There’s an empowering, interreligious message at the centre of our Moses tale today, and also one that is repeatedly uplifted by Jesus Christ in the gospels: “be still,” “accept peace,” “quiet your mind and know God.” Any practicing Buddhist or Christian Monk will tell you that this is at the heart of how Divine Awareness deeply advents into our minds, and yet, when we read scripture, we often miss this deep, central vein. Further, the concept of being still and tapping into our deeper, silent awareness, can often be misconstrued as being inactive (perhaps due to the seeming remoteness of monks!) where the opposite is the case; this inner stillness allows us to respond to the world with clarity, uplifting within and around us the Divine activities of compassion and social justice that are at the root of all life.

God’s message of social justice, hope, and life sometimes gets watered down in our various understandings of the world’s scriptures, which is ironic since even the most esoteric sections of holy text point to the Divine’s mission of uplifting and empowering the entire world in spiritual health. One example, Daniel chapter 7 of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, describes Daniel’s visions of beasts rising up and subjugating the earth in war and strife, but they’re eventually cast into a fiery river in front of the “Most High” who is the “Ancient of Days,” which then leads to “one like a son of humanity” to enter God’s presence and to rule over and empower all nations, releasing them from oppression. This story can be read on many levels, from the personal to Christ’s process of glorification during his earthly life, and as we break down its meaning I think we’ll all hope to not only embody its message ourselves but also as a diverse, interreligious society.