It was said about a disciple that he endured seventy weeks of fasting, eating only once a week. He asked God about certain words in the Holy Scripture but God did not answer. Finally, he said to himself: “I have put in this much effort, but I haven’t made any progress. So I will go to see my brother and ask him.” When he closed the door and started off, an angel of God was sent to him and said, “Seventy weeks of fasting have not brought you near to God. But now that you are humble enough to go to your brother, I have been sent to reveal the meaning of the words.” Then he explained the meaning of what the old man was seeking, and went away.

To close ourselves off from the wisdom of the world around us in the name of God is a kind of spiritual arrogance exceeded by little else in the human lexicon of errors. It makes life a kind of prison where, in the name of holiness, thought is chained and vision is condemned. It makes us our own gods. It is a sorry excuse for spirituality. The sin of religion is to pronounce every other religion empty and unknowing, deficient and unblessed. It is to ignore the call of God to us through the life and wisdom and spiritual vision of the other. The implications of that kind of closing out the multiple revelations of the mind of God are weighty: once we shut our hearts to the other, we have shut our hearts to God. It is a matter of great spiritual import, of deep spiritual implications.

The voice of God within us is not the only voice of God. Openness is not gentility in the social arena. It is not polite listening to people with whom we inherently disagree. It is not political or civil or “nice.” It is not even simple hospitality. It is the munificent abandonment of the mind to new ideas, to new possibilities. Without an essential posture of openness, contemplation is not possible. God comes in every voice, behind every face, in every memory, deep in every struggle. To close off any of them is to close off the possibility of becoming new ourselves.

—from Illuminated Life by Joan Chittister (Orbis)