READ, LISTEN, THINK AND REFLECT

Dialogical Competence 1

Listening: For a dialogue, it is more significant to carefully listen to others in order to fully understand them than to insist on others understanding us.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. (E. Hemingway)

Dialogical Competence 2

 Solidarity: The authenticity of the dialogue lies above all in the actual acts of goodness and mercy that testify of our sensitivity for the sufferings of others!

I know of no great men except those who have rendered great service to the human race.(Voltaire)

Dialogical Competence 3

Cooperation: Dialogue refers not to words only but to actions as well, to the common, socially accountable actions directed towards the common values like environmental and social justice, truthfulness in politics, historiography and the media, partnership and equality of men and women, all in partnership of the religious and the non-religious founded upon the common humanist values.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.(Martin Luther King Jr.)

Dialogical Competence 4

Curiosity: The multitude of human paths to God and God’s paths to human is the cause of the continuous learning and pursuit of the wealth that the merciful God spread among all peoples: read other holy books, visit other churches, attend other religious services, celebrate other holidays, learn of other histories and spiritual leaders from other religious traditions.

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.(Marie Curie)

Dialogical Competence 5

Personal responsibility: Do not wait passively for the dialogue transformation of your religious leader, religious hierarchy or the prevalent climate in your religious community. Actively work on such transformations by shaping bold informal and formal dialogue actions in the environment you work and live in.

Freedom is always and exclusively for the one who thinks differently.(Rosa Luxemburg)

Dialogical Competence 6

Trust: The foundation of trust is the trust in the over-encompassing God’s goodness as God’s savior presence embraces the history of every people, culture and religion, the history of every individual, but also the history of everything created, the whole universe.

I know God will not give me anything I cannot handle. I just wish He did not trust me so much.
(Mother Theresa of Calcutta)

Dialogical Competence 7

Friendship: A true dialogue starts with the friendly sharing of life’s joy and suffering with members of other religious tradition; that is the only way to reveal how faith helps in overcoming everyday difficulties and preserving hope and how the world and our own tradition looks in the eyes of others.

Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend. (Albert Camus)

Dialogical Competence 8

Honesty: When in dialogue, we must compare our own ideals with the ideals of our dialogue partners, and practice as well with their practice to fairly note both the light and the dark of our religious traditions or worldview.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people.
(Virginia Woolf )

Dialogical Competence 9

Self-criticism: Before speaking of the dark aspects of someone else’s religious tradition, we must be free and capable of expressing a founded criticism of our own religious tradition.

The things in which we passionately believe: those things are precisely those of which we should be most wary.
(William Blake)

Dialogical Competence 10

Gratitude: Respecting human and divine freedom, in the difference of the other we have been called to recognize not threat but merciful experience of the revelation God’s infinite wisdom and greatness. 

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us be thankful.(Buddha)

Dialogical Competence 11

Forgiveness and reconciliation: An important part of the dialogue, without which authentic reconciliation is impossible, is togetherness and personal confession followed by asking for forgiveness for any evil that in the past had been done to others on behalf of our religious tradition.

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.(Hannah Arendt)
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.( Mahatma Gandhi)

Dialogical Competence 12

Activism: Use the dialogue to remember the forgotten peacemakers from all religious traditions and place them as contemporary role models, understanding that today peacemaking primarily makes the distinction between true and false religiosity as it is not in the monopoly of any single religious tradition.
Changeyoulifetoday. Don’tgambleonthefuture, actnow, withoutdelay. (Simone de Beauvoir)

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle. (Kahlil Gibran)