Go outside. Let the world in.

Ask any traveller about his strongest experience and a story of an encounter invariably follows. When we meet people not only face to face , but ‘heart to heart’, we experience this as something special.

When travelling, each one of us recognizes the feeling of being out of one’s comfort zone.
Far away everything is different. Also the people. When we position ourselves at eye level of the ‘foreigner’ , we come to know him with an open mind , we enter his world and everything becomes different.

Trust that we give, we also receive.

Margot Kässmann responding to a question from the audience following her lecture on “Multicultural Society – Roots, Resistance, and Visions” at the University of Freiburg. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When we accept that someone is different, a certain chemistry is created. We should not only look at the exterior, but we should keep listening. In this way prejudices and predispositions do not get a chance and the ‘foreign exterior’ will make place for a ‘recognizable interior’. We will experience that wealth is to be found in being different, exactly within the differences. In this sense, people we called ‘foreigners’ at first, are in fact a blessing. The only condition is that we open our heart and allow ourselves to be moved.

In this way foreigners become friends
If our society feels strongly about pluralism we should not be satisfied with an ennobled form of permisiveness that preaches tolerance. In our multicultural society pluralism only has a chance of survival if we go towards the other person and if we are really interested in who he or she is , regardless of whether he/she is a foreigner , of another religion or conviction.

Intercultural dialogue depends upon authentic pluralism
It is essential to allow the other person’s truth , in which a ‘ heart to heart’ encounter is the golden key. In this way a meeting close to home can become a rich experience worth telling. We are only asked to go outside and to let the world in.

Dutch version / Nederlandse versie: Ga naar buiten. Laat de wereld binnen.

Are you right down in the dumps? Stop digging!

Responses to Radical Muslims and Radical Christians

Tolerance Ends When There Is No Tolerance Shown Towards Us

My two cents on the refugee crisis

Stabbed victim parent’s hope for less hatred and more tolerance

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About going outside

1. “Sometimes our stop-doing list needs to be bigger than our to-do list.”
2. It’s Simple, Really, We Don’t Need Much
3. Going Outside: The Sunrise Edition
4. A wee tail
5. Learning to Longboard – Novice Shred Spots

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About meeting people

1. We are strange
2. Striving To Connect
3. Meeting new people, Amazing Experiences & Giving help
4. unexpected tips: ways to meet people
5. How can I start meeting friends
6. 5 Places To Meet People Offline
7. 10 Ways to Meet People in the London
8. 25 Small Ways You Can Bless A Stranger’s Life
9. A person worth knowing
10. Some Relationships Are Just Blips On The Radar (But They’re Still Beautiful)
11. The type of people you Do Not want to meet in life Again!
12. meeting horrible people and you’re complaining about it
13. No makeup – One-liner Wednesday #1linerWeds
14. Pumpkin Munchinskaij 🙂
15. Men with Machetes!
16. Moms have enough to worry about, let’s not make friendships one of them
17. Conversation, Where Are You?
18. Coincidental
19. Good date 8/10
20. Some Wine, Some Words, and Some Confusion
21. Another Source
22. Workshop # 3 – We are all the same
23. Being Religious and Spiritual 8 Spiritual, Mystic and not or well religious
24. Some one or something to fear #5 Not afraid
25. A participation in the body of Christ
26. Justification – salvation is by grace through faith – JI Packer
27. Disciple of Christ counting lives and friends dear to them
28. A Holy week in remembrance of the Blood of life
29. Atonement And Fellowship 3/8
30. What’s church for, anyway?
31. Gathering or meeting of believers
32. Vergadering – Meeting / Meeting – Vergadering
33. Congregate, to gather, to meet
34. Why we do not have our worship-services in a church building
35. Not trying to make the heathen live like Jews #2
36. The Magic of Books
37. Summertime Blues
38. Good Vibes
39. Thought Positions
40. Police Visit
41. A Stop In Mamou To See Fred’s and Tante Sue
42. in which we update our dating status, and talk about tinder
43. Dating Again After Divorce
44. Collective Dating
45. Better late than never
46. Met a new pagan group last night
47. Wading in the Sea
48. It’s all in my mind…

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About prejudice

1. Want to Stop the Contempt, Hate, and Violence?
2. Prejudices and Stereotypes
3. Arrest the prejudices
4. Things are rarely what they seem :: Why I scrambled to offer food to a stranger
5. Dirt Daubers, Humans, and Other Pests
6. Bias, stereotypes, and prejudice. Oh my?
7. Are You Contagious?
8. Dissolve The Barriers You Created
9. Why Is It Important To Have Opinions And Communicate Them?
10. Dealing with love burden
11. “Nowhere to Go”
12. Suicide blond
13. What is True Compassion?
14. our own guru
15. The Enemy Camp: Creativity vs. Logic
16. But You Can’t Shoot Them
17. The Kind of Christian I Am Today (with an addendum on Orlando)
18. Exceptions never ‘prove the rule”
19. Strip Yourselves from Social Masks
20. Heart for sale

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About tolerance

1. Religious Practices around the world
2. Christmas in the 1950s
3. Migrants to the West #10 Religious freedom
4. More Muslim children than Christian children growing up in our cities
5. Quran versus older Holy Writings of Divine Creator
6. Back from gone #3 Giving worries to God and believing in His promises
7. Where is the USA wanting to go with the freedom of their people
8. ISIL will find no safe haven
9. Holiday tolerance
10. If you have integrity
11. Integrity of the fellowship
12. If you want to go far in life
13. People who are always making allowances for themselves soon go bankrupt
14. God let my compassionate affection be tolerant and kind
15. Diversity
16. A social experiment
17. A Musing on Discerning Tolerance
18. Introducing Students To Disability- Year 2
19. Love
20. Making Peace with the Middle East
21. Learn and Live
22. Republican vs. Democrat “Tolerance”, Compare And Contrast
23. How religion can lead to violence – Gary Gutting

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