An Appreciative Inquiry Conversation Guide
Creating a Small Forum in Which Leaders of the World Religions Can Gather in Mutual Respect and Dialogue
Editor’s Note: This conversation guide was given to participants in a one-day forum for leaders of the world religions. Held November 9, 1998, in Washington, D.C., the forum was opened by His Holiness the Dali Lama, Richard Blum, and Bishop William Swing. Moderating was Dr. David Cooperrider of Case Western Reserve University for the SIGMA Program on Human Cooperation.
Overview
Early in 1995, during his first visit to Jerusalem, His Holiness the Dali Lama proposed that "If the leadership of the world’s religions could get to know one another better ... the world could be a better place."
The positive assumption is that while honoring differences of practice and belief, our faiths do in fact call us to care for one another, and that our religious life can support us in building community and respect for one another, rather than dividing us.
Today’s meeting might be viewed as a humble start, an exploration of this idea. The purpose is a simple one:
To create a beginning of what ultimately might be made available for the world’s religious leaders—a secure, private, small, and relatively unstructured forum where leaders can converse with one another, know one another in mutually respectful ways, and reflect upon the hard issues of the world without binding any institution to another.
This conversation guide provides a set of questions to spark a dialogue related to the purpose just stated; it explores, for example, hopes that call us here, experiences we bring to this work, our deeper concerns about the world, insights about significant engagement across faiths and religions, and visions of a better world.
The questions are offered as a starting place, a seed, for good conversation. Hopefully, the group will create even better questions as the day unfolds and for future meetings.
The flow of the day will be a simple one involving whole-group discussion of our agenda with some one-on-one conversation and moments of silence. Even though it is only one day, we do want to create a retreat-like atmosphere of cooperative reflection and hospitality.
The opening dialogue sets the stage for a new appreciation of one another, our work in the world, and conditions we feel will make meetings like this a success.
Conversation Guide
A story from your life journey. One could say that a key task in life is first to discover and define our life purpose, and then to accomplish it to the best of our ability.
Insights from important interfaith encounter:
We have all been changed, both in outlook and in our lives, through encountering people from other spiritual traditions or religions. In your work as a leader, you might have had one, two, or perhaps many encounters with people of other traditions that stand out as particularly significant.
Qualities that could make meetings like this significant and effective.
In his book, The Good Heart, His Holiness the Dali Lama elaborates on the idea that "leaders of each religion should become better acquainted with one another." After talking about hard and "very, very unfortunate" conflict in the name of different religious traditions, and what it means "in the eyes of the public," he talks about the great potential of ongoing dialogue.
You probably already know, based upon lots of experience, what kind of things could make this type of meeting worthwhile, meaningful, and successful.
Imagine an ongoing, secure, private, small, and relatively unstructured forum where leaders can have conversation with one another, know one another in mutually respectful ways, and reflect upon the hard issues of the world without binding any institution to another.
- What qualities of relating could help make it work?
- What would make meetings like this worthwhile to you?
- What kinds of things would you like to experiment with?
Taking steps to create an enduring dialogue among leaders of religions does not happen in a vacuum. Think about the five most important historical events that have occurred over the past hundred years, global or local events and trends that give a sense of urgency, readiness, or calling for our work here.
2. Assessment of the Present: Our World and the Hard Issues
Against the background of many world problems and conflicts [The 1996 Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential lists over 15 thousand global problems and documents, for example, that half of the armed conflicts in the world in early 1993 were not between nation-states but between groups from different religions], there is also a glimmer of what is possible when we find ways to promote peace rather than war, cooperation rather than prejudice, and sustainability rather than environmental degradation and human oppression.
Since that historic Chicago gathering in 1893—the Parliament of World Religions—we have seen a vast widening of interfaith dialogue, interreligious prayer and meditation, pilgrimages, joint action, and study in world religions. Indeed, there appears to be a worldwide urge for an enduring, daily cooperation among people of the world’s religions to make peace among religions and to serve, in the presence of the sacred, the flourishing of all life.
III. Looking to the Future: Visions of a Better World
Dag Hammarskold, former UN Secretary General, once said, "I see no hope for permanent world peace. We have tried and failed miserably. Unless the world has a spiritual rebirth, civilization is doomed. It has been said that the next century will be a spiritual century or it will not be."
Put your thinking about thirty years, a generation or so, into the future. Even though the future is, in so many ways, a mystery, we want to begin to visualize the kind of world you feel we are being called to realize, a better world, the kind of world you really want.
2. Your vision of the relationships between the world’s religions and leaders. The assumption in the invitation is that there needs to be, in today’s complicated and interconnected world, an ongoing and sustained conversation among the religious leaders of the world.
Let us imagine a scale from 1 to 10, a scale in which a rating of ten represents your vision of the ideal kind of relationship among leaders of the world’s religions and spiritual traditions.
• How would you rate in broad terms where the leaders are today, in terms of the quality and kinds of relationships?
• What does your "10" look like? The quality of relationships? Frequency of contact and communication? A metaphor?
• How might the world benefit? How might you and your faith community or organization benefit?
IV. Future Meetings: 1999 Agenda? How Often? Where?
Again, putting yourself into the future, let’s suppose that a high-quality and enduring forum for dialogue has been successfully created, a safe and level playing field where leaders and their envoys can come together to talk, in confidence, about the hard issues of the world.
2. Next Steps we can take to further the dialogue.