​I was at a meeting of the religious leaders of Scotland recently. The focus of the conversation was on climate change and what faith communities are doing in the run up to COP 26 which should have been happening in Glasgow next month but now postponed until next year. We were asked to reflect on the possibility of religious leaders issuing a statement on the environment and were given a suggestion as a focus for discussion – always a good idea but sometimes difficult for the person who initially draws it up.  The thing that struck me, and others, about the statement was how secular it was. There were good things in it – welcoming people to Scotland, understanding the gravity of climate change, asking that governments respond effectively and committing the religious leaders to be agents of change. No-one could disagree with those sentiments but it lacked vision or warmth. It didn’t acknowledge the belief that religions have of reverencing and respecting the earth, of how faiths understand our interconnectedness not just with one another but with this planet on which we all depend.  It didn’t call people to see the earth as a gift to be treasured.  It was, I think, an attempt to be inclusive of all whether believers or not. And I wondered if there is a danger in that.
 
Interfaith relations have changed over the years and some Christian Churches, including the World Council of Churches, are now inclined to talk about interreligious dialogue rather than interfaith. The Catholic Church has always used the term interreligious dialogue ever since the Second Vatican Council set the Church on the path of dialogue. The body that deals with dialogue is called the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, not Interfaith Relations. This quite clearly shows the parameters of this dialogue and distinguishes it from other dialogues such as that with Marxism and New Religious Movements. What has led some of the other Christian Churches to speak of interreligious dialogue has been the development of the interfaith movement which has brought about government funding, a focus on social cohesion and security and an extension of the dialogue to include people of non- religious beliefs in keeping with equality legislation.  Interreligious dialogue differentiates the pastoral and theological concerns of religions from that of the public square.     
 
Traditionally a four –fold model of interreligious dialogue proposed by the Catholic Church in its document ‘Dialogue and Proclamation’ has been accepted by the Christian churches: the dialogue of theological experts, the dialogue of religious experience, the dialogue of action and the dialogue of living together. I’ve been lucky to engage in all of these at some level and have come to value their different contributions to expanding our understanding of others. I’ve enjoyed the challenge of some of the theological dialogues, the exploration of the similarities and differences between religions and the opening of new horizons in my own faith. It’s an area which is vital but sadly lacking in Scotland since the closure of the Centre for Interfaith Studies at Glasgow University.   
 
The Dialogue of religious experience has included inter-monastic dialogue which for decades now involved Catholic and Buddhist monastics not just in dialogue but in visiting one another’s monasteries and participating in their way of life. I’ve had my own taste of that in my visits to Samye Ling Tibetan Monastery and Holy Isle and my years of deep and honest conversation with my good friend Ani Lhamo.  So too I’ve been able to have nourishing and inspiring conversations with my  many interfaith friends and can sometimes be more honest with them about my experience of faith than I can with those who share my religion.

Then there is the dialogue of living together and sharing ordinary everyday life as neighbours or co-workers. Living as we now do in a multi-faith, pluralistic society this is a dialogue which many engage in while not naming it as such. This is the dialogue that cements friendships and is the bedrock of a respectful and open society. And finally there is dialogue of action, of engaging with one another for social justice and the common good.  This is one close to the heart of Pope Francis who for years now has spoken about the reality of fraternity (sic), of the interconnectedness of all humanity  and our need for all to work together to overcome the sufferings and injustices that afflict our world.  So is Pope Francis more interested in interfaith than interreligious dialogue? This brings us back to where we started and that statement on climate change.
 
There is no doubt that living together in a world that is not just plural but also unjust is a concern for religions. For the sake of the future of our planet and humanity it’s essential that we work together and contribute to a just and peaceful society.  We need, I think, to learn to speak a language that will be understood in the market place and not revert to traditional dogmatism.  But we need to speak from our own vision and beliefs about the sacredness of human life in all its aspects and show how our contribution to the work for justice comes from a vision that can be inspiring and liberating - but also reveals the shortcomings of those who uphold and advocate it.  Religions speaking together for the sake of justice need to be humble about how they have contributed to injustice. They should be working with people of all faiths and none but must also share, I think, their own vision and belief that shows that working for justice is an integral part of who they are. In doing this they have something significant to add to their dialogue with the world. 

I’ve recently received a copy of Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche’s biography, ‘From a Mountain in Tibet’.  Lama Yeshe is the Abbot of Samye Ling Tibetan Buddhist Monastery set in the valley of Eskdalemuir in the Dumfries and Galloway region of Scotland.  It’s an amazing place - a little bit of Tibet nestling in the Scottish countryside. I’ve come to know it well, having first visited it when the Temple was just beginning to be built and accommodation was sparse. I’ve taken students and teachers to visit it and spent time there engaging in Buddist- Christian dialogue with my good friend Ani Lhamo. She and I first really encountered one another when we were asked to lead a dialogue on the beautiful island of Iona. The weather was glorious and we spent hours talking and sharing our faith journey.  And as can happen on this interfaith journey we realised how much we had in common, how similar some of our experiences were in spite of the differences in our rituals and practices. 
 
Lama Yeshe’s biography tells the story of his early and carefree childhood  in Tibet though he always knew he was destined to be a monk and serve his brother Akong Rinpoche who, as a reincarnated Lama, was destined to be abbot of Dolma Lhakang Monastery.  Lama Yeshe didn’t exactly embrace monastic life finding it rather dull and restricting. He even thought that the escape from the monastery when the Chinese invaded Tibet would be a moment of freedom and adventure. Adventure it certainly was but not a pleasant one.  Nine months of crossing the Himalayas, cold, starving, not quite knowing the way, trying to outwit the Chinese, fearing they might be betrayed was an ordeal beyond anything most of us have had to endure.  Three hundred fled with Lama Yeshe and his brother but only 13 survived to arrive and find refuge in India.  Even the thought of what it must have been like to lose all those companions along the way is quite horrific.
 
For Lama Yeshe reaching India did not satisfy his restless spirit and his ventures there and in the United States describe what some might call a loose way of living – smoking, drinking, womanising – not what one would expect from a Buddhist Abbot!  His honesty in describing his rather wild life is refreshing and consoling.  But then he wasn’t a Buddhist monk or abbot at that time! He did have a conversion experience brought about by dissatisfaction with his life, the love and teaching of high lamas and a rigorous programme of meditation and retreats.  It was this that prepared him for life in Samye Ling and his subsequent appointment as abbot in succession to his brother Akong Rinpoche, the much loved founder of the monastery who was tragically murdered in China in 2013.
 
 I was born the same year as Lama Yeshe and though I’ve lived a very different life I couldn’t but reflect on my own life as I thought of what I was doing when Lama Yeshe was sowing his wild oats and delving into the spiritual life through rigorous retreats and meditation.  I was born in the final years of the Second Wold War so life would have been difficult though I was too young to know that. I was brought up in a Catholic community which was loving and protective, secure and comfortable but set apart from the rest of society, mainly because of the sectarianism that prevailed in Scotland at that time.  We Catholics kept to ourselves. It wasn’t quite Tibet but religion and Church were at the centre of our lives and separate Catholic schools meant many of our friends were Catholic. I entered the Convent when I had finished training as a Catholic teacher so was a sister all the time Lama Yeshe was living his turbulent life.  But I could resonate with a lot of what Lama Yeshe said when he talked about the process of having to face self, break out of illusions as he pursued his spiritual path.  I too have been through programmes of mediation and retreats. I too have pursued a spiritual path and have found this inner journey an adventurous and exciting one with its own struggles and difficulties.
 
Life is an amazing adventure.  How could Lama Yeshe have imagined that he would end his days in a monastery in Scotland when he was growing up in Tibet.  He wouldn’t even have known such a place existed. How could I have imagined that my life would have taken me into the world of other faiths, that my path would cross with a Tibetan Abbot whom I’ve come to know as a wise and honoured friend, that I would come to feel at home in a Buddhist monastery and happily sit with Buddhist friends in meditation.  Such is the exciting and wonderful result of embarking on this interfaith journey! 

Last week it was hard to get away from the horrors of the Second World War, horrors exposing the depths of degradation and cruelty that human beings can sink to.  War is a terrible event at any time but somehow the cool intention that brought about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago and the unspeakable murders in the death camps of Nazi Germany revealed to us all the depths to which our human nature can fall. 

It was on the 6th August 1945 that the United States, with the agreement of the British Government, dropped the first atom bomb on Hiroshima, hoping to gain the immediate surrender of the Japanese Emperor and so bring the Second World War to an end - without risking US casualties on the ground. When that didn’t happen a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later.  And had the Emperor not surrendered five days after that there were plans to drop more atomic bombs on other Japanese cities.  The massive blasts completely destroyed the cities, killed hundreds of thousands of citizens and left many suffering from radiation poisoning. 

I’ve been privileged to visit Hiroshima, a city that has resurrected itself but retains evidence of the horrors of the bomb in its Memorial Peace Park through the skeletal remains of the former Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall which has been left standing just as it was after the blast and the museum giving an insight into the terrible destruction and suffering of human lives.  To see simply a shadow on a step – all that remains of someone who was vaporised because they were at the epicentre of the blast is unforgettable. I will never forget it. If anything showed me the horrors of nuclear weapons it was that. Nor will I forget the walk and prayers for peace on the evening of 5th August and the annual peace service itself.  At 8.15, the exact time at which the bomb fell there was a profound moment of silence and the release of white doves of peace. Hiroshima, which for us all is a reminder of the horrors of nuclear weapons has become a symbol of peace with its unceasing call to abandon nuclear weapons – unheeded by the most powerful countries in the world.   

It so happens that in the Catholic Church the 9th August, the day the bomb fell on Nagasaki, is celebrated as the feast of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross who was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of 51.  Sr Teresa Benedicta was born Edith Stein and the youngest child of a large Jewish family. She was an academic, a convert to Catholicism who became a Carmelite nun in Cologne but was transferred with her sister to a convent in the Netherlands because the community feared for her safety.  She herself did not believe she would escape the persecution of her people and her community described how she began "quietly training herself for life in a concentration camp, by enduring cold and hunger" after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. She was indeed arrested, as was her sister, because of her Jewish roots and sent to Auschwitz to die in the gas chambers.

I’ve also been to Auschwitz though can’t say it was a privilege to be there but it was an important and sobering visit. To see the gas chambers, the ovens where people’s bodies were burned, the pits where their remains were put, the pictures detailing the names and ages of those murdered, the huge piles of hair, suitcases, shoes etc that had belonged to the victims of such hate. I had wondered before I went if there would be a spirit of evil about the place but in fact I felt it was beyond evil. It was dead in spite of the birds singing in the Birch trees surrounding Birkenau. There seemed to be no hope in this place of death.  I wondered how souls could rest having died in such horrific circumstances and understand why the victims must be remembered, lamented and prayed for. The Holocaust of course has seared into the soul of the Jewish community and someone once said that to understand Judaism today apart from the Holocaust was to understand Christianity apart from the Crucifixion of Jesus.

It also happened that our branch of the Council of Christians and Jews had a zoom meeting recently  at which we heard of the life and death of Jane Haining, a Scottish woman who also died at Auschwitz. She began life on 6th June 1897 in the small village of Dunscore in Scotland but eventually found herself in Budapest as matron of the Jewish and Christian girls boarding at a school run by the Church of Scotland, a position she dearly loved. Her biographers show her as an excellent, efficient, happy, energetic, a loving and well-loved matron who suffered greatly at the threat to her pupils’ survival. When the Church of Scotland, fearing for her safety, advised her to return home she opted to stay in Hungary with her charges. She tearfully sewed yellow badges on to the clothing of the Jewish children and the story goes that the Christian children in the school chose to sew yellow badges on to their own clothing in solidarity with their friends. She was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in May 1944 and died there three months later, probably as a result of starvation and the camp's catastrophic living conditions.  She is recognised by Yad Vashem in Israel as Righteous Among the Nations.  

So two events, two amazing women, all now interconnected with a message for us all as we face a future after coronavirus. Let’s make it a safe and happy one. 

​This week I went to an online interfaith meeting on solitude, something that has been a reality for some people during the self- isolation of this coronavirus period.  For everyone it’s been a difficult time. For some it’s been the separation from friends and family that’s been hard while for others it’s the juggling of working from home with home schooling and entertaining children that’s been stressful and exhausting. For others it’s been keeping alive their businesses and organisations. That has been true of the interfaith world. There have been so many possibilities to join in interfaith dialogues, not just at home but all over the world.  Sometimes it has felt that there have been just too many invitations and I’ve resisted a lot of them because I’ve appreciated the space and time for solitude away from diaries and meetings. I’ve resisted filling up my time with too much busyness. Of course there have been zoom and skype contacts so that I’ve not been at all lonely.

Solitude has a place in the Christian tradition. The celibate life of nuns and priests is seen as a legitimate calling which frees a person from the responsibilities of family to devote themselves to prayer and contemplation as well as service to the community. Being without a lifelong partner means there is a certain solitude about religious life, an aloneness even when living in community though that doesn’t necessarily mean loneliness. We have probably all experienced a feeling of loneliness in the middle of a crowd and a feeling of connectedness when alone by ourselves. But not all faiths value solitude.

Judaism is a religion that focuses very strongly on the family and community. Private, individual prayer is not as important as community prayer or living according to a tradition that re-members the past and reinforces membership of a people in a particular relationship with God. The text chosen for our recent scriptural reasoning event on solitude was the story from the book of Exodus of Moses spending 40 days and nights on Mt Sinai in conversation with God and in preparation for the gift of the Torah. The interpreter on the passage asked: was Moses truly alone if he were in the presence of God and since this time of solitude was a preparation for the giving of Torah then it was directed towards community which is at the heart of Judaism.

The Muslim presenter talked about three kinds of solitude in Islam which connects well with the Jewish view: preparatory solitude, whispering solitude and forbidden solitude. All the prophets including Mohammed, Moses, Jesus spent some time in solitude, in prayer and fasting, as a preparation for revelation. For Moses this revelation was the giving of the Torah, for Mohammed it was the revelation of the Qur’an and for Jesus it was the revelation of his mission to preach the presence of the Kingdom of God amongst us.  Prophets are spokespersons, mirrors that reflect the greatness of God. To be effective they need to be purified, emptied of self and totally open to God’s voice and for this, a time of intense prayer and solitude is necessary. Whispering solitude occurs at moments when we can withdraw and disconnect from all around us to enter into the inner silence of our hearts to pray, listen to God, to remember that God is closer to us than our jugular vein. Forbidden solitude is the kind of solitude that leads us to withdraw totally from family, community or society responsibilities. It’s the kind of solitude that stops us engaging with the reality of the world around us, rather than preparing us to enter into it and serve it.

The Christian presenter was from the reformed tradition which, he pointed out, didn’t, until recently, value solitude in the way that the Catholic and Orthodox traditions did. The text he commented on was the Gospel of Mark’s account of Jesus’ time in the desert after his baptism in the River Jordan.  We are told in Mark that is was the Holy Spirit, the One who is said to have descended on Jesus at his baptism who drove him into the desert where he remained for 40 days and 40 nights without eating, living among the wild beasts and ministered to by angels. In the other gospels there is an account of how Jesus was tempted during that time as to his identity and mission. This side of solitude shows the reality of having to face ourselves, our fears, compromises, our masks, our desire for ease and approval. Solitude is not just about communing with God or discerning His will. It is also about facing the wild beasts within all of us – wild beasts that we happily ignore or suppress in the busyness of life. But wild beasts that we need to face and even befriend if we are to be free and loving human beings.
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 For people of faith solitude is important but it has to be understood correctly. We’re never alone because we are in the presence of God and interconnected to all of creation; it’s good for us to face up to and be honest with ourselves; it’s important that our solitude does not lead us to disregard the world in which we live but becomes a preparation for honest and loving service, even if that be mainly through prayer. It’s an opportunity to see things afresh. Coronavirus has offered us that opportunity. I hope we haven’t squandered it.  

Lockdown has given some of us the opportunity to catch up with our reading. Books are a great gift and a great teacher if we read them in the right way. I belong to a few book clubs – one focuses on fiction and meets once a month, another meets once a week and focuses on a chapter or two from a theological book which gives rise to a lot of discussion – even argument. Another for a time met once a month to discuss a spiritually related book but has been meeting weekly during lockdown which has suited our purposes better as we’re getting through the book more systematically and more quickly. Having taken part in these groups as well as university seminars and discussion it always strikes me how we come at our reading from different angles and for different purposes.

Some people approach their reading from a purely academic point of view, happy to analyse texts and critique the author, pointing out inadequacies and omissions. This approach is good for academic texts and some non-fiction books. The discussion – and even argument – can be challenging and lead us to expand and clarify our thinking. Sometimes, though, I find this can be a bit frustrating as I like to let books speak to me, to look for what they can teach me about life and human nature – and I like to share the wisdom we’ve gleaned from our reading. And sometimes, too much analytical criticism can be a smoke screen for looking beyond the story to the truth it reveals. This is especially so, I think, of fiction. Yes, fiction can be and hopefully is enjoyable, can help us escape into unfamiliar worlds and break the tedium of our everyday lives. But it can give us an insight into human relationships and the reality of the world in which we live.  To see the truth contained in the story or the words is to recognise the sacred nature of a literature that many would class as secular.

I recently came across this quotation from Louise Gluck “When you read anything worth remembering, you liberate a human voice; you release into the world again a companion spirit." The power and the truth of this struck me with some force when I read it. True as it is of many writers it’s been particularly true for me during this pandemic as I’ve read my way through the novels of Elizabeth Strout. Elizabeth Strout is captivated by the idea that it’s not possible to fully know another person. The observation occurs often in her books that we can never truly know another or what they are going through. We can only really know what it is to live in our own skin. Because of this we tend to give off signals that are misunderstood, we tend to judge others by their outward behaviour and our interpretation (often wrong) of that behaviour or our expectations of them. Relationships flounder from a number of issues such as a lack of honesty, an inability to communicate, a fear of others or a sense of inferiority, an inability to face up to ourselves.

Strouts’ novels are all situated in small towns in Maine, USA and the characterisation of the residents, the relationships between them and the way their lives overlap is fascinating as well as insightful. I was so intrigued by two of her books, Olive Kitteridge and  Anything is Possible that no sooner had I finished them than I turned to the first page to begin again. I’ve never done that with a book before but this time I felt there was more to be gleaned and I didn’t want to let the characters go. I’d planned to give the books away as Christmas presents but I’m not sure I’ll be able to part with them as I think I’ll be drawn to reading them again and again.

Perhaps the most famous of Strouts’ books is ‘Olive Kitteridge’ A Novel in Stories for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2009 and which is now a mini-series on Amazon Prime. The book takes the form of 13 short stories that are interrelated but discontinuous in terms of narrative. Each chapter gives an insight into the character of a cantankerous, rude, opinionated, inconsistent, emotionally closed woman who treats her husband and son badly, thinking there is no need to express how she feels about them – any mother loves her son so no need to show or tell him. But there is a side to Olive that her family don’t see and comes out from time to time in her encounter with former pupils and their recollections of her.   
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In spite of all of this there is something likeable about Olive that arouses our sympathy in spite of her prickly exterior that refuses to relax into life.  Perhaps I liked her because of the stresses and strains, the inner struggles, the outward conflicts and expressions that many of us face in our journey through life, even if not so extreme. At the end of the book there is a glimmer of hope which is realised, I think, in the sequel ‘Olive Again’ which was only written last year and published in Britain last month. Thank goodness for it for the Olive we’re left with is a woman who has mellowed and come to a self-realisation that is honest and painful but which she faces up to with a courage that allows her to face old age with equanimity. Perhaps none of us could ask for more.