A bold journey across three faiths

I’ve often reflected on taking the road less travelled. Familiar paths offer comfort; pilgrimage asks us to venture beyond it. When I agreed to spend three weeks travelling and living with a Christian priest and an Indonesian imam before welcoming them into my Melbourne home, I wondered whether I was being impulsive. I did not feel particularly brave or noble. But I knew this was a road rarely travelled today.

Founded by former Indonesian diplomat Dr Dino Patti Djalal, the 1000 Abrahamic Circles is an initiative which aims to ease tensions among the three Abrahamic faiths. Each circle brings together an imam, a rabbi and a pastor to stay in one another’s homes, share meals prepared to meet their religious requirements and engage with local communities. My companions were a young imam, Niki Fauzi, from Yogyakarta, and Father Adrian Villaester, 40, from Iligan City in the Philippines. We spent a week in Yogyakarta, a week in Iligan and a final week in Melbourne.

After more than 30 years in interfaith dialogue, I found this experience unusually bold, intense and intimate. Unlike conferences or one-off encounters, shared daily life leaves little room for pretence. Meals, family routines and unfamiliar customs revealed the people behind the religious titles. They also fostered a deeper understanding of the heartbeat of other faiths. Our shared humanity, humour and playfulness drew us together. Like Benjamin Button, I sometimes felt exuberantly younger by the week!

The deepest encounters often occurred between official engagements: moments over breakfast, in a crowded street market or beside a river. We also met diplomats in Jakarta, university students and children studying the Qur’an in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, and interfaith groups in Iligan. Our conversations ranged from Hadith and Halachah to contemporary ethical questions, from transgender to experiences of transcendence. I gained a better understanding of charismatic Christianity through the passion of Father Adrian and his wife, Leah, and their musical productions of Passion plays about the death of Jesus. We did not need identical answers or common paths to recognise a shared love of the sacred.

Prayer became a particularly powerful connection. Niki’s early rising for Fajr and my attendance at Friday prayers at Carlton’s Albanian Mosque deepened my appreciation of Islamic devotion. We reminded one another when it was time to pray and sometimes prayed in the same room. One Friday in Yogyakarta, as I recited Kabbalat Shabbat, the muezzin’s call echoed through the air: a wondrous, timeless joining of prayer across our troubled planet.