Great works of art touch the human spirit. That truth came home to me once again recently when I revisited one of the most beautiful masterworks of late medieval art.

This series of tapestries, dating from the end of the 15th century, bears the name “The Lady and the Unicorn” and is displayed in the Cluny Museum in Paris. The names of the artists who designed and then wove these six tapestries are unknown but they are thought to be from Flanders and Paris itself.

Rediscovered in 1883, they had to be restored because of serious damage to both figures and colors. Now, thanks to modern scientific methods of repair, they have emerged in something like their original glory.

An overall description of the tapestries comes from the museum: “A Lady, flanked by a lion and a unicorn, is depicted on a dark-blue ‘isle’ set against a contrasting red or pink flower-strewn background; each of the activities she is involved in symbolizes one of the five senses.”

But this prose description does not do justice to the charm and brilliance of each tapestry. The lady is gracious, dressed in long flowing robes and with a different headdress in each of the six pieces. In each, she is flanked by a friendly lion on her left and an attentive unicorn on her right. The latter’s single horn juts up from his head, tall and sharp.

About these scenes, the museum handout comments: “The slender silhouettes of these Ladies emanate a dreamlike grace and an elegance that lead us into an imaginary world inhabited by the beauty of mysterious women and unicorns.”

As noted above, each of five tapestries symbolizes one of the senses. The first, sight, is shown by the unicorn looking at himself in a mirror that the lady holds before his face. Hearing is portrayed by the lady playing a portable organ, much to the delight of her handmaiden and the animals.

The sense of taste is dramatized by the lady reaching out for a sugared almond that is held out to her in a parrot’s beak, and another in a monkey’s mouth. For smell, the lady fashions a necklace of violets while a monkey holds a flower to the lady’s nose. Finally, touch is seen as the lady grasps the horn of the unicorn with her left hand.

The sixth tapestry mysteriously delivers the main message of the work. The lady appears, putting the necklace back into the jewel case. The museum explains this action thus: “With this gesture of renunciation, she asserts her ‘sole desire’ or her refusal to capitulate to the passions aroused by inordinate senses.”

Thus love is revealed as the greatest value in human life. For the woman love is “mon seul desir” (my only wish) according to the words inscribed in the sixth and final tapestry. The life of the senses cannot bring ultimate satisfaction; only love can.

Adding to my pleasure in contemplating these classic tapestries, a group of some 15 French school children entered the display room. At the bidding of their teacher, these six or seven year old urchins sat down on the floor in front of the artworks. As they looked on, a woman instructor directed their attention to various features of the tapestries and carried on a dialogue with them. They asked questions about the animals and listened with interest to information designed to raise their consciousness of the beauty before them. I felt some envy of these boys and girls getting off to such a fast start in appreciation of fine art.

Admittedly, words can never really describe highly creative works of the imagination. Those wishing a more vivid appreciation of what is described here can see for themselves pictures of the tapestries on the Internet or, of course, in many books devoted to French art. Using the search engine Google, I typed in “Lady and the Unicorn” and gained access to pictures of all six tapestries, plus information about them.

It would do violence to this masterwork of centuries past if I overemphasized its moral. Its overall beauty of conception and execution ultimately count for more. However, in stressing human love as a greater value than indulgence of the senses, it does remind viewers of a spiritual truth of supreme importance.

Richard Griffin

The cathedral of Notre Dame in Rheims is one of the most imposing in all of France, a country with many great churches. When you walk through the city streets, as I did recently, and turn the corner, it looms up before you in all the magnificence of its medieval Gothic architecture. A great façade with three portals leads the eye upward; more than 2300 stone statues adorn the church’s exterior, exhibiting figures and events from sacred history.

Inside, the height of the nave and its beautiful proportions lend a sense of awe to people who enter it. To walk around this interior space is to experience wonder at the artistry of architects and other artists who raised this building some eight centuries ago and have worked on the structure throughout its long history.

For boosting the spiritual life, sacred spaces play a vital role. Almost everyone needs contact with such spaces from time to time if the soul is to flourish. In order to appreciate the mystery of our world you must have the lift that comes from encounters with space that is out of the ordinary.

Three features of Notre Dame Cathedral stirred my soul and continue to provide me with inspiration in succeeding weeks. The first, already implied, is the way the interior space soars toward the heavens. Not only are one’s eyes drawn upward by the building’s sight lines, but one’s spirit too is lifted up toward God.

Of course, modern people do not believe that God lives up beyond the skies. However, we still associate both height and depth with the mystery of divine being. God is sublime, and spectacular movement upward can carry minds and hearts toward divinity. At least it works that way for me, especially when I enter a great high-vaulted church.

The second feature of this cathedral that moved me is surprisingly recent. In 1974, the great artist Marc Chagall designed blue stained-glass windows for the chapel at the east end of the building. Three sets of windows display figures from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, brought together in a surprising unity.

A striking fact is that Chagall was Jewish, and that the traditions of his faith were vividly alive to him. Working on art for a Christian cathedral, he illuminates and renews, in his own characteristic style, the great themes of Christian iconography, making us newly aware of their Jewishness.

Chagall’s medieval predecessors were well aware of the Hebrew Bible, and used its stories to foreshadow New Testament events. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac prefigures the death of Jesus on the cross. The tree of Jesse, the father of King David, shows the forebears of Jesus.

Chagall treats these themes as well, but in a new way. The characters from the Hebrew Bible are not mere prototypes, but shine forth in their own right. At the same time, the artist treats New Testament figures with great sympathy. His tender radiant imaged of Jesus and Mary recall the spirit of medieval sculptors who adorned the portals of Rheims Cathedral with smiling angels and saints. The whole enterprise strikes me as a bold, innovative gesture toward reconciliation between the Jewish and Christian traditions.

Reconciliation is also the theme of the third feature that attracted my attention. Outside the front of the cathedral, a stone plaque is set in the pavement with words of great historical importance. On the plaque are engraved words that give the date and the exact hour and minute when two leaders with vision came together to establish lasting peace.

Konrad Adenauer, then the aged chancellor of West Germany, and Charles de Gaulle, the heroic president of France, celebrated that day in 1962 the coming together of their two nations after almost a century of destructive bitterness. When you recall the three terrible wars fought by the two nations in 1870, 1914, and 1939, the sealing of peace and friendship with a Mass at the Cathedral in Rheims has to be seen as a great moment.

This cathedral is indeed a sacred space, important for the life of the spirit. There three important human works – –  the soaring height of the interior, the brilliant blue windows of Chagall, and the reconciliation of two former enemy nations – – summon us to a more realized inner life.

Richard Griffin

An adult grandson’s account of his 91-year-old grandfather’s death stirs reflection on vital issues both human and spiritual. So do the words of another of the man’s grandsons, spoken at his funeral.

The older man, André, had been to Mass that Sunday at his parish church in Ottawa, as was his custom. On the way home, he felt weak and dizzy and required assistance walking from a fellow parishioner.

The grandson, Tony, and his wife arrived at the grandfather’s house in time to help him up the stairs and get him settled in his favorite chair. Soon, however, the need for medical attention became apparent so Tony called for an ambulance. By the time he reached the hospital, André had grown sicker and he soon lapsed into semi-consciousness.

A few hours later, with his wife, two grandsons, other family members and a close friend at his side, André died.

About this event, Tony wrote: “I can tell you that my grandfather died .   .   .   .  fully himself until only a few short hours before his death. At 91, he was barely diminished. He had time to receive the sacrament of the sick. I believe he knew what was happening, and that the rite filled him with peace and calm.”

At André’s funeral, another grandson, Marc spoke in tribute to his grandfather. Speaking for his three brothers and himself, he called it a privilege for them to have been close to André their whole lives.

That closeness counted for a lot because “he showed us what was important and necessary for a good life.” Yet he did so by communicating his message with a delicate touch : “He persuaded, he charmed, he entertained, and he led by example.”

Marc then went on to mention some of the lessons taught by his grandfather. They are filled with practical wisdom along with the wit and playfulness that characterized the man. Not only was he a man of considerable learning but he was a citizen of the world, a survivor of the terrible world war that devastated his native Poland and its people.

Here is a sample of André’s rules of thumb as remembered by his grandson:

• Have faith – seek to do God’s will and no matter how bad you think things are, never give up.
• Wear a beret – it will give you panache.
• If you are married, cultivate a sense of humor.
• If you are a man, seek to marry a strong-willed and intelligent woman.
• Believe in God’s grace – it is freely given and will save your life – more than once.
• Watch television – especially news and sports. If you are adventurous, you will read at the same time as you watch television.
• Put love in all its forms above all other human achievements – no matter how smart you are, not matter how much wealth or power you possess, no matter how handsome or beautiful you may be. If you cannot love and be loved by others, you will feel empty and life itself may be a curse.
• Develop your mind. In the great chain of being it is our mind that raises us above the animals and brings us closer to God.
• Love your country and learn its history.
• Go to the movies. They are more than passing entertainment; at their best they can educate and elevate the human spirit.

This imperative about going to the movies takes on special force when one discovers that André, on the night before he died, watched one of his favorite films, the great French classic “The Grand Illusion.” He brought to the viewing of films a sophisticated knowledge of cinematography, movie history, and the many subtle ways in which the medium creates meaning.

The details provided here, especially the spirit evident in his rules, indicate something of this man’s legacy. Too often, legacy is understood to mean only money. Its deeper meaning, however, describes the impact of a person’s whole life. At a person’s death, family members, friends, colleagues, and others come to recognize how his or her presence has changed their world.

Thus this legacy is revealed as the spirit of the person, something precious left behind. If André’s legacy, brought to a fine point over a long life, was rich in spirit, so is that of other people. Their passing on to another world gives us the opportunity to value their legacy and to allow our own lives to be molded by it.

Richard Griffin

“Every person we have ever known, every place we have ever seen, everything that has ever happened to us – it all lives and breathes deep within us somewhere whether we like it or not, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to bring it back to the surface in bits and pieces.”

These words, written by novelist and spiritual writer Frederick Buechner, ring true in me and, I suspect, in many other people as well. We are truly a reservoir of more experiences than we can count. By the time we have reached adulthood, thousands of them have registered on our psyches, leaving traces that enrich our lives.

If you have already arrived to at least the beginnings of old age, by this time you have accumulated even more of these experiences, more than you can imagine. They form a vast storehouse of happenings from which you can draw for the sake of reminiscence and for other purposes. Of course, some lie too deep for recall except, sometimes, under extraordinary circumstances.

My own earliest memories of people tend toward my maternal grandmother. She was the first significant old person in my life, though probably, with a child’s eye, I made her much older than she really was. She seemed to me the embodiment of kindness and love, as she spoiled me with affection, cookies and late bedtimes.

Two specific images stand out: Grandmother Barry sitting peacefully in her rocking chair by the window reading her daily prayers out of a small book; and sending me down the front stairs to the porch to pick up the Salem (MA) Evening News, and asking me when I returned upstairs, “Who’s dead?”

This question at first seemed a bit morbid to me but I later came to see it as an expression of deep interest in the other people of her own time and place. Other impressions have stayed with me: my grandmother’s keeping the temperature in her house boiling hot; her taste in radio programs such as “Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour” and “Mr. Keen: Tracer of Lost Persons;” her monthly walks to Peabody Square to collect rents from sometimes foot-dragging tenants, – these and many other memories of this beloved person in my early life continue to be readily available.

About one of the places where I once lived as an adult, I have more complicated memories. St. Beuno’s College, near the town of St. Asaph in northern Wales, boasted a beautiful setting. Mt. Snowdon loomed in the far distant west; the Irish Sea could be discerned miles to the north, and the river Clywd lay almost at my feet. Images of this place have stayed vivid in my head over the decades since I left Wales.

These images of natural beauty, however, remain troubled by memories of feeling cut off from home and from friends. It proved the longest year of my life, largely because of this oppressive sense of isolation. I also came to reject many of the values held by my teachers there, and the discipline they imposed on my colleagues and me.

Among the valued happenings in my life that have remained most readily accessible, the birth of my daughter easily finishes first. It was an event that provoked in me emotions that normally do not go together. Feeling intense joy and yet pity and fear at the same time was something new in my experience and this set of feelings continues its imprint on my soul. This birth has left me with ongoing motive for wonder at the mystery of human life and thanksgiving for having been given a daughter to cherish.

Birth, of course, is a gift that goes on giving as the infant becomes a child and, in time, an adult. Looking back at the beginning of it all, I still feel awe at the birth and the later growth and development.

Persons, places, events – we all have them and, brought back, they have power to nourish our spirit. Though often mixed with painful elements, these parts of our past offer a rich agenda for spiritual reflection. I find myself returning often to the three sets of memories in my life noted here and find in them part of who I have become. They seem to me filled with meaning relevant to my ongoing quest for light and fulfillment.

Richard Griffin

A hospital near Chicago is the site of unusual, if not unique, activity intended to enhance the spirituality of its employees. Under the direction of two chaplains, Rod Accardi and Karen Pugliese, staff members of Central DuPage Health in the city of Winfield, Illinois, are engaged in an ongoing quest for deeper meaning in their lives. That this is happening in their workplace, rather than in church or at home, offers reason for surprise and deserves inquiry.

The two chaplains recently spoke about their ministry, known as the “Silent Lamp Program.” This title derives from Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk whose writings have inspired countless seekers. Of this spiritual leader the program directors say: “Silence was the ‘place’ where he achieved or received his own enlightenment. There he discovered the darkness of his own mystery and, struggling with that darkness, experienced his own mystery merging into the luminous mystery of God.”

The Silent Lamp program does not aim directly at the hospital’s patients but rather at those who serve them, either directly or indirectly. If staff members can become spiritual resources at work, the reasoning goes, then they may have an indirect healing influence on patients. In any event, staff members who have discovered a deeper spiritual life will change the atmosphere in the institution, making it a more effective healing community.

At least, this expectation gives shape to the central idea behind the program. As the formal vision statement says: “With spiritual care centered around you, all who encounter Central DuPage Health experience spiritual nourishment and strength for the ongoing journey to optimal health and well-being.”

Mind you, this is not a hospital run by a religious organization. The institution is secular and yet, it appreciates the value of spirituality enough to endorse these activities on company time, five hours each month for six months. Thus one finds nurses, secretaries, physical therapists and others, involved in prayer and spiritual reading in group and individual sessions that take place during the workday.

The program directors understand spirituality as “the search for and expression of connection with a higher power that resides both far beyond and deep within each one of us.” They also have adopted a simpler notion of this term: “Spirituality is about meaning, direction, and purpose to life.”

Another aim of this program is to help people develop skills enabling them to become a “spiritual resource for others.” Staff members are reminded from the beginning that spirituality is not just for themselves but serves the needs of other members of the community as well.

To prepare themselves as resources for others, staff members learn how to accomplish the following four purposes:

1. Understand oneself as a spiritual person.
2. Accompany and listen to others on their spiritual journey.
3. Discern the spiritual significance of shared stories.
4. Link others to spiritual resources.

Program directors set for themselves the goal of increasing in staff members the capacity for compassion and hope. To accomplish this, the chaplains use an ancient monastic approach to spiritual life, namely lectio divina, or sacred reading. This practice relies on a text from the Bible or another revered source which people listen to with reverence. The word becomes a base for contemplation for oneself and for insights that can be shared with others.

The program also includes music conducive to developing a meditative mood. Some of the songs have been composed by Chaplain Accardi and others chosen from other sources. The music also helps to unify the experience of learning that has occurred.

Sharing meals is another important ingredient to the process of spiritual formation. By sitting down with one another at the table, participants can better exchange spiritual issues and insights. This common meal also builds community and tends to draw forth stories of spiritual significance.

In addition, participants receive individual supervisory sessions at which they can discuss their experience with a trusted and skilled advisor.

With this kind of spiritual care, some experience of “spiritual nourishment and strength for the ongoing journey to optimal health and well-being” can rub off on the whole hospital community.

Asked to evaluate the program, one staff member said, “It helped me listen to others and offer direction by holding out a lamp to light their way.”

Another responded to the question of what he or she liked best: “The opportunity to reflect, learn, have the organization in effect grant us permission to be a awake and aware in the workplace.”

Richard Griffin

“We are children who must wrestle with the divine,” says Benjamin Isaac Rapoport, a young man from New York City who is about to graduate from college. He is speaking of people who share his Jewish tradition of faith in the God of Jacob, the Jacob who was a contestant in what Ben calls “the most famous wrestling match in history.”

That match finds vivid description in the 32nd chapter of Genesis. Jacob wrestled all through the night until daybreak with a mysterious man who “did not prevail against Jacob.” But the man did manage to put Jacob’s hip out of its socket, making him walk with a limp thereafter.

Jacob would not let go until the man gave him a blessing. In doing so, his adversary changed Jacob’s name to Israel, a word meaning “the one who strives with God.”

Benjamin Rapoport takes the intellectual life seriously and, in an effort to establish a rational foundation for his faith in God, he read the great French philosopher Descartes. The latter’s proof for the existence of God felt empty to this young scholar: the philosopher’s perfect being was not what Ben meant when he thought of God.

Then, turning to the British philosopher David Hume, Ben discovered causality as the key concept for the seeker of God. “No one believes that we live in a causeless universe,” Ben explains. “Everyone goes to bed believing that the rules of the universe will be the same the next morning.”

This college senior believes that “the orderliness of the universe is close to God Himself. God is the source of all the rules and thus of all the answers.”

So asking the questions becomes the way of engaging God. It may make dealing with God a struggle but, when you discover answers you know that you have received something precious. “To know an answer,” Ben announces, “is to acquire a piece of God.”

He compares human beings to blind spiders spinning webs in a forest. When you walk in the woods early in the morning, you see the forest sparkle and webs shine with light. “If we run into a new leaf or branch,” he explains, “we can extend the web of what we know. But the web itself is almost invisible and is certainly insignificant compared with the rest of the forest.”

Ben goes on to talk about what it means to be young. Youth is the time when “what is known sparkles.” It is the season of life for finding out “what no one else has seen.” And, finally, this idealistic seeker adds: “Being young also means that ordinary is not part of your vocabulary.”

Returning to an earlier theme, Ben proclaims that “part of the divine struggle is to resist ordinariness.”

For this young man so committed to the struggle, faith means “that my questions have answers.” And it makes intellectual inquiry a holy activity. The word “shalem” means “whole” or “complete” or “a healed person.” Jacob, by daring to struggle with the divine became whole, healed, strengthened.

This is some of what Benjamin Rapoport said in explaining his faith to a group of adults gathered before a Sunday church service. In response, members of the audience asked questions and offered comments.

Karen Armstrong, whose books about religion have found attracted many readers, commented about the power of the Jewish faith. “One of the things that attracted me,” she said, “were the endless questions.” To her, the lack of final answers remains part of Judaism’s genius.

Diana Eck, a scholar of world religions, observed that “the messiness of faith comes in interpersonal issues.” She sees the world as fractured, needing repair. “Something is broken, it’s our job to fix it,” she said.

If I had any quarrel with this brilliant presentation, it came as Ben talked about youth. Would that in reality the “ordinary” forms no part of young people’s thinking! I am acquainted with too many of them ever to imagine this is true.

I also insist that people who have advanced to mature years and old age can also carry on the search for reality. They, too, can break out of the ordinary, ask questions, and discover answers. In fact, I like to think of searching for God as an activity shared by young and old that can bring us closer together.

Richard Griffin

“I honestly believe I’m being led by faith,” says Ruby Bridges Hall of her current work. As an adult she travels around the country teaching children and others about the evils of racial prejudice.

She discovered her vocation through prayer. “I went into my prayer closet and asked the Lord, ‘Show me,’ and then things started to fall in place,” she explained to a large crowd of adults, college students, and children gathered one evening last week in the Harvard University Church.

This is the same person who, as a child only six years old, became famous across America when she entered the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, the first African American child to attend that school.  On that day, November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges and her mother were escorted by four federal marshals past a crowd of white people shouting angry threats at Ruby, spewing hatred and promising violent death for the child.

Of that experience almost half a century ago, she now says, “No one talked about it,” in the years when she was growing up. Only when she was 19 did she start to realize what her own history meant. After looking at the famous painting of Norman Rockwell that showed her walking toward school she grasped the significance of the events that she had lived through as a child.

Now a woman approaching 50 years of age, she knows herself to be on the right path. “I believe I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” she affirms confidently. But it was not easy discovering what to do. “I went through a hard time, trying to figure it out,” she confesses.

A charming woman, her head adorned with a stylish turban, she smiles often as she interacts with the audience. She speaks with simple eloquence, holding listeners rapt in attention as she shares her vision of what the human community should be.

“I never judge anyone by the color of their skin,” this current day prophet proclaims. Despite her childhood experience of hatred, she also received love from a woman crucially important to her. This person was Mrs. Henry, a white woman from Boston, who became her teacher when Ruby was six and received her warmly. Of this formative person in her life, Ruby says: “Mrs. Henry took me into her heart, not just her classroom.”

Ruby Bridges Hall now has four sons, three of them old enough for military service, and she hopes they will be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by their character. “I believe it’s time to get past our individual differences, for our children,” she states. In her view, it is extremely dangerous to teach children to trust only people like them.

Racism is her number one enemy. She calls it a form of hate, a disease. “Let’s stop using our children to spread it,” she pleads.

“Every little baby born in the hospital arrives with a clean heart,” she observes, and a fresh start. But they begin to think they are better than someone else.”

To watch Ruby Bridges Hall answer questions from small children after her talk was affecting indeed. Some of these kids first learned about her from Dr. Robert Coles’ book “The Story of Ruby Bridges” which explains to young readers the heroism of the child and her parents.

Her gentle manner and respectful attention to each questioner commended her message further. She is clearly a person who has developed spiritual depth after being tried in the fire of hatred at a young age.

It remains important for her not to hate those who have hated her; instead she reaches out to them with forgiveness. In response to a question, she told of feeling enmity, in recent years, toward one person. Ruby’s husband noticed the problem and told her: “You really need to pray.” She did so and, finally, she was able to extend her hand in friendship to that person: “I knew then that I was set free.”

That action speaks eloquently about the kind of person Ruby Bridges Hall is. One can only hope that her message of peace and love takes firmer hold in the hearts of her listeners. “It has to come from the inside,” she says of the change necessary to overcome the barriers built up by human prejudice

Richard Griffin