Travelblog is a series of occasional posts by RNS national correspondent Kimberly Winston, who is on the road with in Washington, D.C., Nashville, Tenn., Honolulu, Kuala Lumpur, Lahore and Islamabad, Pakistan with the 2015 Senior Journalists Seminar, sponsored by the East-West Center in conjunction with the U.S. State Department.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (RNS) The Very Rev. Gary Hall delivered a sermon from the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral here about those who leave us before the journey is done.

It was an interesting choice. Hall, who is 66, announced his early retirement from the Cathedral, the seat of the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church for Washington, earlier in the week. He will leave a little more than half-way through his five-year contract.

Some expected Hall to address his departure from the pulpit. The day’s reading from scripture — a passage from John in which many of Jesus’ followers leave him after he delivers a sermon on the bread of life — seemed to be designed specifically to help him do that.

“‘This teaching is difficult,’” Hall quoted the passage from the pulpit. “‘Who can accept it?’”

But those who have come to know Hall at the Cathedral said the sermon was pure Gary — no mention of his personal life, but a pure focus on the Gospel and how it can address the needs of the community as he prepares to leave it.

“Gary is not the type where it is all about him,” said Kevin Eckstrom, the cathedral’s new chief communications officer (and my former and very dear editor here at RNS). “He’s always about the work we do here.”

Eckstrom and two of the cathedral’s canons spoke to me and 16 other international journalists I am traveling with on a three-week fellowship to study Islam and its relationship with the West.

Rev. Gina Campbell, left and Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas

That’s a subject Rev. Gina Campbell has some personal experience with. In 2014, she invited a group of local Muslims to come and pray inside the cathedral’s north transept, just to the left of the altar and its elaborately carved stone pulpit. Three hundred people from five local mosques and the cathedral came together to pray on rugs laid on the stone floor.

“There was such a powerful spirit in the room for me that day,” Campbell told us as we sat in a mosaic-lined chapel near the cathedral’s crypt. “For me, it was a little taste of the kingdom of heaven.”

But when news of the interfaith prayers hit the media, some tasted only fury. Campbell’s phone and email inbox were flooded with hate. Cathedral security would not let her walk to her car alone.

She was undeterred. “All that did was convince me we were doing a high and holy thing,” Campbell said. “But it also convinced me it wasn’t going to be easy.”

Mosaics in the underground chapel

When the session was turned over to questions, one of my fellow reporters — not a religion reporter — asked the two canons a question that made me cringe: “Is there one true religion?”

But the answer, given by the Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas was so lovely, I am sorry I didn’t ask the question myself.

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

International journalists

God is a room, she said. There are many doors into this room. Each of us must find the door we can fit through. Your door may look different than mine. All that matter is that we all get into the room and don’t get stuck worshipping our own door.

ANOTHER VIEW: Kim Lawton’s fellowship blog at Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

TRAVEL ALONG:

DAY 2: Terrorism, blashphemy — and cookies

Day 1– A wake-up call in Washington