Tomorrow 27th January, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz- Birkenau,  is Holocaust Memorial Day when many will be remembering the millions of people murdered by Nazi persecution  and in the subsequent genocides of Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. 

The day reminds us of the depth of brutality to which human beings can steep and the hatred with which we can look upon our fellow human beings and treat them as less than animals.  While we remember the past there is much in the present to show us that this brutality is not over.  The news tells us of atrocities in Syria, Sudan and other African countries as well as the Middle East. Films such as Twelve Years a Slave, Mandela, the Long Walk to Freedom, The Book Thief show us the inhumanity of  ordinary men and women who love their families, show compassion to those they consider their own and live their lives in denial of the hatred and brutality that is  in their heart.  This is a lesson for all of us. If one human being is capable of such hatred we are all capable of it and must recognise this.  Otherwise it could creep up on us and express itself in racism, discrimination, exclusion, rejection and hatred, all attitudes that need to be checked and prevented in our society. 

There is of course the other side of the coin.  There is the heroism of people such as Maximilian Kolbe who willingly went to the gas chamber in Auschwitz so that another could go free, the inner strength of people like  Rabbi Hugo Gryn, Cantor Ernest Levi, Etty Hillesum, Victor Frankel and a host of others who, in the face of death, did not lose faith in the meaning and value of life.  They show us that human beings are capable of reaching great heights of courage, selflessness, gratitude and  love.  If they can do it we can do it.  We too have the strength if we but nurture it within ourselves.

The Scottish memorial event is organised by Interfaith Scotland and takes place tomorrow in Stirling.  Two visitors will tell their stories.

Arn Chorn-Pond was only a boy when the brutal Khmer Rouge regime overran turned Cambodia into the “killing fields.” While most of Arn’s family were killed, Arn was kept alive to play propaganda songs on the flute for his captors and forced to fight against  the Vietnamese when they invaded Cambodia in 1979. After seeing his friends killed on the front lines, he escaped to the jungle, eventually finding his way to a Thai refugee camp. Two years later, an American refugee worker adopted An and brought him to the United States. For Arn the journey to healing and wholeness has been a long one, brought about by his efforts to keep alive traditional Cambodian music and help young Cambodian people understand and love their culture.

Alfred Munzuer was separated from his family as a young child and brought up  by Indonesian neighbours in Holland.  He was a accepted as one of the family and hidden in the cellar whenever the Gestapo called.  The kindness and courage of the family saved Alfred from the fate of his father and sisters who were murdered in concentration camps. His mother survived and Alfred was reunited with her after the war.  Today he continues to work for holocaust education in the United States.

So we remember those we know and the millions we do not know.  We remember the atrocities and the heroism, we remember the courage and the cowardice.  We despair at continuing brutalities but hope for a better future, a future that we can influence by the love, compassion and respect with which we treat one another.

Richard Rohr used a phrase in his daily meditations recently that  got me thinking.  Rohr said  'God is another word for the heart of everything'.  This makes sense to me and I have often wondered if there's a difference between life and God whom all religions see as the source and end of all life. 

Just as one can say God is the heart of everything so too one can say the heart of everything is God - a name Etty Hillesum says she used for convenience.

I find God language difficult.  No matter what religions say about God being Mystery they mostly  talk of God in anthropomorphic terms so that it's difficult not to imagine Him or Her as a person somehow or other beyond creation, looking down on human history.  This is the kind of God that's rejected by humanists and atheists.  Some of them might be surprised to find that many religious people also reject this image of God. Mystics tell us that the only true response to knowing or speaking of God is silence. But St Augustine says we have to say something even if we know what we say  is inadequate.  So how do we speak of God?

The problem with religions is that they think their way of talking of God is the only way and cut themselves off from insight by ignoring or refusing to consider the insights of others.  And if God is the heart of everything, then the religious insights about God must contain some insights about life. 

Take the Christian belief in Trinity.  Trying to explain three persons in one God is very difficult and I have heard theological explanations that seem just nonsensical. But when I look at Rublev's ikon of the Trinity I am drawn to participate in a life that is essentially communal.  This insight therefore tells me that community is at the heart of everything, something we know is a reality from modern physics and science.   Islam puts its emphasis on the oneness of God, the oneness at the heart of everything, and we know that this too  is true from science. Any understanding of God must keep in balance these two seemingly contradictory insights.  But science also tells us that such contradictions are also part of our universe. Islam tells us that there is no God but God and to see God as the heart of everything is to see that the one thing necessary is to commit ourselves to developing, promoting and protecting life within our created world and human community.  Judaism's insight is that God, the heart of everything, brings life, freedom and human flourishing from seemingly desperate situations. As it says in the psalm ' bless the Lord who leads us into life'.

Eastern religions have their own take on God.  Hinduism is often thought of as polytheistic because there is a wide pantheon of deities, with their own myths and rituals.  But Hindus know that these are creations of the mind, representing the many faces of a reality which is beyond description.  The famous phrase from the Rg Veda  " the Real is one though known by different names" sums up the Hindu position.  And Buddhism does not talk in terms of God, fearing anthropomorphisms which are taken literally though it does believe in an underlying reality which some schools call buddha-nature.

So for me different religions have something unique to tell us about God and our understanding can only be enriched by being aware of them and seeing how they lead us into life.  They are like maps or paths that can lead us into an experience of the underlying reality at the heart of everything.  The danger is in mistaking the map for the territory as Alfred Korzybski famously said.

I visited the Eric Liddell Centre in Edinburgh yesterday. The building is a remarkable adaptation of a Church which merged with the one once attended by Eric Liddell.  It's a charity that offers specialist day care service to people diagnosed with dementia, courses and support to  carers, office accommodation for a number of charitable organisations and room for many other groups providing activities for the community. It describes itself and is "a living memorial to the Olympic athlete Eric Liddell"

Most of us know the story of Eric Liddell from the award winning film Chariots of Fire which just happened to have  a showing at our local churches recently. It was in preparation for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games to be held in Glasgow in the summer of 2014. The film was preceded by a talk from someone working for an organisation called Going for Gold.  This is a body that's organising accommodation for the athlete's family and encouraging Churches to get involved in the Games, offering hospitality and service to visitors and volunteers.  All of this is good. The purpose is to witness to Christian love and while Christians do this every time they engage in good work, I feel uneasy when there is a need to articulate this and there does seem to be a sub-theme of evangelisation about it. I would be happier if this good work involved other places of worship and others in the community who were not affiliated to a religion but wanted to get involved.

Apart from all of this the film was very moving and i was amazed at how much i had forgotten over the years since I had first seen it.  There are many nuggets of wisdom, what we used to call 'bon mots' when I was a novice and maybe  'sound bites'  now.  One of the most wonderful is when Eric Liddell, explaining his love of running to his sister says ' When God made me he made me fast and when I run I feel God's pleasure in me. in this Eric was living out the good advice given to the athletes educated at Cambridge ' Live out your greatness'.  How wonderful to feel God's pleasure in what we do. 

The film compares two characters; Harold Abrahams who was obsessed with winning. As a Jew he was very aware of how Christian the higher echelons of British society was and how marginalised he was.  Determined to show that he was the best he worked with a personal trainer to distiguish himself as a runner and to be accepted by society. Eric Liddell on the other hand saw his ability as a gift and an extension of himself. Much as he was committed to it he refused to take part in the heats of the 1908 Olympics because they were taking place on a Sunday.  As a presbyterian he believed in the sanctity of the Sabbath and would not break it for  what he considered his own glorification. To  opt out of a race that one had trained for for years and could be  the high point of one's career is a sign of real integrity. The good result was that he changed races and did gain a gold medal, even breaking a record in the 400 metres.

Eric Liddell was born in China and went back as a missionary, teaching science and sports. He is regarded as a hero there as his influence led to the Chinese nation participating in the Olympic Games. To me he is a hero because of his integrity. He remained true to his principles.  What is particularly interesting for me is that when he was in a prisoner of war camp he actually broke the Sabbath by getting involved in a  foootball game with some of the young inmates who were in trouble with the Japanese authorities.  Religious law was important to him but not an absolute. In the face of human need he had a freedom of spirit to allow him to serve a higher good, that of love and compassion which, to me,  is a sign of the truly religious.

I am just about to hand over a book by  poet, artist and writer, Christina McKenna.  The book,  'My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress' is a reflection on her early life in Ireland as she tries to come to terms with a childhood in which life was dominated by the Church and a tradition that carved out a particular life for women as wives and mothers. 

Central to the story is her mother whose hopes and expectations as a young bride were soon dispelled in a marriage to a man who was  demanding and domineering, incapable of showing love and offering no help in bringing up the 10 children they had together.  This was not an easy life but a typical one for many women, not just in Ireland but also elsewhere  and it continues for some women in some cultures today.

Nor did religion help for it was a religion of duty and fear and not one of love.  At the end of her life " she died with the gathering awareness that she'd served her time; all the years of of pain had been 'offered up' over and over again. Paradise surely awaited her. She embraced death; she did not fear it. Her unhappiness had brought her to this pass"   What an indictment on religion.

Offering things up might now belong to another age but it was common when I was growing up.  When things were difficult or painful we were encouraged to 'offer it up' for the holy souls in purgatory or to earn a reward that we would finally reap one day in heaven.  For me growing up the pain and sufferings were thankfully small and insignificant but not for Christina McKenna's mother.  Offering her life up meant remaining within a loveless marriage, within the drudgery of keeping a household and looking after children with very little means to do so.  This so called religious concept kept people in their place, encouraged them to think that they could not change their lot in life, taught them that their suffering and pain was somehow worthwhile and that it was worth suffering in this world as it would be alright in the end.

But like all religious concepts there is an element of truth in it, a truth that has often been abused by clerics and others in situations of power and control.  Suffering is part of life and some of it is inevitable.  We will all suffer illness and death, tensions within families and relationships, problems at work - all the stresses of what it means to be human and 'offering it up' can be a way of making sense of it, showing us how to cope with it and giving it some kind of purpose.  But what are we offering it up for? 

For Buddhists life and actions are 'offered up' for the good of all sentient beings. The intention is that each action becomes an act of compassion and love, a sacred act which contributes to the well-being of our world.  Within  Christianity there is the tradition of making a morning offering - offering and dedicating the actions of the day to the coming of God's Kingdom, a kingdom of justice, peace, reconciliation and wholeness.  Offering up the day can transform mundane, daily actions into sacred ones which contribute to the flourishing of ourselves, our society and humanity.  But to offer up our day for the good of all sentient beings or for the coming of God's Kingdom without working to make this effective in our daily lives is hypocritical.  Once again Judaism has a lesson for us.  For Jews life, both good and bad, is offered up to sanctify God's name. But ' offering up' is primarily a way of living. It is about doing good to others. It is serving God by refusing to stand still and do nothing in the face of injustice.  This surely is what true religion is about.