Freedom to Explore: Finding Common Ground

I remember the first time I stepped foot inside the house of another faith tradition. I think I was 26.

My shoes made clicking noises on the tile hallways throughout Temple Emmanuel, the largest place of Jewish worship and community in Dallas. The clicking reminding me of the similarly tiled hallways I would run down as I skid into my CCD classroom – the acronym for Catholic “Sunday School,” typically held on Wednesdays in the Catholic tradition. I was struck that Temple Emmanuel seemed equally as artistic and spiritually expressive as my beloved Catholic church building that I admired growing up – a new Spanish stucco structure meant to look old with its paintings and statues of the Virgin Mary throughout and Italian inspired fountain out front.

While the synagogue was just as thoughtful in its design, it was less ornate than my church. Modern art and straight edges created a sort of no-nonsense and direct yet inviting aesthetic – something about it reminding me of two people close in my life who are Jewish - both my uncle and one of my best friends from childhood. Their straightforward natures had always drawn me in.

A sort of comfort, homey feeling ran through me. While many of the smells and colors of the temple were new, parts were also familiar. These parts reminded me of my own faith.

A new knowing about my friend and uncle filled me, a deeper understanding. Looking back, a new knowing about myself and God also emerged. A largeness, both within and “out there.” I wondered why I hadn’t visited this house until now.

Taking Steps

Jackie Linden Schade, a pastor in the ELCA church and trained spiritual director, recalls the first time she attended an Iftar dinner at her local mosque.

“One of the Muslim women sitting around the table had her hands lifted up,” says Linden-Schade. “She had a sort of ecstasy on her face. It was a moment of beauty and reminded me of my own feelings of connecting deeply with a prayer or hymn.”

In 2016, as the presidential election approached, political rhetoric and tensions seemed more and more drenched with division. Linden-Schade wanted to somehow do her part and to begin creating new connections for a better future.

She reflected on her seminary training which instructed her to take up the cross of someone else when you see an injustice.

“Well, what I’m I going to do about it? I asked myself,” she explains. “I am going to go to an Iftar dinner.”

Her first real interfaith experience was a literal step into the first of many intra-religious encounters.

A Place at the Table

Iftar is the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at Sunset. Linden-Schade had never attended one prior to a local mosque inviting her five years ago to partake in this celebration of Ramadan which is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting, prayer, reflection and community.

What she describes during this initial encounter is both significant and depending on how you view things – divine.

“I was seated next to a college student and allowing myself to take everything in, to be in someone else’s faith household,” she says. “But, I decided to put myself out there and just go for it, so I slapped my hands on the table and blurted so tell me, what is the best part of the faith of Islam?”

The young man looked startled as if someone had never asked him this question, and after a long pause replied: “I think my favorite part of being a Muslim is that God forgives my sins.”

Linden-Schade says she laughed to herself thinking I had to travel all the way to a mosque to remember that God forgives sins.

And she says the college student explained further: “But, before I can ask God’s forgiveness, I have to go to that person and ask for forgiveness.”

At this point, Linden-Schade says this scripture from the Bible’s Matthew 5:23-24 came to her:

“So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the alter at the temple, and you suddenly remember, that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the alter. Go and be reconciled to that person, then come and offer your sacrifice God.“

Throughout the evening of prayer and meal sharing, she says Biblical scriptures kept flooding her mind. It seemed being in this “other” house of worship had deepened her closeness with her own Christian tradition.

“I also had the image of Jesus pop into my head,” she says. “He was kind of peeking around the corner watching me with a smile on he face, delighted at my discoveries.”

Freedom to Explore

Diane Pennington is a trained spiritual director and grief counselor. While she is a member of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), like Linden-Schade, she has also found comfort in exploring other faith traditions which for her has led to an even further commitment and curiosity into interfaith studies.

Pennington says being open to various forms of spirituality came from emotional wounding that occurred throughout her Christian fundamentalist upbringing. In a quest to understand her own experience, she spent time in therapy and eventually went back to school to earn a counseling degree.

“I was starting to broaden my spirituality through my exposure to counseling, but in a clinical setting there is very little room for faith except looking at it as a pathology,” she says. “Eventually my work as a faith and grief counselor really broadened my relating to and looking into other traditions as an additional reality. to my own.”

Pennington says she felt huge limitations in not being able to sit with with clients and understand nuanced belief systems. Specifics like where does a loved one go after they die? And, what if my loved one didn’t believe in God?

As both a spiritual director and counselor her desire was and still is to sit with people in their pain. She had to be able to think and see in the way of a Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim as well as other religions and those of none.

Pennington admits she was hesitant to explore at first, fearful that considering other ways of thinking and believing somehow would deconstruct her Christian faith, or that she might lose faith all together.

The contrary became her truth.

“This path of exploring ended up not being a threat to my own thread,” Pennington shares. “I am finding that my sense of God has gotten bigger and bigger. God keeps coming out of the box, and now She won’t go back in.”

Holy Ground

Engaging with one’s faith through a contemplative lens provides invitation to live with paradox.

Linden-Schade describes a sense of freedom to not know everything, resting in her truth, knowing that it is okay to wonder. Drawing upon Christian scriptures, she makes the profound connection that Jesus successfully healed, preached to and reached countless in his ministry never asking those He encountered to convert to His Judaism.

In both Linden-Schade and Pennington, a sense of strength abounds as well as confidence in their path to the Holy. There is also a sense of wisdom and a deep sense of knowing God - both through both their own experiences as well as a working knowledge of their Christian doctrine.

“We need to understand where we are on the playing field,” Linden-Schade says. “That’s why doctrine is important, but we need to have enough openings to leave room for God to be God - which in my mind is Holy mystery.”

And, ultimately we come to know this great mystery through are own experiences. And, if we remain open to receiving, whether within the walls of another faith tradition or outside of it, I find that love will meet us. Feeling and finding commonalities among the different traditions can shine a light on our own, making it feel brighter and more known to us - just like that day when I was in Temple Emmanuel and the tile floor warmed my body bringing back the Holy moments of the God I knew in my childhood.

Linden-Schade illuminates this process describing time spend with friends in the Sufi tradition.

“This Muslim contemplative tradition (Sufi), requires removal of shoes when entering into their house of worship,” says Linden-Schade. “When I consider the idea of removing the impurities of the outside world before coming into a place of prayer, my mind immediately goes to Moses - I’m standing on Holy Ground.”

Common Ground

As a Christian, one of the aspects to the Gospel, when I really listen to what Jesus was saying, is to love people. And, when we love people, there’s no room to judge them.

We GET to look for and find beauty in other people without feeling the need to change them, or to change our own beliefs.

I wonder, could having more of an interfaith mindset create more wholeness within myself, our communities, our country?

“Entering into interfaith conversations and spaces is wholeness in the sense that it is recognizing that God is greater than one perception and God is in the lives and hearts of others is not limited to one perspective.”

Could it be that each tradition makes up the whole, having something, a flare, an offering, a prayer practice, a scripture that the other doesn’t posses?

Linden-Schade finds this wholeness through exploration, through looking for beauty and for accepting that the way God relates to us and the way we relate to God is as vast as the night sky.

“What I find beautiful and exciting is that we don’t need to all think alike. And there is so much awe, and inspiration when I hear something spoken in another faith language and suddenly it is resonating with my own tradition,” she says. “I don’t want God to be solvable. I want to serve a God who looks and feels like the images we see behind the amazing Hubble telescope, beauty we can barely imagine.”

Trained Spiritual Director Jackie Linden Schade and Trained Spiritual Director Diane Pennington host Interfaith Prayer through Retreat House every Thursday at NOON VIA ZOOM. Email Jackie or Diane to receive the link to join.

You can discover more about this offering here on the RH Web site.

Watch an interview with Linden-Schade Freedom to Explore: Finding Common Ground.. This interview is the first installment in a Social Media Series “Story Seeds,” which highlight various RH partners and their ministries providing listeners a chance to dive deep and further explore the sacred stories reflected in our blog posts.

Emily Turner is a trained spiritual director and writer. She is currently accepting directees. If you are interested in discussing matters of faith and spirituality, she would love to hear from you.