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Good Morning

We’re in the middle of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity – a time when Christians recognize that they’re divided and pray for greater mutual understanding and unity. The prayers that are recommended combine humility and hope.

Divisions are not only present among Christians. We live in a polarized Britain and a polarized world with one recent news programme speaking of wars of threats and wars of words – within political parties and between countries.

In my professional life, I’ve combined the teaching of religion, most particularly Buddhism, with working practically for greater interreligious understanding. A particular challenge for me has been how to approach difference and complexity – from varying approaches to understandings of ultimate reality to disagreements about ethical issues.

Should differences just be accepted and respected? Or should we struggle to find a common truth? Or should everyone be willing to question themselves in the light of difference?

There are no easy answers but there’s plenty of religious wisdom we can draw on. And it’s the strand that asks us to look at ourselves and how our minds work that I’ve found helpful. The Sermon on the Mount in Christianity advises us not to judge others. ‘Why do you see the spec in your neighbour’s eye, but don’t notice the log in your own?’ Jesus is reported as saying. In Buddhism, clinging to views and opinions or thinking that we alone are right are hindrances on the path to perfect wisdom and compassion.

I’ve certainly been guilty of clinging to my own views rather dogmatically. Change has come for me when I’ve deeply engaged with difference and questioned my own views in the light of it, for instance when I’ve brought Buddhist ways of seeing into my life.

Stuck onto the tiles of my kitchen, though, is a poem by an Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai. It’s called ‘The Place where we are right’ and evocatively says that the place where we’re right is barren, hard and unfruitful. It doesn’t produce anything new. In contrast, when we can doubt, question and find new ways of loving and, I would add, looking and listening, change comes, revolutions happen.

To have ourselves proved right in an argument can give a thrill down our spines. But I doubt whether it leads to the change we need, whether within religions or wider society. Struggling with difference so that something new can arise stands a better chance.

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