Almost twenty years ago, Jesuit peace activist Father John Dear wrote in the CAC’s journal Radical Grace about the nonviolent impact that interfaith cooperation can make:

At the heart of each major religion is the vision of peace, the ideal of a reconciled humanity, the way of compassion and love and justice, the fundamental truth of nonviolence.

Mahatma Gandhi [1869–1948] was the first to point toward interfaith nonviolence. . . . When he moved to India, and saw again the deep hostility between Hindus and Muslims, he made interfaith nonviolence the core of his daily worship. Each day when his community gathered for prayer, they read excerpts from the Hindu and Muslim scriptures, from the Sermon on the Mount and the Hebrew Bible. Then, they sat in silence for forty-five minutes. They concluded usually with a hymn about the all-inclusive love that reconciles everyone, the love even for one’s enemies. Forty years of interfaith, contemplative prayer transformed him into a universal spirit, as all the major religious scriptures hope for all of us. . . .

“Religions are different roads converging to the same point,” Gandhi once wrote. “What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal?” [1] . . . [and] “There will be no lasting peace on earth unless we learn not merely to tolerate but even to respect the other faiths as our own.” [2]

As we learn from each other’s religion, Gandhi discovered, we can help each other deepen in the faith of our own personal tradition. His critique of organized Christianity—that it rejected the nonviolence of Jesus and has become an imperial religion based on the Roman empire—has helped innumerable Christians return to the core teachings of Jesus, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount. The Baptist Martin Luther King, Jr. testified that the Hindu Gandhi helped him more than anyone else to follow Christ.

Since the early 1980s, Dear has worked as an author, activist, and peacemaker, deeply influenced and inspired by interfaith friendships.

For the last twenty [now almost 40] years, I have experienced the deepest multicultural and interfaith connections through my work in the peace movement. I have developed many friendships across cultural and religious boundaries because of our shared vision of nonviolence. This interfaith peacemaking sprang from the Civil Rights Movement, when Dr. King called religious leaders to march with him to Selma. The friendship modeled between Dr. King, Rabbi Abraham Heschel and Thich Nhat Hanh still bears good fruit in our world and exemplifies the journey we must all make.

As the world hangs on the brink of nuclear and environmental destruction, as we wage war in the name of religion, we need to explore the religious roots of nonviolence, just as Gandhi did. Perhaps then, we will hear the call to disarm, to embrace one another as sisters and brothers, and welcome the gift of peace that has been already given.

Sarah Young…..

Do not let any set of circumstances intimidate you. The more challenges you face, the more of My power I give you. I empower you based on your challenges of the day. The degree to which I strengthen you depends on two things: 1) the difficulty of your circumstances and 2) Your willingness to surrender

Ephesians 1:18-20
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,

Psalm 105:4
Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.

Deuteronomy 33:25 NKJV
Your sandals shall be iron and bronze; As your days, so shall your strength be.

The Holy Water We Share

Author and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes about what she calls “holy envy,” befriending followers of different traditions, and allowing such friendships to enrich our own faith. She summarizes an insight taught by inter-spiritual theologian Raimon Panikkar (1918–2010): 

Raimon Panikkar . . . spent a lot of time thinking about what it might mean for Christians to focus on contributing to the world’s faiths instead of dominating them. Born in Spain to a Catholic mother and a Hindu father, he used the analogy of the world’s great rivers. The Jordan, the Tiber, and the Ganges all nourish the lives of those who live along their banks, he said. One flows through Israel, one flows through Rome, and one flows through India. If he were writing today he might have added the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which flow through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

None of these rivers meet on earth, Panikkar said, though they do meet in the heavens, where water from each of them condenses into clouds that rain down on all the mortals of the earth. In the same way, he said, the religions of the world remain distinct and unmixed on earth—but “they meet once transformed into vapor, once metamorphosized into Spirit, which then is poured down in innumerable tongues.” [1]

Eventually all people of faith must decide how they will think about and respond to people of other (and no) faiths. Otherwise they will be left at the mercy of their worst impulses when push comes to shove and their fear deadens them to the best teachings of their religions.

Taylor recalls a trip she took with her students to a local Islamic center, and the inspiration it provided: 

Once, at the end of a field trip to the Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam, the imam ended his meeting with students by saying, “Our deepest desire is not that you become Muslim, but that you become the best Christian, the best Jew, the best person you can be. In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Thank you for coming.” Then he was gone, leaving me with a fresh case of holy envy.

I could do that, I thought. I could speak from the heart of my faith, wishing others well at the heart of theirs—including those who had no name for what got them through the night. It might mean taking down some fences, but turf was no longer the reigning metaphor. I was not imagining two separate yards with neighbors leaning over a shared boundary. I was imagining a single reservoir of living water, with two people looking into it. One might have been a Muslim and the other a Christian, but there was nothing in their faces to tell me that. All I saw were two human beings looking into deep waters that did not belong to either of them, reflecting back to them the truth that they were not alone.

 Only Love Is Absolute

This week’s Daily Meditations explore the fruitfulness of interfaith friendships. We begin with Father Richard reflecting on Jesus’ inclusivity, which has allowed Richard both to affirm and critique his own religious tradition—and invites us to do the same. 

In no other period of history have humans had such easy and immediate access to people of other cultures and other religions, often as friends. Once a person has developed any “discernment of the Spirit” it becomes clear that God’s holiness exists all over the place.

The Second Vatican Council gave Catholics some fine official guidelines and freedoms. Nostra Aetate, the 1965 Catholic document on non-Christian religions affirms, “For all peoples comprise a single community, and have a single origin . . . one also is their final goal: God. [God’s] providence, manifestations of goodness, and saving designs extend to all [people].” [1] Such an affirmation rightly places us all inside the same frame of history and allows no foundational distinction between us. We are clearly from the one God, tending toward the one God, and as the mystics of all religions teach, Reality itself is one. 

It is strange that it took us almost all of our two-thousand-year history to get back to the “ecumenical” attitude Jesus had at the very beginning! He goes out of his way to make non-Jews the heroes of many of his stories and teachings. He is quick to point out the failures and fallacies of his own religion, Judaism, while still remaining faithful to it. Jesus held a very critical stance toward his own religion, but for some reason few of us think we can do the same.

On the other hand, sadly, many people think that if they no longer believe in the absolute primacy of their own religion, then it has no absolute call on them and they often give up on it entirely. But I am convinced that the biblical tradition is saying that the only absolute available to us is the faithful love of God, and not any concept or structure—even our religious traditions themselves. God’s love itself is the center and the still point of the turning world. But if we have never actually experienced this love, we will most assuredly look for absolutes in other ways.

What is unique about Jesus is his inclusivity itself! He is so grounded in the absoluteness of the Divine relationship that he is quite free to relativize the Law, simplify the Prophets, and find God outside of his own tradition. He is constantly and consistently inclusive—without denying his Jewish foundation and faith. I believe we can only be inclusive when we have a deeply held and shared experience that we can include people “into.” We have to have a “home” to bring people home to.

What the world wants, and people need, are people who believe in Something—Something that will lead them to the good, the beautiful, the true, and the universal.

Learning from Others

If something is true, no matter who said it, it is always from the Holy Spirit. —Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate

Father Richard reflects on how his commitment to Christ and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit have continually helped him recognize God in other traditions:

In my own life, going deep in the Christian religion of my birth has enabled me to see the same Spirit and Love in other religions as well. It’s been quite a journey from growing up in a Catholic “ghetto” in Kansas, and hardly even knowing any Protestants. And yet, at age fourteen, I was sent to study with the Franciscans in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they gave me a very ecumenical theological education.

One of the best courses I had was on the Hebrew Scriptures, which gave me a great love for Judaism. It’s probably why I emphasize the prophets so much, because I realized the prophets really weren’t about what we call today retributive justice. They were about restorative justice. When we stay with their message, there will be these magnificent passages toward the end of their books that invariably point toward love. God eventually says through the prophets: “I’m going to love you anyway. I’m going to redeem you by my perfect love. I’m going to love you into wholeness” (see Isaiah 29:13–24 and Hosea 6:1–6).

In 1969, when I was sent as a deacon to the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, I had only a basic introduction to Indigenous religions. I observed how mothers in the pueblo would show their children how to silently wave the morning sunshine toward their faces, just as we learn to “bless” ourselves with the sign of the cross. Indigenous peoples here had contemplative prayer long before we Franciscans ever appeared.

The rediscovery of Christian contemplation opened my eyes to Buddhists and Sufis—their teachings and practitioners. Buddhism taught me the phenomenology of perception—what’s going on in our brains. Every world religion at the mature levels discovers some forms of practice to free us from our addictive mind, which we take as normal. Starting in the 1960s, our increased interaction with Eastern religions in general, and Buddhism in particular, helped us recognize and rediscover our own very ancient Christian contemplative tradition. The Sufis’ deep love of mysticism, especially as expressed by their poets Rumi and Hafiz, often captures the stirrings of my own heart.

My latest discovery was really Hinduism, which is considered the oldest world religion. In the early 1980s, I gave a retreat in Nepal; between talks I would just walk the old streets and walk into temples and try to remain invisible. I remember these lovely Indian women coming in wearing saris, so gracefully, and paying no attention to anything else except maybe the flame or the oil they were holding. With what reverence they would bow! What do we think they’re bowing to except God, the Mystery?

Like the wind, the Spirit blows where it will (see John 3:8).

On The Cosmic We podcast, hosts Barbara Holmes and Donny Bryant interviewed minister and scholar Dr. Walter Fluker, who shares a transformational experience he had during an ancestral grief ritual:

Walter Fluker: We hardly know the grief of our suffering. Certainly among Black people, but it’s true for all of us as you think of the Cosmic We and this universal moan [of suffering]. Even creation is moaning. Why shouldn’t we?. . .

I was involved in a grief ritual on Cortes Island off Vancouver, British Columbia. This island, all of these people from around the world were just going through these rituals. One evening . . . during what the Dagara people called the grief ritual, where we pay our debt to the ancestors through grief, through weeping and moaning that universal moan. . . . So [my friend Malidoma Somé] said just be free, so they started playing the drum and Sobonfu

was hitting some kind of shaking instrument. I just started getting down. . . . All at once, out of nowhere, my father is there. . . . I fell to my knees and I cried. I said, “Daddy, we miss you.” He had died in 1984.

I had performed a eulogy but never mourned him. I was too busy being me. I said, “Daddy, we miss you. Mama misses you, B. misses you.” I just went through the whole family. When I came to myself, all of the women had taken me to a corner in the room and they were rocking me. This Japanese woman whispers in my ears. She says, “You’re only five years old.” I didn’t know what that meant then. It was years later [that] I discovered, when daddy left Mississippi in a hurry, he sent for us, thanks be to God. I was five years old. I was still grieving my daddy’s departure.

That was one of the most healing moments in my life. He was more real than even in life real. So, I have no doubt that ancestors not only exist, but they are present for us. They come to us in moments of great need and trial, and they also celebrate life’s moments with us. They want to celebrate with us. . . .

Holmes and Bryant invite listeners to give space to their own need to grieve:

Donny Bryant: I guess the question is for our listeners . . . what trauma, what healing, what hurt, what pain that we need to be healed from could benefit from the practice of our own unique grief ritual?

Barbara Holmes: Yes, and how can the organized religious institutions, the churches, the places where we assemble to finally shed some of our arrogance, how can they help us to grieve, to lament, to begin to get free? . . . What are you grieving that you don’t know that you’re grieving? How will you process that grief?

………

Sarah Young

Transform Your Disappointments

Every time your plans or desires are blocked, use that as a reminder to be surrendered and connected to Me.

Our communication will be a blessing for you, and you will learn disappointments are transformed into opportunities for good.

Begin to see all your setbacks as opportunities and you will transform your disappointments into blessings.

Proverbs 19:21
There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.

Colossians 4:2
Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving;

Philippians 3:7-8
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ

Part of One Body

Father Richard connects the church’s teaching on “the communion of saints” and our ancestors:

Humans throughout history have often had a strong appreciation for and connection with their ancestors. I think the collective notion of oneness is what Christians were trying to verbalize when they made a late addition to the ancient Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the communion of saints.” They were offering us the idea that the dead are at one with the living, whether they’re our direct ancestors, the saints in glory, or even the so-called souls in purgatory.

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022) wrote of experiencing a tender oneness with his mother in a dream and in nature:

The day my mother died, I wrote in my journal, “A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.” I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut of my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet . . . wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as “my” feet were actually “our” feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil. [1]

Father Richard continues:

The whole thing, all of life, is one, just at different stages, all of it loved corporately by God (and, one hopes, by us). Within this worldview, we are saved not by being privately perfect, but by being “part of the body,” humble links in the great chain of history. This view echoes the biblical concept of a covenant love that was granted to the Jewish people as a whole and never just to one individual like Abraham, Noah, or David.