By PEGGY FLETCHER STACK
The Salt Lake Tribune
First Published Mar 11 2015 06:57PM
Last Updated Mar 12 2015 09:24 am
Six women, six spiritual journeys, six life-altering experiences with faith.
Most of these Utah women found themselves traveling far from their religious origins, often prompted by a crisis or awakening. A couple were born into a particular faith tradition and stayed with it, but with newfound awareness and appreciation.
They shared their stories with about 70 people Tuesday at a Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable in a small Sugar House chapel that belongs to the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. The discussion was part of the Roundtable’s monthlong celebration of the religious diversity in the Beehive State.
For Rev. Carmela Javellana-Hirano, the catalyst was her mother’s death.
The Philippines-born dynamo, who was reared as a Catholic, had become a doctor, married and had a child before she moved to the U.S., where she entered a”spiritual vacuum” amid this country’s materialism and self-absorption.
But the loss of her last parent, followed by a divorce, she said, left Javellana-Hirano feeling “the shock of impermanence.”
Once she found Japanese Buddhism, with its emphasis on wisdom and compassion
