The new challenge for all peoples is to broaden our sense of spiritual community, becoming fully ecumenical not only concerning whom we pray FOR, but also concerning whom we pray WITH. If humankind can begin to pray together we can begin to live together, finding new and creative ways to reduce the evils which plague our planet. But how can we pray together with integrity, when we differ so much in beliefs? The best way to being to pray and meditate together is in SILENCE. Words are not enough. In silence we can sense that we are not separate from anyone, and so we can dare to hope for peace. For silence to "work", participants must bring to it some degree of trust, love, and letting-go: a trust in the good-will of the others which moves them to join in such an expression of human caring; a love which brings a sense of heart-felt connection with the others as human beings; and a letting-go for a short time of our desperate clinging to the convictions which separate and divide us, letting these recede to the background of consciousness. After the silence, we return to deal with the same differences, but in a different spiritual climate.
Surrender is not an abandonment of ourselves in the face of difficulty, nor is surrender synonymous with submission, we yield ourselves to God freely, not under coercion. Surrender is not resignation. It is an invitation to be ourselves more fully... Surrender is not so much a giving up as it is an OPENING up. It is a dynamic living and striving in the face of the unknown. When we surrender in faith, we enter into the power of God, into the realm of all possibility. We open ourselves to new perspectives, thoughts and dimensions of life yet to be explored. We do not give ourselves in the sense of extinguishing ourselves. Instead, the little lick of light we are joins with the holy flaming that is God. We are brought more fully into ourselves and at the same time brought into that fullness which is greater than all that is.