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Praying for Peace

25/6/2016

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I've just returned from a meditation session at the Buddhist centre near where I live.  We have it every month, it's interfaith and the focus is peace in our world. There aren't many of us but we believe, hope and pray that the good energy from this meditation, the fact that it's dedicated to peace will sow seeds of peace and help humanity further on its journey towards peace. Many people I'm sure will think this rather a pointless exercise.  Some will think, no doubt, that we are asking a Divine Being to somehow intervene in the world and transform the cantankerous, competitive, hateful and violent ways we relate to one another.  But no Divine Being can do that without us. It's we who alone can transform human relationships but only if we have undergone a personal and inner transformation to appreciate others as our brothers and sisters. We need to become active peacemakers for as Thich Nhat Hanh says the way to peace is peace. Prayer, especially petitionary prayer, changes  the prayer~And as St Teresa of Avila says God has no hands but ours, no feet but ours.  

What we do when we meditate for peace is open ourselves to peace, recognising the need for it in our own hearts, in our families, in our nation  and in our world. I do believe that this releases good, positive energy which we can send out to others. Sometimes I think this is all we can do for the world and that it's a contribution to the future evolution of the human family. There's a song - 'It's not what you do but the way that you do it......'.  There is a lot of truth in this, I think. I've sometimes come across people who are great activists for justice but angry with it so that the  energy they communicate is anger more than anything else. It's not possible to be a peacemaker, I think, and not strive for inner peace which we hope might express itself in our actions and relationships. I also like the idea of focussing our energies, which many religious practitioners do by dedicating their day with its joys and sorrows, hopes and fears to God as they understand God, trusting that it contributes to the building of God's Kingdom, to use a Christian phrase.

There's also a secular version of this. It's called kything. What this does is focus our attention on someone (or a situation) and consciously send good, positive, healing energy out to them. If the person knows when you are doing this they can consciously receive that energy which is good for anyone in a situation of suffering. Kything is mutual and just as it's possible for us to send out our good energies so it's possible to receive the good energies of others. To me this is very similar to prayer but acceptable to some because it doesn't involve belief in a Divine Being intervening in the world.  But it has a similar effect - we now know from research done on people who meditate that meditation can change our brainwaves which send out positive vibes to the world around them.  Meditation is a religious exercise though now-a-days it's taught as a way of reducing stress. The secularisation of it means that it's acceptable to people who are not religious and wouldn't admit to praying. For me the label doesn't matter. I think we're  talking about the same reality  but using different language. 

In our peace meditation we pray in silence but there's real strength and support in doing this together and a great sense of unity.  I remember reading once - in Morris West's book, The Ambassador- about a conversation between a Buddist monk and the ambassador in which the monk said ' when we are silent we are one, when we speak we are two'. There aren't many of us but the fact we take the time and trouble to come together must also be a contribution, surely.  And then we're joined to all the others who pray for peace. This has become a world wide movement. Each year the Fuji Peace Santuary which describes itself as 'the birthplace and global home of the Symphony of Peace Prayers' hosts an interfaith gathering to pray for peace. Many of those who formally participate come from peace centres throughout the world. Then there's the World Peace Prayer Society which establishes peace poles throughout the world with the prayer, 'may peace prevail on earth', and the names of the countries of the world carved on it. I've heard of a movement to institute a peace pulse movement to encourage people to radiate peace each month to an area of the world that needs it most. 


So we are not alone as we sit together in silence and pray for peace in our troubled world. Perhaps you might join us. 
Lead us from death to Life, 
from falsehood to Truth.
Lead us from despair to Hope, 
from fear to Trust.
Lead us from hate to Love, 
from war to Peace.
Let Peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
Peace, peace, peace

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All Through the Night

15/6/2016

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Recently the Jewish community celebrated the festival of Shavuot. It comes 49 days after Pesach and is eagerly anticipated in a countdown to the festival.  It remembers the giving of the Torah to the People of Israel 3,000 years ago, a gift which is at the centre of Jewish life and a moment of great significance.  This is as foundational a moment as the escape from Egypt and perhaps even the culmination of that event.  One of the traditions associated with this feast (apart from eating cheese cake) is staying up all night to read and study the Torah. Judaism is a religion of story and there is a midrash which tells how the ancient Israelites overslept the morning God was due to give them the Torah so there was no-one there to receive it! Moses had to go to wake them up!  Staying up all night is one way of making up for the mistake and neglect of their forebears.  But that's not the only story of course. A wonderful thing about Judaism is the multiplicity of interpretations and stories which people debate and argue over. For Jews argument is not something to be avoided or seen as a sign of disunity and I think this is a healthy quality which we Christians could learn from.  No matter the reason why Jews stay up to study the Torah, observant ones will do so in a spirit of faith and gratitude. .

This staying up all night to read the scriptures is not confined to Judaism. Muslims will be doing the same shortly.  At the moment they are keeping Ramadan, believed to be the month in which the Qur'an was revealed. Towards the end of Ramadan (this year on 2 July) occurs the holiest night of the Muslim year. It's know as Laylat Al Qadr which means the Night of Power and commemorates the night the first verses of the Qur'an were revealed to the Prophet Mohammed. It's mentioned in the Qur'an, in Surat Al-Quadr


        We have indeed revealed this (Message) in the Night of Power:
        And what will explain to thee what the night of power is?
       The Night of Power is better than a thousand months.
       Therein come down the angels and the Spirit by Allah’s permission, on every errand:
       Peace!...This until the rise of morn!

So Muslims too will be staying up all night to read, study and pray, believing this to be a particularly efficacious time to draw close to God and have prayers answered. For some it's the start of a kind of retreat - striving to be especially observant and devout - which will finish with the celebration of Eid. 

Hindus too follow a similar tradition. They pray and sing hymns all day and even all night on feasts such as the birth of the Lord Krishna who is thought to have been born at midnight - something something that finds an echo in the  Catholic tradition of midnight mass when the birth of Jesus is celebrated. And then there's the Sikh tradition of reading the whole of their scriptures, which takes about 48 hours, during festivals and special events such as the opening of a new Gurdwara as happened here in Glasgow recently.  

Scriptures are central to every faith and regarded by their followers as the Word of God or the Word of the Buddha in the case of Buddhism, though they don't often see the scriptures of other faiths in that light. For the believer scripture is  a living word which is seen to have power, holding within it the possibility of transformation. Sometimes it's not necessary to understand the words to feel this power. For many believers hearing their sacred language chanted and sung is enough to bring them into that contemplative space within themselves in which they find the presence of God.  But the words too are important but not to be taken at face value. Scriptures are complex and varied. Buddhist scriptures are so numerous that they could fill a library and different schools of Buddhism emphasise those scriptures that most reflect and condition their specific tradition. Hindu scriptures too are complex, some regarded as more sacred than others but all containing a religious message. The Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib includes  hymns and prayers from Hindu and Muslim saints, the Jewish and Christian Bible is really a collection of different kinds of books and the Qur'an contains surahs reflecting life in Mecca and Medina. This means that the context and nature of the literature has to be taken into consideration. What did these words mean in their time and how relevant are they today.  For this study is necessary and all religions have their experts who do this. 

But there's also another way for ordinary believers.  We can come to the sacred text seeking the wisdom that is within it, listening and discerning what evokes a response in our heart, using its message to live life more lovingly and fully. And in this sense the scriptures of all faiths can become for us all a Word of God. 

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The Meeting is the Message

7/6/2016

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PicturePope Francis greets Sheikh el-Tayeb
Pope Francis welcomes many visitors to the Vatican. One that seems to be there fairly often is his friend Rabbi Skorka from Argentina. But there are others too. Recently he met with the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo. Al-Azhar is the most  famous and authiritative centre of Islamic learning in the Muslim world and one commentator suggested that this was a meeting between two men who could harness the loyalty of over two billion followers between them. What a force for good a relationship between these two men could be. The Pope himself declared that in this encounter 'the meeting is the message' and it struck me this was a very powerful statement - and a true one. I've often had people criticise interfaith relationships as a tiger without teeth, a sitting around being nice and drinking tea, stressing the commonalities in religion but avoiding the difficult questions. Others want to focus on what we call side by side dialogue, sharing in common concerns and working together for social justice rather than  face to face encounters.  

Working together is important, there's no doubt about that, but it can also be an excuse for avoiding conversations, of avoiding sharing one's own faith and having it challenged by  the encounter.  Sometimes people get frustrated at conversations which never seem to go anywhere, have no outcome.  All understandable, but Pope Francis suggests that the meeting itself is important and has a message for society. I've often thought that interfaith encounters and interreligious dialogue are, in their own way,  a kind of non-violent protest against religious and racial conflict.  In a world so characterised by violence the sight of people from different faiths relating to one another, forming bonds of friendship and dialoguing with one another is a witness that things can be different, that we are not enemies but capable of friendship. Interfaith relations are new, we've not been doing it that long and the fact that we can meet together in spite of  long histories  of  conflict is nothing short of a miracle. It's a reversal of how religions have traditionally related and so I'm with the Pope in believing that the encounter itself is a step forward and must surely contribute in a little way to taking the human race further on its journey towards peace. If only the press would publicise this a bit more because there are many such encounters though the high profile ones can attract attention and hopefully inspire others to follow their example. 

Of course there have to be difficult conversations but these have to be based on friendship which is at the heart of all interfaith work, I think. It's friendship which helps us avoid  confrontational encounters and allows us to be honest with one another, so at home with one another that we can be open about our faith's shortcomings and express our difficulties and concerns. And it's friendship that keeps us talkiing to one another in spite of  disagreements and conflicts. For a number of years Al-Azhar and the Vatican were dialogue partners but relations cooled five years ago when Pope Benedict spoke out against the attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt, seen as unwarranted interference in the politics of the country. It's only right that a Pope should protest the persecution of Christians and Pope Francis has done this on many occasions so he's not afraid to speak out. I'm fairly sure he would have spoken about Christian persecution at his meeting with the Grand Imam but he seems to have a knack of moving beyond these tensions to focus on the person, connecting with their humanity and thus laying the ground for honest encounter. The Imam, Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb seems to have been pleased that the dialogue had been resumed, calling the Pope 'a man of peace' and describing him as 'a man who respects other religions and shows consideration to their followers'. There's no knowing what exactly passed between these two leaders but surely religious violence, particularly in the Middle East, must have been mentioned. It's hoped the conversation was honest but in  a press interview  Sheikh el-Tayeb said that conflict in the Middle East "must not be presented as persecution of Christians ....  there are more Muslim than Christian victims, and we all suffer this catastrophe together.
”  I think Pope Francis would agree with these sentiments but I feel sure he would also want to press home the point that that there seems to be overt anti-christian violence to the extent that it's being recognised as genocide by a number of organisations. Perhaps this first meeting wouldn't be the moment to do this but it's important that voices such as that of Sheikh ed-Tayeb speak out against Islamic extremism. Extremists will not listen to anyone outside their faith but if they are to hear an alternative voice it has to come from within Islam itself. The University of Al-Azhar has the prestige and authority to do just that.

This week began the month of Ramadan - a time of fasting but also prayer and almsgiving. There will be some mad people who will show their misguided commitment through increased violence but there will be billions of moderate Muslim men and women praying fervently this month, being faithful to the fast and witnessing to the fact that Islam is a way of peace.
Let's join them in that prayer.

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    I am  a Catholic nun, involved in interfaith relations for many decades.  For me this has been an exciting and sacred journey which I would like to share with others.

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