Ch. 9 The GOD-Centric Conversation (continued)
Rules of GOD-centric Inter-Religious Conversation
First, we get our own spiritual house in order by building, maintaining, and centering ourselves in a loving relationship with God. Second, we, hopefully with other GOD-centric members of our faith community, will reframe or filter from our own religious tradition those aspects that do not support our good and fair God of love. Third, we prepare ourselves to engage with GOD-centric members of other religious traditions in a spirit of love and possibility as we all pursue a fuller understanding of our shared good and fair God of love.
Practical Rules
1. Remaining centered in our good and fair God of love is our defense against defensiveness.
2. We must remember that we are not seeking agreement beyond our faith that God is loving, good, and fair and that we should live out those qualities.
3. Love should be both the tone of our conversation and the goal of our transformation.
4. Listen to understand rather than to rebut.
5. Resolve to meet any mistreatment with love because only love has a chance of dispelling anger or hate.
6. Be gentle with each other inviting what is most precious in our hearts to venture safely forward.
7. Hold a spirit of enthusiastic possibility that our sharing will give to each of us a fuller understanding and deeper love of God.
Theoretical Guidelines
For a more theoretical perspective, please allow me to use the cross which is a well recognized symbol from the Christian tradition. The vertical plane is longer as it reaches into the heights and delves into the depths and it is this line that connects us all as we reach toward the same good and fair God of love while being connected at the deepest level by our shared humanity. The shorter horizontal plane represents our particular expression of our love of God and our humanity here on earth. These planes intersect or converge. The point of intersection would be the point of the perennial philosophy but that is not our sole spot of interest because a lot of the most intriguing stuff we have to share with each other lies further out on the horizontal plane as our unique culture and circumstances flavor our spiritual development and expression. However, it is important that our practices on the horizontal plane do not venture too far afield from the place of vertical convergence because we may get trapped in our trappings straying from our ultimate concern in our good and fair God of love. On the vertical plane, GOD-centric people help each other stay focused on our good and fair God of love and on deeply sharing human compassion. On the horizontal plane, GOD-centric people appreciate the diverse ways that our cultures, religious traditions, and personal experiences have expressed our love of God.
