It depends on what religions you are talking about, because religions are very different. For example the question of God wouldn't be terribly interesting to Buddhists. They wouldn't discuss that, but for us it would be the main question. With Muslims, of course, immediately you could have these sorts of discussions and you would get into areas that we both share.
I think though, with all religions, the modern issues facing the planet will be something that we can talk about. For example, the ecology, environment, pollution, care for the planet, climate change. Then there'll be questions of social justice, care for refugees and asylum seekers, migrants and people on the margins - how do religions relate to these people, what can religions offer these people. I think they will be things that will bring us together rather immediately and easily.
But as for theological issues, I think it really differs from religion to religion.
First of all, it's not immediately easy to get into deep discussions with people you don't know very well. So I think there'll be some kind of ice-breaking, or some way of getting into a relationship with people, winning their trust and getting to know them. I suppose that's a big challenge in a short time.
Part of the time is taken up asking various questions and seeing how people respond to the questions, which would indicate if we can go further. So much of what we call dialogue is really just exchanging information, or even worse, it's just telling the other person something about your faith but not really asking the other person about theirs, not really learning from the other person.
So I think the challenge is really to create an environment, or situation, where we can really be listening and wanting to learn something from the other person. Not to be reaffirmed in our own established opinions and assumptions, but to have them re-evaluated.
In retreats it's a different environment. Outside that special environment, you need to make frequent visits and sit with people and have tea with them and just relate with them on a human level. That's how you can find or recognise opportunities where people can go deeper. You've got to visit people in their houses, that's what I do. Go to their places, their centres, places where they have talks and so forth.
In a retreat situation, we sit and we do awareness exercises for some time - becoming aware of ourselves, becoming aware of the environment, becoming aware of the people sitting around us. Just sitting in silence for some time, trying to be aware of one another. That has created an atmosphere where people can be more listening, and perhaps more trusting.
There's one kind where there are both Muslims and Christians participating. We usually have an equal number of Muslims and Christians in one group. That creates a certain dynamic, where you can hear directly from the way Muslims are responding to our Bible, and Muslims can hear directly how Christians are responding to Koranic verses, which we meditate on or pray about beforehand. So there's a directness of response, and a freshness of response which we can hear from persons of the other religions. Which is remarkable, surprising and very encouraging.
The other kind is the retreats where there are only Christians, or people of a Christian background. There we still have the Koranic verses, and we look for links between the Koranic verses and the Bible verses. It's amazing what people come up with, and what people do find, and how Christians can enlarge their understanding of the Bible and New Testament by reading the Koran. Because the Koran can bring out certain aspects of a Bible theme in a new way for Christians. I've experience that in these retreats. Christians see their own scriptures in a new light, and have been encouraged and affirmed and have a fresh approach to their own Scriptures.
One would be the majesty and the ever-presence of God. The all-present God and the all-sustaining God come across so strongly in the Koran. People discover that this is also the way that Jesus tried to talk about God. He may have used different language, different images... and therefore it remains a different experience... but enriching, I think. If you read the experience of God that comes through from the Koran, it enriches our understanding of God as we read the New Testament.
Another insight would be the whole question of forgiveness and reconciliation, which is very strong in the Bible. But also when we read the Koran we find a very similar theme there, and put quite clearly. Another one would be the idea of being servants of one another. Being servants of one another comes through very strongly in our Scriptures, but it's remarkable how that is also strong in the Koran. Not only being servants of God, but being servants of one another.
I suppose I was just trying to find out what Muslims would say about our Bible, in a prayerful environment. You hear so much rejection of certain aspects of the Bible, as if there would be constant arguments and constant differences between the Bible and the Koran. I wanted to create an environment where we could reaffirm one another based on our Scriptures. I wanted to see if Muslims really could read our Bible and be affirmed in their faith, whether we as Christians could be affirmed from the Muslim side, whether we could affirm one another, rather than debate or argue with one another. I suppose that's the genesis of it.
Also, I think, another aspect would be the desire to go deeper. There's so much interfaith activity going on which is on the level of information, and purely instruction on a rather superficial level. I wanted to go deeper, looking for ways to go beneath the surface, and opening up the real experience of our faith. Rather than just some doctrinal points.
I think there's so much more to be done in this area. We're only just beginning, really.
I hope that we could begin to ask the more difficult questions in a retreat atmosphere. We need to go into those areas which are more difficult - areas we have avoided because we find some serious differences of belief. Can we pray about these differences in a retreat environment and try to explain them to one another in new ways? Can we just allow these differences to be part of our communication? That's the challenge that lies ahead of us.
So far I've kept to sharing in areas where we have a lot of commonalities, and so that's been reaffirming and enriching and so forth, but I think also we need to look at certain verses in the Koran, verses which are difficult for Christians. In the same way, can I get Muslims to listen to verses from the Bible which for them would be quite difficult? I'm looking forward to doing that in the future.
