WORDS OF PRESENT TRUTH

When the history of the twentieth century comes to be written, this will surely be one of the most important movements of this century - a movement of people of various religious traditions deliberately setting out to meet one another.

If I tolerate you as a person of another faith I don't have to know anything about you.  Tolerance does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another.  Tolerance is simply too thin a foundation for the world of religious differences in which we now live.

                                              ~ Diana Eck, Harvard Divinity School

When in the afterglow of religious insight I can see a way that is good for all humans as it is for me—I will know it is His way. 
                         ~ Abraham Joshua  Heschel

Do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not try to call them where you are, as beautiful as that place might seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they have ever been before.   
                             ~ Vincent Donovan

Come, come, whoever you are,
wanderer, idolater, worshipper of fire.
Come even though you have broken
your vows a thousand times.
Come, and come yet again,
ours is not a caravan of despair! 
                                ~ Jalaludin Rumi

I think there's no more crucial a problem for our day than to be able to cross religious frontiers while preserving our own integrity.  In fact, I think this is the only exciting intellectual adventure of our times.                                                              ~Seyyed Hossein Nasr, George Washington University

We no longer have to ask ourselves if we are approaching a state of emergency. We are in the midst of it, right here and now, and we expect the future to mirror the past.... It is in the midst of this dark world that we are invited to live and radiate hope. Is it possible? Can we become light, salt, and leaven to our brothers and sisters in the human family? Can we offer hope, courage, and confidence to the people of this era? Do we dare break through our paralyzing fear? Will people be able to say of us, 'See how they love each other, how they serve their neighbor, and how they pray to their Lord?' Or do we have to confess that at this juncture of history we just do not have the needed strength or the generosity? How can we live in hope so as to give hope? And how do we find true joy? 
                                                                            ~ Henri J. M. Nouwen

Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked. And there is a far worse anxiety, a far worse insecurity, which comes from being afraid to ask the right questions--because they might turn out to have no answer. One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.                                                               
                                                                            ~ Thomas Merton

We have to start this dialogue between faiths respecting in each other the inability to give up the belief that our truth is the greater. I think that's inherent in religious experience. If we start from there we can still go on loving each other instead of fighting each other, and I think something new may come. I don't know what it will be; we have hardly begun.

                                                                            ~ Gerald Priestland