The BBC used to have a program on the radio called Thought for the Day. Here’s my version; and who better to start things off with a bang than Rowan Williams: dialogue is recognition of the serious. As he ruminates on how to deal with other faiths, don’t let the rumour of Rowan’s erudition deceive you into thinking what he says means anything:

For me it involves above all the willingness to build relationships through common study and sometimes through common silence. We can’t pray publicly together, for many reasons. Prayer follows conviction. But we can sometimes keep silence together. We can certainly look together at the sacred texts of one or another tradition. We can watch how other people handle their sacred texts and their rituals and learn from that. And in that process we become able to recognise some kind of integrity and some kind of depth in one another. It doesn’t mean I say, ‘Oh well, you must be right.’ But I can at least say, ‘I know you’re serious.’ And that’s dialogue for me – the recognition of the serious. And therefore if we find we can do things together after all in servicing, witnessing, peace-making, then it will come out of depths, not shallows.