An ancient rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day was on its way back.

“Could it be,” asked one student, “when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?”

“It is when you look on the face of any woman or man and see that she or he is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot do this then no matter what time it is, it is still night.”

This simple story with its clearsightedness gives expression to true religion as understood by the great spiritual traditions of the world. They agree on a spiritual ideal that is uncomplicated: all you have to do is to identify with your fellow human beings and treat them as other selves.

Religious leaders at their best agree that, beyond all rules and regulations, the most important single element is love. In fact, that is how those rules and regulations get their meaning. All you have to do is love.

Of course a certain irony lies hidden in the phrase “all you have to do.” In practice, loving other people as ourselves turns out to be a formidable challenge demanding a lifetime’s self discipline.

The writer and Boston University professor Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Prize for peace, recently told an interviewer how much stories like the one told here about the ancient rabbi have meant to him. Perhaps he has drawn inspiration from this story in particular. Certainly, the title of his autobiographical novel, “Night,” starkly expresses some of the same meaning.

This book is based on Wiesel’s experiences as a boy in three Nazi death camps where he saw his fellow Jews, including members of his own family, put to humiliating and agonizing deaths. Such savagery toward fellow human beings truly did spread night across whole nations during those years of Holocaust.

Wiesel’s encounter with absolute evil shook his faith in human beings and destroyed all belief in God. For years afterward, he struggled painfully to find his way through the darkness of profound despair about humanity and its prospects.

That many people do manage to love others can give us hope in what often seems like a hopeless world. Taking a broad view of the human family, one philosopher who used to teach at Dartmouth College, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, saw the issue this way:

“The history of the human race is written on a single theme: how does love become stronger than death? The composition is recomposed in each generation by those whose love overcomes murdering and dying. So history becomes one great song.  .  . As often as the lines rhyme, love has once again become stronger than death. This rhyming, this connecting is men’s and women’s function on earth.”

Against all expectation, the last years of the twentieth century have providentially brought the people of some nations from darkness toward the light. Moves toward reconciliation among the residents of Northern Ireland, for example, have cheered those of us who desire for large national communities something like the fraternal love we want individuals to have.

Similarly, the demise of apartheid in South Africa has brought citizens, of various skin colors and ethnicities closer to a society based on respect for basic human rights. Many people look forward to the day when the people of Israel and Palestine act as brothers and sisters toward one another.

In recent weeks, the astonishing move toward undoing hostilities between the two Koreas, North and South, has encouraged the peace lovers of the world. One can now hope that these two peoples will become true friends.

If love is true enlightenment, as the story we began with suggests, then love serves as the goal of the spiritual life. Being able to see that other people are brother and sister to us stands as the best single indication that we are advancing on the right path toward God and spirit. Then, for us, as the old hymn says, morning has broken.  

Richard Griffin

My old friend George was in the rehabilitation hospital, I had been told. He was there to recover from recent surgery and would therefore not be present at the assisted care community where he has lived for the last two years. That meant George would not be there for talk I was asked to give at the residence in honor of Father’s Day.

So I decided to visit George at the hospital. There I found him looking well and in remarkably good spirits for a person in his middle eighties who had just endured major surgery. As he explained it, he had fallen and fractured his femur, the thigh bone that bears much of a person’s weight. Now he was anticipating the physical therapy needed to get him walking again.

George expressed much pleasure at my having come to see him. In conversation, I reported on some mutual friends whom neither of us had seen for a long time but with whom I had enjoyed a reunion the previous weekend. Back in 1972, George and I had concelebrated their wedding, an event that he has always loved to recall.

George is a distinguished scholar who held the oldest professorship of theology in the United States, the Hollis Chair of Divinity at Harvard University. As a leading Protestant religious historian, he had been an official observer at the Second Vatican Council (1963-65), an event that initiated profound changes in the Catholic Church and, in fact, in other Christian churches as well.

Now in physical decline, as he himself acknowledges, George continues to be vitally interested in religious issues and loves to talk about such matters. In recent months he completed the last major work of his career, a long history of divinity at Harvard, a manuscript that has not yet been published.

My visit with this colleague of many years standing passed quickly because we found so much to talk about. It also helped that, despite his physical crisis, George was not fixated on his own needs but took pains to make me feel welcome. When his dinner was served, I took the initiative and stood up to leave.

As parting words I promised George that he would be in my thoughts and prayers. When he heard this last word, he asked if I would pray with him there and then. So we clasped hands, and I asked God for a blessing upon our friendship and especially upon George. We prayed for healing and for the well being of George’s wife who lives in the same assisted care community.

In leaving his bedside, I felt myself to have been blessed. I had arrived unaware that my visit would be a source of grace for me. Through receiving me so warmly and by placing our visit in an explicitly spiritual setting, George had helped me to draw much value from this experience.

The Christian Church has traditionally listed visiting the sick as one of the seven “corporal works of mercy.” These actions are seen as part of the spiritual person’s response to other people when they find themselves vulnerable. Anyone who is sick or hungry or homeless needs the support of others because they are in crisis.

This approach to the needy has a solid foundation in the Bible. In texts such as Isaiah 58: 6 –1 0 and Matthew 25: 34 – 40, God identifies himself with those who have basic human needs. When we reach out in these situations, the tradition says, we touch not only our brother or sister but the Lord hmself.

The beauty of my visit with George is that each of us turned out to be both giver and receiver. To his credit, George did not remain passive, open simply to receive my sympathy and concern. He accepted these gifts from me but he himself gave me much value, too. Perhaps he had the vision to see me also as a needy person, one who lacks the spiritual insight that I must have to live a full life.

So the visit resulted in an exchange of gifts that seemed to buoy up both of us. I walked out of the hospital that day with my morale high. To quote lines from the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, “So great my happiness / That I was blessed .  .  . and could bless.”

Richard Griffin

Our astronomer friend, Fred, told how he had photographed a cluster of some hundred thousand stars the previous night. Using a thirty-two inch telescope, he had taken photos and then examined the images on a computer. It added up to a spectacle that dazzled this friend so accustomed to looking at the sky professionally.

As he recounted this experience the next morning to some thirty of us gathered for a reunion, Fred’s voice broke with emotion. He spoke of what we all meant to him, people that had remained close to his heart for over thirty years despite his not having seen some of us for that long a time.

Over the past two years, Fred has been struggling with a life-threatening disease that had escaped diagnosis and even now is not amenable to treatment. It has made for a time full of anxiety for him and his wife as they face an uncertain future. But their spirituality has fortified them in this struggle and given them the courage to provide for one another and their two teenage children.

We were gathered together for the most expressive event in our informal weekend reunion, a Eucharistic celebration in the backyard led by one of our number, a Franciscan priest. As the birds sang lustily on the trees overhead, we joined our voices to theirs in praise of God, thanksgiving for God’s gifts, and petition for our many needs.

When it came time for individuals to say what the reunion had meant to them, Fred drew on his experience of the heavens and said to us all, “You are my star cluster.” For a moment he found it impossible to go on but, when he regained composure, he assured us all that we are crucial to him in the most difficult time of crisis he has ever faced.

The liturgy we were celebrating was the feast of Pentecost, the time when the church was born and when the first Christians, though they came from many different parts of the world, all heard the Spirit speaking in their own tongue. This outpouring of the Holy Spirit struck us all as appropriate to our situation.

Many of us, as noted, had not seen one another for three decades. We had scattered far and wide since the graduate school days when we were last together. Some of our spouses, our children, and others had not been part of the original friends and were thus meeting the core group for the first time.

The liturgy revealed even more clearly than we had sensed previously that the bond among us still held strong. We cared about one another perhaps even more than we had dared think. And, though acting without the mighty wind and other signs of the first Pentecost, we were clearly bound together into a single community.

In response to the readings from Scripture, we all sang “Ubi Caritas and Amor, Deus Ibi Est,” (“Where charity and love are, there God is.”) And when we exchanged the kiss of peace with one another, the fervor of feeling was evident. Ever the scientist, Fred announced a rapid calculation: we had just exchanged 551 hugs among us!

In this one event of liturgical celebration, we were able at one and the same time to confirm that our community of friends was still bound together in affection and spiritual intimacy, and to extend those bonds further. We felt ourselves to have sealed friendships and could come away from the experience with memories that would last.

So we have returned from this reunion in Poughkeepsie, New York with new inspiration and a new appreciation of the power of the spirit in our lives. During the weekend that we spent with these old and new friends, we could sense the spirit at work in our lives. Not a few among us have had much to cope with over the last few decades, personal suffering, ailments of children, and disability of various kinds. But everyone showed a resilience that was inspiring to others around them.

There seemed evident a growth in spirit over the years that has made us more finely honed human beings than we were when younger. The varied experiences of life, both those warmly welcomed and those difficult to accept, have worked on us to help mold us into a spiritual maturity that can encourage us for the future.

Richard Griffin

Last Saturday, the sun shone early from an entirely blue sky and some of our neighbors had come outside to take in the delicious air. Among them was a woman I will call Martha, a neighbor who was working in her garden. I approached and greeted her by name. As soon as she heard my voice, she jumped, startled to be suddenly awakened from her reverie.

It was a moment that later provoked mutual laughter but, when it occurred, it seemed disruptive and even frightening. Martha had been shocked by an intrusion into her mental world, wresting her thoughts from another place.

Later, I wondered what had occupied her attention. Was it the plants that she was carefully placing in the ground? Perhaps she had focused on their beauty, on their creaturely life that would later flower into bloom. She may have reflected on the gift of exis-tence that they share with us, though on quite a different plane of being.

Part of this same experience could have been the feeling in her hands as she touched the dirt. Plunging one’s hands into the ground can give us a feeling of richness, of felt appreciation for the wealth that all of nature possesses.

I still remember the feeling of the earth that I experienced decades ago, when dig-ging up potatoes from a field. The poet Gerard Manly Hopkins was right even about dirt when he wrote, “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things,” a line that always gives me inspiration.

Or maybe Martha was thinking about her mother. This past year her mother died, an event that plunged Martha and her siblings into a cycle of grief, mourning, and love. Like so many other middle-aged men and women, Martha may now think of her mother every day. The spiritual writer, Frederick Buechner, from the vantage point of seventy-three, says “My father has been dead for more than sixty years, but I doubt that  a week has gone by without my thinking of him.”

In thinking about their parents, surviving sons and daughters establish a kind of spiritual dialogue with the dead or, rather, with those living in a different sphere of existence. They are somehow present to one another and can say things that were impossible to say on earth.

Maybe, however, Martha was not thinking anything at all. She might simply have been plunged into her own soul, engaged in an altogether silent dialogue with the deepest parts of her own being. She would then have come close to a spiritual ideal, that of find-ing satisfaction of soul in just being. At times like that, it seems sufficient not to be doing anything vitally important but simply to take pleasure in sheer existence.

Of course, Martha may have been carried away by distractions. She may have been wondering, for instance, why her next-door neighbors (namely my family) do not take more loving care of our own modest front yard. Thoughts of this sort tend to waylay the prayer of even the most spiritual people.

Or, like me, she could have been absorbed by worry about another project weighing on her mind. This sort of anxiety has power enough to throw other people off course, people who are serious about the spiritual life. It is so much easier to think about the next activity rather than to concentrate on what lies at hand.

I like to think, however, that Martha knows the value in the old Latin imperative, “Age quod agis,” do what you are doing. Being able to enter deeply into the task at hand is the way to appreciate human life and the world about us. The monks who invented the slogan realized that the gap between action and contemplation could be narrowed. They discovered how to find God in all things, not just in things religious.

That insight presumably sustained them in the old days as they plowed the fields and prayed in their hearts as they do even now. “Work and pray” became their motto, a sacred slogan that helped form Western civilization.

As a result of Saturday’s encounter with Martha I have resolved not so jauntily to accost her again when she appears deep in her garden work. A person’s sacred times and sacred spaces deserve respect. Something too important may be going on to suffer easy interruption.

Richard Griffin

In New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral at the funeral of Cardinal O’Connor a few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton and Rudolf Giuliani sat in adjoining pews. When the time came for the liturgical kiss of peace, they exchanged handshakes like others around them.

Mayor Guliani at that time was a candidate for the United States Senate, pitted against Mrs. Clinton in what loomed as a bitter campaign. While not exactly enemies, the two candidates seemed to share strongly negative feelings toward one another. That they could rise to the occasion and exchange the kiss of peace, therefore, was a tribute to the power of this ancient ritual and a summons to mutual respect.

From the great spiritual  traditions of the world, peace emerges as a precious gift. Its possession has long been regarded as a priceless benefit for human beings because it brings us close to God.

In ancient Hebrew thought, the word “shalom” meant personal well-being and harmonious relationships with other people. Peace brings a person into perfect communion with Yahweh, the Lord God who himself is peace.

Shalom in the Hebrew Bible is a dynamic word, suggesting an ideal  condition in which nothing is lacking. The messiah who is to come is seen as the prince of peace, and his kingdom will guarantee peace without end.

People resident in Israel today use “shalom” as their greeting to one another. At its best, this word takes root in the soul and builds bridges to other people.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus embodies peace. In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul says, “He is our peace.” In writing to  the Galatians Paul lists peace among the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Most of all, peace is associated with Easter, the feast of the Resurrection. When Jesus first appears to his disciples he greets them by saying “Peace be with you.” In his mouth it is a word that empowers his apostles to live by the spirit.

In the Muslim tradition, the word for peace, “salaam,”  has been used since the time of the Qur’an. Muslims use the same word when greeting one another. Salaam suggests that people should be bound together in respect and love, as children of the same God.

Whatever one’s faith, of lack of it, peace is a precious human quality. Both in the outer world, where enmity among peoples so easily erupts in  murder and war, and within our own souls, peace is devoutly to be wished for.

The desire for external peace among people and nations makes me think back to a chant that was popular among demonstrators against the Vietnam War. “All we are say-ing/Is give peace a chance.” This song gave expression to the heartfelt wish for an end to fighting and the establishment of a peace that would last.

The spiritual gift of peace has to be regarded as one of the greatest human goods. To be at home within one’s own skin in tranquillity and without rancor toward other people – that seems worth everything. “Humans are just inches away from paradise,” says Elizabeth Lesser, “but that last inch is as wide as an ocean.” Perhaps the gift of peace can narrow the gap.

Is there anything we can do to dispose ourselves to receive this gift? I believe that some disciplines do help to prepare us for becoming people whose lives are marked by peace.

Becoming more compassionate toward other people is surely one way. Exercising that same compassion toward ourselves might be another. Resisting the negative thoughts that make us find fault with others and with ourselves can open us to greater peace of soul.

For many years I have made it a practice not to allow disturbing thoughts to take over my mind in the evening before bedtime. In resisting beforehand the temptation to anxiety, we can often escape the worries that plague the hours of sleep and rob us of peace.

I also have found spiritual and bodily benefits in observing the sabbath. Taking at least one day a week off from work and making it a special time for prayer, getting together with other people, and recreation can nourish our soul and help us cultivate peacefulness.

The prayer of St. Francis points the way both inwardly and outside: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”

Richard Griffin

Encounters with three people last week have stirred in me reflections about real-life spiritual issues. They all share a common drive for intellectual achievement that has carried them to positions of eminence in their chosen fields. But each of the men now finds himself facing a turning point in his life that is la-den with challenges and, perhaps, opportunities.

Two of the men I talked with have been friends or colleagues of mine for several years; the third I have known for much longer. And yet, despite much per-sonal contact, it is not easy to write about them because the spiritual depths of a person always remain so mysterious and inaccessible.

Much of what you find here therefore is guesswork, rather than precise knowledge. After all, if we can arrive at knowledge of ourselves only with great difficulty, how can we know other persons with confidence? Who can ever read the inmost depths of a fellow human being, with the secret desires and hopes that the human heart may cherish?

The first man has recently returned to work after a year’s leave of absence. He formerly was the equivalent of chief operating officer of his organization but was forced to resign that position. The president of the agency acted to remove him because the official had been discovered downloading dubious images on a computer that belonged, not to him, but to the organization. Much discussion fol-lowed upon the president’s action, with commentators split about whether it was justified or, perhaps, overly harsh.

In returning to work, this man has presumably had to swallow his pride and win back his standing in the community where he is still employed. It must be difficult for him to face his colleagues again, this time from a position of reduced power and carrying the humiliation of having been in effect fired.

The spiritual challenge facing this middle-aged man must be to accept what has happened and to turn his new status to advantage. Perhaps he has learned greater humility and self-knowledge; he may have become more open to the presence of grace. As a person of faith, he may believe that good may come out of highly undesirable situations; he may see in what has happened a call to greater devotion to God and community.

The second gentleman has passed his ninetieth birthday and is in obvious physical decline. Visiting him in his stately old urban residence, another friend and I talked with this retired professor about his delicate health and about the many friends we hold in common. The young woman who serves as his caretaker confirmed our view that, overall, he was doing better than previously.  

At one point, my companion said to the person we were visiting: “You are the greatest philosopher in the world,” a compliment not without credibility. After pondering this statement with some degree of embarrassment, the old philosopher replied, “Maybe that will help me in my gloomy moments.”

The philosopher does not believe in God, not does he seem to attach much reality to the spiritual life. Over the course of many conversations with him, I have never detected in him an interest in any kind of spirituality unless it be intellectual activity. The philosophy for which he is widely recognized is closer to language analysis and logic than to metaphysics.

The third man is another person for whom reputation looms large. In the course of an extended conversation last week, he made two statements that stick in my memory: “I am very important” and “I am world famous.” Though he was talking with me, an old friend, he oriented much of the conversation around this theme of his own self-importance.

Can this friend now experience peace of soul or any real happiness? His achievements are certainly solid but he seems dissatisfied unless everyone recognizes in him a preeminence that he apparently craves. And what about the future, what will come when he retires and has to face decline?

Again, no one can say with confidence what the interior life of these three men is like; only God can do that. Perhaps the best approach is to trust the resourcefulness of their secret hearts and the incalculable power of grace.

Richard Griffin

Almost one-half of Americans under age thirty (46%) believe that “the best religion would be one that borrowed from all religions.” By contrast, only about one-third of people over seventy (31%) think so.

These figures emerge from a new survey of Americans’ attitudes about spirituality sponsored by the New York Times. The Times reported these figures in its Sunday magazine of May 7th.

Given attitudes distrustful of institutions among younger people, their opting for a religion made up of borrowings from all does not come as a great surprise. In fact, many people of all ages seem already to have crossed boundary lines and have adopted practices from religious traditions not their own.

In doing so, some Christians, for example, may have been inspired by spiritual leaders such as the Catholic monk Thomas Merton who journeyed to Asia in order to learn more for his spiritual life from Buddhist monks.

This new openness to different practices and beliefs different from the ones familiar from childhood must be judged admirable. Clearly, it can enrich the lives of individuals and communities of spiritual seekers. It might even promote prospects for peace among nations, at least if you believe that spirituality can influence world politics.

However, this approach runs the risk of watering down religion, of making it a grab-bag of beliefs and practices. Forming a deeply held religion cannot be the same as walking down a cafeteria line and choosing the foods that most make your taste buds salivate.

Borrowing from religions in this way could easily leave a person spiritually superficial. Instead of plumbing the depths of any one heritage, seekers of truth might end up forever roaming about in the world of religious thought and practice without coming to grips with the full richness of any single tradition.

Most masters of the spiritual life, even those sympathetic to a radical openness to the traditions of others, urge us to concentrate on one. The Muslim theologian Seyyed Hossein Nasr, for instance, says: “To cling to one’s own religion – this is the normal situation of humanity.” This he says while at the same time believing that “all religions are true.”

Of course, it would be a mistake to exclude the possibility of conversion from one faith to another. This experience usually results from a long spiritual search and often encourages us to keep searching even more ardently.

This past Easter I took part in celebrating the baptism of a dear friend, Madeline, as she became a Christian. She did so, after much prayer and some agonizing experiences of death among people closest to her. Through a long heal-ing process she discovered Jesus as her main source of spiritual enlightenment.

Her decision to be baptized did not, however, make her think that she was giving up her own Jewish heritage. Rather she felt herself to be bringing to her baptism all that she had learned growing up Jewish.

At the same time, in an intriguing twist, one of her daughters who was brought up Christian was embracing the Jewish faith. Friends and family members joined together in wishing for both mother and daughter inspiration and joy in their new-found faiths.

So, at the risk of appearing unsympathetic toward the majority of young people who favor a religion made up of borrowings, I choose a middle ground. Yes, I would say to youthful seekers, avail yourself of precious elements from traditions not your own. But do not believe that the “à la carte” approach to religion will satisfy your deepest desires.

I myself have profited much from other traditions. But my experience is that, while I come away from experience of other faiths with a broader vision, I feel strengthened in my own faith.

For many years I have felt free to incorporate into my religious practice prayer methods of the Asian religions and American Quakers, for instance, to my own spiritual profit. At the same time, I hold on to the meditation learned from teachers nurtured in my own tradition.

Of course, if you grown up without being gifted with a religious tradition at all, your situation is different and perhaps more complicated. You may then need to explore world religions for yourself. Even there, however, it makes more sense to plumb the depths of one religion rather than rely on mere borrowings.

Richard Griffin