“Without solitude community cannot save”

As promised in last week’s Shalom, I will now share in this column another lesson we have learned in our engagements with Muslim ulama and Protestant bishops and pastors through our 23 years of interreligious and ecumenical dialogue.

This learning is the title of this column. It is presented between two interjection points (“) which means it is borrowed, not mine owned. If my memory does not fail me it came from an article of the late Fr. Henri Nouwen, a famous Catholic spiritual writer. What then does it mean in terms of dialogue?

In our experience of dialogue, which can also be called intercultural, we have realized that stricter listening and speaking can come only from a person who has grown to psychological and spiritual maturity, especially through self-control, self-introspection and self-possession. This is what Fr. Henri meant by Solitude, literally referring to the art of being alone. In Islamic spirituality this is what is meant by personal Jihad, a battle against egoism and all kinds of selfishness.

So we have learned that one can effectively help as a member of community when one has been in solitude of silence and listening. Without this one can end up being lost in community activities or become a fanatic for everything communal forgetting the importance and value of individuality and self-possession or be truly jihadized.