Two weeks ago my brother-in-law Tom Keane received the Lavoisier Medal for Technical Achievement, the highest honor the DuPont company gives to its scientists and engineers. Close family members were invited by the company to Wilmington, Delaware for several days where we celebrated the recognition received by Tom and five other long-time fellow achievers.

Amid all the hoopla of a professional high-tech award ceremony before a large audience,  the six received medals from the CEO. The next day, in another ceremony, the company unveiled plaques engraved with the faces of the honorees. It seemed the private industry equivalent of adding their images to the side of Mount Rushmore.

Tom received all these honors with modesty. In his acceptance speech after being given the medal, he told the audience that what counted for him most was his family. And he acknowledged that he could not have accomplished anything, during his forty-six year career, without the collaboration of many colleagues.

Success like this comes to relatively few people. Most of us never achieve so much or receive recognition of this sort during long years of work. Instead, we may be  tempted  to envy the success of others. “Could I but achieve something worthy of wide recognition,” this subtle temptation suggests, “then that success would heal whatever is lacking in me.”

We live in a culture that is notoriously success-driven. People everywhere in America crave becoming wealthy and recognized. Nowadays dot-com millionaires are envied for having scored brilliant successes so quickly.

The myth of the self-made man still holds its grip on our society. “Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” and other such clichés retain their power to influence our imaginations when we think of what success means.

Success in itself is something good. Whenever we manage to accomplish some-thing significant, our strong impulse is to feel good about it. If  others recognize what we have done and honor us for it, so much the better. An accomplished life, an honored life is much to be desired.

At the same time, success can be spiritually dangerous. It can close us off to what is most important in life and make us think of ourselves as self-sufficient. The person whose success has gone to his head has fallen victim to illusion and may have damaged his soul.

Of course, failure has its dangers as well. Repeated failing can make us lose heart. It can cause us to give up confidence that anyone, human or divine, really cares about us. Ultimately, it can drive us toward despair.

Let me suggest here an approach to success that can satisfy both our natural craving for achievement/personal recognition and the deeper demands of the spirit.    

Perhaps the answer is to be prepared to accept as gift whatever success may come our way. After all, there is no such thing as the self-made person, man or woman. We all get somewhere only through God-given talents and by the help of countless other people. Seeing success from this angle can enrich our spiritual life.

Besides recognizing success as a gift we also need to redefine it. Seen spiritually, success cannot be identified only with material achievement or reputation or power, but must include fidelity and self-knowledge and the ability to love. Devoted spouses, parents who truly cherish their children, and people of spirit who reverence all life and show compassion for other human beings – all these people must be recognized as truly successful.

Public television this week featured the life of Joe DiMaggio, the storied Yankee center fielder. According to the program, DiMaggio, when off the baseball field, was a painful failure as a husband, a father, and a human being. He seems never to have had the spiritual values necessary for success in these roles. On the diamond, he set a consecutive game hitting streak that has lasted almost sixty years. But in real life, he failed miserably at roles infinitely more important than hitting.

I feel happy for my brother-in-law that he has achieved so much and has been accorded such honor. But I feel even happier that he has the spiritual vision not to be seduced by the sweet-smelling incense that has wafted his way. He has clearly shown him-self a man of spiritual values who knows what is truly important in life.

Richard Griffin

Seyyed Hossein Nasr may not be a household name in the United States but he has rightly been described as “one of the world’s leading Islamic thinkers.” Currently Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, he brings to spiritual is-sues wide knowledge and profound insight. I had the privilege of hearing him lecture recently and came away with much to think about.

A native of Iran, this distinguished scholar came to the United States for advanced study at M.I.T. and Harvard receiving his doctorate from the latter. Before taking his present position, he was professor at the University of Tehran and founder of the Iranian Academy of Philosophy.

Warm and personal, Professor Nasr is a pleasure to talk with and his common touch belies the stereotype of the highly accomplished but distant academic. I valued the chance to listen to him and to ask him a question about the effect of secularization on Is-lam.

Taking as his theme the crossing of the frontiers that divide the religions of the world, the Muslim scholar calls such crossing “a journey in spiritual space more exciting than space travel.”

The relationship between human beings and nature looms large in every religion at its best. However, Professor Nasr feels that something has gone awry in the modern world, upsetting the healthy balance between us people and the world around us. One large reason for this imbalance is the havoc that secularism has worked on religion, especially Christianity.

For most modern Christians, the world has lost its sacred character leading us to abuse the beautiful creation that God has given us. The effort to understand the other religions of the world can help us to restore that sacredness of nature.

Dr. Nasr believes that “there is no possibility of peace among nations without peace among religions,” a fact that secularism denies. He regrets that UNESCO, the United Nations Economic, Scientific, and Cultural Organization based in Geneva, does not have religion as a defining category.

To appreciate a religion, ;you cannot study merely its history, as some scholars do. To focus exclusively on history  would be to ignore the qualities – changeless truth and transcendence – that make a religion what it is. Rather, you must enter into its truth and appreciate its vision of God.

This scholar holds that every religion is complete in itself. “Religion must en-compass all that we are,” he says, “or it is not religion.”  Also, every religion is true and those unfamiliar with traditions other than their own must often struggle if they wish to understand the way another religion works for its adherents.

In every religious tradition there are many people who stand opposed to crossing over the frontiers of religion. They fear that this spiritual travel will destroy their own faith. Professor Nasr, however, believes that in the modern world we have no choice, Either we try to understand the faith of others or our world falls into chaos and armed struggle.

But to cross over and understand, we must deny false absolutes. Only God is ab-solute. If you make anything else absolute, you make it impossible to cross over.

“You should not ask religions other than your own: ‘What is your concept of God?’” The question is too abstract and does not suggest the rich spiritual life and practice of each tradition.

Every religion offers salvation and, to do so, uses various rites. It is the inner meaning of these rites that can bring religions together.

In summary, Professor Nasr lists five positive consequences of crossing over:

1. Seeing our own religion in the light of another one brings us to know ourselves better.
2. We can remember things that have been largely forgotten in our own tradition, for example, the mystical tradition  in Christianity.
3. We can be motivated to reexamine secularism, the philosophy that denies the reality of religion.  In studying Islam, for example, Christians can recognize more clearly the negative impact of secularism on their own tradition.
4. We can develop a spiritual and theological understanding of the other faces of God that our own tradition may not have shown us.
5. We can find common ground in the determination to protect the world of nature.

Richard Griffin

“Does God have a future?” This is the question asked by the celebrated British theologian Karen Armstrong. “In my country, God is in trouble,” she says, by way of answering her own question. In England, only a reported six percent of the population still goes to church regularly. Church buildings are being converted to other uses and there is a widespread malaise with institutional religion.

However, she hastens to modify the meaning of this situation. “I am not troubled by the atheism in my country,” she explains. It is not really directed against God, but rather against “a particular idea of God.” Remember, she observes, Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all once regarded as atheists. The Europeans may need the moral equivalent of a “sorbet” to cleanse their palate of false theology before they can find the true God.

Karen Armstrong stopped in the Boston area recently on a nation-wide tour promoting her new book, The Battle for God. In a lecture to students and others at the Episcopal Divinity School, she laid out her views of the current struggle over religious issues. Author of several previous influential books, notably The History of God, Professor Arm-strong displays an amazingly wide knowledge of world religion and knows how to talk brilliantly about the subject.

In an interview with me, she described herself as a “freelance monotheist.” She now feels very critical of the Catholic Church which she formerly served as a nun. In fact, she confesses that she is currently “quite exhausted by religion” and feels the need of a break from it all. However, when asked about the need for a community of faith, she readily admits that the lack of such a community is “the weakness of my position.”

The crisis of modern belief, as Professor Armstrong sees it, arises from the conflict between mythos and logos, two Greek words that can be roughly translated as reli-gious imagination and hardheaded reason. The history of the West over the last 400 years should be seen as the triumph of logos. Science and technology have proven so spectacularly successful that thinkers anxious to preserve faith misguidedly let reason displace religious imagination altogether.

The result of this surrender to rationalism was that church doctrine came to be understood more as scientific statements rather than poetry. And what Gregory of Nyssa and other Fathers of the Church had taught was forgotten. They had insisted that doctrine can be understood only through prayer and contemplation.

Ultimately the first world war was to show the emptiness of the narrow scientific approach. Some thirty years after that catastrophic event, Auschwitz even more appall-ingly demonstrated what can happen when God is lost. In the face of such evil, human beings are defenceless against the threat of despair.

The answer to this situation, Professor Armstrong holds, is not to create a  new definition of God but rather to cultivate spirituality. That is the way to get beyond the selfish, grasping self. This scholar quotes approvingly what she understands religion to be saying at its best: “We are most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away.”

Theology, being like poetry, is always an attempt to express the inexpressible. We must enter the darkness that covers God, the cloud of unknowing in which the divine dwells. For entering, two approaches are necessary: first, prayer because it teaches us to express ourselves in an unselfish way.

Secondly, we must undertake the discipline of compassion, something that enables us to rise above ourselves. That means living the Golden Rule of loving others as ourselves, as Rabbi Hillel taught. Jesus also urges love for people who do not love us. And the poet Auden says: “Where equal affection cannot be /  Let the loving one be me.”

Our age has become weary of too many definitions and too much dogmatism. Prayer and contemplation can help us to overcome the limitations of our theology. We can become like the patriarch Abraham who entertained three strangers outside his tent at noontime in the desert, not knowing that one of them was his God. 

In practicing compassion toward those they did not know Abraham and his wife Sarah encountered the holy.  By receiving the unknown visitors and preparing a meal for them, they experienced something about the otherness of God and thus touched the great mystery.

Richard Griffin

How did it ever happen that the bunny became associated with Easter? What historical connection is there between this small animal and the central Christian feast of the liturgical year? Why did the Easter bunny take hold in the Christian tradition and remain a staple of popular celebration right up until today?

These are questions posed to me recently by a colleague known for his wide knowledge of world history. Despite all of his learning and scholarly achievements, he did not know the answer nor, to my embarrassment, did I. A lifetime of being steeped in Christian symbolism had never moved me to focus on this connection. I had to plead ignorance by reason of never having asked myself these questions.

One easy answer that leaps to mind is the rabbit’s well-known ability to procreate. The bunny has become notorious for its fertility. People who reside in areas where they live are often surprised to see how many come forth each spring.

There may be something to this answer – the abundance of the species perhaps has some imaginative link with the central reality of Easter. Insignificant as this animal remains, the bunny does suggest life abounding.

But the historical record reveals a different meaning. According to the “Encyclopedia of Religion,” a standard reference work, ancient cultures attached meanings to this animal that lent themselves to adoption by Christianity.

In ancient Middle-East cultures the rabbit was taken to be a sign of death and re-birth. In Mesopotamian and Syrian society of some two thousand years before Christ, this animal was adopted as a symbol for some kind of rising again after dying. “In Egypt,” according to this source, “it was probably associated with Osiris , the god of rebirth and immortality.”

Later in the world of Greece and Rome, “as belief in immortality became more popular, the hare was increasingly used in funerary art.” Its meaning in ancient societies of the Middle-East thus made it appropriate for the first Christians to take it over as one of Easter’s emblems.

Along with the egg, more clearly a sign of new life, the rabbit was made to serve as a reminder of Christ’s rising from the dead. The author of an article on the subject from the encyclopedia cited above notes that “early Christians accepted this rabbit symbolism and depicted rabbits on gravestones.” I myself have never seen this animal depicted on an old gravestone in America, but perhaps such a motif would be worth looking for.

Thus the bunny is one of many creatures of the world taken over by the early Christians and used in connection with Christ. In that, the bunny is like the fish, the lily, water, and fire. All of these creatures, and many others, were seen as reminders of the central mysteries of the Christian faith. They became part of a sacramentalized world where everything could serve as full of meaning because redeemed by Christ the Savior.

Despite the bunny’s connection with Easter, however, the Christian church seems never to have explored in depth its symbolism or made much of it in popular piety. As another author in  “The Encyclopedia of Religion”  notes, “although adopted in a number of Christian cultures, the Easter bunny has never received any specific Christian interpretation.”

This statement is supported by personal experience. Never in my lifetime have I heard an authoritative Christian voice speak of the bunny as an important symbol. It re-mains strong in popular culture – greeting cards for Easter certainly make wide use of it, oftentimes ridiculously. But no one seems to take the connection of rabbit and resurrection seriously for its religious value.

Admittedly, this information about one of the symbols of Easter may not have a major impact upon people for whom the Easter faith is important. It may serve to remind us, however, that, in the eyes of believers, every creature belongs to a world that has been redeemed.

All of God’s creatures, bunny rabbits included, have a part to play in the great drama of dying and rising again. They can imaginatively move us closer to the religious mysteries by which people of faith live. Like people of long ago, we too can allow our-selves to feel the mythic power of humble creatures like the rabbit as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.

Richard Griffin

What kind of spirituality do people with life-long disabilities practice? How does God seem to them?

These are the main questions driving research done by two faculty members of the Wes-ton Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge. Reporting on their findings last week in a talk entitled “Guts and Grace: ^The Spiritual Lives of People with Disabilities,” psychologist Katherine Clark and theologian Francine Cardman announced results that overturn expectations.

From the beginning it should be understood that the two researchers deliberately sought out people who have enjoyed a high level of worldly success. The thirty men and women chosen do not, therefore, amount to a sample that represents the disability community at large. However, those chosen for the study do reveal some spiritual attitudes that have significance for others with or without major disabilities.

For purposes of the research, the professors set out “to discover  patterns of spiritual resilience in people who live with life-long disability.”  They looked to see what people set their hearts on. In doing so, they defined spirituality as “beliefs, practices, relationships, and orientations to life that embody a person’s overall way of being in the world.”

The first question asked of the thirty was what they thought about the reasons for their disability. Why do bad things happen to good people? How can a caring God let bad things happen to me?

Surprisingly, many respondents said they had never thought about such questions. Others asked another question in response: why not me? Still others expressed their confidence that there is a reason even though they do not know what that reason is. And, finally, others answered: that’s just who I am.

Overall, one theme emerged most strongly: having a disability served as a source of identity. It had shaped their lives, made them who they were.

When asked how having a disability stood in relation to spirituality, people said that it made them ponder life more deeply. For others, it led toward them knowing they have a purpose in life. It helped some develop a compassion for other people and moved them to work for a better world.

The theologian, Professor Cardman, discovered that most of the people who were polled did not think their image of God affected by their disability. Thus, not a single person blamed God for his or her condition. Instead, many saw God as loving and accepting them; God did not make any distinction between abled and disabled. At the same time, some imagined God as beyond any human description.

Two-thirds of the respondents are active in Church or synagogue. They consider these as important to belong to and to have their families associated with. But many feel conflicted because these religious institutions often practice ways of exclusion. For example, the church-goers among them say that no church building is accessible.

Not surprisingly, personal relationships are vital. Two-thirds have marriage partners or the equivalent. Friends are critically important, especially those who themselves have or understand having a disability. Most of those polled have connections with the disability community and some serve as advocates for societal change.

About their identity, many say “this is just my life.” And they are likely to affirm, “disability is not a tragedy.” Thus it is often difficult for them to deal with people who cannot accept differences, who lack the spiritual insight to recognize the basic unity of the whole human community.

Some people felt a sense of shame in being different. For these people, a key spiritual task was reversing this shame. Some escaped that feeling altogether, presumably those whose families accepted them as normal when they were growing up. Just about everyone would resent others expressing pity for them or treating them as if something were lacking.

Francine Cardman listed three basic parts of a spiritual pattern that marks many of the people studied. First, they felt a strong sense of trust that things are basically good. This trust, however, remains compatible with a critique of things in society that need change.

Secondly, people have moved from being apologetic about their condition toward being prophetic. They are ready to be critical of the able-bodied who do not recognize the needs of others.

Finally, they refuse to serve as models for the inspiration of others. Instead, they prefer to say, “It’s just my life.”

In closing her report, Katherine Clark, referred to the title and concluded provocatively: “You don’t live successfully with a disability unless you live in the guts of it.”

Richard Griffin

In the 1970s I enjoyed listening to the songs of the British singer known as Cat Stevens. His version of the hymn “Morning Has Broken” made a particularly strong impression on me; I can still hear it now. But a large gap separates that singer and the bearded middle-aged man with a receding hairline who now speaks to American audiences about his conversion.

Yusuf Islam, the former Cat Stevens, talks eloquently about  his search for “the center of the universe.” This search led him in 1977 to cast off his former identity as a pop musician  and become a pious Muslim. In his own graphic language, he asks, “Why did this rock star who seemed to have everything come down from the stars, put his head on the ground, and hang up his guitar?”

Almost by a process of elimination did he find the center of the universe. First, it was not the church. As a boy in London, he had grown familiar with the church through the religious education he received from Catholic nuns.

Later he discovered the world of popular music and Merseyside (made famous by the Beatles) became the center of the universe. At age eighteen he scored a big success with his hit song “I Love My Dog.” Featuring three gigs a night, this career brought him into a milieu of worldly activities such as drinking and smoking.

This early phase ended abruptly when he came down with tuberculosis, a life-threatening disease that forced him into a hospital for months. This fearful experience made the young man think about the direction of his life and the prospect of death. At that time, he now says, the center of the universe was his own belly-button.

However, he soon happened  to read a book that said, “You will never be satisfied until you reach the truth,” a wake-up call for him. This led him to try Buddhism, Zen, and other spiritual traditions until, through a gift from his brother, he began to read the Qur’an.

The very beginning of this holy book – “In the name of God, the Lord of the universe,” opened his mind and heart to reality as never before. This book, he felt, “was just for me.” It brought him a knowledge of God not available  to him previously, and also the gift of peace.

In his new identity as a Muslim, he first took the name Joseph after reading in the Qur’an about the patriarch who, as a boy, was hidden in the well and sold in the marketplace. Later, at the suggestion of a fellow worshipper, he changed his first name to Yusuf, the Muslim form of Joseph. Finally, he had found his place in the world and his true identity.

Since then, Yusuf Islam has used his talents to advance the knowledge of the Muslim faith. Though for a long time he gave up singing, he returned to the recording studio in 1995 and now performs without any accompanying instrument. He does so for the benefit of others such as the embattled Bosnian Muslims.

In concluding his talk, Yusuf Islam says modestly, “I hope this will give you some insight into my journey.”

In fact, he did succeed in sharing that insight and seemed to captivate members of the audience, in the  majority college students. His is yet another classic story of conversion away from the pleasures and successes of the world toward the satisfactions of the spiritual life. His storytelling features deep conviction, an animated style, and many dashes of humor.

One disturbing element in his worldview, however, surfaced immediately with  the question period. The first questioner wanted to know whether he had changed his opinion about the death sentence leveled against the celebrated writer Salman Rushdie. Yusuf Islam had been reported as favoring the threat authorized by the government of Iran.

Yusuf Islam blamed “misbehavior on the part of the press” for this report. “I was

a new Muslim,” he explained, “and some smart journalist decided to pose the question.”

But, instead of backing off this time, he suggested that “when all things are Islamic, then all things can be implemented.” Since Great Britain is not an Islamic state, then the sentence against Rushdie could not be implemented there.

This one sentiment seemed harshly and disquietingly out of keeping with Yusuf Islam’s message of peace.

Richard Griffin

“God invented time to keep everything from happening at once.” So says Mel Kimble, a man widely admired for his spiritual insight. This week in San Di-ego at a meeting of the American Society on Aging, friends and colleagues celebrated his life and legacy. Though acquainted with the man only slightly, I found it spiritually uplifting simply to take part in the celebration.

Founder of the program on aging at the Lutheran seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, Professor Kimble loves what he calls “my post-mortem life, my bonus years.” You cannot tell by looking, but he has survived two major illnesses that threatened an end to his life.

In the early 1980s he was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, cancer that seemed likely to kill him.

Then, in 1995, he suffered a cerebral stroke that hit his right side of his brain. At that same time, his wife was diagnosed with lupus and one of his daughters underwent a miscarriage.

During this period of trial, members of the Kimble family showed their spirit of hope by playfully inventing a set of rituals and declaring themselves members of “the royal order of rhinos.” Family members took inspiration from animals remarkable for their tough hide and they began to amass a small army of rhino figurines.

“Time is irreversible,” Professor Kimble says, “but there is an opportunity to shape a moment that is rich in meaning.” That is how he looks back at the times of suffering which he and his family have endured.

For Dr. Kimble, after his recovery from the first life-threatening crisis, “every day was now a bonus, and every person in my life more precious and valued.” “With the awareness of my finitude and mortality,” he has written, “time and its passing took on deeper meaning.”

Like so many others who have passed through the threat of death, Mel Kimble saw more deeply the beauty in the world around him. “Sunrises and sun-sets as well as full moons were events not to be missed, especially sunsets shared with loved ones.”

This man’s spirituality now centers “in relationship and connectiveness, especially with my family and faith community.” For him family bonds have taken on even greater importance since the health crises he and his loved ones have en-dured.

Dr. Kimble has a well-deserved reputation for innovatively bringing the study of aging to the seminary where he has long taught. In his own studies, his teacher and prime mentor was Victor Frankl, the famous psychiatrist and survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau. Professor Kimble holds his mentor in veneration and prizes his approach to the human soul.

An associate of Sigmund Freud, Frankl wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning which, over the years, has sold more than three million copies.

In this book and in his many other writings, Dr. Frankl stressed “the defiant power of the human spirit.” As a survivor of the Nazi death camps, he knew how some human beings could be physically crushed and yet, despite the horror of it all, find ways to emerge still alive spiritually.

I remember reading Man’s Search for Meaning as a young man and finding in it inspiration for my own life. The book had great credibility for me since it was written by a man who had witnessed unspeakable horror and survived be-cause of  his unyielding belief in the human spirit.

Mel Kimble in his advanced years evidences a peace of soul born of much experience and personal trial. As he accepted the congratulations of friends and colleagues last week, he showed forth signs of the blessings received over a long life. I enjoyed adding my own greetings to those of many others because I felt spiritual power coming from the man.

It’s beautiful to feel the presence of spiritual gifts such as those that Mel Kimble possesses. Over a long life, these gifts have had the chance to mature and grow in power. His mentor, Viktor Frankl, chose the hour glass as his favorite image to indicate the passage of time. For his student Mel Kimble, now coming into the fullness of age, the glass looks to be charged with grains of sand made precious by life experiences lived bravely.

Richard Griffin