Jewish-Catholic Dialogue

[dauer]

I just came across this video of a talk between Fr. Thomas Keating and Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. It's about 45 minutes long. I'm currently about 10 minutes in and liking it so far. I thought some folks here might be interested in listening in on their dialogue as well.

Jewish Tv Network

Will post again with more thoughts later tonight when it's over or tomorrow when I've had more time to mull over it.

 

[Thomas]

Hi Dauer —

Well I've just started watching ... and it will have to be in slices ... but my first impression is 'Oh, wow ... this is gonna be 45 minutes well spent.'

Thanks for the link.

Oooh, Dauer ... 8 minutes in and two things:

The darkness — one of my favourite symbols is Peter and John rushing to the empty tomb on the day of the Resurrection, its a great text for metaphysical and mystical contemplation (what text isn't?): The tomb is empty — everything Christ said has come true, but the tomb is empty — I think all Christians have to enter the empty tomb before they can dialogue with Christ ...

And Elijah on Mount Horeb — It is my belief that Saul, after his conversion experience, according to his own account, 'went south to Arabia', he followed in the footsteps of his hero, Elijah, and went to Mount Horeb to contemplate his experience, and put it all together, to make sense of this new revelation ... not of fire and thunder, earthquake and storm ... but of the still small silence.

But be still ... these men are talking of the silence, and here I am making a noise ...

Thanks again,

God bless,

Thomas

 

[dauer]

I will have to watch it again in slices. I saw the whole video in one sitting while there were other things going on around me so my comments right now address the gestalt of the interaction more than anything else.

I really appreciated the type of interaction that the two modeled. It's very easy to focus on differences. It didn't seem like they were speaking only to similarities. Each spoke in the language of their own tradition, making occasional references to the other's tradition. It seemed like they were addressing what's underneath all of the theology and mythology via that language without suggesting for a minute that such language need be done away with. I liked that.

Tomorrow most likely I will give it a deeper viewing.


-- Dauer

 

[pohaikawahine]

Mahalo nui dauer for posting this - I listened to the whole tape and was very excited that "The Song of Songs" was briefly discussed and I loveRabbi Zalman's words that g-d is an athiest because he has no g-d (now that is something to reflect on). I wish I could have heard more about the four worlds in which I'm sure he was speaking of pshat, remez, drash, and sod but that part of the conversation was cut-off in the tape.

Thomas, I like your reference about going into the tomb ....

he hawai'i au, pohaikawahine