An Invitation to Interspiritual Dialogue and Transforming Union

				Opening Minds, Opening Hearts Season 3 EP1: An Invitation to Interspiritual Dialogue and Transforming Union with Colleen Thomas and Mark Dannenfelser

Colleen: Mark, we're back.
Mark: It's been too long.
Colleen: It has, it's good to be back to the conversations, the things we love to talk about.
Mark: Yeah. At least we've had a chance leading up to this for you and I to talk more, but I've missed those conversations when we were not involved in a season. So I'm so happy we're back.
Colleen: Me too. I think somewhere in our, trailer or something we talk about and we love to talk a little too much about contemplation and prayer, and it's true. I think we're both really blessed and privileged in a way to be working in these spaces. Contemplation and mindfulness and it doesn't get lost on me that, it used to just be my spiritual life, but now it's also my work world and it's a real gift.
Mark: Amazing that we get to do this work. A few weeks ago, i was facilitating retreat and I came out of the guest house. I was walking up to the practice area. People were sitting outside. It was early morning and it's quiet and we're about to go in for practice.
And I just thought, wow, this is my office, this is where I get to work. It's just amazing that we get to touch this. Not just personally, but professionally too so.
Colleen: It's funny, I went to a workshop prayer day with my local contemplative outreach chapter and connecting with the people here in Maryland and Washington area and they were asking me about the podcast and, oh my gosh, I recognize your voice from the podcast that I'm like.
Oh yeah, I do, and people are hearing this, people are, tuning in and just the whole gift of being on staff with Contemplative Outreach. We miss you too, it's like we had a, staff and board retreat in Minneapolis and you weren't there and,
Mark: no, I miss you guys too. But we get to have this connection which is great. And the other thing about us doing this work is we get to talk to a lot of other people who are doing this work and who are deeply steeped in the contemplative tradition,and we have e a lot of good guests this season. I'm excited for our listeners.
Colleen: We do. Just when we think, gosh, we've talked to everybody. Who else can we talk to about centering prayer? And the good thing is, that this season we get to shift the dialogue a little bit too because, we're still going to be talking about centering prayer.
This is the podcast of Contemplative Outreach and it's about the transformative practice of centering prayer. But we're going to shift the dialogue a little bit in season three, away from the method of centering prayer and centering prayer as a practice that leads us to a form of personal transformation into where father Thomas went in his later years and his teachings, into the impact of centering prayer on our relationship with others.
In particular, our relationship with others inside and outside of the Christian tradition. So much of Father Thomas's work from the very beginning was to engage in interspiritual dialogue and interreligious dialogue. And one of the founding theological principles of Contemplative Outreach, which we've been referencing in the past two seasons, really speaks to this theme of being in solidarity with the Contemplative dimension across faith, traditions and it's principle number 11.
I'll read it just so that our listeners are with us in this conversation. Theological principle number 11 says, we affirm our solidarity with the contemplative dimension of other religions and sacred traditions, united in our common search for God. We respect and honor other religions and sacred traditions and those committed to them.
We engage in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue and work together in areas of social justice, ecological concerns, and contemplative initiatives. So this is what's going to ground us into this, third season.
Mark: That is a densely packed and deep principle. We are going to spend essentially the season on this by practicing it ourselves and engaging with others but, that there's solidarity and that it is rooted in the contemplative dimension, not just in Christianity where, Keating was coming from, but across all traditions, sacred traditions. It's the contemplative part of those traditions that can connect up.
Colleen: Which, for many of us coming to Centering Prayer from the Christian tradition, we have found ourselves on this journey into or with the contemplative dimension of Christianity as we know, there's lots of Christians out here that also know nothing about the contemplative dimension of Christianity, and likewise across other faith traditions in Islam the religion itself has a contemplative dimension that is practiced as Sufism.
Which the Sufis are the mystics of the Islamic faith, just as in Judaism, the Kabbalists are known to be the mystics of the Jewish tradition. And so in all of these especially those, what we call Abrahamic, religious traditions. It's like this layer underneath the doctrine, it seems, where the essence of the divine is found.
Mark: Yeah, and you know when you hear kind of the origin stories around Thomas Keating and centering prayer and all that kind of developed he was there all the way in the beginning terms of opening up that contemplative tradition. Of course he was a monk and he lived in a monastery.
But even there, He said it really wasn't talked about. In a sense they practice some of the traditions, but talking about like way back in the 50s and 60s. And then by the 70s, when he's at St. Joe's up in Massachusetts at the monastery there, he's starting to put all that together and, I never realized until I went back on all that, how much he saw that relationship between contemplative practice and what eventually he started calling dialogue, within the tradition and then across traditions. And that dynamic, those two things were always there for him, contemplative practice and dialoguing, in terms of deepening our understanding of what's going on there.
I love this part too of this principle 11. And then he ends up talking about social justice. So this is not just a personal thing, individual thing, right? Me and my salvation or however we would frame it but, he says it has to go out too so there's, what emerges is social justice, awareness of that, ecological concerns.
It's all connected. And that sounds like a very new thing, the way we talk about that but, he was talking about that, all the way at the beginning.
Colleen: It kind of makes sense because the seventies where there was a lot of movement activity and social justice organizing. Also in tandem with the movement towards Eastern spirituality, that was happening. Was all of that happening around the time of Vatican II as well? Was there this surge in kind of social consciousness and did that influence the Vatican? Like you're the Catholic historian here.
Mark: Yeah well, I'm no historian but I can make it up. But the Vatican Council was like, in the 60s. Early to mid sixties, and then you see that early seventies people are engaging this because part of the way they talk about what that council was about, the Vatican council was one description by the pope was, we're opening the windows and doors of the faith. In other words, we're airing it out and also we're opening up to the world.
And again that's that, kind of what Keating picked up as this dialogue, it's not our thing, and so he took that to heart.
Colleen: He really did. Yeah. Both in, opening up the doors to the practice, contemplative practice, which we've shared this story of how there was an insight meditation center near the monastery that was in Spencer. And then, so the monks at Spencer notice this, visitation of young hippies following the Beatles, Eastern transcendental meditation path.
Like we have this too. Let's open up the doors of the monastery and invite people into this practice. But then also at Snowmass, when he made the move from Spencer to Colorado Snowmass was very near to a Buddhist university that was inviting Father Thomas and other spiritual teachers and religious figures into conversation there at Naropa University.
And so that opening continued. It went in two directions. It was like, let's open and invite people into the Christian contemplative tradition, and let's also open ourselves in a way to being in dialogue with other Faith traditions. And I don't know what happened first. If the Naropa invitation came to him first, or just this mutual exchange of ideas and perspectives and philosophies and theologies.
But it's pretty amazing. They had this first, I know that father Thomas hosted the first, what was called the Snowmass Conferences or Snowmass Dialogues at Snowmass in 1984. And Pema Chodron was one of the guests at that first gathering.
Mark: Yeah, and I think whether he was going out and looking for folks, but he was known for that. Then he decided formally, let's gather a number of people because he was doing that kind of individually and in small groups, you know, having people to the monastery for tea and just talking and developing friendships, but then when they decided to do this gathering, and it was interesting too, because they decided not to have an audience, which was evidently a big decision between the group. And as I understand it, the reason they didn't invite an audience is they wanted true, genuine exchanges and developing true friendship, not with people watching and allowing people to really share their own personal kind of spirituality and histories as well as their traditions.
Colleen: There's a different kind of truthfulness that comes from being in relationship with another person or persons and sharing tha n being in front of an audience and on a panel and just, talking about your beliefs. But there was this element of being able to share their beliefs and come to some common understandings too, about their beliefs in these dialogues and well. We're not historians ourselves of the Snowmass Conferences, but one of our first guests did a really deep dive into these dialogues and he'll be on to talk with us about the Snowmass Conferences and the history and the participants we're looking forward to chatting with Netanel Miles Yepes, who's a professor at Naropa and really has also dedicated his life and work to religious, interspiritual dialogue.
And so, we'll get into a bit more of the history of the Snowmass conferences and what they came to agree upon, because that will also frame some of our conversations too. They emerged from these conversations over many years with what they call the Points of Agreement and they're really fascinating.
Mark: Evidently, they worked on that, they shared their own personal kind of story in terms of their spiritual life and then they shared about their tradition, and then they looked for these points of agreement or these places of intersection, and that was very important.
It sounded like to the group that they really understand that we share certain points of view and certain practices and so, we can trust that. I think later on, they also looked at points where they didn't agree and felt that was important to also understand. To be honest, in terms of, if you're really in a relationship, then, you don't always agree.
And so they got to that, but originally it was about, creating that container to say, this is who we are now as a group, and this is what we agree on, and this is where we connect.
Colleen: Which is important to do what this principle is stating to affirm solidarity with, you have to look for things in common while acknowledging difference, because, it is important to me and has been for many years that, we often talk about diversity in every regard, but diversity doesn't mean saying we're all the same.
It means. Respecting that we all have different traditions, cultural practices, heritages, and yet can still respect one another's difference and make space for it, one of the fascinating points that I'm seeing in the literature about this no mass dialogues and the reality of just what is most present when you bring together different faith traditions, Is that, some of them are Theistic, Christianity and Islam, and then there are others that are non theistic, like Buddhism. And then hinduism, which I'd never really thought of in this context is in many ways polytheistic because there are many gods and icons to worship in a way. And so finding commonality when there are these varying ways of relating to or with an entity that is experienced as divine also must have lent itself to some really fascinating and maybe at times challenging conversations.
Mark: And especially when you're able to have those conversations in a, safe environment where people have a sense of not just relationship, but friendship, where you can trust and it's not about well, I've got to show up here on a panel and defend my tradition or something. There was a freedom there, which I think is so important in general in relationships. One of the things you were talking about in Hinduism and that this kind of personal or non personal kind of God, or this, I don't know, theistic or non theistic, I guess is another word. But one of the things I said when I was reading some of the conversations around that was that that was showing up in the Hindu tradition, and it shows up in Christianity, which I wouldn't necessarily always describe it that way. At least the part about a very personal God, and also sort of impersonal God. For us, it's not multiple gods, but it's, multiple persons in one God that's the whole Trinity thing. That there's God, the father, God, the son and God, the spirit that we would see that in a sense that, it's a bigger idea than just Jesus as the person. As much as that for Christians is important, a personal relationship with Jesus.
Colleen: It is, but it can become too important. It seems too, that we cling to this personal image of God. And that's some of where we want to explore this season too, is that in this deepening understanding of father Thomas Keating's theology and how it evolved, maybe not so much in his own experience, but in his teaching, maybe a little bit of both.
He, taught where we were in some contexts but towards the later years of his life, his writings begin to reflect some of non-dual nature in terms of our experience of God and this movement from the, self-made self that relates to a personal God to a suspension of that self that enables us to open to an experience of God that's beyond personal into more of a nothingness is some of the language that comes up in his writings in the later years. A lot of his poetry in the Secret Embrace that was published, which was a collection of poems you hear this journey he's inviting us into what he called unity consciousness.
That other traditions will call non-dual awareness. These are concepts that can't be learned and even as I'm reading through reflections on the unknowable right now and, they're the kind of transmission teachings that, you read a page or two and you sit and just, sit and reflect soak in what can be absorbed and continue the practice because that work of understanding or even maybe it's that work of not knowing happens in our practice, in our prayer.
Mark: Yeah and, i mean, at least in my own experience in contemplative practice, it seems you can feel that nudging pointing to cause so much of it within the practice is about letting go, and so, I have all these ideas, end beliefs and figuring it all out. And then the practice invites me to just release all that, because maybe there's something beyond just what I can understand or explain, to me that's part of that non dual, it's not one or the other, an absolute here and a absolutely not here, you know? I was, reading some of the resurrection stories in the Christian scriptures in the Gospels, and was struck by this, i think curious detail in a lot of the resurrection stories, post resurrection stories where the disciples don't recognize Jesus.
He shows up, he's walking on the road to Emmaus with the disciples they don't know who he is. They think he's a fellow pilgrim. Mary's in the garden in the morning of the resurrection and he shows up and she thinks he's the gardener. The disciples are fishing and he's on the shore waving to them and they're like, who's this guy. And it's like, what is that, cause these are people that were closest to him.
And then he comes back, like he said he would, and they don't recognize him. To me, it seems like the putting that in there and emphasizing that has something to do with, hey, you gotta see this differently. See with new eyes, the post resurrection Jesus is not the person Jesus who walked around with you, but that's hard for me, you know I because I'm attached to my point of view whether that's about my faith or just about anything else in life, It's this radical letting go that's necessary to see that way, to be transformed that way.
Colleen: Yeah the word that's coming up for me is formless. That he was unidentifiable. The essence of, Jesus was the same. The form. Because you mistake him to be a gardener, clearly he's clothed differently. His physical appearance must be different. And then what does that say about our own selves?
That this form that we carry, in this lifetime is not who we are. We understand this intellectually, but it's also beyond understanding that I am not this body. I am not this voice. Even the voice was not recognizable in these resurrection stories, but something made them recognize who he was.
In a couple of those stories, what's even more mysterious is that, he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread, which I'm not qualified to even consider the depth and the reality of what that meaning is but, I always am struck by that. What is that breaking of the bread?
What is that symbol for us? and It seems to have something to do with relationship and what happens at a table when you share a meal with other people and really are able to be present to the divine through relationship and relating to others.
Mark: There's a tremendous sense of intimacy. And even in those stories, you hear that. So Mary doesn't recognize him at the tomb. And then he says her name and she says, Oh, it's my rabbi. And it's like, he's reminding her of their intimacy in that life before, you know, in the human life that they had together. And even like you're saying about the Eucharist or the breaking of the bread, Catholics would call it Eucharist, but he's walking with the disciples and they don't get it at all.
And even when he is teaching them. But then when they sit down and at the moment he breaks spread 'cause it's that intimacy, it's that gathering and see if we could only see it that way or allow it to move us in that way, and be fed like that through letting go of just our ideas or like this physical part of who I am and this ego part of who I am.
' Cause as soon as Mary recognizes he isn't in there. Then he says, hey, don't cling to me which is don't get caught up and now you think I'm this person again. So it's almost like it's both, you know, you're saying we're not just this physical person. It's like, we are, but we're beyond that as well. It's both things and that's why I'm so excited about this season because we're going to hear these common kinds of themes and understandings and especially derived through contemplative practice, that with different language, which to me always helps me to open up more to, I know the different terms that I grew up with.
Mark: And that's helpful, but it can also get stuck in there. But to hear don't cling to me in other traditions as well, it just confirms it. When the Buddha says, all of my teachings can be summed up in one sentence, nothing is to be clung to as I, me, or mine. Sounds like Jesus saying,
Colleen: don't cling to me.
clinging to me.
Yeah. And it sounds like the practice of centering prayer, but also as we'll hopefully learn about practices in other traditions that also invite us into this posture of non attachment, because that was one of the points of agreements so, number one, and I believe there are eight. As a number one says all world religions bear witness to the experience of ultimate reality to which they give various names.
And then the eighth and final point of agreement says, disciplined practice is essential to the spiritual life, yet spiritual attainment is not the result of one's own efforts, but the result of the experience of oneness, with ultimate reality.
Mark: These wisdom traditions sometimes, right? Anybody of course, we're just using our mind to try to figure that out. And what does that say to you, that Eighth point of agreement there about practice.
Colleen: It's interesting because I read in Netanel’s book, A Common Heart. He wrote a book, and he really edited a book, that was a transcription of interviews he conducted with several of the members, participants of one of the later Snowmass dialogues. But in it, and I can't recall the name of the person who was sharing that discipline practice is essential but at the same time they were acknowledging that you can have a spiritual awakening in a moment. You might not be practicing per se or you might not be practicing in any disciplined way. But you can have a moment of waking up to the consciousness of a reality that is ultimate, that is absolute, that is greater than you.
And I think that's really important to hold.It's important for me to hold right now as a possibility as I engage more in contemplative spaces with the BIPOC, Black, Indigenous, Latino, Middle Eastern, Asian communities where a sitting silent prayer practice may not be the most formative practice, yet there is a tangible experience of one's sense of oneness with an ultimate reality or the divine.
I've been reflecting on that a lot lately, that my personal practice has this particular form, but there are many forms of practice and ways in which we as people encounter the divine.
Mark: It's almost like, practice isn't making that happen. It's already there in terms of that oneness we are not making an ultimate reality happen.
It's almost like the practice just helps us to, recognize it, engage in it, live it out absorb it, something like that. It allows us to focus or be able to see it a little bit more but we're not producing it or something.
Colleen: I always think of the word we're remembering, and Ram Dass has one of my favorite quotes " We're all just walking each other home."
I love that. This sense of returning to a state of being awareness that is always, is, it just is, and God is all in all which is, it's a conversation actually you can find it on YouTube, but it was also transcribed into a book, one of Father Thomas's books, God is all in all, he talks about, the essence of God. God is, is-ing. And again, I can't describe what that means, but just that idea of God carries some ultimate truth for me.
Mark: Yeah. And I think that's why there's so much talk about the kind of our work of letting go. If we are to recognize that oneness, that easeness of God, it requires that least for me, I know it does, that I get out of the way a little bit, with my ego.
Otherwise, it's just still this separate thing to me my fortified ego and self, and then this entity that's somewhere outside of me. Keating's got a quote that I came across just in getting ready for this, about that non-dual, he says " In nonduality, the separate self sense is greatly reduced and it even disappears."
This is again that kind of reduction of the self and everything that happens is the direct experience of reality. It is being able to lead ordinary life without thinking of oneself all the time. That's hard. I'm always referring it back to me. What's this going to do for me?
Colleen: Yeah. What a relief to be separated from the separate self sense.
Mark: Yeah, even if I go kicking and screaming, but yeah there is some relief in that.
Colleen: Even if we go kicking and screaming. And all of the traditions, I remember Jim Finley was a teacher of mine, for my spiritual direction formation years ago and I don't even know if Jim would remember that he was a teacher of mine but,
Mark: Well We're gonna find out cuz he's one of our guests.
Colleen: He is and we're going to get to talk to him. But essentially he was saying, pick a path, but doesn't matter what path you pick, but pick a path and go all the way down that path. Because they all lead to the same place essentially of the reduction of the separate-self sense. And he was saying to the danger of, a form of spirituality where you're just living at the surface of a bunch of different traditions is that, you never really get down deep into one. To where the possibility of this separate self sense disappearing can occur. So whatever path, just someone else, Parker Palmer, I think it is, has a quote that I always love because he's talking differently in a sense about the dark night of the soul and, he says, you know, you got to ride the monster all the way down, and I love that.
Mark: I like how you're framing that about following the path all the way down and going deeper and those words that about descending, like really going in and yeah, whatever path takes you there is, the right path in a sense for you. Maybe that's based on what you were born into in terms of a particular tradition or whatever but, the contemplative path, however, it shows up or is expressed, will take you there. Which is why I sometimes don't wanna go there, 'cause that's hard to do, to descend. I wanna ascend, I want to be on top.
Colleen: We do and that's our whole culture, that's what we're taught, that's the Olympics of life, let's be number one, get the gold and, spirituality is about losing, and who wants to do that.
Mark: It's a hard thing to do. But you can't reduce the self or have it disappear into God unless you're willing to do, or yeah I get maybe you don't always have to be willing, but it's gonna happen.
Colleen: That's true. You don't have to be willing. You can be brought low.
Which I think we all experienced that too. Life happens and brings us to low places and that's also the grace of God. Part of the gift of this human experience that we might not willingly lose, but we will lose things, people, dreams.
Mark: Yeah, it's that, commonly quoted Julian and Norwich quote, first there is the fall, then there's the recovery of the fall and both are the blessing of God. On that note, we're all going to die and loose ourselves and descend.
Colleen: Pleasee tune in to our podcast.
Mark: It's going to be fun. it may not sound like it, but it's going to be fun. Descending can be a real bless do you know?
Colleen: If you're like us, it's going to be great because even in all of this, it's like this conversation, I don't know. It's hard for me to even say that it's unappealing because I'm so into this stuff. I'm so into this life. You know, I feel like the psalm is where can I go from your presence?
And, there's this old hymn, that comes to mind all the time. I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back. Which, for some reason singing it like that, it sounds like some horror film nursery rhyme or something. No turning back. But, it's a gift. It's a joy, it's a joy to be on this path and, we hope that the podcast is reaching beyond our contemplative outreach community, beyond our Christian faith tradition. We hope that the guests this season who are coming from different faith traditions will teach us and that we'll be able to model in these conversations this, intimacy and relationality that is necessary to affirm our solidarity with others by exploring these commonalities and contemplative dimensions of other religious and sacred traditions.
The world needs this right now. We need, to affirm solidarity with others. We are living in a increasingly multicultural, multireligious world. You know, I was reading some interesting statistic about the Catholic Church, which it's almost something like 80 percent of the Catholic Church now is in these Southern hemispheres, South America, continent of Africa, South Asian countries. And we've got to find a way to find commonality across cultures too, because the body of Christ is multicultural.
Mark: And our guests this season are, we haven't talked to all of them yet we're still meeting but I know they're going to help us do that, because they've all walking this path and going to the deeper places and where that connectivity starts to show up more and so, to me i'm very excited about that.
The guests that we have and having these conversations and taking the time to pause around this. That's the part that brings me joy, because like you said, there is suffering in the world and there's challenges but to affirm that there is an actual path for us to travel and then to speak with people who are really familiar with that path and steeped in it.
Colleen: And people who are, living in community with people from other faith traditions too, like in ways beyond me, I feel like my world is very small and very Christian, but Mirabai Starr, she lives this, interspiritual lifestyle. Netanel, same thing.
Even Cynthia Bourgeot, who's coming back this season, she's got a book about Father Thomas coming out about this, evolution and his later teachings and non duality and oneness and how this theme becomes more, how he hones in on this, in the final years of his life but, Cynthia's got these wonderful relationships with, Interfaith teachers and leaders that are all involved in Garrison Institute and she's having a, symposium in the spring of 2025 and Garrison is this, beacon of interspirituality and practice in our current culture and so, I'm looking forward to learning. I'm looking forward to really learning.
Mark: Me too, and I'm happy to be sitting, with you or across from you in this whole process and learning together it's a great choice. So I'm looking forward to this season a lot.
Colleen: Me too.
Mark: And we're looking forward to all of you joining us. Even though we said that thing about, we're not doing this in front of an audience.
That wasn't us. That was the Snowmass people. We want an audience so come back.
Colleen: We want to hear what you think too. If you're on YouTube listening to this, please leave comments. We want to commit to, being better about responding to some YouTube comments this season and find us on social media and let's engage in a dialogue and live into this legacy of father Thomas for whom, dialogue was a really important aspect of our spiritual journey so,
Mark: All right, here we go. We'll see all of you soon and I'll see you soon, Colleen.