Seyyed Hossein Nasr may not be a household name in the United States but he has rightly been described as “one of the world’s leading Islamic thinkers.” Currently Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, he brings to spiritual is-sues wide knowledge and profound insight. I had the privilege of hearing him lecture recently and came away with much to think about.

A native of Iran, this distinguished scholar came to the United States for advanced study at M.I.T. and Harvard receiving his doctorate from the latter. Before taking his present position, he was professor at the University of Tehran and founder of the Iranian Academy of Philosophy.

Warm and personal, Professor Nasr is a pleasure to talk with and his common touch belies the stereotype of the highly accomplished but distant academic. I valued the chance to listen to him and to ask him a question about the effect of secularization on Is-lam.

Taking as his theme the crossing of the frontiers that divide the religions of the world, the Muslim scholar calls such crossing “a journey in spiritual space more exciting than space travel.”

The relationship between human beings and nature looms large in every religion at its best. However, Professor Nasr feels that something has gone awry in the modern world, upsetting the healthy balance between us people and the world around us. One large reason for this imbalance is the havoc that secularism has worked on religion, especially Christianity.

For most modern Christians, the world has lost its sacred character leading us to abuse the beautiful creation that God has given us. The effort to understand the other religions of the world can help us to restore that sacredness of nature.

Dr. Nasr believes that “there is no possibility of peace among nations without peace among religions,” a fact that secularism denies. He regrets that UNESCO, the United Nations Economic, Scientific, and Cultural Organization based in Geneva, does not have religion as a defining category.

To appreciate a religion, ;you cannot study merely its history, as some scholars do. To focus exclusively on history  would be to ignore the qualities – changeless truth and transcendence – that make a religion what it is. Rather, you must enter into its truth and appreciate its vision of God.

This scholar holds that every religion is complete in itself. “Religion must en-compass all that we are,” he says, “or it is not religion.”  Also, every religion is true and those unfamiliar with traditions other than their own must often struggle if they wish to understand the way another religion works for its adherents.

In every religious tradition there are many people who stand opposed to crossing over the frontiers of religion. They fear that this spiritual travel will destroy their own faith. Professor Nasr, however, believes that in the modern world we have no choice, Either we try to understand the faith of others or our world falls into chaos and armed struggle.

But to cross over and understand, we must deny false absolutes. Only God is ab-solute. If you make anything else absolute, you make it impossible to cross over.

“You should not ask religions other than your own: ‘What is your concept of God?’” The question is too abstract and does not suggest the rich spiritual life and practice of each tradition.

Every religion offers salvation and, to do so, uses various rites. It is the inner meaning of these rites that can bring religions together.

In summary, Professor Nasr lists five positive consequences of crossing over:

1. Seeing our own religion in the light of another one brings us to know ourselves better.
2. We can remember things that have been largely forgotten in our own tradition, for example, the mystical tradition  in Christianity.
3. We can be motivated to reexamine secularism, the philosophy that denies the reality of religion.  In studying Islam, for example, Christians can recognize more clearly the negative impact of secularism on their own tradition.
4. We can develop a spiritual and theological understanding of the other faces of God that our own tradition may not have shown us.
5. We can find common ground in the determination to protect the world of nature.

Richard Griffin

“Does God have a future?” This is the question asked by the celebrated British theologian Karen Armstrong. “In my country, God is in trouble,” she says, by way of answering her own question. In England, only a reported six percent of the population still goes to church regularly. Church buildings are being converted to other uses and there is a widespread malaise with institutional religion.

However, she hastens to modify the meaning of this situation. “I am not troubled by the atheism in my country,” she explains. It is not really directed against God, but rather against “a particular idea of God.” Remember, she observes, Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all once regarded as atheists. The Europeans may need the moral equivalent of a “sorbet” to cleanse their palate of false theology before they can find the true God.

Karen Armstrong stopped in the Boston area recently on a nation-wide tour promoting her new book, The Battle for God. In a lecture to students and others at the Episcopal Divinity School, she laid out her views of the current struggle over religious issues. Author of several previous influential books, notably The History of God, Professor Arm-strong displays an amazingly wide knowledge of world religion and knows how to talk brilliantly about the subject.

In an interview with me, she described herself as a “freelance monotheist.” She now feels very critical of the Catholic Church which she formerly served as a nun. In fact, she confesses that she is currently “quite exhausted by religion” and feels the need of a break from it all. However, when asked about the need for a community of faith, she readily admits that the lack of such a community is “the weakness of my position.”

The crisis of modern belief, as Professor Armstrong sees it, arises from the conflict between mythos and logos, two Greek words that can be roughly translated as reli-gious imagination and hardheaded reason. The history of the West over the last 400 years should be seen as the triumph of logos. Science and technology have proven so spectacularly successful that thinkers anxious to preserve faith misguidedly let reason displace religious imagination altogether.

The result of this surrender to rationalism was that church doctrine came to be understood more as scientific statements rather than poetry. And what Gregory of Nyssa and other Fathers of the Church had taught was forgotten. They had insisted that doctrine can be understood only through prayer and contemplation.

Ultimately the first world war was to show the emptiness of the narrow scientific approach. Some thirty years after that catastrophic event, Auschwitz even more appall-ingly demonstrated what can happen when God is lost. In the face of such evil, human beings are defenceless against the threat of despair.

The answer to this situation, Professor Armstrong holds, is not to create a  new definition of God but rather to cultivate spirituality. That is the way to get beyond the selfish, grasping self. This scholar quotes approvingly what she understands religion to be saying at its best: “We are most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away.”

Theology, being like poetry, is always an attempt to express the inexpressible. We must enter the darkness that covers God, the cloud of unknowing in which the divine dwells. For entering, two approaches are necessary: first, prayer because it teaches us to express ourselves in an unselfish way.

Secondly, we must undertake the discipline of compassion, something that enables us to rise above ourselves. That means living the Golden Rule of loving others as ourselves, as Rabbi Hillel taught. Jesus also urges love for people who do not love us. And the poet Auden says: “Where equal affection cannot be /  Let the loving one be me.”

Our age has become weary of too many definitions and too much dogmatism. Prayer and contemplation can help us to overcome the limitations of our theology. We can become like the patriarch Abraham who entertained three strangers outside his tent at noontime in the desert, not knowing that one of them was his God. 

In practicing compassion toward those they did not know Abraham and his wife Sarah encountered the holy.  By receiving the unknown visitors and preparing a meal for them, they experienced something about the otherness of God and thus touched the great mystery.

Richard Griffin

How did it ever happen that the bunny became associated with Easter? What historical connection is there between this small animal and the central Christian feast of the liturgical year? Why did the Easter bunny take hold in the Christian tradition and remain a staple of popular celebration right up until today?

These are questions posed to me recently by a colleague known for his wide knowledge of world history. Despite all of his learning and scholarly achievements, he did not know the answer nor, to my embarrassment, did I. A lifetime of being steeped in Christian symbolism had never moved me to focus on this connection. I had to plead ignorance by reason of never having asked myself these questions.

One easy answer that leaps to mind is the rabbit’s well-known ability to procreate. The bunny has become notorious for its fertility. People who reside in areas where they live are often surprised to see how many come forth each spring.

There may be something to this answer – the abundance of the species perhaps has some imaginative link with the central reality of Easter. Insignificant as this animal remains, the bunny does suggest life abounding.

But the historical record reveals a different meaning. According to the “Encyclopedia of Religion,” a standard reference work, ancient cultures attached meanings to this animal that lent themselves to adoption by Christianity.

In ancient Middle-East cultures the rabbit was taken to be a sign of death and re-birth. In Mesopotamian and Syrian society of some two thousand years before Christ, this animal was adopted as a symbol for some kind of rising again after dying. “In Egypt,” according to this source, “it was probably associated with Osiris , the god of rebirth and immortality.”

Later in the world of Greece and Rome, “as belief in immortality became more popular, the hare was increasingly used in funerary art.” Its meaning in ancient societies of the Middle-East thus made it appropriate for the first Christians to take it over as one of Easter’s emblems.

Along with the egg, more clearly a sign of new life, the rabbit was made to serve as a reminder of Christ’s rising from the dead. The author of an article on the subject from the encyclopedia cited above notes that “early Christians accepted this rabbit symbolism and depicted rabbits on gravestones.” I myself have never seen this animal depicted on an old gravestone in America, but perhaps such a motif would be worth looking for.

Thus the bunny is one of many creatures of the world taken over by the early Christians and used in connection with Christ. In that, the bunny is like the fish, the lily, water, and fire. All of these creatures, and many others, were seen as reminders of the central mysteries of the Christian faith. They became part of a sacramentalized world where everything could serve as full of meaning because redeemed by Christ the Savior.

Despite the bunny’s connection with Easter, however, the Christian church seems never to have explored in depth its symbolism or made much of it in popular piety. As another author in  “The Encyclopedia of Religion”  notes, “although adopted in a number of Christian cultures, the Easter bunny has never received any specific Christian interpretation.”

This statement is supported by personal experience. Never in my lifetime have I heard an authoritative Christian voice speak of the bunny as an important symbol. It re-mains strong in popular culture – greeting cards for Easter certainly make wide use of it, oftentimes ridiculously. But no one seems to take the connection of rabbit and resurrection seriously for its religious value.

Admittedly, this information about one of the symbols of Easter may not have a major impact upon people for whom the Easter faith is important. It may serve to remind us, however, that, in the eyes of believers, every creature belongs to a world that has been redeemed.

All of God’s creatures, bunny rabbits included, have a part to play in the great drama of dying and rising again. They can imaginatively move us closer to the religious mysteries by which people of faith live. Like people of long ago, we too can allow our-selves to feel the mythic power of humble creatures like the rabbit as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.

Richard Griffin

What kind of spirituality do people with life-long disabilities practice? How does God seem to them?

These are the main questions driving research done by two faculty members of the Wes-ton Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge. Reporting on their findings last week in a talk entitled “Guts and Grace: ^The Spiritual Lives of People with Disabilities,” psychologist Katherine Clark and theologian Francine Cardman announced results that overturn expectations.

From the beginning it should be understood that the two researchers deliberately sought out people who have enjoyed a high level of worldly success. The thirty men and women chosen do not, therefore, amount to a sample that represents the disability community at large. However, those chosen for the study do reveal some spiritual attitudes that have significance for others with or without major disabilities.

For purposes of the research, the professors set out “to discover  patterns of spiritual resilience in people who live with life-long disability.”  They looked to see what people set their hearts on. In doing so, they defined spirituality as “beliefs, practices, relationships, and orientations to life that embody a person’s overall way of being in the world.”

The first question asked of the thirty was what they thought about the reasons for their disability. Why do bad things happen to good people? How can a caring God let bad things happen to me?

Surprisingly, many respondents said they had never thought about such questions. Others asked another question in response: why not me? Still others expressed their confidence that there is a reason even though they do not know what that reason is. And, finally, others answered: that’s just who I am.

Overall, one theme emerged most strongly: having a disability served as a source of identity. It had shaped their lives, made them who they were.

When asked how having a disability stood in relation to spirituality, people said that it made them ponder life more deeply. For others, it led toward them knowing they have a purpose in life. It helped some develop a compassion for other people and moved them to work for a better world.

The theologian, Professor Cardman, discovered that most of the people who were polled did not think their image of God affected by their disability. Thus, not a single person blamed God for his or her condition. Instead, many saw God as loving and accepting them; God did not make any distinction between abled and disabled. At the same time, some imagined God as beyond any human description.

Two-thirds of the respondents are active in Church or synagogue. They consider these as important to belong to and to have their families associated with. But many feel conflicted because these religious institutions often practice ways of exclusion. For example, the church-goers among them say that no church building is accessible.

Not surprisingly, personal relationships are vital. Two-thirds have marriage partners or the equivalent. Friends are critically important, especially those who themselves have or understand having a disability. Most of those polled have connections with the disability community and some serve as advocates for societal change.

About their identity, many say “this is just my life.” And they are likely to affirm, “disability is not a tragedy.” Thus it is often difficult for them to deal with people who cannot accept differences, who lack the spiritual insight to recognize the basic unity of the whole human community.

Some people felt a sense of shame in being different. For these people, a key spiritual task was reversing this shame. Some escaped that feeling altogether, presumably those whose families accepted them as normal when they were growing up. Just about everyone would resent others expressing pity for them or treating them as if something were lacking.

Francine Cardman listed three basic parts of a spiritual pattern that marks many of the people studied. First, they felt a strong sense of trust that things are basically good. This trust, however, remains compatible with a critique of things in society that need change.

Secondly, people have moved from being apologetic about their condition toward being prophetic. They are ready to be critical of the able-bodied who do not recognize the needs of others.

Finally, they refuse to serve as models for the inspiration of others. Instead, they prefer to say, “It’s just my life.”

In closing her report, Katherine Clark, referred to the title and concluded provocatively: “You don’t live successfully with a disability unless you live in the guts of it.”

Richard Griffin