I've just been to see the film Joyeux Noel which commemorates the spontaneous and voluntary cease fire by German, Fench and Scottish soldiers during the First World War. 100 years ago, on Christmas Eve 2014,  soldiers emerged from their trenches into no man's land to greet one another, swapping cigarettes and rations and even playing a friendly game of footlball. This was in response to the German soldiers decorating their front line with Christmas trees and candles and the British soldiers singing Christmas carols which the German soldiers joind in singing. 

This truce has become the stuff of legend and the film movingly portrays the common humanity of men who from their childhood had been taught to see the other as the enemy and yet recognised in one another the love and concern for family, the pain of separation, the horror of war and fear of what it might entail. For the men a truce at Christmas time seemed the human and Christian thing to do but their superiors saw it as treason and not only objected but punished them, disbanding their units and sending the men to the front line so that it's unlikely that any of them survived much beyond that Christmas.  A particularly chilling scene in the film is when the Bishop gives a sermon to the soldiers quoting a passage from scripture which suggests that war is part of the gospel message and the only good German is a dead one - reminiscent of what the Germans said about the Jews during the Second World War. 

This year the truce was celebrated in a number of football matches organised by British consulates around the world that included Tunisia, Japan, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Cyprus, and the United States, as well as European countries. 

In Israel, a youth soccer competition was organised by Matthew Gould, the British ambassador to Israel, for more than 200 Arab and Jewish students from the Haifa region of northern Israel.  The ambassador told them "Just for a short moment, the [soldiers] put all their differences to one side to find a spark of shared humanity,  Today Jewish, Arab, and Druze are coming together here to play football, which breaks down barriers between communities. It is a really lovely way to remember what happened 100 years ago."  This was particularly significant coming as it did after the recent hostilities in Gaza. An Arab-Israeli football commentator on Israel Radio said  "Right now, we're not just in a crisis situation, we are in a total and utter collapse ... . here, we have an island of equality, and we need to develop projects like this ... especially at this age. This is when we can change the next generation."  A number of professional soccer players from Maccabi Haifa and Maccabi Tel Aviv teams also joined the tournament, supporting the idea of peace and tolerance through sport.

And the young people agreed. Here are some of their comments:

"I learned that it doesn't matter if someone is Arab or not, you need to give them respect,"  

"I came because I wanted to play and have fun and make new friends, and meet people from other schools,"  

"I'm really happy to be here because we get to meet new people ... We're all in this together, holding hands,"  

 The football tournament seems to have been well received though in the past Fatah has objected to this kind of fraternalisation with those they consider the enemy.  As we face the cusp of a new year, as we look back on what is now behind us and look forward to what is to come we can  pray and hope that humanity will win over religion, ideology and division. Perhaps then we can walk the way of peace into a new future for this world for which we are  all  responsibile.
 
 ( with thanks to Melanie Lidman , the Middle East and Africa correspondent for Global Sisters Report, a project of the National Catholic Reporter for news of the Israeli tournament) 

One of my favourite feature writers is Daniel O'Leary. He writes in The Tablet, a Catholic Weekly  and his contributions are always so insightful, poetic and meaningful. I love them.  His recent article was about Christmas, the Feast of Light which as O'Leary says "celebrates the light in all people"  There was one statement which got me wondering as statements like this often do.  It was:
    " To perceive the world in Christmas light is to discern the hidden depths of everything, the astonishing possibilities in         all that happens, the exra-ordinary mystery abiding within the ordinary. This Christian revelation of an incarnate God is alone among the religions of the world".

Is it alone among the world religions to see the presence of God in all things and to recognise the spiritual  at the heart of the material?  I'm well aware of the danger in making simple comparisons between religious doctrines that on the surface appear very similar. Hinduism for example has a belief in avatars or incarnations of God who take on an eathly form, either animal or human, to rescue human beings from evil or disaster.  These figures are not historical and many of the stories surrounding them are myth. This does not mean they are a fabrication, rather they are stories which reveal a spiritual truth. And the truth is that God is to found in our ordinary lives to help and sustain us when things get tough.  This is of course different from the Christian belief that Jesus embodies God and to compare the different meanings of incarnation is not helpful but it might show a religious intuition which is similar.  

Perhaps it's in the ancient Hindu scriptures of the Upanishads that the intuition of the divine at the heart of life is seen most clearly. There we read of Svetaketu who is searching for the meaning of life.  His father uses a series of simple examples to show him that just as the pot cannot be separated from the clay so too the universe cannot be separated from God. Svetaketu's father sends him to put some salt in water and then asks what he can taste and of course what he tastes is salt which cannot now be separated from the water.  'That you are Svetaketu', he's told - just as there's no separation between the salt and the water so there's no separation between the divine and the human. The divine resides in the human and the material.  

Indian religions warn us against dualism - that we should not think in terms of either/or but both/and.  Thich Nhat Hanh encourages us to look deeply, not to take things at their surface level but to look deeply and see their relatedness to all that exists.  He doesn't talk in terms of God or the divine but he does talk in terms of nothing existing in itself but only in relation to every other thing on which it depends.  If we have eyes to see we can look deeply into a flower, he says,  and see sunshine, rain, clouds, the earth. It's as though the whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest itself. Because of this it has no separate identity and to recognise this is to understand reality. Hence there is conventional truth, that is how things appear and ultimate truth, that is how things really are.

Christmas is teaching Christians something similar. This is the meaning of  incarnation -  that there is nothing ordinary. That underneath the convenional truth of the mundane there is an ultimate  truth that is the presence of God, if only we can look deeply enough, if only we can see the dearest freshness deep down things as Gerald Manley Hopkins would say.  Everything is holy and sacred. And Daniel O'Leary tells us that "to become more aware of God's incarnate presence, all we need to to do is look more intensely, listen more carefully, think more imaginatively, see more deeply, feel more attentively."  Can we do it?

Last weekend I attended a dialogue with humanists at the Conforti Institute outside of Glasgow. It was the second such meeting. The first one had been more formal with presentations and well managed discussions. It had involved participants from the USA and Britain and there had been a certain amount of tension as people were a bit suspicious of one another. Someone who described himself as a humanist had even confessed that dialogue between religious and non-religious people was difficult because those who designated themselves as humanist really wanted rid of religious people from the public square. We're trying to put you out of business he had said.

This year was quite different. The gathering was smaller and apart from someone from the British Humanist Association we were all Scottish and we met as friends.  We all felt we were on familiar terrritory and there was plenty of time for conversation which allowed us to meet as people and not representatives of any organisation. We did recognise that such dialogue is only possible for those of us  who belong to the more liberal wing of our faiths and philosophies for even humanists have their fundamentalists who don't understand dialogue nor are willing to engage in it. 

I was introduced to the term ' ignostic' and only now realise that it's a formal term with a whole entry in Wikipedia. It finds discussion about God meaningless and useless because there's no common definition of who or what God is and so no point in talking about it. The ignostic in our midst said he didn't care what we believed, we were free to believe what we like, it was no concern of his. Earlier he had quoted Bertrand Russell " do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will thing that it is happiness".

 Not caring what others believe and giving them the freedom to believe it can be called tolerance and no doubt to put up with what one doesn't agree with is necessary for peace and harmony in society. But I wonder about it. Should we not care what others believe?  The news is full of beliefs that I see as life-denying and therefore wrong. I'm concerned where those beliefs lead.  I want people to seek the truth. And I'm not thinking here of conversion.  Every religion and belief group has the right to promote its faith, to live it, to witness to it, to explain it but only in the context of the right of each one to choose their own religion. All religions recognise this . The Qur'an tells us  "there should be no compulsion in religion” and the Buddha tells his disciples to find out for themselves the truth of his teaching and that their conduct is spiritually wholesome only when it emerges from their own genuine insight. I am not for proselytisation but I do want dialogue that helps us recognise wisdom in the other and seek for that wisdom in language that might at first seem strange to us. It's this kind of approach that helps us move beyond tolerance to a respect for others, to seek a common ground that will help us cooperate in common action for the common good.  In doing this we might even move towards appreciaiton. Can you do this with people whom you think of as foolish?  Seeing  another's belief as foolish is a short step from seeing the person as foolish, denigrating and dismissing them. Is this not the attitude that has led to and still leads to religious violence? 

In spite of our ignostic friend I think our weekend did move us beyond tolerance. We talked of common concerns about poverty and justice, we even talked about death and dying. Here the discussion was interesting.  Conducting funerals was a common issue but an understanding that connection, love and interrelatedness survived death showed that though the language was different the intuition was the same. When we meet again next year I'm sure we'll take another step to move beyond tolerance.

This week the Vatican called together representatives from a variety of faiths to speak out against human trafficking. It was organised by the Global Freedom Network.  The Buddhist representative was meant to be the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh but because of illness he could not attend.  His eldest monastic student the  Venerable Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chan Khong, read his prepared statement.  It contains the wisdom, gentleness and compassion that Thich Nhat Hanh witnesses to  so effectively. It's worth reading it for all of us. It is taken from the website of Plum Village, the name of Thich Nhat Hanh's community in France.

Your Holinesses, Your Excellencies, Your Emminencies, dear Most Venerables, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen. Please allow me to read the words that our Beloved Teacher, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, wished to deliver here today:

“We are grateful to gather today to announce to the world our commitment to work together to end Modern Slavery; and to plea to those who traffic in human beings to stop their exploitation; and to ask world leaders and organisations to protect the dignity of these young women, men and children. They are our daughters and sons, our sisters and brothers.

“It is clear that in this age of globalisation, what happens to one of us, happens to us all. We are all interconnected, and we are all co-responsible. But even with the greatest good will, if we are swept away by our daily concerns for material needs or emotional comforts, we will be too busy to realise our common aspiration.

“Contemplation must go together with action. Without a spiritual practice we will abandon our dream very soon.

“Each of us, according to the teaching of our own tradition, should practice to touch deeply the wonders of Nature, the wonders of life in each of us, the Kingdom of God in each of us, the Pure Land, Nirvana in each of us, so we can get the healing and nourishment, the joy and happiness born from the insight that the Kingdom of God is already available in the here and now. The feeling of love and admiration for nature, that we all share, has the power to nourish us, unite us, and remove all separation and discrimination.

“By being in touch with everything that is refreshing and healing, we can free ourselves from our daily concerns for material comforts, and will have a lot more time and energy to realise our ideal of bringing freedom and compassion to all living beings. As it says in the Gospel, “Do not worry about what you will eat or drink or wear. Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself.”

“In our work to end modern slavery, we must find the time to take care of ourselves, and to take care of the present moment. By doing so, we can find some relative peace in our body and mind to continue our work. We need to recognise and embrace our own suffering, our anger, fear, and despair so that the energy of compassion can be maintained in our hearts. When we have more clarity in our mind, we will have compassion not only for the victims, but for the traffickers themselves. When we see that the traffickers have suffered, we can help them wake up and stop what they are doing. Our compassion can help transform them into friends and allies of our cause.

“In order to sustain our work of compassion, we all need a spiritual community to support us and protect us – a real community, where there is true brotherhood and sisterhood, compassion and understanding. We should not do this work as cavaliers seuls, as lone warriors. The roots of modern slavery run deep, and the causes and conditions, the networks and structures supporting it are complex. That is why we need to build a community that can continue this work to protect human life not just until 2020, but long into the future.

“The world in which we live is globalized, and so too is this new form of slavery, that is connected to the economic, political and social systems. Therefore our ethics and morality also need to be globalized. A new global order calls for a new global ethic. We have to sit down together, as people of many traditions, as we are doing now, to find the causes of this suffering. If we look deeply together, with clarity, calm and peace, we will understand the causes of modern slavery, and we can find a way out.”