On a visit to India in November of 2006, I was invited to share in a meal — in dialog, and conversation — with three different families:  one was Hindu, one Muslim, one Christian ….  people whom I did not know personally [..with the exception of one family who I had met, briefly, two years earlier].  Remarkably — or so I thought at the time — these people opened their homes (almost as family) to meet 'another' — a small group of foreigners, strangers — in an atmosphere of hospitality, and compassion, and relationship.  It was an experience that revealed more about similarities …. than differences.  And it was our similarities — as human beings ... in reaching-out to one another in friendship, love, understanding …that had the greatest impact, and deepest memory.

Although the words and wisdom of Henri Nouwen speak from the heart of his own experiences, I can share [equally] in the truth and beauty of his teachings — simply, because I have known and witnessed, personally, "the heart of compassion" …found in those unforgettable, humble, caring encounters …. faced with others in my own life.  Not only with the Hindu family, and the Muslim family, and the Christian family … in India; but also with the many Jewish families that I have come to know, and love, in Canada.  And with people who do not share a faith community at all.  All of these individuals — though different and diverse in many ways — are windows that allow me, and others, to see "that every human face is the face of a neighbor."

* * * * *

Jean Vanier, in his book encountering 'the other' retells the courageous story of Etty Hillesum — a victim of the Holocaust …. and a survivor.  A survivor in God's House — an eternal soul that lives above, and beyond, the horrors of the Nazi regime. 

"One of the women who has most influenced me is a young Jewish woman, Etty Hillesum, who died at Auschwitz in November 1943 at the age of twenty-nine.  Once she was yelled at by a young Gestapo officer.  She wrote in her journal: 'I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion and would like to ask: "Did you have a very unhappy childhood, has your girlfriend let you down?'"  She was not fearful.  She also had a deep sense of who the human person is.  What makes a human person the sacred reality that the person is?  Her deepest belief was that each person is a 'house' where God resides.  At one moment she said, 'Everyone must be turned into a dwelling dedicated to you.  I shall try to find a dwelling place and a refuge for you in as many houses as possible.  There are so many empty houses.  I shall prepare them all for You, the most honoured guest.'  She had a deep sense of the beauty of each person;  she felt that each one was carrying the mystery of God in a capacity to be, to love and to be loved."⁷