Interfaith Week has just come to an end.  It’s been a permanent fixture on the interfaith calendar in Scotland since 2004 and the rest of the UK since 2009. This year there have been interfaith events the length and breadth of the country, too many to be able to go to more than a few. The whole point of the week is to encourage a greater awareness of interfaith relations and hopefully introduce people who have not been involved before into the excitement of getting to know our neighbour of a different faith – or no faith even. I went to  several events but the one that will remain with me was an Invest in Peace evening  organised by the Christian Churches and the Jewish community. It just so happened that it took place in Interfaith Week but it highlighted the importance of interfaith as a step in peace-making and understanding.

There were two speakers – Robi Damelin from Tel Aviv whose son was killed by a Palestinian sniper and Basam Aramin from Jericho whose young daughter was killed by an Israeli soldier.  Their stories were very moving and the pain of having lost a child so obvious. Yet they were both committed to reconciliation and peace.  Both belonged to the Parents Circle - Family Peace Forum which was set up in 1995 by Mr Yitzhak Frankental and several bereaved Israeli families who believed that reconciliation was the only way to make peace in that troubled land and to stop the violence. Now it is a joint Palestinian Israeli organisation with a membership of over 600 families, all of whom have lost a close relative as a result of the conflict. They work incessantly for understanding and peace and their members are willing to go anywhere to promote this message.

Neither of the speakers were offering a political solution to the problems of Israel/Palestine but they were adamant that peace will only come through reconciliation between the two peoples. Neither of them wanted to minimalise the violence or the injustices and as Robi said ‘we must speak the truth to one another in love – but before we speak the truth we must speak’.   It’s this speaking she suggested that allows for an understanding of a common shared humanity in a situation where both sides are suffering at the very depth of their being, for what can be worse than losing a child in such terrible circumstances.  And speaking in these circumstances (and in all circumstances) involves listening. Not to listen to the other’s story and perspective, Robi suggested, could lead to extremism from the one who feels they have not been listened to or understood.  Violence can then become the only way to make their views known.   

Robi was also challenging to those of us present at the event –‘if you cannot be part of the solution it’s better to do nothing and leave us alone to sort out our own problems. Do not import the conflict into your own situation’.  There’s a real tendency here in Scotland to take sides in this particular conflict.  Often the Israel/ Palestine conflict is the elephant in the  room at Christian – Jewish – Muslim dialogues. If it’s raised people polarise immediately.  This has become a challenge – how to talk about the situation, hear the stories of both sides, recognise injustices and yet make progress in peaceful reconciliation which is needed here as it is in Israel/Palestine itself.

As a young man Bassam was involved in hostilities against Israel, raising the Palestinian flag to make the Israeli army angry. He has spent time in prison where he became convinced that it was important to get to know your enemy - so that you can kill them. But he also came to realise that hate only leads to the killing of oneself.  He had heard stories about the Holocaust but didn’t believe them.  Since then he has studied at Bradford University and visited concentration camps. He too has become convinced that recognising our different stories and interpretations of historical events is essential in the work for peace. He quoted Rumi ‘yesterday I was clever and thought I could change the world. Today I am wise and know I can only change myself’.  He also quoted Nelson Mandela, ‘ if you want to make peace with your enemy, you must work with your enemy and then you become partners’. 

This partnership working was so obvious in the two speakers and the charity they represent.  Both realise that there is much political work to be done for peace between Israel and Palestine but it doesn’t deter them in their work. At present the Parents Circle is working on a process for reconciliation that will be part of any future peace process. 
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These were remarkable people – inspirational, challenging, hopeful.  Surely If they can work for peace we can all do it in our own small way, knowing that we are part of a far wider movement which must have some impact in our world.  

​Recently there was a series of television programmes called Retreat. Each of them was a day in the life of a monk or community in one of three Benedictine Monasteries – Belmont, Downside and Pluscarden. What was unusual about the programmes was that there was no dialogue and no commentary though occasionally there was a caption telling something about the life of a Benedictine monk. The programme was slow and deliberate ….. not much going on apart from prayer, chanting and manual work like making honey or doing woodwork that allowed time for reflection.  Someone I know thought it was wonderful while others thought it a bit drab with’ not much point to it really’. What was the point of it all?

The life of the monk is very different from the one that most of us live – ruled by our diaries and clocks, never enough time to get through all that we want to put into our days, rushing from one thing to the other, no time to think or be still.  We can be so caught up in the practicalities of everyday life that we forget there is a deeper dimension to life.  We are too busy and fill our day with noise so as to distract ourselves from any kind of unpleasantness or pain.  But as the poet said “what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare”. In our busyness we can become blind to the beauty of the world in which we live, the goodness and pain that surrounds us, the depth of our own insecurities and fears. We can live at a surface level, scared to look too closely at ourselves or hear our own inner conflicts.  Silence can be threatening.  The first time I did the Time for Reflection at the Scottish Parliament I wanted to include half a minute or so of silence but was warned by the Presiding Officer that the Parliamentarians did not like silence.  

What the programmes on the three monasteries did was show another dimension of life, a pace of life that is steady, reflective and committed to prayer. It might sound rather selfish and idealistic but it’s not. I don’t live in a monastery but know enough of community living to realise the challenges that it can pose with the opportunities for personal character building. I know enough of silent meditation to know that it can bring peace and comfort but also struggle as we honestly face up to the shadow side of ourselves, being open to healing and transformation.  I know enough of monastics to know that their commitment is to the healing of the nations and the world in which we all live. Their life and their energy is a power that is for the good of all. 

Christian monastics as well as Buddhist monastics (and of course practising Muslims) come together several times a day to pray regularly for the world in which we all live. In Christian monasteries this can be five or seven times a day and I often think there’s an energy there we could all draw on. We know from our faiths and from science how closely everything is related, that our energies are connected. When life is difficult, when we are down and overwhelmed by anxiety or sadness, there is a constant stream of prayer that we could imagine taking into ourselves to strengthen and support us.  And it’s not necessary to believe in God to do this. All we need to believe is that our energies are interconnected, that we can send out good energies and thoughts into our world and it will be affected by them; that we can open ourselves to that good energy which is constant in our world even if unseen.

It so happens that this past week I have been on retreat- not in a monastery but by myself, in a little house close to the sea. There was plenty of time to stop, free myself from e-mails and phone calls, be silent, rest, walk, read, reflect, meditate.  My companion was a book by Judy Cannato, a spiritual writer who tragically died five or six years ago. Her interest lay in quantum physics, in the new science which is offering us what she called the Story of the Universe, a story that tells of our unfolding evolution to this moment of consciousness. The book, entitled ‘Field of Compassion’, uses the idea of the biologist Rupert Sheldrake who speaks about morphogenic fields – a field of energy that surrounds all living organisms – much like magnetic fields – and holds inherited memories, connects and draws us together with those who inhabit our particular morphogenic field. There is a resonance, a relatedness between different species and as human beings we can be conscious of this in a way other species might not be. As Cannato says “the human person is a field of energy and information rooted in the body but extending out from the body, interacting with the energy and information of others. None of us is a discreet, separate unit but an integrated system of interactions and relationships connected to all”. 
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So taking in the energy of others and sharing our energy with others is not just a spiritual reality. It’s also a scientific one. However energy can be good or bad. As the song says it’s not so much what we do as the way that we do it that matters. It’s good for us to be aware of this. It’s good for us to try to develop within ourselves compassion and justice to make sure that our field of energy is indeed a field of compassion. Uniting with others, it’s not hard to imagine what a difference that would make to our world.