Source: Faith for the Climate

Interim communications officer, Jon Chew, reflects on the recent multi-faith eco-summit on 23 February, 2025.

Colette Joyce (Westminster Justice and Peace Co-ordinator and Trustee of Faith for the Climate) and Fr Dominic Robinson SJ (Justice and Peace Chair) were in attendance on behalf of the Diocese.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.” – Jalaluddin Rumi

As Rabbi Debbie Young-Somers, a trustee of Faith for the Climate, led us in ‘Hinei Ma Tov’ – a Jewish hymn sung at Shabbat feasts – I was reminded of the field the Sufi poet Rumi speaks of. While evocative, this translation by Coleman Barks has been accused of de-Islamifying Rumi a bit too much. 

There is another translation by the British scholar A.J. Arberry that is closer to the original meaning of the Persian: 

“Beyond Islam and unbelief there is a ‘desert plain.’ For us, there is a ‘passion’ in the midst of that expanse. The knower [of God] who reaches there will prostrate [in prayer], (for) there is neither Islam nor unbelief, nor any ‘where’ (in) that place.”

In this rendering, the middle ground between belief and unbelief feels like a blank canvas, a place that may be too scary for some to enter. But here, a worshipper of God finds a unique passion, where your heart and devotion to truth and healing fills the expanse. A passion that is no less devoted, that causes us to prostrate in prayer, but maybe, a place where fellow pilgrims are feasting with each other. A place where we are bound not by the ferocity of our arguments, but by our need to find kinship.

Hinei mah tov umah na’im / Shevet achim gam yachad. Behold how good and pleasing it is, for people to sit together in unity.

An act of gathering can be a provocation for our times, because these are the times we live in. On February 23, around 150 of us spent an afternoon at Friends House in London for our ‘Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves’ summit. Co-organised with Christian Climate Action and Quakers in Britain, we came together in The Light Auditorium, where a vaulted roof stretched with holy hands to the skylight above, almost in recognition that the sacred provides safety for the extra-ordinary. 

The word “inter” kept springing to mind, the original word in Latin meaning “in between”… continue reading on Faith for the Climate website