This edition of Interreligious Insight has something of a “spirituality” theme running through it. We publish the final essay of the late Wayne Teasdale and, in so doing, we honour one whose Christian example of openness, humour and generosity has inspired many on the journey of interreligious understand-ing and active engagement, and whose final writings were marked by what he called “inter-spirituality”. We include reflections on the beautiful poetry of the Islamic mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi (b. 1204); on the abiding challenges of the Hindu activist-politician-spiritual seeker, Mahatma Gandhi; and on the contemporary search of Charles Burack whose journey has involved leaving the Judaism of his birth-right only to redis-cover it later in fresh form and after much interior struggle. All examples from different traditions of spirituality on the move. 

What unites these writers and writings is their shared experience of crossing boundaries and the sense that spiritual insight in the modern world emerges from empathetic intentions and atten-tive listening to those who strike us initially as unfamiliar and strange. The spiritual quest in our times, it seems, involves us in both bending our gaze to view the world from the spiritual other’s vantage point and also actively relating what we see to our own; and thereby moving towards a new more wholistic vision of reality itself. As Martin Buber, the Jewish sage and philosopher, would have said, it is what happens in the space between worldviews, spiritualities and philosophies that counts. 

“Spirituality” in a shrinking world is clearly undergoing change. Where our sense of what claims our loyalty spiritu-ally once focused on a person’s interior life and from within a single tradition, the ever-expanding consciousness of contemporary multiculturalism forces two further factors into the open. First, spirituality is concerned with awareness on more than the interior level alone. If it is to connect our religious orienta-tion with what we understand to be the way the world works, it must be lived also in relation to the social, eco-nomic and political world. In this sense spirituality is closer to the language of values and ethics than it is to either the believing dimension of faithfulness or the institutional aspect of belonging. The best spirituality is both an interior cultivation of the mind and heart and an exterior application in public life of values and ethical dreams. It is a com-mitment to prayer and meditation and to bringing about change for the sake of a more just, peaceful and sustainable world. No longer is spirituality a flight of “the alone to the Alone”. It cannot be reduced simply to a life-style option or become another form of a consumerist approach to living. 

The second mark of a changing spirituality is the readiness of practitioners to cross boundaries, as the writers mentioned above demonstrate. For Wayne Teasdale this seemed as natural a prospect as breathing. And it led him to envisage spiritually enlightened persons from many traditions, who have undergone a transformation at the experiential level, as a kind of “fraternity of sages that unite all ages and cultures”. This metaphor of fraternity is not merely an idealistic aspiration. When the Buddhist Dalai Lama visited Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky State, USA, the spiritual home of his Christian friend Thomas Merton, he placed a marker at Merton’s grave with the words, “Now we are one.” Then with the example of Gandhi, crossing boundaries was necessary as part of the struggle for liberating India from the British Empire. For if Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists and so on, were to be recognised as an inclusive part of the tapestry of the new India that would arise after colonial rule had ended, then it was necessary to value the spirituality of each as the animating principle of their social and political hopes. 

Examples of crossing boundaries could be multiplied. It has always happened. But in today’s world it has become unavoidable. The interreligious movement is poised to turn this unavoidable reality to spiritual advantage. Yet for this new journey we shall need the gift of critical discernment, as all manifestations of spirituality are not necessarily conducive to human well-being. Critical discernment will involve us not only in the mutuality of interreligious dialogue but also in paying attention to what we know of the world through many kinds of enquiry. Sharing wisdoms is not simply about sharing “timeless” truths and insights; it points forward also to new futures. This is the meaning of our experience of expanding spirituality in the context of dialogue and engagement.