THE ELEVENTHS

 

When I am asked to say something about our “elevenths of the month” I try and give a flavour of what happens – and invariably fail to convey what they mean for me – not just the one each September which marks my own birthday – but all of them. I suspect they mean something like this for all who come along to them.

 

Archbishop Rowan Williams said something like; “The truest way to understand interfaith relations is to be alongside someone when they pray to their God – to observe the eyes of the one whose gaze is directed towards God.” The most significant regular reminder of the innate goodness of people, their ability to change arising out of their religious convictions and their ability to choose the good out of that change, comes to me from the experience of attending the 11ths of the month.

 

If you want an illustration of the way in which religious conviction far from drawing human beings apart, actually draws them together in one of the profoundest ways open to us, then the 11ths provide it. Here we share a deep and heart-felt desire, expressed in words directed out from us to God – conceived in the myriad different ways of individuals interpreting the revelations, calls and invitations of their own religious traditions – words which live and take on meanings not shared by all but arising from our differences in belief – which do share one motive and desire of the heart – that all live in peace. So solitary human beings stand in solidarity and express in their different ways of prayer and reflection, their common human desire and passion that peace prevail in a world too often scarred by violence and the unimaginable violation of human dignity and goodness. We experience on the 11ths - which are always different in exact theme and tone – the same spirit of human yearning for the peace which means human fulfilment, flowering, beatitude in the fullest sense – for all, everywhere, at all times. This is placed in the context of folk who are supreme realists and who would want not utopia but who, outside the meeting for prayer, often are engaged in the humdrum work of building peace locally and further afield.

 

We say “we do not pray together but we do come together to pray”. Prayer occupies subtly different places in each religion. There can be no such thing as a sort of common denominator prayer – a one prayer fits all type of thing. There can be variations and varieties of prayer - each variety true to its rootage in its own tradition - played on a shared theme, that of the desire for peace. It is not as if the different religions play different notes and the notes make up an orchestral composition – though if the score is entitled “variations on a theme of peace” played on the instruments of the orchestras of the world’s religions – you get somewhere near what its like. I do not argue for the coming together of the world’s religions. I do argue for the coming together of the people of the world’s religions in the name of the desire for peace to pray for peace.

 

So we listen in silence to and with silence surrounding the prayers from the different religions for peace. The silence is of respect and appreciation not as much for the words (they often cannot bear the weight of the emotion) but for what is not spoken – the yearning which each prayer betokens – for peace to come. So we experience what it means to belong to one family with one yearning desire.

 

In my own simple way I think that heaven will consist in all peoples having been created up into being a prayer for thanks and praise for peace realised. There will have come an end to boundaries and barriers and differences of belief, culture and nation. The 11ths of the month are a “sacrament” (an outward sign and demonstration of the inward unity in love and therefore in God) of our shared humanity. I rejoice that on the 11^th of September each year I can enter this totally human and totally unpretentious expression of my own humanity on my birthday and share this with all those others who also share birth and life with me. And this blessing is available on the 11ths of every month.

 

It’s wonderful!