WORLD PARLIAMENT
World Parliament
There is a lot of bad news around and being surrounded by it so constantly can easily become depressing. Some respond to the manipulations of the media by giving up the news entirely or at least reducing it before they go off the grid altogether. Others decide to drink news from wells that make them feel good because they now only hear of the world from their own point of view.
At the World Parliament of Religions that I had been attending all day, 230 different religions were displaying their colourful, highly contrasting and often beautiful ways of communicating good news. There were orange robes, red robes, saris, black suits and collars, feathered head-dresses and grass skirts, horns and choirs, drums and gongs and meditation cushions. This confluence of different cultures and their clashing ways of seeing life as sacred and meaningful has been happening for millennia — on the Silk Route, in Alexandria and Lhasa, around campfires in deserts and jungles. I wondered whether the encounter of so many different, even contradictory religious viewpoints had happened before on such an organised and grand scale in such a massive conference centre. It hadn’t just happened. It was a news event. It was new and modern.
It was minor news as far as the media were concerned. They gave it less attention than it actually deserved. It would have been more newsworthy if it had involved conflicts or scandals. When the WCCM invited the Dalai Lama to lead an interfaith event over several days in Belfast our intention was to show that, if Christians and Buddhists could be friends in their vision of the wonder and mystery of life, its suffering and joys, maybe Loyalists and Nationalists could be kind to each other as well. His Holiness was a great success and connected movingly and humorously with representatives of all sides of the divided society. A symbolic highlight was his walking through the so-called ‘Peace Wall’ on the Falls Road. Made of steel and concrete and barbed wire it had come to epitomise the hatred that had divided Catholic and Protestant believers. The idea we had was for a door in the wall to be opened so that the Dalai Lama could walk through it while holding hands with a Protestant minister on one side and a Catholic priest on the other. After days of tense negotiation and a cliff-hanger last-minute ultimatum the event actually happened. Children from both sides of the divide had been given a day off school and were thrilled to meet the smiling Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
The breaching of the wall of violence was very moving for everyone for reasons that it is hard to describe persuasively. It seemed like good news. But the sceptics who agreed that it felt good also asked what difference it would really make. Later that evening we got a call from a local TV station telling us that there had been a fight between some of the Protestant and Catholic children and one boy had sustained some injuries and was being hospitalised for the night There were no more details given but it sounded like something the media was hyping up. Walking through the wall of hatred was less newsworthy than a street skirmish between kids even if they were well-used to fighting each other. The journalist asked for a comment from the Dalai Lama and wanted him to come to the hospital to visit the boy and his aggressor. That would be a catchy news item — although it wisely did not happen.
Really good news just happens. It is not manufactured. At the World Parliament there was something managed about the whole event, of course. But there was a spontaneity, enthusiasm and pure innocence, too, in all the different expressions of humanity’s strangely contagious conviction that life, however flawed or fallen, is, despite everything, good.
The costumes and rituals on display were not competitive but seemed playful with a sense of both the holy and the absurd. It made me love the human race more because it seemed to be the result of God’s box of colouring pencils and playground. Yes, there was egotism, too, as everyone wanted to be seen but they were also interested in seeing others at play like children discovering new games. I saw a group of Iranians laughing with some Bahai followers and asking for a photo to be taken of them taken together. There was a lot of networking and invitations to go and speak after the conference in exotic places. Especially among the younger participants there was a sense of high optimism that the friendship shared at that event would bear fruits and maybe make a difference.
How does one evaluate such things? It was difficult to judge; but overall, it seemed to me, religion even when the people promoting it are only too human is a good thing. It is a sign that when God looked at his creation on the sabbath day and saw it was ‘very good’ this included the human creatures who would soon and frequently spoil it. Maybe, as in certain activities like sport, art and working for peace and justice the sacred, in a world made cynical by fake news, triggers a liberatingly playful spirit. Childlike nonsense, which religion resembles, exposes a lost healing well of wisdom.
As the day’s play concluded and I prepared to leave, I wondered if the world is really worse than it always was; or is it how we select and fabricate ‘news’ that makes it all feel so hopeless. In the days of the town crier, it must have been simpler. Now we hear processed news delivered with moralistic judgement and confused convictions about right and wrong. Everything that makes news sell is grist for this mill: the corruption of values, sexual crimes, environmental pessimism, disillusionment with politicians, journalists, religious leaders, megalomaniac billionaires and endless social trends illustrated by images that seduce our attention. It is easy to create pessimism.
But still hope springs like water from the most arid soil. In Clockwise, a great dark comedy, John Cleese plays a militaristic headmaster whose life unravels, in the course of a day, combining the fatalism of Greek tragedy and the absurd humour of Monty Python. In one scene he despairs and gives up and joins a monastery of caricatured misfits who could never make it in the real world. He soaks in a hot bath, relieved by his loss of hope until he hears the sound of a car starting up outside. Suddenly he realises there is a way of escape and that he has another chance. He struggles but cannot suppress the hope. ‘It’s not the despair that hurts’, he complains as he steals the car, ‘it’s the hope.’
Tired by so much optimism at the Parliament, I was relieved to get into a taxi to take me to the Cathedral presbytery where I was staying. I asked my young Indian driver to take me there. He looked evasive and nodded. I could see he had no idea what or where the cathedral was and for my part I had forgotten the street name. I mentioned other landmarks which also drew a blank. After a phone call and precise directions, we set off with my inter-religious good will now at low ebb. I was feeling irritable. I saw he was looking curiously at my monastic robes in his rear-mirror. He said, ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, sir, but are you some kind of priest?’ The innocence of the question hit me almost as a rebuke for my uncharitable mood.
He was Hindu, very religious but now unable to go to temple which was distant and he had to work all hours. To my surprise, he asked about confession in the Catholic church, the idea of which had long amazed him. ‘People can really just go in and talk to a priest about anything, their problems and bad things they’ve done?’ We reached the cathedral and stayed talking for some time in the carpark. He told me how worried he was about his level of stress and mental state, his inability to concentrate and the loss of his spiritual practice. I suggested meditation. No, he had never meditated, but he would try. He seemed grateful with the news I passed on about how he could worship interiorly in the temple of his heart. I paid the fare and gave him the mala beads, the Indian rosary someone had given me at the Parliament.
I got to my room feeling humbled and blessed by my encounter with such pure faith. The epiphany refreshed my hope. I was grateful to have been touched by the gentle breeze of God in such a quiet and local way. Sometimes the global just feels too big.