What's Your Why?

Also known as the Interfaith Amigos – The interfaith Amigos do an inspiring presentation that offers a message of inclusion, empathy and hope. In their life work and in their interfaith presentations their message creates a bridge and opens the door to have to create conversation on religion and the interfaith experience.

Pastor Don Mackenzie, PhD, now living in Minneapolis, is devoting himself to interfaith work after retiring as Minister and Head of Staff at Seattle’s University Congregational United Church of Christ. Previously, he served congregations in Hanover, New Hampshire, and Princeton, New Jersey. Ordained in 1970, he is a graduate of Macalester College, Princeton Theological Seminary and New York University. His interest in interfaith work began while a student at Macalester and continued while living and teaching in Sidon, Lebanon, in the year prior to the Six-Day War in 1967. His country music band, Life’s Other Side, recorded the sound track for the documentary film Family Name, and has sung at the Ernest Tubb Midnight Jamboree at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.   Rabbi Ted Falcon, PhD, spiritual guide, author, teacher and therapist, has taught Jewish traditions of Kabbalah, meditation and spirituality since the 1970s. Ordained in 1968 at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, he served in Los Angeles as a congregational and then a campus rabbi. In 1975, he earned a doctorate in Professional Psychology and, in 1978, founded the first meditative Reform congregation. He moved to Seattle in 1993, where he also founded a meditative synagogue. He is the author of A Journey of Awakening: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tree of Life and co-author, with David Blatner, of Judaism For Dummies. He served as Scholar-in-Residence at Unity of Bellevue for two years, and has a private spiritual counseling practice, seeing people in his Seattle office as well as via Skype. He is Chair of Interfaith at Unity in Lynnwood.   Imam Jamal Rahman is co-founder and Muslim Sufi Minister at Interfaith Community Sanctuary in Seattle and adjunct faculty at Seattle University. Originally from Bangladesh, he is a graduate of the University of Oregon and the University of California, Berkeley. He has a passion for interfaith work and travels often, teaching classes, workshops and retreats locally, nationally and internationally. He is available for interfaith weddings and ceremonies and, like Rabbi Ted, has a private spiritual counseling practice. His books include Sacred Laughter of the Sufis: Awakening the Soul with the Mulla’s Comic Teaching Stories and Other Islamic Wisdom; Spiritual Gems of Islam: Insights & Practices from the Qur'an, Hadith, Rumi & Muslim Teaching Stories to Enlighten the Heart & Mind;  The Fragrance of Faith: The Enlightened Heart of Islam and Out of Darkness into Light: Spiritual Guidance in the Quran with Reflections from Jewish and Christian Sources. 

"We are living in an age of so much division — religious, economic, racial and ethnic. The Interfaith Amigos’s message of inclusion, empathy for and understanding of “the other” struck a much-needed chord. It is this message that attempts to heal and provide a bridge back to civility." - Nicole Glass

You can find links to their Ted Talks, published works, or their contact information here.