's get started. it's called good will industries for good reason. they've been doing that for a hundred years now. san francisco has 21 retail stores and here to chat with us is their director of participant services. how are you? >> i'm well. >> great to have you here. we talked off the camera for