On a crisp October Sunday morning last year, Councillor Bill Hartnett, the Redditch Council leader, Meena and myself, drove across to the Moseley Buddhist Centre. Don’t worry we did not go out to change our faith or belief system, although I could easily have done with a dose of yoga!
This is merely the place where we start our annual multi-faith walk where we walk, and talk with people from different backgrounds and visit their place of worship, if any.
So on this one we had a lady in Birmingham who joined us partway and left part way, and had exchanged contact with Meena. She organises an annual event at her home and gathers women from different backgrounds at her home for sharing their reflections. This year there were women from four three countries! So she says.
Getting a word in edge ways must be difficult, so I imagine there must be special reflections, and there were a handful this year. One poignant one was of a South African white woman whose nineteen year daughter was killed by a black young man, just before the end of apartheid, during the era of Pik Botha.
The mother asked to meet this man to ask him why he killed her daughter. He said that when he did what he did he was only thinking of the cause, and nothing else. The mother then forgave him. And her instant feeling was freedom from the shackles of her thoughts about this mans action. She was unlikely to meet him again, but her thoughts were freed to focus on more positive aspects of life.
This is not, of course an isolated story, and killings were from both sides. Nelson Mandela, was not just known for his fight against oppression and the many years in jail. His greatest legacy was that he did not bring South Africa into the abyss of a war against former minority rulers. Instead he bought in a peaceful transition.
And one method was through the truth and reconciliation mission. Hundreds of victims families and adversaries, black v white, white v black met, wept, and moved on. The reconciliation was personal and in the mind, rather than meeting the adversary again.
In our small ways we need to release from our own mind those same trappings so that we can occupy it with more positive issues. Persistent hate is a pressurised balloon of anger that needs to be dissipated and make space. The victims mother required a lot of courage, and most of us require just a tiny fraction of that to sort those negative balloons in our minds and be free.
I attended Church three times in the last three months, once in Birmingham (St Martins..beautiful) on our faith walk, and twice near Studley Castle, a near Redditch. The Church is in set off a narrow country lane and is a few hundred years old. Some months ago it was for a wedding of a colleague, and a couple of months thereafter it was for the funeral service and burial of his mother. Matthew 6:12 ,which asks ‘And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us’ was another reminder of forgiveness at the best and worst of times.
The idea of the multi-faith walk came when I went to a Charity Walk in Leicester about three years ago organised by the Friends of the Oxford Centre of Hindu Studies. We walked to each of the seventeen Hindu temples in Leicester, saying a prayer, with maybe a prasadam and walking on. A sort of a pilgrimage! I did not need to just go to India.
In Birmingham,we do not have so many temples, so somehow with a group we organise and attend Sikh, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist temples, and ask them to talk for a few minutes about a specific topic…this year peace. To me it’s the walking with different people which is incredibly enriching, as the experience Meena had with this lady. The peace message was virtually the same, dressed in different ways.
As for the Cllr Bill Hartnett , after the walk he was so excited, and called this experience a myth buster. He wants to organise one in Redditch as an annual event. As we have mostly Churches, I am relishing the thought of understanding the variety of Christian denominations and we intend to attend a Sikh service and Hindu discussion.
On that note, it seems to me that debate and discussion about all our beliefs is a healthy development of common values.