To Understand

To Understand

by Corrado De Robertis

From the Editor's Desk

Vol. XVI

No. 4

APRIL-MAY 2004

World Mission Archives

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Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh once said: “When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.”

This month WORLD MISSION tries to help you understand one of the major religions of Asia - Islam. Dialogue between religions (especially Muslim-Christian dialogue) is alive and happening, contrary to the many reports of intolerance and religious violence that so often make headlines.

Of course in any effort towards dialogue and conflict resolution understanding someone else’s background and motivations is of decisive importance. Of course, we would wish that understanding and searching for insight might not be just a one-way street, and that both sides would simultaneously try genuinely to understand each other from a start. Yet - contrary to what one might think - even a one-way effort towards a sincere understanding of the other person, though painful, can and does bring about constructive change and resolve stalled situations. As St. Francis prayed: “Lord, grant me not so much to be understood, as to understand”.

Such “unilateral” understanding demands a considerable degree of sacrifice - the sacrifice that Christ’s understanding required on Mount Calvary is the model and symbol of all understanding. That was one-way, his own personal choice, and humanity has yet fully to reply in kind. Despite everything, though, that event put into motion a definitive chain-reaction of love and of positive change in the world.

Easter is indeed a time for each of us to consider the necessity of practicing such understanding towards the different, the unknown, the one who may challenge and even irritate us. On this depends the solution of conflicts in today’s world, whether they happen in the family, at home, in a religious community, in a nation or between religions.

All it would take is that at least one side would have the courage, the strength and the will to stop acting on prejudices and begin a journey of insight into the different other to move the world and one’s own life towards unavoidable peace.<WM

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Fr Corrado De Robertis

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