“Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.”

These prayerful words come from T. S. Eliot, one of the most prominent poets of the 20th century. Born and raised an American, he later became a permanent resident of England. Characteristic of him, was a vision of the world and his place in it that were profoundly spirittual.

The poem from which the quoted words come is “Ash Wednesday,” a complicated but eloquent celebration of his Christian faith.

The balance between caring and not caring can be difficult for just about everybody. On the one hand, we must value our own life and we also learn to place great importance on our personal relationships, our possessions, and the beautiful things of the world.

Thus we care about our own bodies, our families and friends, our homes and their furniture, and many of the things we see around us or hear about from others.

And yet, on the other hand, every person is tempted to care about some things excessively, to his or her own spiritual harm. Marriages break up, and friendship shatter, often because of disordered caring about possessions or other human beings.

The spiritual tradition in which I was trained as a young man, namely that created by Ignatius Loyola in the 16th century, placed great emphasis upon what that saint called “indifference.” In one key passage of his little book “The Spiritual Exercises,” Ignatius said: “A person should be indifferent to all things and not wish for good health rather than infirmity, wealth rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, longer rather than shorter life.”

For him, the crucial task is to win the salvation and perfection or our own soul and everything else is secondary. Looking at life from this vantage point, spiritual persons should use things only in so far as they help them gain salvation and remove themselves from the things that endanger salvation.

This indifference is a combination or caring and not caring –  –  caring a whole lot about salvation and not caring about things that interfere with the spiritual health of the soul.

In this way I learned a form of detachment from things and even from other people. However, this austere way of living the spiritual life made me quite rigid; only with time did I learn to become flexible in applying this framework to daily life.

At my current stage of life, I now doubt whether the notions of indifference and detachment were good for me. These ideas perhaps required more maturity than I could muster when they were first presented to me.

I still find some value in these ideas. However, I now take them as rules of thumb rather than as commands. They are too abstract for my personality and tend to reinforce character traits that unduly limit spontaneity.

The parables of Jesus, the stories told by the Hasidic rabbis, and the anecdotes from the spiritual masters of the Far East warm my heart the way principles such as indifference and detachment can never do.

Mind you, many of the narratives with spiritual punch teach the same principles. But they do so with a human touch that is much more compelling for people like me.

“Teach us to care and not to care” remains a beautiful prayer, simple sounding but full of meaning. This attitude of soul is something we have to learn all of our lives. The prayer asks God to become teacher of this subtle spiritual art.

“Teach us to sit still” prays for another spiritual gift, the ability to do nothing. Meditation is a very respectable way of doing nothing because it occupies us in a receiving rather than a giving role.

In a hyperactive society like ours it is hard to stop for anything. Most of us must scramble to make a living, provide for our families, and maintain social contacts. Often we do not find time to just sit there and soak in the silence.

Even for those of us not pressed for time, we are out of the habit of just being there. Still, if we can ever find a short time, 15 minutes a day for example, using it for sitting in silence usually proves valuable. If we dare face doing nothing, it often pays off with an inner peace and quiet that can feed our souls the rest of the day.

Richard Griffin