TRUTH . . . IS INCLUSIVE

We were aboard the morning flight to JFK. My wife had claimed her usual window seat and I waited to see who would complete our row of three. Presently we were joined by a middle-aged lady dressed in a beautiful sari. She occupied the aisle seat next to me.

Our conversation flowed easily as we cruised at thirty thousand feet. I soon discovered she had flown from Bombay several hours before and was on the second leg of her journey to relatives in New York. Her home was on Marine Parade, known to me as 'The String of Pearls', so named because of the sweep of the lamps along the Bombay coastline. As I had served in the Indian Army many years before and knew her location, this made an immediate point of contact.

Showing little signs of fatigue, the gracious lady insisted upon getting us whatever we needed from the stewardess. As we talked of India and England, and the differences in culture and religion, it was evident that even if our understanding was different, we were of one spirit. There was no inner clash, no stridency, no insistence that our view was the only correct one.

My understanding of God had come through my encounter with Christ, hers through the many expressions of God that her Hindu upbringing had taught her. Thankfully we did not try to convert one another, but spent hours listening to each other; engrossed, fascinated, enlarged and thoroughly grateful to have met. As we prepared to leave the aircraft our new friend touched my arm and I saw she had tears in her eyes. She said quietly, 'How do people cope in the world today, Maurice, without knowing God?'

The age difference, the miles, the cultures, the religions, had all been spanned because we wanted to learn from each other; because we all acknowledged there was a light that lights everyone that comes into the world and we sought that light in each other. Our journey across the ocean was a sheer delight, instead of a head-on collision between two opponents.

//Continued