We appreciate your comments about our content, Anonymous! What type of server are you using? We'd love to help fix it so you can view our site.

Really miss your hour long program on television so much. I cannot access most of your content on my computer since you have switched to your latest format.
I very much liked the inspirational photos you used to have, what happened in history on this date, and other written thoughts of day. I could read the transcripts, but not get the streaming video. Still can't.
Really do not appreciate blogs and political focus. It seems to be everywhere. What I treasured about your site and television program in the past was the presentation of all kinds of ideas for nurturing the spirit. I came to know about and experience labyrinth walking from one of your programs. Seeing how people use music and art to enhance their lives and the lives of others was wonderful. I miss this content you used to present so well.

Mr. Chaffee, thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughtful comments. They've already got our team thinking!

ON Friends,

Odyssey Networks has played an historic role in religious/interreligous media and, I hope, will continue being an important resource. I would echo Mr. Gum, though, in not quite grasping the mission or container holding together Odyssey's work. I started receiving your newsletter recently, and always enjoy it - but with a sense that the overwhelming multiplicity of issues, news, and activities of interreligion is echoed in your coverage, but without a frame of reference that might make it more meaningful.

I'm not sure to what degree you depend on your own content and how much your aggregate, if any. But again the multiplicity of content showing up every day means that you could use a frame-of-reference to make your work more explicable as well as educate people about the video terrain for religion in the 21st century. We badly need perspective as people catch up with the historic implications of religious diversity today.

For instance, ten years ago, finding interfaith video on the web excited everyone doing interfaith work. But today You Tube has 26,600 items in its interfaith index. It would be a terrific service, seems to me, for ON to do a weekly feature highlighting and linking to the best religious/ interreligious/ interfaith videos on the web (besides your own!). It would be very useful to people who are trying to keep up with interfaith activities but feel overwhelmed by the volume. I'd view it religiously and tell others about it!

Another notion would be inviting people to send you their video clips exemplifying religious diversity and pluralism, and then edit them into some kind of series. If solicited, the interfaith fire department in Arizona might send a piece, as might the United Religions Initiative cooperation circle in Islamabad made up entirely of travel agents, or the interfaith academic program going on in a Boston jail, or the 11-16 crowd that write and edit KidSpirit... so many options! (And, I know, everything comes with a budget.)

How about a video curriculum for classes in schools or classes studying religions and their relationships? Your holy holidays set already starts to do this; it's a big step forward from the run-of-the-mill religious calendars popping up and a model you might pursue with issues like interreligious history, interfaith skill-sets, and theological/philosophical toughies like syncretism.

My suspicion is that Odyssey may have to do some shifting from professional studio cameras to iPhone video clips, no matter how else you evolve ON. A very tough assignment, but you are probably the best folks in the world to take it on. And it is waiting to happen. Young adults are doing the most exciting interfaith work on the planet and will be eager to be asked onto your teams. Leaders like Eboo Patel and Joshua Stanton, whom you've already featured, are the tip of the iceberg.

Like others, I have all sorts of other ideas, but most of them are expensive. Not all of them. At The Interfaith Observer, a new interfaith e-journal, we've made it a goal to engage in and promote as much collaboration as possible among groups and individuals who are committed to creating a vital healthy interfaith culture. Down with silos, up with networks. I would hope for a similar perspective from ON - promoting the programs and issues of the Parliament of the World Religions, United Religions Initiative, Religions for Peace, and the like, while also sharing video of local programs. Stories fromToledo (e.g., interfaith gardening), Omaha (700 short postings about faith and ethnicity videotaped by local volunteers being downloaded onto a site this Spring), Louisville (with its incredible annual festival), and the hundreds of other innovative interfaith efforts in North America and abroad, need to be shared. Another for instance: an ON team of two at North American Interfaith Network's gathering in Atlanta this summer could generate material for half a dozen programs, and the NAIN board would probably offer you free registrations in appreciation. (Their dozen scholarships go to young adults; if you sent a camera person under 35, willing to join a panel of peers talking about their lives, you might even get $500 to help the effort.)

Forgive my rambling - your work is critically important and I couldn't resist your open invite for suggestions. Enough for now. Thank you for your work.

In peace,
Paul

We greatly appreciate your thoughtful comments, Mr. Gums. We will gladly take all these thoughts into consideration!

I miss your presence on cable or television. Viewing your videos on my PC is so unsatisfactory and trying to read your daily newsletter, which I'd like to appreciate, is hindered by the organization of your page layout. One cannot easily discern your platform. Some pieces are informative or inspiring but most often little more than being "interesting" in passing. Sometimes I feel that Odyssey aims to be inclusive to the point where what you wish to communicate is lost. Can you focus more intellectually and spiritually without compromising your aims?

Thank you, Anonymous, for your helpful feedback! We will work to make this happen!

Always find some new information or insight daily!