“People are fed up with mass society and feel a strong need to get together in a genuine and a sincere way.” So said Bob Atchley, a professor at the Buddhist-oriented Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, speaking last week in Boston.

He considers the rise of small groups – – not more than 12 or 15 people – – the most significant feature in American religion today.  It is a form of  “unchurched spirituality” that appeals to many who have broken with their earlier patterns.

For many people, big no longer does it. Groups larger than about a dozen , they find, cannot get to know one another and share genuine feelings.

The beginnings of the small group phenomenon can be traced back to the period after World War II. The rise of the Human Potential movement led many Americans to focus on their inner life, sensitizing them to their own spiritual quest. They developed a so-called holistic approach to life, seeing their body, mind, and spirit forming one united whole.

They came to appreciate the value of previously unfamiliar spiritual practices, especially meditation, which they came to recognize as a different way of knowing.  It served them as a form  of learning that goes beyond ordinary thought.

The small group movement grew stronger in the 1960s when many Americans, most of them young, experimented with various forms of communal life. Those who are now old are likely not to have taken part in these experiments and thus may not be attracted to small groups now as part of  their spiritual life.

But those who do join and meet regularly with others usually become comfortable disclosing their inner selves.  In doing so, they find others to respond supportively  to their revelation of self. In fact, the more they reveal their own weaknesses, the greater that support tends to become.

Professor Atchley attributes to spiritual traditions of the East the idea that “you need a spiritual community to interpret your experience.” This has led to recognizing how a community can serve as what he calls your “garbage collector,” accepting from you whatever you wish to share.

Just being heard means a great deal to most people. For those who cannot find anyone else to listen to their story –  –  and that includes almost everybody –  –  discovering sympathetic listeners  counts for a whole lot.

In the words of Thich Nhat Han, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, these groups are rooted in “compassionate listening.”  They learn to hear one another with heartfelt sympathy.

Professor Atchley compares these gatherings to family groups, but without the baggage that most families carry. “People talk about heavy stuff,” he reports, “but they laugh a lot.”

Typically, there is not much structure to these groups, nor do authority figures exist. Most members, in fact, are trying to get away from the oppressive authorities of their earlier lives.  Instead, these groups tend to be “ruthlessly democratic,” respecting the rights of each person to a voice.

What attracts people to these groups is their authenticity. They appear to be free of the humbug that often afflicts large religious organizations.

And they respect diversity, the differences among people that so characterize American life now. In the small groups one finds women and men of varied ethnic origins, along with other human differences.

Membership also cuts across religious lines. People of different faiths come together and feel comfortable in one another’s presence. Christians of various backgrounds also find common ground despite inter-church differences.

In reflecting on the small group movement, Professor Atchley feels one crucial question still remains uncertain. How will these groups influence power and authority?

As a member of a small prayer group myself, I appreciate coming together with a few friends. At the same time, however, I continue to place high value on membership in the church in which I grew up. It continues to feed me values not available to small groups. I especially love the liturgy, the public worship for which people of faith come together.

I also value the greater variety one finds in the church community. Rich and poor, saint and sinner, old and young – all come together in search of inspiration.

For  me, having available both the church and the small prayer group offers the best situation of all.

Richard Griffin

The spirit of thanksgiving continues on. It cannot be confined to a single day of celebration, however memorable.  Ideally, thanksgiving is an everyday attitude that shapes the way we feel about our life and about the world.

A grateful heart not only ennobles human life at all times but enables us to see more deeply the world around us.

When gratitude marks your stance toward the world, you notice things that otherwise would pass you by. Recognizing yourself as a gifted person, you see the events of the day stand out in bolder relief as their meaning becomes clearer. The people you meet can also be more fully revealed to the eyes of gratitude.

Ann Ulanov, Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, hits the mark when she calls for “an ethics of overflow.” If we love God first, she said at a recent morning prayer session, “it spills over to the love of the self, and of our neighbor.”

I believe in the power of thanksgiving to kickstart this overflow. That is why I value the approach  of another spiritual master, Brother David Steindle-Rast. This Benedictine brother runs a website called “Gratefulness” that expresses his approach to the inner life.

Here, at gratefulness.org, is his home page introducing the subject:

“In each of us there is a spark that can reverse the trends of violence and depression spiraling within us and in the world around us. By setting in motion the spiral of gratefulness we begin the journey toward peace and joy.”

In this season I give thanks for whatever inspiration has been given me. Like the sun shining through cloud banks, this gift enlightens the mind and heart.  Inspiration cannot be manufactured by oneself; it must be freely given. As Jesus says of it in John 3, 8: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”

It comes at the strangest times, catching us unawares. We can be walking along, without much going on in our head, when all of a sudden – bingo – we see into a situation that previously remained obscured.

The gift of compassion also stirs thanksgiving in me. Without the delusion of  thinking myself nearly enough compassionate, I still recognize some growth in sympathy toward other people. For this I feel grateful while wanting to have more of this precious quality of heart. Perhaps recognizing my limitations here is itself a gift.

I also feel thankful for the spiritual seekers who inspire me. Some of them are colleagues in the field of aging: Tom, Rick, Susan, Bob, Bernie and others have recently shared insights with me and revealed their own efforts to open to the light. What a gift to find scholars like them at professional meetings who bring me into their lives! They sit down with me and we talk about our personal challenges and our occasional breakthroughs.

For  the gift of  understanding I feel grateful. Limited though my brain is compared to that of some other people, it still continues to be a marvelous instrument. It enables me to grasp the wonders of the world and to appreciate the thoughts of other people past and present. I can pick up and read the writings of William James, who once lived only a few city blocks from my home, and who one hundred years ago published a classic book on spirituality called “Varieties of Religious Experience.”

Through the gift of faith, I see God as the source of all good gifts. That is why a sermon of Meister Eckhart, the German mystic who lived in the 13th and 14th centuries, speaks to me:

“In every gift, in every work, we ought to learn to look toward God, and we should not allow ourselves to be satisfied or detained by any thing.  .   . Above all else, we should always be preparing ourselves, always renewing ourselves to receive God’s gifts.”

A grateful heart can be a font of joy even in the midst of suffering and hardship. But we come to a grateful heart only by stages, as Brother David suggests when he speaks of “the spiral of gratefulness.” It goes up, but only in a round-about motion that continues to carry us higher.

Richard Griffin

“Of the millions of the sick who go to Lourdes, not one in thousand is ‘cured,’” observed the late British theologian Adrian Hastings. Probably he was setting the odds better than they actually are.

If you travel to a holy place looking for a miracle, your chances of finding one are indeed no better than if you play the lottery hoping to win a million dollars. But people of faith know this, by and large, and yet still go to sites like Lourdes in southern France because they are sources of spiritual blessings.

When I visited Lourdes, four years ago, I was prepared to feel put off by what I imagined as the craze for cures. The sight of all those thousands of people in wheelchairs and moving beds would show me religion, I feared, manipulating the sick by making them expect to be cured of their illnesses and disabilities.

What I found instead was an atmosphere of impressive spirituality. Yes, there were merchants galore in the city squares selling religious trinkets of all kinds. Some of these were in bad taste, tawdry objects connected with the shrines and the famous grotto where the sick bathe.

But I soon discovered the spirit behind the sick and disabled who come, in some instances, thousands of miles to take part in ceremonies at Lourdes. They were clearly there to pray; at least most of them were. Along with their caretakers and others like me who were in good health, they formed part of a long and awesome procession that moved by candlelight around the square outside the great basilica.

As we slowly moved along, we repeated hymns in honor of the Blessed Virgin and Jesus. I felt buoyed up by the spirit of people there, all ages and conditions of life, speaking many of the languages of the world. I was deeply impressed by the work of the caretakers who ministered with great solicitude to those dependent on them.

Gradually I became aware of the purpose motivating the people sick in body (and, perhaps, mind) who were there. For the most part, I came to realize, they had not come for a miracle to be worked on them nor did they expect to be cured of their maladies. Rather, they had traveled there for healing, for the grace of their souls becoming whole.

This was undoubtedly why theologian Adrian Hastings had put the word “cure” in quotation marks. He must have wanted to allow for the use of the word to describe the spiritual healing that many people bring home from a pilgrimage to Lourdes or other places sanctified by faith.

In her 1999 book “Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age,” Oxford scholar Ruth Harris presents herself as an unbeliever who was deeply touched by her experience of this holy place. She sees this site of pilgrimage as one where genuine healing has taken place during the past century and a half and where an attempt has been made to overcome the mind/body divide that has marked modern society.

I came away from my visit with a sense of spiritual renewal. I felt buoyed up by the faith of the thousands with whom I mingled. That was a beautiful evening on which, accompanied by family members, I walked, sang, prayed and sensed the presence of spirit among us.

That is “miracle” enough for me, though I still sympathize with those who continue to endure agonizing suffering of body and mind. To me the spirit of God is present in the devotion of those open to the change of soul that takes place within them. In accepting the inner anointing that comes with this kind of pilgrimage, they become healed even if they never find a cure for their ailments.

The fine American writer Flannery O’Connor, who suffered from lupus, went to Lourdes in the spring of 1958. For reasons not entirely clear, she was afraid of being cured of her disease, says the editor of her letters. But, if she had not taken the bath, she feared being “plagued in the future by a bad conscience.”

Ultimately, the odds quoted at the beginning are irrelevant to the spiritual meaning of the holy site. More to the point, the odds of spiritual healing seem remarkably favorable. For people who come open to God’s healing touch, those odds are excellent. Most likely, they will return home fortified in spirit and with renewed hope.

Richard Griffin

On its face, prayer seems the most wasteful of activities. It comes perilously close to doing nothing. And it sometimes starts a conversation with a God that seems not to be there.               And yet, modern-minded people galore welcome knowing more about prayer. Many of us are eager to grasp the insights of others into this practice. When it comes to praying, we all remain amateurs and need whatever help we can find.

Last week proved a fruitful one for me. It provided me with insightful words about prayer from two quite different women. I feel grateful to them for helping me along the path where light shines.

The first woman to offer me inspiration was a Bible scholar, Ellen Aitken. Based in Amherst, MA, she shares in my community what she has learned from her studies of Holy Scripture. On this occasion, she spoke to some fifty people gathered together for a church service.

“Prayer is, at its base, the habit of bringing everything to God, the whole of one’s life,” says this student of the Bible. To me, these words offer inspiration suggesting the benefits of making prayer a familiar activity, something one does every day. Habit is a way of making actions accessible and even comfortable.

What Professor Aitken says also points toward the content of prayer, what we can pray about. This part sounds simple: everything about us is material for conversation with God.

This same woman says that, when you pray, “You are gathering up all sorts of the pieces of life.” This makes prayer a remedy for the scatteredness felt by many people as we find themselves torn in several directions at once. This makes us crave becoming centered so that we can focus on something important instead of feeling poured out all the time.

Professor Aitken also sees in prayer a force expanding outwards: “Prayer leads to radical acts of compassion.” If it sometimes seems detached from real life, we are deceived. Genuine prayer contains the seed of actions that will express love for our neighbors. Talking with God impels us in the direction of feeling the pain of those God loves.  

A second person who shone light on prayer for me is author Anne Lamott in her book “Traveling Mercies.”  She often presents herself as rather a kooky person, full of weird and entertaining points of view, but at the same time spiritually insightful.

On a day she was struggling with what she calls an “ice-pick headache,” she turned to God in her distress. Of this experience, she writes: “But the way I see things, God loves you the same whether you’re being elegant or not. It feels much better when you are, but even when you can’t fake it, God still listens to your prayers.”

So it does not make any difference if you are having a good or bad hair or head day, you can still turn to God in prayer. God is always ready to start a conversation with us, no matter how harried we may be.

Then Anne Lamott goes on to say: “Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, ‘Well, isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do about your stuff.’”

The familiarity with which the writer puts breezy words in God’s mouth can at first seem shocking. Such words may strike as irreverent those trained to use pious Sunday school language. But they flow from a woman accustomed to dealing intimately with God in prayer. With the freedom of friendship, she dares to write a script for God, giving him his speaking lines.

Notice also how the message echoes what Ellen Aitken, the biblical scholar, says about prayer leading to compassion. Anne Lamott puts it more concretely: it means relieving an old lady’s thirst by getting her a glass of water. But both agree that prayer overflows its apparent boundaries and issues in love of other people.

Ms. Lamott obviously has confidence about God answering prayer. It’s just a matter of priorities: service to the old woman, before God gets to Anne’s stuff. The word “stuff” suggests the mess that her life is frequently in. That does not make any difference to God; the important thing is she needs help so God is prepared to give it.

Richard Griffin

By now, the world has come to expect innovation from John Paul II. Surely he will go down in history as a pope who knew how to surprise people by change. Some of the changes have proven controversial indeed, but no one can accuse him of lacking creativity.

The latest example of John Paul's willingness to change tradition is his adding five additional mysteries to the rosary, a devotional prayer beloved by many Catholics. This move will not strike most people as highly significant; even Catholics will see it as a small change, affecting the piety of those who hold dear this particular form of prayer. However, for these people, it will come as a welcome gift from the pope.

If, before 1965, you had walked into a Catholic church while Mass was being celebrated, you would almost surely have seen some people praying the rosary. In those days the language of the liturgy was Latin, so many Catholics preferred to whisper the Hail Mary in their own language while also paying attention to the Mass.

However, with changes in the liturgy brought about by the Second Vatican Council forty years ago, saying the rosary during Mass has become relatively rare. Now that the public prayers of the church are said in the language of each country, Catholics find the Mass more accessible and they tend to give it their full attention.

However, the praying of the rosary has retained its popularity as a private prayer with not a few Catholics, and John Paul wishes to promote its use. He thinks highly of this practice and strongly encourages the habit. For him, it does not conflict with the official public prayer of the church, but instead “serves as an excellent introduction and a faithful echo of the liturgy.”

The genius of the rosary as a prayer comes from its combining spoken words with contemplation of events in the life of Jesus and his mother Mary. It also gives you something to hold in your hand – – beads strung together along which you move your fingers after saying each individual prescribed prayer.

A series of “Hail Marys,” each repeated ten times, forms the center of each section of the rosary. For the person praying, they become a kind of mantra, while he or she ponders the sacred events called “mysteries.” In the spiritual tradition the events receive this name because they have depths in which a person can find ever richer layers of meaning.

Up till now these mysteries came in three groups: joyful, sorrowful, and glorious. Those added this month the pope calls the five “mysteries of light” all of them taken from the public life of Jesus.

These five events, as listed by the pope, are: 1) The baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River; 2) His self-manifestation at the wedding of Cana; 3) His proclamation of the Kingdom of God, with his call to conversion; 4) His transfiguration; 5) His institution of the Eucharist.

John Paul sees contemplation of these five events as filling something of a gap between the five joyful mysteries relating to the infancy of Jesus and the sorrowful mysteries that center on his passion and death. The five events added by the pope will provide additional rich material for prayerful reflection, all of them based in the New Testament.

Those who pray the rosary every day of the week are accustomed to saying one set of five mysteries a day. For these people, the pope suggests that the “luminous mysteries” (his term for those he has added) be prayed on each Thursday. Some who give more time to the rosary each day, of course, can include all four groups at once.

Some Christians, including some Catholics, have often been troubled by what they see as too much attention to Mary in the rosary. That criticism, which the pope does not agree with, would seem to be deflected by the addition of the new mysteries so clearly focused on the life of Christ.

In any event, many spiritual seekers will welcome the rosary's new content and find it food for their souls. They may also agree with Sister Janice Farnham, professor of church history at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, who says simply of the new material, “It is beautiful.”

Richard Griffin

What are the most important realities in life? According to Jimmy Carter, the right answer can be found in the words of St. Paul. These realities are the spiritual things that cannot be seen. The former president lists justice, humility, love, and compassion among the unseen qualities that make human life precious.

This was his comment in response to the announcement last week about his winning the Nobel Peace Prize. In the midst of his fellow townspeople of Plains, Georgia – – all 637 of them it seemed – – he was shown on television celebrating the news. Despite his having been honored numerous times previously for his work in bringing peace to various parts of the world, this recognition of his efforts came as especially sweet.

Asked on television to comment on the award, historian Douglas Brinkley said of him: “Jimmy Carter does not wear his religion on his sleeve, but in his heart.”

Zbigniev Brezinsky, his former national security advisor, spoke in admiration of the way Jimmy Carter, when president, “combined the spiritual dimension with the use of power.”

Another commentator, columnist Thomas Oliphant, said that “hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, are alive today because of him.”

According to the Nobel Committee that chose him, Jimmy Carter’s brokering of the accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978 could have won him the peace prize by itself. That mediation brought about a peace between those two countries that has endured through many crises, although it is seriously threatened today.

After retirement from the presidency in 1981, Mr. Carter has traveled to far sections of the world, in the cause of peace. His work of conflict resolution and election monitoring in Ethiopia, North Korea, Bosnia, Sudan, and Uganda, among other places has won him the world’s admiration.

To each site he brings the prestige of a former president along with an ability to listen to all sides. The charm of his famous smile also must win him friends who see in him the power of benevolence.

Some consider his greatest achievement in this era to be persuading the military junta in Haiti to step down, thus saving that small nation a bloody confrontation involving United States military forces.

So this is a man eminently deserving of the world’s most honored peace prize. The only question about it is why it was so long coming.

What strikes me as deserving of attention is not only the scope of this man’s achievement, astounding though this certainly is. But I like to focus on President Carter’s motivation. He is a man who lives by the spirit. His religious heritage continues to be the most important force in his life.

Carter is not simply a do-gooder. His service of others gives every evidence of coming from a deeply rooted love of God and other human beings. Steeped in the Bible and the teachings of his Baptist tradition, he believes in using his personal gifts for the benefit of others. His is a classic spirituality that sees in other people other Christs and gives highest priority to their service.

At a press conference in Orlando three years ago, I had the opportunity to see him answer questions from journalists interested in the subject of aging. I also asked him a question of my own, about whether, with the advance of years, his ideas of God had changed.

In response, he indicated that his ideas had indeed changed and he went on to talk more broadly about his spiritual life. Having taught Sunday school since the age of 18, Carter reflects on the teachings of his faith. As he approaches the end of life, he thinks more about the hereafter. “Members of my family,” he noted, “have approached the end of life with a very healthy attitude, with a sense of humor.”

He then added: “I think that whether or not we believe in life after death, we do have to face the prospect of what we’re going to do in our final days, how we’re going to be a blessing instead of a curse to the people we leave behind.”

As the Nobel Peace Prize confirms, Jimmy Carter has already been a blessing to a whole lot of people.

Richard Griffin

At the end of a lecture I gave last week about ministry to older people, a member of the audience asked me how he could promote better relations between the younger and the older members of his religious community. He belongs to a Catholic order in Peru where he will be returning after his theological studies here.

To hear him tell it, men of different generations within his religious household have trouble communicating with one another. They experience a fair amount of tension because of differing outlooks and values. He would like to find a way of easing those tensions and opening hearts among older and younger members.

Like many questions posed in public, this one was difficult. Anyone can ask a question that I cannot answer. And what do I know about religious communities in Peru?

Making a brave effort, however, I shared with him my own experience of living in religious communities in a past era when tensions between generations had grown large. It was a time of great change in the church and many older men felt their values and way of life under threat.

I remember one older colleague who, to my consternation, literally would not exchange a single word with me during dinner. If I had asked him for the salt shaker, he would not have passed it to me. Such was the degree of bitterness he felt about people like me who favored changes so threatening to him.

I never did find a way to deal with such divisions within my community, nor did anyone else. Only the passage of time eased the problem as new outlooks gradually took hold and the younger generation grew older.

Since that time, I have learned some approaches to older/younger relationships that may promote mutual sympathy and understanding. Sharing these approaches with the questioner, I hoped he could act as a bridge between the two age groups in his community.

For young people, I suggested, the challenge is to come to grips with their own aging. Though it is extremely difficult for young people to imagine themselves as old, they might try to make this spiritual leap. Doing so would require them to come to grips with their own aging so as to enter with empathy into the experience of people grown old.

For young persons to enter into the experience of the aged might mean: 1) realizing that wealth, success, achievement, – welcome as they are – do not define human life; 2) seeing their own life and aging as a gift; 3) regarding old people, not as a race apart, but as their future selves; 4) recognizing that someday disability and dependence may loom large in their own life as it does with so many older people now; 5) allowing that God may have special gifts in store for them when they get old.

These would be ways for younger people to find the older person in themselves. Another approach might be to see the young self in the old man or woman. Often young people act as if they think the older person was born old. They do not realize how some people, now aged, still still think of themselves as young.

Of course, in looking for the younger person in themselves, all older people have the advantage of actually having been young. They do not have to rely upon imagination to know what it is like; they can remember.

However, it may still require spiritual power to understand how being young now differs from being young two or three generations ago. The year 1940 and the year 2002 show more than a few differences between them. The challenges and opportunities of contemporary culture are not the same as people now old once faced.

Their challenge is to bring empathy and love to younger people and take an interest in the generations that have come after them. Older people who can identify with young men and women in a disinterested and loving way will almost surely find in younger generations a precious source of renewal and revitalization.  

So, ideally, the problem posed by the questioner after my lecture calls forth a spiritual approach. It may require a revision of attitudes and values that will enable older persons to find the hidden youth in themselves and, in turn, for younger persons to discover in the aged their future selves.

Richard Griffin