A large part of my spiritual pilgrimage has been the journey into the faith of others. It has been a sacred encounter and a journey which has truly enriched my soul.
It began when, as a young sister, I went to study at Lancaster University, living in the university halls of residence during the week. This was the first time I had lived in a secular environment, having been brought up in a committed Catholic home, becoming a Catholic teacher, and then entering a Catholic convent. Although it was disturbing at the time I now look upon it as the most graced moment of my life. It was a time when the scales fell from my eyes, and my vision was widened to see God’s presence in other faiths. It was a moment that led me to reconsider my understanding of my own faith and to re-articulate it in terms meaningful to me. I was changed by the experience of Lancaster. The security of my one-sided perspective was disturbed. I came to recognise the great diversity in God and in the search for God, which is deep within all religions and indeed within all human hearts. I was able to recognise what was essential and what was peripheral in my faith as I reconsidered my understanding of God, religion, and truth.
Returning to Glasgow after Lancaster, I knew I did not want to retire again into a closed community but wanted to keep alive my contact with other faiths, and I was fortunate enough to meet an amazing woman, a Church of Scotland deaconess called Stella Reekie, who set up the first interfaith group in Scotland. Becoming a member of the Glasgow Sharing of Faiths provided me with opportunities for friendships with people of all faiths, and our long-standing friendships have meant supporting and encouraging one another in times of sadness as well as joy. It gave me the opportunity to visit and feel at home in different places of worship, to attend weddings and celebrations in faiths other than my own, to travel and experience what it is like to be Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist in countries where these religions are the majority and Christianity the minority. I have lived in ashrams and monasteries, made retreats with Buddhists, engaged in endless conversations, read the scriptures of others, taught world religions and conducted workshops on the faith of others, helped set up organisations like Interfaith Scotland, supported others like the Council of Christians and Jews, attended seminars and conferences, studied interfaith relations and continue to keep alive my interest and involvement in it, convinced that it’s vital for peace in our troubled world.
Engaging in the work of interfaith relations has allowed me to live my life in what Rilke calls ‘ever widening circles’. As Catholic theologian John S. Dunne wrote in a book called The Way of all the Earth, the spiritual adventure of our time was to pass over into the world of other faiths and to come back to our own to find ourselves changed. Just as we see our own home and our own country with different eyes when we visit others, so too with religion. Having passed over into the world of others, having tried to understand and teach their faith, having tried to stand in their shoes, I have come to believe that at the heart of religion and faith is a human search for meaning which unites us all. I have come to see that doctrines and expressions of faith are inadequate ways of expressing a Reality that is Mystery. For me, it is important to understand the historical and cultural context in which particular expressions of the faith grew up, to recognise that they are conditioned by those contexts and may need reformulation to incorporate later knowledge and understanding. For me it is not so much what religion says but what it means and where it takes me in my relationship to that Reality which some of us call God, the One in whom we all live and move and have our very being.
I have benefited so much from the beauty and wisdom of the scriptures of other faiths. Reading some of the Upanishads has led me to a place of silent prayer and a sense of connectedness with the Ground of our Being. I have been moved by passages such as this one from chapter VIII of the Chandogya Upanishad:
As great as the infinite space beyond us is
The space within the lotus of the heart.
Both heaven and earth are contained in that inner space
Both fire and air, sun and moon, lightning and stars.
Whether we know it in this world or know it not,
Everything is contained in that inner space.
I have heard the call of God in the stories of the Lord Krishna and marvelled at the beauty of the Bhagavad Gita. To pray with these texts has been as meaningful as my reflection and prayer with the Christian scriptures.
Perhaps it is my dialogue with Buddhism that has influenced me most, particularly the Christian–Buddhist encounters I organised with a nun from Samye Ling Tibetan Buddhist Monastery. The encounters began with a week on Iona, and continued for about fifteen years. We met annually at Samye Ling, Holy Isle, a Carmelite monastery, and other ‘secular’ places. The week on Iona that began the dialogue remains one of the most meaningful weeks I have experienced. Ani Lhamo and I spent the week talking, sharing our faith and preparing the sessions we were offering in the Abbey while enjoying the sun and beauty of the island. We became good friends, with a real sisterly connection, and I, for one, recognised the common attraction we had to spirituality, an attraction that had led both of us to a lifetime of commitment in a religious community. I could relate this attraction to God, but it did not seem to be so different from that of Ani Lhamo, who did not believe in a creator God but did believe in a Reality that we participate in and draws us to itself. We sometimes tried to find readings that would take the participants in the course from the head to the heart. My memory is that I suggested Francis Thompson’s poem ‘The Hound of Heaven,’ which speaks of God’s search for us and of finding us even if we try to run away from it. Ani Lhamo was very touched by this, and it occurred to me that she and I felt the same attraction to spirituality and prayer, which demanded a lifetime commitment. Tibetan Buddhists do not believe in a Creator God and would not use God language to describe this attraction as I might have done. But the reality of the attraction was surely the same, and the Reality which is the source of all life, whether it be called God or a universal Buddha nature, was surely the same – just described differently.
I have been privileged and blessed to have made two retreats with the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, and to have visited his monastery in the Dordogne region of France, which was composed of several hamlets and called Plum Village. I shall never forget these retreats. Thich Nhat Hanh was an ikon of mindfulness and peace, so to see him walk into a room, sit quietly in the lotus position and teach with gentleness and kindness was a lesson in itself. I think he was a genius in that his teachings on Buddhism touched his listeners’ humanity and made perfect sense. This was religion at its best, and I wished I could do that for Christianity. Thay, as his disciples called him, had a great respect for Christianity, writing two books about their relationship, Living Buddha, Living Christ and Going Home: Jesus and the Buddha as Brothers. He felt that Buddhism would allow Christianity to discover the spirituality behind many of its teachings and Christianity help Buddhism discover its sense of justice, something he called engaged Buddhism.
For some people the engagement I have had with faiths other than my own has felt like a betrayal of Christianity. But not so for me. As I have sat in different places of worship, as I have sat in silent meditation with people of different faiths I have encountered something of the reality that is behind all our faiths and sensed my solidarity with them all. I have come to realise my interconnectedness with people of all faiths and none and indeed with the whole cosmos. And when I sit in silent meditation on my own or participate in Christian liturgies, I hold them all in my heart and give thanks for a deep and hidden communion that we all share.
Isabel Smyth is a Sister of Notre Dame. She was the founding director of Interfaith Scotland and the Scottish Catholic Bishops’ Interfaith Officer. She has been awarded the OBE and the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice medal for her interfaith work.
Her blog is — www.interfaithjourneys.net