In her book “Traveling Mercies: Thoughts on Faith,” the writer Anne Lamott repeats a story that she calls old but is new to me. It centers on a rugged individualist who gets drunk at a bar someplace in Alaska.

“He’s telling the bartender how he recently lost whatever faith he’d had after his twin-engine place crashed in the tundra.

“‘Yeah, he says bitterly. I lay there in the wreckage, hour after hour, nearly frozen to death, crying out for God to save me, praying for help with every ounce of my being, but he didn’t raise a finger to help.’ .  .  .

‘But,’ said the bartender, squinting an eye at him, ‘you’re here. You were saved.’

‘Yeah, that’s right said the man. ‘Because finally some goddamn Eskimo came along.’”

The punch in this story, as I reflect on it, comes in the way the fellow misses the point altogether. His ugly expletive about the person who rescued him, betraying racial prejudice as it does, gives further emphasis to the man’s obtuseness.

The point, of course, is that God did answer his prayers for help. The God to whom he turned for rescue from the ruins of his plane responded appropriately. But the injured man was spiritually so dumb as to miss the hand of God in his release from a life-threatening predicament.

In some ways the story evokes the parable of the Good Samaritan in the New Testament. There St. Luke tells of a man lying wounded on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. The similarity comes in that the rescuer of this man, too, was of a racial identity normally unacceptable to the man saved. In the Gospel story, however, there is no indication the man lying in the road fails to recognize the hand of God in his rescue.

The other chief point in the Alaskan story goes beyond the fact of God’s response. It lies in how God answered the pilot of the crashed plane. God responded to the man’s pleas for help, not by anything heavenly, but by the arrival on the scene of another human being.

What kind of answer the man expected is not clear; he seems to have wanted some kind of divine apparition. He apparently imagined God would somehow physically lift him out of the plane wreck and take him away from the open tundra to a safe place.

Many spiritually sensitive people are accustomed to recognize the actions of God in the way other people  reach out to them. Especially in their times of need, when grief and distress threaten to overwhelm them and they need help, they find in the concern of others something of God’s own compassion.

Those who write letters of condolence to us when someone dear has died, for instance, may be offering us help in which we can find God. When I receive such notes from friends, I discover in them human emotion that can be taken to express something of God’s own sympathy.

Similarly, when other people hug and kiss us at times of such loss, we can feel a divine embrace. Even though we may not do so explicitly, we may still experience something that goes beyond the merely human.

In such instances, I guess you can say I allow another person to be an Eskimo for me. At least, that is the way Anne Lamott might express it as she applies the point of the story to everyday life.

Rather than looking for God in heaven, it perhaps makes more sense to detect God’s presence on earth. And instead of expecting the divine to appear in revelations or miracles, maybe we can find the divine in the actions of the people who fill our days.

“Finding God in all things” is a motto dear to Ignatius of Loyola, the saint who founded the Jesuit society in the Catholic Church. I continue to cherish this spiritual ideal of my tradition, even though it’s impossible to fulfill.

I’m sure Ignatius would allow me to amend his spiritual slogan to say finding God “in all people.” He must have intended that already but making it explicit helps clarify the point about other persons as contacts with the divine. It can be spiritually uplifting to let them be Eskimos to us.

Richard Griffin

A fellow journalist who lives on the West Coast (I will call him Joe) has shared with me his spiritual experience of the most recent Yom Kippur holiday. Though he does not consider himself an entirely observant Jew, this particular observance means much to him and each September he embarks on what he calls a “Yom Kippur trek.”

The trek is a journey he takes on foot, often in mountainous country of California. There, freed from the constraints of ordinary life, he can be more open to extraordinary feelings and insights. Close contact with nature endows him with experiences of beauty and unspoiled splendor that can stir within him awe and reverence.

Joe especially values what he terms the “epiphany” that emerges from these treks. He gropes for a definition of this word, calling it a “sudden manifestation, a connection with the divine, a physical tingling, a sense of oneness with the universe, and eyes welling with tears.”

With an earthy comparison, he sums it up by saying of this experience: “It’s a feeling even better than good sex.”

The first time he remembers experiencing this epiphany was after he climbed a mountain and came to a place known to locals as Paradise Valley. He had stopped there to rest after coming down from the 2500-foot peak. Soon he was overwhelmed with feelings about the beauty of the place and something beyond. Fasting all that day (and drinking only water) may have disposed him to a special sensitivity.

Here’s how he describes what he sensed: “I felt connected and part of the world, the universe and whatever mystical experience exists. The goose bumps and electricity up my spine were more intense than even the most moving operatic arias produced.”

These sensations lasted only a minute, he says, but adds: “I don’t know if I could have taken any more, it was that intense.”

Joe recognizes something similar in what his religious friends tell him about experiencing epiphanies in church. But he fears the fanaticism that persuades some believers that they have found the only way to what he calls “this kind of connection with the prime life force.” To him, there are many ways and he acknowledges his own as only one of them. He hope that the church people will say the same.

With disarming frankness, my friend acknowledges not getting epiphanies every time he goes on his Yom Kippur treks. Rather, he sees these manifestations of spirit as something extra and undeserved. “It’s a wonderful bonus when it happens,” he says.

Joe’s experiences sound much like those of other people who take the life of the spirit seriously. Ordinary women and men have epiphanies from time to time but they usually keep them secret; the great mystics of the various spiritual traditions, of course, have become famous for them. It is a mistake to judge such manifestations of something beyond as out of bounds for you personally. To be human is to be eligible to experience hints of the divine.

Those who have written about mystical experience vary greatly in the way they describe it. A woman named Florida Scott-Maxwell, for instance, writing in her old age says this: “Some of it must go beyond good and bad, for at times – -though this comes rarely, unexpectedly – – it is a swelling clarity as though all was resolved. It has no content, it seems to expand us, it does not derive from the body, and then it is gone. It may be a degree of consciousness which lies outside activity, and which when young we are too busy to experience.”

If this sounds vague it is not because the woman is writing about something unreal.  Rather, she is trying to describe the indescribable, something bursting with reality for which words are always going to prove inadequate.

Her experience is of a piece with my friend Joe’s. His epiphanies occur in the mountains amidst the awesome beauty of nature; hers take place in the room where she lives. His rise from a holy day observance in the great Judaic tradition; hers come from daily experience of her later years.

Both sets of epiphanies witness to the presence of spirit in the world and in the lives of human beings.

Richard Griffin

Suppose a group of American Catholics were to organize a campaign targeting Jewish people for conversion to Christianity. Would such a campaign have the approval of the Catholic Church?

Definitely not, according to a new statement issued by a committee of the American Catholic bishops and the National Council of Synagogues. The Catholic side states that such organized efforts at conversion are “no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church.”

This announcement by the two organizations in Washington makes religious history. Yet, despite its importance for two major faiths and perhaps a much larger community, the document has received surprisingly little public attention.

Had the commitment by Catholics not to aim at the conversion of Jews been made at any point before the middle of the last century, it would have astounded everyone. But the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 statements on the Jews scored such a breakthrough that this 2002 announcement may fail to have much impact.

The Vatican II document expressed attitudes toward the Jews that were widely regarded as revolutionary. Measured against the sorry history of Catholic persecution of Jews they certainly were. That history was filled with atrocities whereby, for example, Jews were forced, over and over, to accept conversion or to be exiled from their homeland or even put to death.

In particular the charge that they had killed Christ was hurled against Jews for centuries to justify attacks on them. Tales of Jewish plots to kill Christian children became part of religious folklore and further destroyed respectful relations between the two groups.

Cardinal William Keeler, the bishops’ moderator for Catholic-Jewish relations who co-chaired the discussions leading up to the announcement, explained the current relationship of the two communities. He spoke of an “essential compatibility, along with equally significant differences, between the Christian and Jewish understandings of God’s call to both our peoples to witness to the One God to the world in harmony.”

For his part, Rabbi Gilbert Rosenthal, Executive Director of the National Council of Synagogues, said: “Neither faith believes that we should missionize among the other in order to save souls via conversion.” Rather, he pointed to a new goal, namely “the healing of a sick world and the imperative to repair the damage we humans have caused to God’s creations.”

The new attitudes of the Catholic Church come from what the statement calls “a deepening Catholic appreciation of the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people, together with a recognition of a divinely-given mission to Jews to witness to God’s faithful love.”

If the new view of conversion efforts directed toward Jews were simply a way chosen by the Catholic Church to promote better feeling with the Jewish community, it would lack the punch of this announcement. But the church has gone beyond diplomacy by now branding such efforts as no longer “theologically acceptable.”

This means the church now recognizes Jews as having their own call from God, a call that has never been taken back. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has not changed his mind about having chosen the Jewish people. And they cannot be faulted if they do not accept Jesus as Messiah, the way Christians do.

Despite this striking new sign of progress in the relationship between the two faith communities, the two groups express concern about “the continuing ignorance and caricatures of one another that still prevail in many segments of the Catholic and Jewish communities.”

Another columnist writing about this agreement has made fun of  Catholic leaders taking almost forty years after Vatican II to arrive at the no-conversion statement. She took this as yet another sign of the molasses-like pace of change in the church. And, the leaders who issued the new statement admit that it required them to meet “twice a year for more than two decades,” before they could produce it.

However, large-scale institutional change almost always proves difficult. To reverse deeply ingrained historical attitudes, however perverse, is a complicated business. That a committee of the American Catholic bishops has now officially renounced efforts to bring Jewish communities into the church and even regards such efforts as based on bad theology must be accounted momentous and a spiritual change to be thankful for.

Richard Griffin

Even after a whole year, the images have tremendous power. People in free fall after leaping from the windows of their office. Smoke and soot enveloping city blocks as the great towers burn and fall. Men and women shaking with emotion as they weep for loved ones lost. Steam shovels gathering up huge chunks of debris in their giant mouths. Firemen taking off their helmets in silent salute as the bodies of their comrades are borne past them.

These images remain etched on our souls as we recall the horrific events of September a year ago. Even those of us who did not lose a family member or friend in the catastrophe of the eleventh can feel as if we did. And those of us whose faith in God was shaken by the unspeakable terror of it all continue to grope for meaning.

Terry McGovern, a thirtyish woman who lost her mother in the World Trade Center that day, says “You have to believe there’s something deeper going on, that there’s spiritual life.” As she explains on public television’s “Frontline,” aired last week, she has turned toward the faith she had previously lost.

For her, the death of her mother amidst a scene of terror has restored faith, a return that contrasts with the loss of faith experienced by others. “I want the church’s teaching about the afterlife to be true,” she now says. She needs to believe her mother lives on in a different way.

A man who saw, among the people falling from a thousand feet up, a man and woman hand in hand, finds in that image “the most powerful prayer I can imagine.” As he reflects on this awesome sight he expresses his faith: “It makes me think we’re not fools to believe in God, to believe that love is why we’re here.”

And yet others interviewed for Frontline report the destruction of faith. “If there is a God,” says one man, “he is an indifferent God.” Another sounds despairing: “Our hope was sucked out at Ground Zero.”  Still others, blaming religion for the hatred and the violence, feel bitter at teachings that spawn destruction.

A fireman still retains faith but longs to be in contact with his son: “I wish God had a telephone number,” he says with tears in his eyes. Others are moved to tears as the soprano Renee Fleming sings “Amazing Grace.” She herself confesses having been unable to look at her audience at Ground Zero as she sang, for fear of being overcome with emotion.

As I look back on the terrible events of a year ago, my own faith continues to provide support. The spiritual traditions that have marked my whole life still offer me insight and solace even in the face of unappeasable evil. Though I cannot understand evil’s power over the world, I continue to draw strength from a community of faith.

The gestures that my wife and I made on September 11 last year still seem to me appropriate. We walked to our parish church and joined with others in praying for the victims and their loved ones. We had no answers but felt that sharing a sacred meal made sense. Admittedly, it was an intangible response that could help only spiritually. Still, it was important to us and, we felt, others directly involved might appreciate it too.

If there was ever a time when mere spirit could help, this was it.  We were far from the scene of disaster,  so could do nothing physical. However, we did put ourselves in spiritual contact with brothers and sisters undergoing great travail. There was nothing much that could have been said had we been there. Just being present to them spiritually still seems the most appropriate response to unspeakable tragedy.

The spiritual values that emerged for me a year ago remain central. The precious value of family relationships and those among friends, with special attention to reconciliation among those estranged; the heroism of people called to duty in the most hazardous situations; the primacy of spirit as a response to the mystery of evil.

A woman involved in the dire events says for the television cameras: “I was so materialistic; now I want to be more spiritual.” She has found something valuable that has emerged from the ashes.

Richard Griffin

“Compared to other people, I’ve got it easy.” So says a friend, whom I will call Bill, of a chronic health condition that causes him both pain and embarrassment.

Recently I encountered Bill at noontime when he and I happened both to be out walking. I noticed immediately that he was not looking his best: his face was gray and his expression somewhat strained.

In response to my inquiry, he acknowledged not feeling well that day. His intestinal problems were particularly bothersome. It hurt in a different way that he could not spend time in other people’s homes because of social embarrassment caused by this ailment.

Bill is a deeply spiritual man, as I know from previous contact. He has traveled widely and has lived and worked in other countries. Though he has learned much from this experience the doctors believe that his health problems may have resulted from it.

This encounter marked the first occasion on which Bill had talked openly with me about his health. Usually he cheerfully ignores the subject in conversation, preferring not to focus on matters he regards as private and too intimate for polite exchanges with friends.

Clearly he was feeling oppressed by illness on that particular day, enough so that he broke his usual reticence. For my part, I felt touched by his disclosures and took them as a sign of a growing friendship between us.

As he talked, I noticed how often he repeated the line quoted above: “Compared to other people, I’ve got it easy.”  It became a refrain in his conversation, one that reveals a certain attitude of soul.

It’s obvious to me that Bill does not, in fact, have it easy. His saying so, however, does him credit because it shows a spirit remarkably free of self-centeredness. Pain can easily narrow our outlook on the world and make us turn toward self as the only reality. “Why me?” we ask as if it’s all right for others to suffer but surely not for me to undergo the same fate.

The refrain about other people’s suffering being worse than his also reveals to me an attitude of compassion. He knows first hand about the problems of other people, having served as a counselor to many in the Boston area. He also has observed the conditions under which people in other parts of the world live and knows first-hand the afflictions many of them have to endure.

So he resists the ever-present temptation to self-pity by calling to mind the sufferings of others. He does not feel himself alone in coping with health problems that can perhaps be soothed but not cured. This perspective enables him to accept the physical pains that go along with the human condition.

On several occasions in church, I have noticed Bill absorbed in prayer. His hands folded and his face set in recollection, he kneels in silent attention to God. Of course I have no idea what he is praying about. But I wonder if he is not committing his ongoing health problems to the divine healer, asking for strength to accept his situation.

Though suffering is not desirable in itself, it can serve as a reminder that our life is more than it appears to be. Pain can rouse us out of our complacency and make it impossible to go on thinking of life as assured. I like to think that God hates pain even more than we do, but still God allows the mystery of evil to mark our lives.

When it comes to facing pain, one of my friends calls himself a “devout coward.” That inglorious description also applies to me. But, like Bill, I find it important not to see my own pain in isolation. In times marked by suffering, as in times of gratification, we belong to the human community.

I hope Bill finds relief from his pain and deliverance from those aspects of his condition that make it hard for him to visit the homes of his friends. However, such relief and deliverance cannot ever be assured. Whatever happens, I will continue to regard his perspective –  –  appreciating the suffering of others and seeing his own in that light –  – as a precious spiritual gift.

Richard Griffin

The researcher felt nervous about the request he was about to make of the nuns. Though David Snowdon had become well acquainted with these School Sisters of Notre Dame and counted many of them as friends, what he was now asking of them went beyond anything he had asked them to do previously. He wanted them to donate their brains to his scientific study.

Speaking in 1990 to the first group in Mankato, Minnesota, Dr. Snowdon explained the nature of Alzheimer’s disease and described his research plan. If they agreed to take part, the sisters would have a series of physical and mental tests each year. They would also donate their brains after they died.

In his book, Aging With Grace, published last year, Dr. Snowden shares some of the reactions of the nuns faced with this request. At first there was dead silence but gradually the sisters began to speak.

One of them, Sister Clarissa, said “Well of course he can have my brain. What good is it going to do me when I’m six feet under?”

Another, 95-year-old Sister Borgia, posed a question: “He is asking for our help. How can we say no?”

Of this first group, 90 percent of the eligible sisters in the Minnesota convent agreed to the request. By the time Dr. Snowdon made his presentation to the sisters living in other states, an astounding 678 had pledged to make the same gift.

The obstacles expected by one member of Dr. Snowdon’s scientific team proved surprisingly weak. This medical researcher, David Wekstein, had agreed about nuns being more altruistic than the average person but he thought they might still not want to donate their brains. “The brain is not like other organs,” he said. “People think of it as who they are–it contains their identity. It’s loaded with meaning–personal, emotional, spiritual.”

Dr. Wekstein was right about a few of the nuns: one explained her rationale for not donating by saying “I must return to God the way I came.”

Several others would have faced trouble from their families who objected to brain donation.

But the great majority of the nuns felt motivated by spiritual reasons to give this precious part of their body for love of God and neighbor.

Sister Rita Schwalbe undoubtedly expressed the attitude of many when she explained: “As sisters, we made the hard choice not to have children. Through brain donation, we can help unravel the mysteries of Alzheimer’s disease and give the gift of life in a new way to future generations.”

Yet these words should not make one think the commitment was prompt and easy for all of the sisters who made this choice. Dr. Snowdon was impressed with the “intense thought and prayer” that went into the decisions.

Dr. Snowdon quotes from a few sisters about how they made their choice to donate, words that emphasize their belief in life transformed after death.

“It is the spirit that is important after death, not the brain,” one said. Another shared her faith: “At the resurrection, I believe our bodies will be glorified and perfect. We will have no illness and no physical defects. Resurrection does not depend on how our bodies are in the grave.”

A key concept that helped motivate the sisters who agreed on making the gift of their brains was the spiritual idea of charism. They understand it as “a gift of the Spirit given to an individual for the good of all.”

Sister Gabriel Mary explained it further: “Each sister carries the charism with her as she devotes her life to others. It’s the spirit of our congregation.”

And Sister Rita stressed that this charism motivated them to work with the poor and powerless. “Who’s more powerless,” she asked, “than someone with Alzheimer’s disease?”

The farsightedness of these sisters and their generosity suggests a deep spiritual life. Indeed most people do feel wary of giving away their brains even after they have no more use for them. But these women live their whole lives with eyes directed toward the ultimate reality of God and the service of their fellow human beings. The brave decision to make a gift of their brains gives dramatic expression to their love of God and neighbor.                    

Richard Griffin

“There comes a level of prayer where it is no longer a question of ‘are you seeing something?’ but ‘are you aware of being seen?’ – if you like, sitting in the light and of just being and becoming who you really are.”

This talk about prayer comes from Rowan Williams who has just been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important position in the Anglican Church. He made these remarks in an interview first appearing in an Australian church publication, and later reprinted in The Tablet, a Catholic weekly from London.

To hear an archbishop talk about prayer is, strangely enough, unusual. Most prelates of that rank, it seems, focus in their public statements more on issues of public policy than on the spiritual life. But this Welshman, who will soon bear responsibility for the Church of England as its chief bishop, gives top priority to his own relationship to God and his search for the spirit in all that he does.

Rowan Williams, in addition to his spiritual orientation, is a practical man with domestic responsibilities. As a married man with young children, he is concerned each morning about getting them ready for school and giving them some personal time. But he still manages to fit in about a half an hour of prayer each morning using a formula popular among Eastern Orthodox Christians.

This is the so-called Jesus Prayer that goes: “O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” The archbishop uses a prayer rope favored by Eastern monks and featuring 100 knots at each one of which a person says this prayer.

Rowan Williams describes the effect of this prayer as follows: “By repeating the Jesus Prayer the mind is stilled and the heartbeat and the breath slow down, and you become more present to the place you are in. It’s really an anchorage in time.” So he experiences the effect of that ritual on both his soul and also his body.

This kind of prayer is obviously active as one recites the same formula over and over. However, it also has the power to transport a person into a new awareness of the divine presence. Much like the rosary, it fixes the mind on holy persons and events while allowing a freedom to just be present.

Archbishop Williams loves the writings of St. John of the Cross and finds much inspiration in them. Following this Spanish mystic, he takes pains to distinguish between prayer and feelings, in words that many people who want to pray may find helpful:

“You may be feeling terrible and God may be active; you maybe feeling nothing in particular, but God may be very active; you maybe feeling wonderful, and that may have nothing at all to do with God’s doing.”

The archbishop also favors a simple rule for prayer that he quotes from a former abbot of the English monastery, Downside: “Pray as you can and don’t try to pray as you can’t.” Keeping to this advice could save some people a lot of frustration. It’s almost like saying: all you have to do is follow your own instincts.

This man of prayer wants to avoid complication. Instead he favors simplification of the heart whereby “we simply become what we are and just sit there being a creature in the hand of God.” Just dwelling on God having us in his hand could be enough to sustain a beautifully simple prayer that might carry us through a entire period set aside for spiritual quiet.

It’s not about me, it’s about God: this is a sentiment about prayer that the archbishop might approve. If you feel lost when praying, that’s something probably shared by many other people. As the archbishop says, “Being out of your depth seems to be very basic to what’s going on in the sense that in prayer you cannot contain what is given.”

It sounds easy enough, simplicity in prayer, but it takes a kind of spiritual maturity to put this approach into practice. “Don’t just do something, stand there,” was ironic advice popular in the 1960’s. In the light of  Archbishop Williams’ habits of prayer, standing there (or sitting or kneeling) becomes a way of being in contact with God and growing in the life of the spirit.

Richard Griffin