Gus Zuehlke, a friend and former student of John S. Dunne, spent some time at Father Dunne’s hospital bedside and reported on his visit in a post to Notre Dame Magazine: “As I was silently praying in John’s room, a nurse walked in and said to me, ‘I’m on my break. Can I stay in here for a while?’ ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘You see,’ the nurse said, ‘I feel God here.’ I said to him, ‘I understand.’”

Passing Over

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the death of the Catholic priest, imminent theologian, and beloved teacher John S. Dunne. I first encountered the writings of John Dunne in a course at Princeton Theological Seminary called “Autobiography as Theological and Psychological Reflection” taught by Don Capps. In his book A Search for God in Time and Memory, Dunne offers a method for self-understanding, growth, and transformation which he called “passing over.” He writes:

You find yourself able to pass over from the standpoint of your life to those of others, entering into a sympathetic understanding of them, finding resonances between their lives and your own, and coming back once again, enriched, to your own standpoint.

Only, as Dunne points out, the standpoint we come back to is a different point of standing, a different way of standing and understanding than before. The me that I come back to, and the you that you come back to, are now somehow different, perhaps even permanently changed— that is, until we pass over again “into a sympathetic understanding” and come back again in the dance of ongoing transformation.

For me, passing over, is one antidote to the political partisanship and religious, ethnic, social, and national fundamentalisms of our day that are hell-bent on dividing and conquering (that is, diminishing, demonizing, or destroying) the other. Whether in junior high hallways, secret classrooms of religious zealots and terrorists groups, on partisan radio and TV Talk Shows, or in meeting rooms of global leaders, the too-often accepted modus operandi of today is to deem the “stranger” unclean, uncool, unenlightened, unworthy, dangerous, a threat, or an enemy.

From a Christian perspective passing over is not merely a strategy but a way of being with others, a way of being in the world rooted in the conviction that each person is a sacred image of the divine Source from whom we all come. It is a theological conviction, a spiritual perspective, a world view, an ethic, a contemplative practice, and a compassionate action grounded in the surety that each person has something to say, offer, and teach me.

Passing over (and coming back) captures the essence of the underlying wisdom of the ecumenism and reverent dialogue that are so dearly needed in our world today. It helps us who are truly committed to ecumenism, civility, healthy international relations, and the common good from confusing unity from uniformity.

In a less obvious and dichotomous context, this movement is at the heart of who we are and what we strive to do together in H&H. We hold in tension our oneness-otherness. Although we have much in common, each of us is an “other,” someone who is utterly singular, one-of-a-kind, a unique mystery. But here, our commitment is to learn to grow in our certainty that diversity is a gift not a threat, that difference is something to be celebrated not feared. It is our otherness and uniqueness that both makes us one and enriches us.

Whether it’s the high school sophomore choosing to sit at lunch with someone not in “her group,” or a college student taking a semester abroad, or someone learning another language, or the CEO of a company going undercover to see what it’s like to work a menial or blue collar job in her company, or a young person making regular volunteer visits to the home for the elderly, or the Hindu Gandhi reading the Christian gospels, or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. studying Gandhi, or a 21st century Christian passing over to the first century Jesus, we never come back the same. We find ourselves in that new benediction, in that mysterious place of being different than who we were before, yet who we always were, yet now more who we truly are.

I suspect that if as persons and as communities of faith we learn, practice, and become proficient at this forth and back movement that John Dunne taught and lived, that like him we too might find people wanting to pull a chair up beside us saying, “I feel God here.”♦

╬ Dan