29/05/2023

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Rabbi Jonathan Romain

Good morning

I don’t know about you, but I get puzzled by the mixed messages I receive, about how religious people in this country are interacting, with some saying how full of religious conflict society is, with rivalry either between religious groups or within them, and others claiming, on the contrary, it’s a time of great interfaith harmony.

Personally, I’m an optimist and follow Monty Python in always looking on the bright side. That’s not to ignore the problems and the need to overcome them, but if someone shows me a rose stem, I concentrate on the petals, not the thorns.

That’s why my favourite story is the one about a rabbi and his two friends, a vicar and a Catholic priest. They lived in the same town in the USA and used to meet to play cards once a week. The problem was that it was a very conservative town and activities such as playing cards was banned, so they had to do it privately.

One night, as they were playing, the local sheriff burst in, caught them red-handed and hauled them off to the judge. He looks at the priest and sternly demands: “Were you playing cards ?” The priest looks heavenwards, whispers “Forgive me Lord” and says “No, of course not”. So the judge turns to the vicar, “Were you playing cards ?”. The vicar looks to the heavens and says “No”. So the judge asks the rabbi: “Were you playing cards?” The rabbi replies, “With whom?”

I like the story because it highlights how not only are they firm friends, regularly spending leisure time with each other, but they are all equally innocent - or guilty. They know that their fate is bound up with each other; they stand or fall together. Like us, they are now irrevocably intertwined in this multi-faith, multi-race, multi-cultural society of ours, and we have to work together.

So I ask God’s help that even if we can’t love our religious neighbour as ourselves all the time, we can at least get on and co-exist, and work towards religious peace and then peace in society as a whole.

Amen