The Panelists

“The panelists wanted to create a dialogue of unity,” moderator Dr. Don Mitchell told Living City. “And it was not just a dialogue, but an experience of communion among people crossing the boundaries in dialogue.” While belonging to different faith traditions, the panelists came together around the theme “God as Love.” “It is the reality alone upon which we can build that communion that we all desire, in view of a world that is more united, more at peace.” These words from Chiara Lubich’s message for the occasion “gave us the push to go ahead,” Mitchell said, “to be free to dialogue in faith.” Following are excerpts from the panel discussion.

Dr. James R. Hodgkin

Expert in Buddhist teachings from Los Angeles, and director of the External Affairs Division for the Rissho Kosei-kai, a lay Buddhist movement originating in Japan

Contribution to discussion

Commenting on the Lotus Sutra, Buddhism for Today, Dr. Hodgkin approached his talk from three perspectives:

1. the love that Sakyamuni Buddha recognized during his enlightenment;
2. the love and compassion he taught;
3. the altruistic love of those seeking enlightenment.

On love in humanity

“A big element of love is the empathy between people and the recognition that the other person is another me. You love these other people as you love yourself, but the more you love yourself, the more you love the others. There has to be self-improvement and a sense of self-worth. The more of this love you have, the more you love the person because you see that in you.”

On how to respond to the absence of love

“If you feel anger or irritated at something, something is wrong with you. You must instantly realize that you have a problem if you are angry. If you hate someone, if you dislike someone, or you’re feeling irritated or angry, you have a problem, and you have to find out what it is. For example, frequently you see traits in other people that you don’t like, and if you reflect closely, you realize that you have many of those same traits that you don’t like in yourself…. The ultimate secret is: you need to change yourself, even when you’re right and the other person is wrong.”

Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard

Director of Organizational Development, National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, New York.

Contribution to discussion

Rabbi Blanchard approached the discussion of God as Love from three themes that permeate Judaism: creation, revelation and redemption. He said that if you are loved by God, you are not only created, but you are spoken to.

On how to put love in a situation where love is absent

“You can love somebody very deeply and care for them very deeply, and they sometimes simply will not give you what you want, even if you want it very badly, if you want it desperately. So, how do you introduce love into a situation like that? Maybe you give up the expectation and the fantasy that you love somebody because you’re bound to get something back for it all and instead you love them because you love them.”

On unity and diversity

“There’s a possibility of a mystery in which unity and otherness are the same in some way or other. I took Fr. Massa’s description of the eternal movement of love proper to God, for example, radically one and monotheistic, but nonetheless containing otherness in itself. Jews are not Trinitarians, yet there are many Jewish views in which there is the notion that there is some mystery in our lives, spiritually, that what appears to be and is “other,” at the same time is profoundly unified with us. We as human beings, for example, are the image of God, and when you look at the other human being, you see someone that reflects that image.”

Father James Massa

Executive Director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs

Contribution to discussion

Reflecting on Benedict XVI’s Encyclical “God is Love,” Father Massa spoke about the love that belongs to God’s essence and related it to human beings, made in the divine image and likeness. He spoke of the doctrine of the Trinity as the most eloquent human speech about the love of God, which is not only “mutual love,” but also “shared love.”

On friendship and fellowship

“In Catholic theology the Trinity increasingly becomes the model for understanding the church and every Christian movement and community. How can we have diversity and plurality, and yet also unity? The rich exchange of gifts: that is really the heart of what we mean by communion. What exists in the very life of God, from all eternity, becomes somehow embodied in the actual life and practice of the community here on earth. I would say that that’s really the heart of the Christian idea of unity.”

On how to respond to a lack of love

“I wonder if our capacity to love in those difficult situations is when we grow in holiness, in virtue, and then love becomes its own force. It’s not dependent on the receptivity out here around us; rather it draws on something much deeper, and then it becomes that wonderful reality. Love grows when you give it away. It does grow, provided that we are growing in virtue and in holiness.”

Imam Ronald Shaheed

Leader of the Sultan Muhammad Masjid and Director of the Clara Mohammed School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and follower of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, President of The Mosque Cares.

Contribution to discussion

Speaking of the Qu’ran, Imam Shaheed described the attributes of God—the Merciful Benefactor, the Merciful Redeemer—as the closest concepts in Islam to the concept of God as Love: “If ye could count the favors of Allah,” the Qu’ran says, “never would ye be able to number them: for Allah is Oft-Forgiving Most Merciful. He gives without counting.”

On how to promote interfaith dialogue

“I was one of those young people who came into faith by discovering Islam…and I wasn’t thinking about dialogue at all. But the Qu’ran, our number one source for guidance, teaches us to be in a position to learn from everyone.”

On building friendship

“With my family, we moved around a lot. Each time my children were very sad to leave their friends. They were going to their new school and would come home the same day saying they had all these new friends and I said, ‘No, it couldn’t be. How could you get friends that quickly?’ But in looking at them now, I think that the innocence that our children reach to establish friendship is probably something that we adults need to go back to.”

On human dignity

“Islam is most attentive to the human person as a social group. There is a phrase in the Qu’ran that says that God has honored or given dignity to every descendant of Adam. God created every person and endowed them with rights that can never be violated, and this is very similar to the initial idea in the framing of this country.”