“She was the last person in the world who should have been there.” This is what Terry Rockefeller says of her younger sister, Laura, who was managing a conference about information technology on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Laura usually worked in theater but had not made it big and had to bring in money to pay her rent. That’s how she happened to be in the wrong place and the wrong time on that day of terror. It fell to Terry to tell their parents about Laura’s death, a task that still makes her voice choke and brings tears to her eyes.

In time, Terry came to understand that war is like that. It always traps  some innocent people and brings terrible harm to them. This realization helps motivate her work for peace as a memorial to Laura. She feels confident that her sister is happy knowing of Terry’s dedication to this cause.

Terry also feels supported by the extraordinary compassion she experienced in response to her sister’s death. She will never forget the wall near the World Trade Center, with pictures of the victims, and the hundreds of teddy bears from Oklahoma City lined up on the sidewalk. She also recalls taxi drivers taking her there and not charging anything for the ride.

This resident of Arlington, Massachusetts, the wife of an historian and mother of two children, does not stand alone in her peaceful response to the terrible violence of that day. She has joined with others in forming an organization called “September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.” The name comes from a statement of Martin Luther King, who said: “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

This advocacy organization hopes to “spare additional families the suffering we have experienced – – as well as to break the cycle of violence and retaliation engendered by war.” Members feel that war is an inappropriate and ultimately ineffective response to the attacks that killed their family members.

It was this spirit that moved Terry Rockefeller to visit Iraq shortly before the recent war. Together with three other women, she stopped at schools, hospitals, and universities in both Baghdad and Basra. The women also talked to people in their homes.

Explaining her motivation further, Terry says: “We went there really to just make a very public gesture of citizens meeting with other civilians and trying to express our commonality and our concern for their well being.” Almost everywhere, they were greeted with food and they sang songs written one of the American women.

Some of the encounters they had were grim, however. The hardest place was a bomb shelter that had been hit by two missiles in 1991. The first made a large hole through the four-foot thick concrete roof. The second entered through the same hole and killed the women and children huddled there. Their skeletal remains are still embedded in the walls.

The surviving husbands were still furious. One of them said to Terry Rockefeller: “You lost a sister; I lost my wife, my mother, and all my children.”

The women were also taken to a family in Basra where the father had just been killed by a bomb. This man, Jamal, was a truck driver for an oil refinery. Admitted to the room where his widow was grieving, the American women shared condolences: “She wept for us; we wept for her,” recalls Terry.

After showing slides of her Iraqi visit, Terry Rockefeller shares what she calls her “big idea.” She and a divinity school alumnus named Andrew dream of meeting with family members of the airplane hijackers. They would like to ask the “hard questions” about the motivation of those men and explore with their relatives why those attacks took place.

Terry is a filmmaker with an impressive list of credits that include the public television science series NOVA and the civil rights history “Eyes on the Prize.” She aims to have the opportunity some day to record the meetings that she and Andrew imagine having with those related to the hijackers.

Whether or not that ever happens, Terry is determined to carry forward her quest for peace in alliance with others who suffered great losses. She wants not merely to oppose war, she says, but to build peace.

Richard Griffin

I felt it an honor to sit at lunch last week between two bishops from distant parts of the world. They had come from India and Zimbabwe to take part in a four-day conference at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge. These bishops and some 30 other Anglican theologians had gathered to exchange views about leadership and education in the family of churches they represent.

In addition to Dhirender Sahu of Darjeeling and Sebastian Bakare of Manicaland, three other delegates joined us at the lunch table. Herman Browne, a native of Liberia now based in London, represented the Archbishop of Canterbury; Christopher Lind spoke for the Anglican Church of Canada; and Robert Paterson, for the Church in Wales. All of them responded to my questions about the spiritual issues most important to them.

Bishop Bakare challenged me with a question of his own: “How do you in the press help your readers to understand that there are other countries in the world?” His words caught me unawares and I found myself unable to answer immediately.

Obviously the question carried the hidden message that Americans do not pay enough attention to nations in need of our understanding and support. I could have cited the 15 billion dollars our federal government has earmarked for AIDS treatment in Africa as a shining example of what we need to do more extensively.

Bishop Sahu spoke about the importance of sharing. Among the gifts that he mentioned are the strong family bonds among his people. This is a gift they can give the West, he said. He also identified “the kind of hospitality the poor can offer to others.” No matter their poverty, these people often prove generous to others.

The theologian from Wales, Robert Paterson, placed emphasis on the variety of circumstances that must be taken into account before judging a question of morality. The issue of homosexuality, for instance, has to be approached with sensitivity to the way it is seen in different parts of the world. You cannot explain texts from the Bible without paying attention to the situation in which they are read.

The educator Christopher Lind lives in Saskatchewan, the province that produces 55 percent of Canada’s wheat. Because of low prices, farmers have been going bankrupt, so they have pooled their products. The American government considers this an unfair trade subsidy and has slapped a 10 percent duty on wheat imported into the United States.

This is an example of the problems raised by economic globalization, says Christopher Lind. Another example is the so-called Harvard mouse. The name comes from the research animal developed by Harvard University in 1985 that gets cancer four times faster than the ordinary mouse and is therefore more prized for medical research.

Recently the Canadian Supreme Court ruled against the patenting of this mouse, a ruling hailed by the Canadian Council of Churches. Though it may seem merely a biotech question, Professor Lind sees the matter as having spiritual significance as well.

Herman Browne spoke of his main priority as a leader in his church. “None of us is satisfied,” he said, “for the Gospel to be merely heard; it must also be felt.” The message must penetrate to the heart and be welcomed as a precious gift.

Another concern of Rev. Browne is the situation of Christians who are suffering under repressive regimes. How do the practice their faith when the government is persecuting them for their beliefs or when conditions in their country are chaotic? Unfortunately, the latter situation currently mars his native Liberia.

It would have been welcome to have heard the discussions at the general meeting of all the delegates from some 20 countries. However, I felt grateful for the opportunity to listen to the views of a cross section.

What jumped out at me from the luncheon was the view of the United States as insular, not well enough informed about other countries. The religious figures I talked with worry about Americans using so much of the world’s resources and not caring enough about the effects of their habits on the people of other nations.

One of them shared his view that “churches are a kind of media.” As he sees it, the churches often give Americans more access to people of other countries and their real concerns than do the news media. Our lunch discussion serves as one small instance of this reality.

Richard Griffin

Dear Elliot:

I am writing in celebration of your 100th birthday.  To me this anniversary of yours comes as a truly marvelous event. Only one American in 10,000 lives as long as you have. I thank God for having given you this gift of such rare longevity.

That you are now living in Florida, so far from here, frustrates me because I cannot be with you for the occasion. It would be a joy to talk with you face to face about your life at this milestone. Looking back on our conversations when you lived nearby, I relish your recollections of family members and friends we both knew.

You were my father’s best friend, a relationship that still means much to me even though he died almost 50 years ago. At his death in New York City, you were with him, something that served as a consolation to us, his family. He admired you not only as a friend but as a fellow journalist with high professional and personal standards.

One of the benefits that comes with your long life span is that your work as drama critic continues to be recognized and honored. People realize that your reviewing of more than 6,000 plays, along with your teaching and television broadcasting, make a unique record of achievement.

I hope that the annual awards given in your name make you feel rewarded for your many years of hard work. Much to my own satisfaction, a recent book entitled “Eminent Bostonians” includes a chapter about you.

However, knowing you as a person for whom spirituality has always been vitally important, I suspect you do not place ultimate value on the world’s honors. Rather, I have reason to judge that your relationship with God and the interior life are more significant to you than any recognition from others.

I also suspect that your prayer life looms as even more important now than before. Perhaps your later years have brought you spiritual consolations like those of some people in the Bible.

In the Gospel of Luke, Simeon and Anna, two old people, appear when the child Jesus is presented in the temple. Simeon took the child in his arms and thanked God saying  “now you dismiss your servant in peace.” For him, it was the fulfillment of a promise and a moment of spiritual joy.

And the prophet Anna, 84 years old, also praised God for her encounter with the child. For her, too, it was the fulfillment of a lifetime, seeing the child  who was to redeem his people.

Here the Bible presents old age as a time of fulfillment, a stage of life when spirituality can reach its full flowering. Anna and Simeon serve as a model for late life and the rewards it can bring.

However, I know it is a mistake to think of old age as simply a time when good things happen to good people. Realistically, it cannot be easy to be 100 years old. Almost everyone who has reached this milestone has experienced serious physical problems along the way.

I remember you telling me about finding it hard to have lost most of your eyesight. For a man to whom reading was a favorite activity, it is surely a trial not to be able to pick up a book now or to read the newspapers that formed your daily diet at work.

Even more difficult, living with loss of people dear to you is another trial of old age. You have shared with me how you feel about the loss of your dear wife and the deprivation of living without her. No one can take her place, a situation that you have had to live with for several years.

Despite the hardships that come with 100 years of living, however, your birthday is a day of celebration. Members of your family and your legion of friends feel joy at this rare anniversary of yours. Some of the friends are looking forward to an event in your honor tomorrow evening when awards will be given in your name.

I thank God for the gifts that have brought you this far and I pray that you may receive abundant blessings on this occasion.

Richard Griffin

“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”

These words come from Abraham Joshua Heschel, a man who inspired many during his long and distinguished lifetime. After escaping from his native Germany, Rabbi Heschel taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York from 1945 to his death in 1972.

Beyond that, he allied himself with Martin Luther King in the struggle for civil rights, he led protest against the Vietnam War, and he provided spiritual dynamic for the age liberation movement of the1960s and 1970s.

“Just to be is a blessing.” A friend with whom I have frequently exchanged views of the world recently received the gift of a deeper understanding of what these words mean. My friend, a physician by training, underwent surgery for a routine health condition. The surgery was expected to take only an hour and recovery would be rapid, everyone thought.

Something went terribly wrong, however, and the operation took much of a day, most of it turning into an effort to save my friend’s life. Two days later, he woke up in the intensive care unit, not knowing what had happened. He had narrowly escaped death and, by now, has recovered completely.

My friend tells me that as a result of this near-death experience his outlook has changed in two ways. First, life has become more precious to him, a gift that he appreciates more than he did before. And, secondly, he has lost his fear of death. No longer is he afraid of what is going to happen to him when his turn comes to die. He is surprised by how free he now feels about the threats to his life that may loom up before him.

My friend now feels more deeply than ever before the truth that being is a blessing. A person of faith, he realizes that his very existence is a gift of God. Being comes from God who creates human beings and everything else out of nothing. Created things share in the mystery of God, the supreme being.

“Just to live is holy.” By right, holiness belongs to God alone. But  the creator has made creatures to share in his holiness. We are flawed, and thus never perfectly holy, but just by living we can partake in what belongs to God.

The heart of holiness is love. So, to the extent that we live by love, we live in holiness. Walking in love, we can embody the holiness of God and bring out the potential of life to be holy.

The classical response in the presence of the holy is awe. When we become more deeply aware of our lives as holy we can feel this amazement at having life. Being alive is a mystery, it goes beyond any explanation we can give, no matter how far our knowledge of genetics advances.

Recently I visited an old friend who is in sharp physical decline. He suffers from the terrible disease abbreviated as ALS. But while his energy and physical abilities diminish each day, his spirit amazed me. He manages to regard his life as precious despite the assaults on it the disease inflicts. Undoubtedly, he must have private moments of doubt, but he seems to cherish his life and care about others around him.

Rabbi Heschel’s two sayings discussed here do not come from a merely optimistic view of human life and the world. This spiritual leader was too sensitive to the presence of evil to have indulged in facile Pollyannish upbeat philosophy of life. Instead, his outlook took root in the hope he had in God.

Hope places confidence in God’s power to accomplish what human beings cannot. This quality of heart also leads toward that reverence for life expressed by the rabbi. “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.” These two statements reflect a soul that has made deep soundings in spirituality and has come up with pure gold.

I propose these two sayings as suitable for carrying around in one’s heart during the day and night. They can serve as mantras, fixed guides that can make our activities spiritually meaningful. Repeated over and over they can ground a person in reality and enable us to lay hold of more of reality than we otherwise could.

Richard Griffin

My fellow writer and friend, Brad, will not share his mantra with me. It’s private, something he discloses to no one else. In any event, this mantra is not made up of words but rather of sounds. My friend uses these sounds to anchor his daily meditations.

The name I use here is not his real one. Quite understandably, Brad wants me to use a pseudonym and to keep his identity secret. Though one of his most important activities, meditation remains something he considers deeply private. He honors me in sharing details about this activity so precious to him.

Morning and evening, for the last 16 years, Brad has been meditating. Each of his sessions lasts about 20 minutes, time that he considers extremely well spent. What he values most is the way meditating relieves stress. His work is demanding and he looks forward to this routine that enables him to stay calm even under pressure.

“You hit the pause button,” he says, explaining how he gets rid of the stress that accumulates during the day.

Strangely enough, meditation for him also relieves boredom. It gives an edge to daily life, he finds, that counteracts the feeling he often experiences of some activities not being interesting enough to hold his attention. “It’s like taking a shower, you don’t see this as boring. Instead, it’s refreshing and you experience the benefits all day long.”

After summoning up the mantra, getting into the meditation is easy. “It’s largely a question of sitting quietly and closing one’s eyes.” When thoughts arise, Brad does not fight or resist them but simply returns to the mantra. Thus “the mind kind of settles down this way, leaves disturbances on the surface and the mind sinks into these greater states of calm.”

In his meditation, Brad tries to avoid thought. Yet, as with everybody else, this highly experienced contemplator finds distracting thoughts an almost constant presence. These pesky intruders fly into his consciousness unwanted but Brad knows by now how to handle them. What he does is to return to his mantra, those sacred sounds that keep him on track.

Rarely does Brad meditate with other people. That is because the Transcendental Meditation center where he got his start is no longer housed  nearby. But he does attach a special value to doing it with others.

“When you practice with even eight others, there is an absolute palpable difference in the quality of the silence,” he says. “There is a multiplier factor – we’re able to affect each other’s consciousness – without any verbal exchange at all.”

Brad does not regard his kind of meditation as a form of prayer. Rather he relates it to health. In fact, he considers it the most important single thing he does for his health. It affects your physical body, he says, by reducing the stress factor.

He feels the effects of meditation every day: “It’s harder to knock me off my horse,” he reports, “much harder to disturb or upset me, not that I’m unable to be upset by any event.”

Asked whether his kind of meditation has anything to do with God, Brad gives a sophisticated answer. You don’t need any belief in God to practice it; this meditation can be a purely secular activity.

But, on second thought: “In my case it’s a vehicle that I can use to get in touch with the divine aspects within oneself.”

Does that make it religion? “Not religion as taught with dogma or theology, but opening up an aspect in one’s own experience that could be connected with larger consciousness and a larger sense of self.”

This opening can lead to a unity with the divine, Brad believes. “One long respected version of spiritual life,” he says, “is the destiny of the human being is to become God. You can do in your own life what brings you closer to the divinity your own life.”

At the end of the discussion Brad returns to meditation as a hedge against boredom. “That’s important,” he emphasizes, “ because I was able to keep it up.” For him to have continued this practice so long, it had to be intriguing enough. And he holds firmly to meditation as a fascinating and deeply rewarding human activity.

Richard Griffin

Some people are worth an encore. That’s the way I feel about Nancy and George Mairs, who were the focus of my previous column. Hearing them talk further has prompted me to share more of their experience and their thinking in the hope readers will find inspiration in both.

Before flying back to their home in Tucson, this spiritually dynamic couple talked about what they call “the activist demands of faith.” They thus gave expression to what they believe to be the requirements prompted by their Christian beliefs.

Joining the discussion on this occasion was their son, Matthew Mairs, who lives in New York City but who came to see his parents during their East Coast visit. Though he shares many of his parents’ values, Matthew modestly says of his own earlier social action: “I didn’t have the guts my parents had.”

There is no disputing that they indeed have guts. Needing help with almost all the activities of daily life and requiring a wheelchair for mobility, Nancy still reaches out to others. George devotes much of his time to assisting Nancy; he has had a life-threatening bout with melanoma; he also makes it a priority to stay involved with others who need help.

George and Nancy ask themselves: how can a person use his or her gifts to make a difference in the world? This is a question asked by many spiritual seekers who want to respond but often feel overwhelmed and do not know what action to take.

In response, Nancy admits being daunted because the world is in such need. As the world’s population grows larger, the number of people in dire need increases, putting potential volunteers in a quandary.

Speaking practically, Nancy says: “My first recommendation is this ― think small.” Instead of trying to fix the whole world, Nancy suggests doing something specific on a regular basis.

What she and George do is visit a nursing home, once a week. During this visit they see only two people but talking with these people takes the entire hour.

They are both convinced that what they do makes a difference. “It does matter that we do it,” says Nancy. “it does not matter that we don’t prevail.”  

In visiting the nursing home residents, George senses himself to be part of a faith-inspired activism that is happening all over the world. About the effects of this experience on himself, he says: “This makes me feel healthy and whole.”

This activity also promotes in Nancy and George a sense of peace. It comes in part from integrating their activities. Alluding to his retirement from teaching, George says: “Now I’m more relaxed because I now have time for caregiving.”

Nancy also sees peace as flowing from an acceptance of death. She recognizes the subject as off-putting for a whole lot of people. For her, however: “I know I’m going to die. After that, you’re free.”

They know first-hand the temptation to allow caregiving and being taken care of to dominate their outlook. If allowed full sway, the need to give and receive the care that makes Nancy’s life possible can eat up concern for anyone else.

To their great credit, George and Nancy do not permit themselves to focus only on their own needs, pressing as those needs remain.

The faith that is expressed in the Eucharist drives them on. That this sacrament has been celebrated in their house has changed their feelings about where they live. “It feels like a sacred space,” says Nancy about their home.

And the community of people with whom they celebrate their weekly house Mass means much to them. That is a source of their drive to reach out to others.

Besides the nursing home visit and the other actions in which she and George take part, Nancy regards her writing as a form of ministry. She calls her books “a critical, but not a commercial success.” It feels good to see reviewers praising her work but it does not produce much income. More important, however she values them as a sharing of spiritual insights and experiences with her readers.

My current reading of her latest book, “A Troubled Guest: Life and Death Stories,” has made me appreciate more this ministry of hers.

Richard Griffin

As to beauty, the basement of our parish church leaves much to be desired. With its hard stone floors and rather dim lighting, this space possesses precious little grace or style. It looks like a place for storage rather than for people to come together for food and company.

And yet, on this site take place some of the most important activities sponsored by the parish. This is where people arrive each Saturday morning to receive food to take away with them uncooked or, on Wednesdays during Advent and Lent, to eat a meal served to them by volunteers.

At noontime on a recent Wednesday, I came there to help serve the meal. With the other volunteers I stood behind the tables, waiting on the men and women who filed by. My job was to preside over the desserts; that meant ladling out the rice pudding and making sure that everyone got what they wanted of the fruit, cookies, and other dessert offerings.

Before the guests came by, we all stood and grasped hands to sing a blessing over the food. This music was not a solemn hymn but rather a jaunty tune with words I did not recognize. This blessing seemed to lift the hearts of people in the group before we sat down to eat.

Not all of those who lined up to receive food were guests from outside. Some were insiders, members of the parish who had come to share fellowship with the visitors. Among those parishioners already known to me I noticed Frances, a college sophomore, who sat and ate with some of the older people from outside the parish.

This mingling of visitors and parish regulars seemed to me important because it made being there easier for the homeless and other people lacking money who had come because they needed a nutritious meal.

My reason for describing this parish lunch in some detail is because I see it as an important manifestation of community. To me, it expresses who we are spiritually, a community of believers who try to extend to others the love we have received ourselves.

Serving food to others in this setting is not mere “do-goodism” but rather an action grounded in spirituality. As people blessed by the Lord, we think it vital to share the inner wealth given us by God. And since Christians believe that Jesus gave himself in the form of bread, what better way is there for us to share his love?

This sharing of bread with the hungry strikes me as an answer to a problem recently raised by a group of lay leaders in the parish. They feel concern that we are not a community for enough of our members. Too many feel isolated, cut off from personal contact with others.

For instance, a woman who has been coming to our parish church for two years regrets that she has never spoken to anyone during that time and no one has spoken to her. Probably she has shared a word or two with the people around her when exchanging the kiss of peace during the liturgy of the Eucharist, but nothing otherwise.

In response to this situation the lay leaders have issued a call to action designed to change isolation into community. They have taken this initiative because they see community as located at the heart of Christianity.

Christians also believe themselves joined together with Christ and one another with bonds that go beyond what can be seen. These mystical connections are what give the church its basic character –  –  though, admittedly, the church often does not live up to this character.

Christians also feel their church’s call to social justice aiming at human rights for all people, especially those now impoverished and needy. Without community, precious little progress toward peace and justice can ever be achieved.

Left to ourselves, we Americans are notoriously individualistic in the way we live and in what we value. So to push for more community, as the parish lay leaders wish, will require going against some of the values of our culture.

I feel thankful for the opportunity to have shared a meal as one of a community of people needing nourishment, both physical and spiritual.

Richard Griffin