By Sister Eileen White
From Phillyburbs

The first week of February is designated by the United Nations General Assembly as World Interfaith Harmony Week.

The late Rev. Al Krass, a true believer in dialogue among people of different religious persuasions, started this weekly column, From a Faith Perspective, to support interfaith discourse.

One aspect of spirituality that many different faith traditions share is prayerfulness. Last week, I was privileged to take to heart my own faith tradition’s dedication to prayerfulness in a week of retreat in New Jersey.

As a Catholic Sister, I have both the obligation and the luxury of a mandated annual retreat, that is, a time to go apart from my job and my community simply to be with and attentive to God.

The retreat I have chosen for many years is a silent retreat — no lectures, no required reading except Biblical passages suggested by a spiritual director with whom I meet once daily, no TV, no telephone or Internet — just time, silence, and activity that promotes listening. You might imagine that this is easy, but for me, it is challenging! I am only recently hard of hearing, but I have always been much more a fill-the-air-or-the-paper-with-words nun, and less a here-I-am-attentive-to-Your-word-God type.

Still, I would not miss this opportunity for anything. I wish that everyone could have the chance that I have each year — to walk and notice the deer prints in the fallow soybean field; to paint with watercolors (badly, but enjoyably) the tree on the roadway outside my window; to be still and silent with other retreatants listening to a psalm together and then quieting ourselves to listen only for the still small voice of God that sometimes breaks through all the noise that occupies our brains.

Every religious tradition provides many paths to prayer. Some use beads; some sacred writings; some sing, others wear a prayer shawl, or use candles, go on pilgrimage, kneel or lie prostrate on the ground.

All seek communion with God. Prayer can have many motives for connecting with the Divine. We might beg for help, plead for forgiveness, praise God for mercy and love, ask for healing for a loved one, for employment, or for an end to suffering. We may even question God, “Where were You when I needed You?”

Like many Christians and Jews, I find in the Psalms a wonderful resource providing us with words that resonate with our heart’s deepest longings. “I waited and waited for the Lord, who stooped down and heard my cries.” (Psalm 40) “God, You are my shepherd. There is nothing I shall want.” (Psalm 23) “As a deer longs for running water, so I long for You, O God.” (Psalm 42) In prayer, we listen too, convinced that God also speaks to us, reassuring us that we are loved, inviting us to change, challenging us.

After a week of stillness and silent searching to hear God’s voice, I was invited to a church service in a downtown Philadelphia theater. It rocked! The floor shook with the music and the singing. The pastor loudly invoked the Spirit of God and invited conversion of heart and commitment to service in the name of Jesus.

It was completely different from the serenity of my week of prayer, and yet it was sincere and authentic and inspiring.

The prayerfulness to which every religious faith invites us aids us to realize that, no matter how different in culture or language or the way we picture or name the Holy One (G-d; Allah; Yhwh; Lord; Father; Jesus) we are one with all humanity and all the universe in our yearning to know that Divinity.

Let us pray for one another and for our world — people of many different faith traditions and many different ways of searching for and finding the Holy One and wholeness. Let us not allow our differences in religious beliefs and practices to tear apart the oneness that surely reflects and reveals the Sacred One.