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Prayer for Light

“Shine on me, Lord, and I shall be light like the day.” So goes one line of an ancient prayer from the Syrian Orthodox tradition. I found it in a 1998 book called “Gifts of the Spirit” co-authored by Philip Zaleski and Paul Kaufman.

This prayer, when repeated often in the early morning before dawn, can build anticipation of daybreak. Then, when the sky lightens and the sun rises, it comes as a blessing. The day has started with an act of worship the influence of which can be felt throughout the day’s remaining hours.

In its root meaning, the word “day” has a vital connection with light. It comes from an ancient Indo-European root meaning “burning” or “shining.” Making this radical association between day and fire and illumination can lead us to a deeper appreciation of what each day can be.

All traditions value inner enlightenment as one of the great spiritual goods. Any day that brings greater light to one’s soul has special value. It counts as a privileged time among the many days we experience.

Last weekend the season of daylight savings time came to an end and we entered a period when we will see less natural light during the day. And as the winter months approach, the days will become shorter still, rationing the daylight hours. It can test our spirit to lack longer periods of light for week after week until the spring arrives.

How can we live by the light under these conditions of diminishing availability?  Perhaps by asking in prayer for inner illumination. That’s what the next line of the prayer does: “The creation is full of light; give light also to our hearts that they may praise you with the day and the night.”

It’s not only people who can see with their eyes that can receive this light. People who are physically blind can, of course, hold that light within them.  My friend Paul strikes me that way. At a recent meeting in a subway station, I was again impressed with his spirit of buoyancy and concern for other people.

Paul is the same person who, in his days as a college student, took part in a peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam War and when the police refused to take him with the other demonstrators, demanded that they arrest him too. That took courage, a sign of inner light, as he prepared for handcuffs and a jail cell.

The request to have the Lord shine on you will perhaps remind you of one of the blessings frequently given at the end of a liturgical service. “May the Lord make his face to shine upon you,” the liturgical leader prays. Again, the underlying image is of light flowing from God to the upturned countenance of the worshiper.

The Syrian Orthodox prayer expects more, however. In saying “I shall become light,” the person praying anticipates a personal transformation. It’s as if, through God’s action, the darkness in him or her will be reduced and the newly available space taken over by light. It’s a way of becoming a sun, and thus becoming able to shine one’s inner light on everyone you meet.

Philip Zaleski suggests that few people actually greet the day joyfully and live in the light. Instead, he writes, “Most of us, I suspect, wake up in a fog, go to work in a funk, come home in a fuss, and fall asleep in a fret.”

Many people undoubtedly have some days like that, 24-hour periods when everything goes wrong. But as a description of an average day this strikes me as unduly pessimistic. After all, many Americans begin the day or end it by meditation, prayer, or reflection about God in their lives. They perform other spiritual exercises, too, as they call to mind the divine presence. The day may turn out to be not all light but, at some moments at least, we can feel ourselves illumined by it.

“Shine on me, Lord, and I shall be light like the day.”  Those who made this prayer their own many centuries ago knew its power to transform their lives. Perhaps it can serve us, too, their fellow seekers after enlightenment so many years later.

Richard Griffin

Boston Transformed

To anyone with a long memory of the place, it comes as a shock to hear Boston praised as a “cool” city, a place where “hipsters” wish to settle. To read how Forbes Magazine in recent years chose Boston as the best city for singles seems unreal to us veteran residents of the area.

Social critic Richard Florida goes so far as to to call Boston the third most desirable city in the country for highly talented people. He does so because this place can boast diversity – “bohemians, technologists, and other cutting-edge types” – who find it a comfortable place to live. Professor Florida of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University cites the presence of gays in particular as a sign of a stimulating urban environment. Beyond tolerance of differences, he also places high importance on the city’s acceptance of human diversity as a value.

Talent attracts more talent and that is why cities like Boston and Austin continue to flourish at the present time. They have transformed themselves into “talent magnets” attracting others whom Florida refers to as “the creative class.” The presence of a varied gay community and its acceptance by the local populace also makes a difference, he says.  

The Boston I remember from my growing-up days seems located on a different planet from the one described above. The Old Howard burlesque theater and the Scollay Square district in which it lived were among the few sections of the city that defied convention. The city’s mainline institutions – the Boston Symphony, the Museum of Fine Arts, and hotels such as the Parker House and the Ritz – upheld the tradition of decorum and solidity.

Looking back, I recall a time when the city seemed to be sleepwalking, in absolutely no danger of being called cool or hip or the then equivalents. Yes, Boston had its charms but they were largely of the classical sort, without the dynamic diversity and experimental spirit of other places.

A Boston dowager, refusing to buy a hew hat, said that she had her hats. Like our hats we had our buildings too, and the Custom House retained its dominance while other cities (notably Chicago and New York) grew structures that were imposing and often architecturally distinguished. We allowed the wrecking ball to destroy the Boston Opera House on Huntington Avenue. Though the building may have been past its prime, it still hosted the annual visits of the Met and featured the greats like Caruso and company.

The highways and streets remained unmodern, with the city apparently committed to the charm of its slow-moving traffic. Before Storrow Drive took shape, the main arteries did not offer great  views of the Charles and other beauty spots of the area. And the Southeast Expressway was about to despoil central parts of the city.

The district that I found most congenial was Newspaper Row, that narrow section of Washington Street where the Boston Post, my father’s paper, faced the Globe directly across the way. The Post was housed in five thin ramshackle buildings tied together by no one knew what. When, during one of my college summers, I came to work as a copy boy at the Globe I found it a sleepy tradition-bound publication, filled with cigarette and cigar smoking city room editors and reporters, some of them hung over from the night before.

For lunch I would often hasten down to Durgin Park, the fabled restaurant near Faneuil Hall where the waiters took pride in almost throwing the food at you. Even by Boston standards the food was plain and simple but I used to gobble it down with pleasure. Or sometimes I would go to Thompson’s Spa, a favorite hangout for local newspapermen (and a few women) where gossip about politics reigned.

As in my pre-college days, the only people I knew were much like me. Irish Catholics and Yankees constituted my whole social circle and I never remember the presence of people of color. Protestants made for about as much diversity as I ever experienced in that era of apparent uniformity. The only variant on this sameness I remember came from the trips I used to make to a club on Mass Avenue in Roxbury where jazz musicians like Fats Waller performed with great style.

My memory remains sharp enough for me to resist nostalgia for those days. By and large I find the new Boston much more dynamic and entertaining. That we now have so many immigrants from other countries I see as a revitalizing force. Thankfully, Boston is much more like the rest of the world than it used to be.

The terms hip and cool now applied to the place may strike me as forced but I welcome many of the changes that the transformation of Boston has brought. Though I do not live within Boston’s narrow city limits, I enjoy sharing in the lively atmosphere of the region. The place certainly has formidable problems as always, but it has grown into an area that is indeed worth living in.

Richard Griffin

Coles and Eck

Ruby Bridges, at age six, had to be escorted to school in New Orleans by federal marshals. As she walked toward her classroom under heavy guard, she endured verbal taunts and jeers from crowds of white people opposed to integration of the public schools of that city in the deep south.

Asked about her feelings at the time, Ruby, an African-American child, said: “I feel sorry for those folks.” In response to a further question, Ruby added: “I pray for them because Jesus said ‘forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.’”

This ordeal of the child Ruby Bridges occurred forty years ago. Robert Coles, psychiatrist and Harvard professor, recently recalled talking with Ruby shortly after the events and hearing the responses we have quoted here. From the perspective of almost a half century later, Dr. Coles still expresses amazement at the spiritual quality of her re-marks. He considers her one of America’s hero’s.

That such a young girl could have forgiven her persecutors and have joined with Jesus in pitying their ignorance is indeed worthy of wonder. This precocious child had a  spiritual life even then, an inner life deep enough to dare threats to her safety. She  was even able to find humor in her grim situation. Of her tormentors she said, “Just because of me, their whole schedule is ruined.”

What she did stands over the intervening decades as an inspiration for Americans of good will everywhere. In fact, Dr. Coles considers her one of this country’s  most im-portant citizens.

Dr. Coles used this memory in a talk to parents of college undergraduates to stress the importance of moral teaching in a college and university education. He points out that education without a spiritual dimension shortchanges students and can even endanger a whole nation. After all, he says, “Germany in the 1930s was the most educated nation on earth, a sober reminder  to us all.”

Speaking to the same audience of parents, another Harvard professor, Diana Eck, talked about the new religious landscape in America. Using a CD ROM, she displayed the astounding variety of religious groups that can be found in the cities and towns of the United States. Many of the sites where people come together, however, remain invisible to the casual observer because the places of worship or gathering are often located in nondescript buildings.

In recent decades, ancient traditions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam have grown at a fast rate. Currently, for example, Muslims have increased so as to outnumber the Jewish population. Newer traditions such as the Mormons and the Ba’hais have flourished and grown. America has moved far beyond the 1950s when a leading writer, Will Herberg, called the United States a “three-religion country – Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.”

But this new religious diversity has not been embraced by all Americans. In fact, it has put us to the test. As theologian Harvey Cox says, “It’s a brand new experiment in human history – whether we are going to make it or burst apart is still a question in my mind.”

Two incidents cited by Professor Eck dramatize the possible outcomes. In one case, a woman in Norwood, Massachusetts, looking at a new center established by the Jains, said approvingly: “That’s what makes America.”

In the other anecdote, an angry woman in a mall parking lot, turned to a Muslim woman, whose head and body were veiled by a black chador , and lashed out at her: “Why don’t you go back home to Iraq or wherever you come from?” (The Muslim lady’s response is worth noting here – “I am at home.”

This is the spiritual and civic issue that now confronts those who belong to major-ity religions. Can we accept those who differ from us religiously and find a spiritual kin-ship with them?

To do so, it might help to accept Professor Eck’s image for the most desirable outcome. Instead of the earlier figure of “melting pot,” she suggests that we use the im-age of “symphony” to indicate how all of us can make spiritual music together without losing the distinctive contribution of each religious tradition.

Anyone looking for further information on Professor Eck’s work can consult her web site. Its address is http://www.pluralism.org.

Richard Griffin

Boykin’s Bigger God

“I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

These words, spoken to a church group by Lieutenant General William Boykin, at first sound like the boastings of a schoolboy. In reality, they are the sentiments of the Pentagon’s top intelligence officer, a deputy undersecretary of defense, talking about Osman Atto, a terrorist he was trying to catch in Somalia.

Along with other statements made by the general, the two above reveal a man dangerously ignorant about religion and yet using it to degrade his enemies. In particular, his views about Islam threaten to solidify the impression held by many Muslims around the world that America is fighting against their religion.

President Bush has said otherwise, insisting that ours is not a war against Islam but rather against terrorism.  General Boykin seems not to have got the message.

This supposed specialist in intelligence displays an astounding ignorance of the facts. By contrasting the God of Islam with that of Christianity, he shows himself unaware of a huge fact: both religions worship the same God.

That recognition of the one God has always served as a common bond between Islam and Christianity, though admittedly Christians and Muslims have often ignored it in practice. Mohammed himself, when he launched Islam in the 7th century, openly recognized that Judaism and Christianity worshiped the same God as he. That recognition is clear in the Qur’an, the sacred book of Muslim religion.

For the general to call his God bigger, as if there are two, is fatuous. Similarly, for him to brand the God of the Muslims an idol is both ignorant and insulting. To people who profess Islam this charge comes as a deeply offensive remark.

The true God can always be made into an idol by people who worship money or prestige or power as their supreme reality. But to imagine that because people’s faith differs from Christian belief it is the worship of idols is seriously mistaken.  In this age of ecumenical understanding among those of varying faiths, this accusation smacks of old-fashioned prejudice.

General Boykin also believes that we are a Christian nation. It is true, of course, that Christian tradition influenced the founding of our country.  The founders were people schooled in the ways of this religion, though some did not practice it themselves and they did not legislate its establishment as in England.

Currently, a large number of religions flourish in America. Every large metropolitan area is home to many different communities of faith. More than ever before, the United States is a multi-religious country, filled with non-Christian as well as Christian residents.

So America is not a Christian nation in the way the General would have us think. When he says “Our spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus,” he may express his own belief but he excludes many Americans for whom Jesus is not the inspiration for spiritual struggle.

When Boykin says “We are hated because we are a nation of believers,” he again makes it look as if we only and not others hold faith important. Indonesia, Pakistan, Iraq, and many other countries of the world are nations of believers, the difference being that Islam is the religion of the majority there.

The general believes that the enemy is “a guy called Satan.” Again, if that view is important in his religion, he has a right to profess it. But for a public official to present this identification as part of public policy is of dubious value because it has so often proven harmful to demonize enemies.

Boykin seems to imagine that America is waging a holy war, a campaign undertaken with God’s blessing, over against the irreligiousness of others. Even more dangerously, he claims a direct pipeline to God.  Speaking of Mogadishu he said, “It is a demonic presence in that city that God has revealed to me as the enemy.”

If, as the old proverb says, a little ignorance is a dangerous thing, then the large ignorance of General Boykin would seem to make even more hazardous our nation’s continuing struggle against terror.

Richard Griffin

Bateson on Death and Life

“I think that our denial of death is almost comparable to the denial of sexuality under the Victorians. And I think that maintaining that level of denial, in and of itself, distorts the capacity to understand the world, to think straight.”

These words come from Mary Catherine Bateson, who engaged in a public dialogue with me last week. A cultural anthropologist of note, she dares to talk openly about subjects that American society likes to keep hidden in the closet.

Asked her feelings about the prospect of her own death, Catherine Bateson replies forthrightly. In the face of this event she feels peaceful but she adds one caveat: “I feel concerned that, if I were very ill, I might not have the clarity of my own convictions about being willing to die.”

It’s important to leave models for the next generation. Just as we have received stories of our forebears’ death  –  – “That’s how granddad was, he said he was ready to die and he was” –  – so we can provide our descendants with our stories. Ms. Bateson believes that of all the things we learn in the course of a lifetime, dealing with mortality may be the most important.

Her mother, Margaret Mead, was one of the first people to write a living will. In it, she stipulated that she did not want anything done to extend her life if she had suffered any mental impairment or lost her mobility. This statement made Catherine, then a teenager, angry because her mother “was saying that it was not worth her while to be alive when she was no longer the famous Margaret Mead.” Catherine’s sharp response was: “But you’d still be my mother.”

Ms. Bateson believes in not being surprised when serious disabilities come along. She sees them as precursors to death and reason for doing what you can to cope. When reading in their memoirs how other people adapt to aging, she has formulated two rules of thumb.

The first is “to keep on learning, observing and thinking about what’s happened.”

The second concerns the need to change self-definition, “not to be caught in a self-definition that says, if I’m not what I was at age 50, then I’m nothing.” Even if her mother had been unable to do scholarship any more, she would have remained an important person – her mother.

On the subject of care for the sick, Bateson is eloquent insisting that being attended goes far beyond high technology and lots of tubes. She sees it as giving care in a personal way, such as sitting by a person’s bed and holding her hand.

“Caring for someone you love, whether it’s an infant or a sick person does have built-in rewards, even though it’s a huge burden.” Bateson considers it a “profound experience that, over a period of time, a great many people have missed out on, the privilege of giving care to a human being you love.”

Professor Bateson has lived and worked in several other countries, experience that has brought her important cross-cultural insights. Drawing on her observations of Iranian society, she poses the question of why women there are not more rebellious about their status.

Contrasting American and Iranian women, she identifies the most important man in the life of women who live in that patriarchal society. He is not her father, nor her husband, but rather her son. “When she has an adult son, she is courted, she’s listened to, she’s treated with veneration.”

One of the things we fail to understand about patriarchy, Professor Bateson says, is how “it’s not just about male versus female, but it’s about elder versus younger.” The women she really feels sorry for are those whose sons marry emancipated women.

In American society with its negative view of advancing age, people cannot look forward to anything good. That makes them feel rebellious because the future does not promise enough rewards.

Catherine Bateson loves being a grandmother, a fairly new and thoroughly welcome role for her. With increased longevity, she points out, the generations are no longer in synch the way they used to be because so many of us now have great-grandchildren and have become part of four-generation families.

Professor Bateson thinks all of us adults need children in our lives. To make that possible we have to build bridges to them. One way of doing that is to be open to them teaching us.

She is fond of asking students what they have taught their parents. One girl told her, “I taught my dad not to interrupt me,” an experience that conveyed to him her sense of personhood.

“There are areas where public understanding has changed in our lifetime and our children are often more sensitive to issues than we are and can usefully teach us,” Ms. Bateson adds.

Many more of Professor Bateson’s insights can be found in her books, notably the paperback “Full Circles, Overlapping Lives,” published in 2000.   

Richard Griffin

Granny D

“A mission is what does it for you; you must have a mission.” Thus Doris Haddock, a.k.a. Granny D, explains her motivation as a 93-year old, five-foot-tall woman out to change the world.

She strikes the same theme in the subtitle of her 2003 paperback memoir: “You’re never too old to raise a little hell.”

Granny D is the woman who, when she was 89, walked across the whole of the USA. Starting in Pasadena, she ended up 3200 miles later in Washington, D.C. where she climaxed the effort to get campaign finance reform made law.

After initial opposition from her son, she managed to get his approval for the great walk. This she did by engaging in a training program of walks, near her Dublin, New Hampshire home, for most of a year previous to the big trek. She took her son’s interference with a measure of irritation and tolerance, telling me about adult children: “They become our parents when we get to be 80.”

An unexpected personal benefit from this great escapade came in an improvement in both of her main ailments: high blood pressure and emphysema.

On her arrival at the nation’s capital, she was met by 2200 people, with several dozen members of Congress walking the final miles with her. During the final three days of debate on senate floor, she walked around the Capitol building 24 hours a day, some of it in subzero winds and rain, stopping only to rest and to eat.  

On the 14-month hike, she adopted as her guide the motto: “walking till given shelter, fasting till given food.” Presumably she brought extra shoes with her because she wore out four pairs.

In a conversation with Granny D last week, I was surprised to discover how late in life she has turned to political action. Most of her working years she spent in a Manchester, New Hampshire shoe factory until her retirement in 1972. Earlier she had studied at Emerson College in Boston, an institution that gave her an honorary degree in 2000.

I found it a pleasure to converse with this dynamic woman. With the help of two hearing aids she responded articulately to everything I asked. Like so many other people in her age bracket, she expresses amazement at having arrived there. “I can’t believe I’m that old,” she says. At the same time, age has brought her a sense of vulnerability: “I may die tomorrow,” she tells me.

But her mission drives her ahead. Now she is campaigning for public financing of elections on a trip that will take her on a 15,000 mile trek across some of America. This time, however, she is not going to walk the whole route but instead only in cities where she stops.  

“The only thing that will save our democracy is public financing,” she believes. Her message aims especially at working women in the effort to make sure they vote. She says that this group is underrepresented among voters because they are overworked and stressed for time.

To begin her new voter registration campaign, she spoke at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. There she made a ringing condemnation of what big money has done to this country. Referring to the people she met on her walk, Granny D spoke of those “who came to actual tears when they described their frustration at the loss of their America.”

She made a reference to “senior moments” that especially pleased me because of my one-man campaign to get people to use it positively. For Granny D, “it is when I talk to the senior class in high schools along my way, for they are our newest voters and I am going to sign them up, four million of them if I can.”

Getting people to vote is her current passion. “On the road, I will not suggest how people should vote,” she says, “only that they should vote. They should study the issues and the candidates for themselves, and we will be all right if they get enough good information.”

In not a few ways, Granny D reminds me of another woman I knew whose political consciousness drove her on to strenuous action in later life. That was Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers (whom Granny D seems never to have heard of.) Both physically small, the two women were to display a personal dynamism that made them different from most other people. Like Maggie, Granny D cares passionately about the larger community and resists the temptation felt by most of their age peers to focus in upon herself.

Like Maggie, Granny D wants to share this spirit with others. In the words she inscribed for me on the title page of her memoir, she wrote: “One step in front of the next will get you Anywhere!”

Richard Griffin