As about 100 people of many different ethnicities and religions sat at circular tables to eat Turkish food at Millersville University on Thursday night, keynote speaker Leonard Swidler couldn't have been happier.

Swidler, professor of Catholic thought and inter-religious dialogue at Temple University, said he was appreciative of the work of Red Rose Intercultural & Educational Foundation and its interfaith banquet.

"I wish I would have brought the Fulbright Scholars (at Temple) to Millersville instead of New York City," he said.

When Swidler began "dialoguing" with Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars in 1978, he could find only 10 or 12 Muslim scholars in the world who were able and willing to engage in talks.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Out of that tragedy, good came, Swidler said. Now there are not just 10 Muslims around the world willing to dialogue, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, he said.

"This type of gathering would have been impossible 15 years ago and maybe even 10 years ago," Swidler said.

Dialogue, Swidler said, is not just conversation or an exchange of a little information.

"Dialogue is fundamentally a whole new way of thinking," he said. "Our whole being, the whole universe fundamentally is dialogue. There is necessary dialogue between matter and energy. … If we are not in dialogue, we are out of sync with the universe."

Swidler said that because we can think and choose and love, we have the possibility of being in sync with nature and the cosmos and what we call God.

"In recent decades we have become increasingly aware that we have that choice," Swidler said. "We've always needed dialogue, but now we are aware we need it."

It's like looking through to the other side of a clear pane of glass and not noticing the glass, he said. We need to see the glass or we'll hit our head on it.

But what exactly is dialogue?

"Dialogue is talking with you because you think differently than me, so I can learn from you," Swidler said. "It's not so I can teach you, but so I can learn from you."

Until recently, we were living in an age of monologue, he said. "We talked only to ourselves or with those who think the way we do or should think the way we do.

"Now with dialogue, we realize that (neither) we nor anyone can know everything about anything," Swidler said. "Our knowledge is always partial, limited, even when it is accurate."

For an example, Swidler described one of the doors in the banquet room, adding a bit more detail and a bit more and a bit more and, and, and … .

If it's true about a simple door, Swidler said, then it must be true about the most complicated thing in the world — religion.

"We have a stark choice in the end," Swidler said. "Either we engage in dialogue or death."

E-mail: lvaningen@lnpnews.com