The following story comes from the Zen Buddhist tradition and teaches a lesson that I, for one, need to hear over and over.

One of the devotees in the temple was well known for his zealousness and effort. Day and night he would sit in meditation, not stopping even to eat or sleep. As time passed he grew thinner and more exhausted. The master of the temple advised him to slow down, to take more care of himself. But the devotee refused to heed his advice.

“And how do you know,” asked the master, “that enlightenment is running on be-fore you, so that you have to rush after it? Perhaps it is behind you, and all you need to encounter it is to stand still – but you are running away from it!”

This anecdote, one of many collected by Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield in a 1991 volume Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart, reminds seekers after the light that waiting on God or spirit or truth can be more important than actively working toward them.

In my reading, the story says that the best way to enhance spiritual growth is often  simply to stand there and let things happen to you. Enlightenment is not on the path ahead where you think it is, but rather lies behind waiting for you to stop your forward progress and turn back.

Would that my novice master had taken the lesson of this story to heart! Instead, he fed me with an activist approach to the spiritual life. Admirable for personal virtues though he was, he taught me and my fellow novices to reach out to God by much speak-ing in prayer and through constant activity in the form of self-denial.

It is a tribute to the spirit of this man that, many years later, he came to see the harm in his approach to the spiritual life and changed his own orientation. After many years of suffering, much of it caused by injuries suffered when he was trapped in a burn-ing building and had to jump from an upstairs window, he realized how his spiritual teaching erred on the side of activism.

What else proves as hard as admitting to oneself, in later life, that your entire course of action has been based on some false principles? And that many other people may have been misled by your teaching?

“There is no time to waste” says the zealous seeker after the light. But,  for those who would approach ultimate truth, wasting time holds great spiritual value. That was a value that I lost when a novice; I got to the point where I could not allow myself to let any waking time pass without accomplishing something worthwhile.

It has taken me a long time to learn once more the benefits of what the Italians call “dolce far niente” (sweetly doing nothing). The spirit had to bend my rigidity before I could ever recover the restful openness of heart necessary for a rich spiritual life and a humanly enjoyable one at that.

The old activism served me badly when I was younger and retains surprising power even now to rise up and place chains on my soul. The lessons of spiritual waiting seem never to be finally learned. It takes courage to just stand here in the expectation that the spirit will act in me.

Remaining passive is not easy. Just standing there with heart and mind open to the spiritual flow remains a big challenge. When you start to pray, you find yourself trying to take charge. Maybe that’s part of the reason why so often, as Elizabeth Lesser says, “me-ditation can feel as if you are slogging through pudding.”

Doing nothing goes against the grain of American culture, of all that we feel about our place in the world. It’s counter-cultural to cultivate habits of the heart that in-cline us to wait in hope. Because enlightenment may not lay on the path ahead, may in-stead wait behind us, perhaps the chance is worth taking.

Richard Griffin

Is there anything better for the spirit than to take off from work and domestic chores on a day when the sky is flawlessly blue, the sun agreeably hot, and the greenery lush after the previous day’s heavy rain? That’s what my wife and I did last Saturday, much to our pleasure and inner profit.

We had plenty of time to wander around the spacious grounds of the retreat house, Campion Center in Weston, Massachusetts and luxuriate in the splendor of our surroundings. Inside, we could draw inspiration from talks given by Father William Barry, the Jesuit priest who led the day of recollection in which we were taking part.

“What does God want for us?” That was the question he posed for our prayer and reflection, a question that anchored the day. The responses that he suggested were calculated to stir in us a deeper sense of God’s creative action in our lives.

His ultimate answer? That we dance. God invites each of us to enter into the di-vine dance of His own life. God wants us to live consciously this way and thus find our deepest happiness.

As a spiritual director in the Catholic tradition, Father Barry places the dance in the three-in-oneness of God. In this faith, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share a dynamic inner life. The three persons interact constantly with one another in sublime love.

It was a vision of this Trinity of divine persons that St. Ignatius Loyola saw and described as three notes in one musical chord.

So, in a spiritual sense, God invites us to become his whirling dervishes, dancers caught up in intimacy with Him. This fits with the vision of a universe in motion, of a world where everything is alive with the power of God’s creative force.

Father Barry cited the experience described by the writer Frederick Buechner when the latter went with his family to visit Sea World in Orlando. In his book, The Longing for Home, Buechner uses the same central image of dance to describe what was for him an ecstatic experience.

“What with the dazzle of the sky and sun, the beautiful young people on the plat-form, the soft southern air, and the crowds all around us watching the performance with a delight matched only by what seemed the delight of the performing whales, it was as if the whole creation – – men and women and beasts and sun and water and earth and sky and, for all I know, God himself – – was caught up in one great, jubilant, dance of unimaginable beauty.”

Though without the poetic gifts of Buechner, I too felt transported by a larger vision on our day of spiritual renewal. Since my college years, I have always loved the line written by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.”

I experienced that freshness for myself while watching a butterfly flutter about the broad lawn that I was crossing. Was not this creature’s flight a kind of dance too?

This creature, all splendid with yellow wings speckled with black, landed in the grass at my feet and spent time burrowing into the roots, flapping those wings and appearing to draw out nourishment.

This butterfly may have been one of the Monarchs whose flying feats scientists have recently tracked in detail. They migrate each year thousands of miles from this region and elsewhere to Mexico, a marvelous feat of navigation and perhaps another opportunity for dance.

The butterfly that I observed on this day provided me with a glimpse of “the peaceable kingdom” where all God’s creatures will one day live in harmonious dance. That creature’s lightness of touch seemed spiritually connected with my own ideal of living in the moment instead of worrying about what is to come.

Later, Father Barry suggested that what God wants and what we want are identical. At least when we look deeply into our own hearts we will recognize there the desire for God. As our director said, “The deepest desire of the human heart is what God wants.”

That deepest desire finds expression in Psalm 42: “As the deer longs for the flow-ing streams, so my soul longs for you.”

Richard Griffin

Two weeks ago a Brazilian archbishop, known in many parts of the world as a champion of the poor and oppressed, died at age 90. I count as one of many spiritual blessings the opportunity to have spent some time with him when he visited the Boston area in 1969 and 1974. His memory will remain with me as an inspiration.

Helder Camara was small in stature but large in spirit. He dressed in a simple soutane, wore a cross made of wood rather than silver or gold, and lived in a small house in Recife instead of the palace reserved for the archbishop of that city.

Dom Helder (as he was called by almost everybody) believed that the Catholic Church in Latin America had to change its priorities and champion the millions of people forced to live without decent food, clothing, education, and other necessities. Together with other bishops in the late 1960s, and the 1970s and 1980s, he attempted to turn the attention of both church and secular society toward those left out.

Dom Helder saw the United States as having a vital role in this mission. Our nation’s power over Third World governments was one thing; another was the part that giant American corporations played in the life of other countries.  

When Dom Helder visited at my invitation in 1969 he came to Harvard University where I was chaplain, and spoke to students, faculty members, and others about our responsibility toward the impoverished peoples of the world and our opportunities to influence our country’s policies to make them more just and humane.

He liked to speak of “Abrahamic minorities,” people who, like the great patriarch Abraham at the dawn of sacred history in the Hebrew Bible, “hoped against hope.”  Even though the chances of ever changing the condition of the world’s poor always seem hope-less, Dom Helder believed that even a minority of people who place their hope in God can make a difference.

If all of this makes Dom Helder seem an ideologue, I have given the wrong impression. In going around my impoverished Boston neighborhood, as well as at Harvard, I noticed the marvelous warmth he showed to the people he met. He made himself fully present to each person, a reality that made me think of him as another Pope John XXIII, whose effect on people in the 1960s had been similar.

The second visit of Dom Helder came at the invitation of Harvard. The university gave him an honorary degree at the 1974 commencement. He seemed an unlikely choice, this man whose style of life clashed with so many of the university’s wealthy associates. But he told me that he found hope in the assurance given him by the Harvard president, Derek Bok, that the university would respond to his calls for help.

Another person who showed himself willing to help Dom Helder was Cardinal Cushing, who was then archbishop of Boston. When I took the visitor over to see the cardinal, the latter gave him a check for a thousand dollars, not in itself a large sum but enough to signify Cushing’s support.

As this century comes to an end, Dom Helder’s style of leadership within the Lat-in American church has become rare indeed. His successor in Recife promptly moved into the archiepiscopal palace and has shown little regard for Helder Camara’s social values. Liberation theology seems, if not dead, at least on a respirator.

However, I like to think myself not alone in continuing to hold in high regard the life and work of a church leader who brought Gospel values to bear on behalf of the dis-possessed. I will not ever forget the way he taught me to link the teachings of Jesus with the real-life situation in which so many people of the world are forced to live. I also ap-preciate the way Dom Helder chose to live simply himself so as to be closer to the poor.

I also continue to draw inspiration from some of the things he said. Writ large on a truck used in my city by people who distribute groceries to those in need are these words of Helder Camara: “When I give food to the poor, they called me a saint; when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”

Richard Griffin

One day Megan, a seven- year-old girl, called excitedly to her mother: “Look, Mom, look Mom!” For a time her mother was distracted and failed to turn around. When the mother did take notice, she saw that her child had blown her bubble gum into a large bubble, the first time she had accomplished this feat.

Immediately, and unaccountably, the woman burst into tears. Of course, they were tears of joy, prompted by a sudden feeling of the beauty of her child and her own heightened appreciation of the world’s splendor.

This ordinary human event had become a spiritual experience. The woman had received an unexpected vision of the wonder that surrounds everyone and of the God who created it.

This story comes to me from Jan Gough, a deeply expressive  middle-aged woman who practices the ministry of spiritual direction. She judges the mother’s experience a good introduction to what the spiritual life means. For her, it is a fine instance of what it signifies “to feel one’s heart suddenly on fire.”

This spring, Jan completed a year’s training at the Jesuit-run Center for Religious Development in Cambridge. This internship proved to be an intense and wonderful experience for her. She found the people at this center open to her, a Presbyterian in a Catholic environment. They showed themselves flexible as if accepting a truth that Jan expresses in these words:  “God hasn’t read all the rule books we have written about God.”

Jan learned spiritual direction by two methods: first, by actually doing it (Jan had ten people who came to her each week); and second, by receiving supervision from a veteran spiritual director. The supervisor, in reviewing her work, did not focus on what she might have said wrong, but helped her “identify where you are getting in God’s way.”

That phrase comes close to what spiritual direction is. In Jan’s view, it is “the opportunity for a person to help another person discover how God is trying to speak to them in their life.”

This activity may seem elitist, if only because most people, even those serious about the spiritual life, do not have individual directors. Whatever direction most of us get comes in a group setting, especially in church or in some other formally religious place.

But Jan feels strongly that almost everyone can profit from having an individual director. To her, spiritual direction should not be an activity reserved for the a privileged few, but something that remains accessible to almost everyone.

When I asked her if you must have faith in God, she replied: “Spiritual direction presupposes an openness to the possibility of God or some supreme being that wants to be in relationship with us.” “When spiritual direction works,” she adds, “it’s because people let themselves be loved by God and experience the presence of God.”

In taking on the direction of others, Jan got off to a dramatic start. Her first directee was a 49-year-old woman who was dying. For the last nine months of the woman’s life, Jan helped this woman remain open to God. “It felt like a pregnancy, like giving birth to something sacred,” Jan told me.

“Was it hard?,” I asked of this experience. “It wasn’t hard,” Jan said, “because it was so grace-filled. People who choose to live until the day they die, who choose to be open to where God might be leading them, the gift that they give the rest of us is extraordinary.”

Before her death the woman made Jan and her colleagues promise to get together regularly for a year after her death as “a resurrection group.” Commenting on this experience, Jan says: “The opportunity to think that, even in death, your life can be generative, is an incredibly important concept.”

Jan tells of another woman who felt drawn to God because her husband was dying. But the woman felt scruples about returning to church. “It doesn’t seem fair to go to church now in the hard times when I haven’t been there in the good times to praise God.” As her spiritual director, Jan helped her see that God welcomes everyone when they turn to Him, no matter what.

More detailed information about spiritual direction is available at retreat houses, churches, monasteries, and other religious centers.

Richard Griffin

“It is told: In the city of Satanov there was a learned man, whose thinking and brooding took him deeper and deeper into the question why what is, is, and why anything is at all. One Friday he stayed in the House of Study after prayer to go on thinking, for he was snared in his thoughts and tried to untangle them and could not.

“The holy Baal Shem Tov (“Master of the Good Name”) felt this from afar, got into his carriage and, by dint of his miraculous power which made the road leap to meet him, he reached the House of Study in Satanov in only an instant.

“There sat the learned man in his predicament. The Baal Shem said to him, ‘You are brooding on whether God is; I am a fool and believe.’

“The fact that there was a human being who knew of his secret, stirred the doubter’s heart and it opened to the Great Secret.”

This anecdote belongs to a group of stories collected in two volumes by the famous Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. Called Tales of the Hasidim, these books are full of brief narratives that breathe religion and spirituality.

The stories center on religious figures of 17th century eastern Europe who were leaders of Jewish communities. Most of the tales are set in  Poland or Russia and reflect the sufferings imposed on the Hasidic people of that time and place.

Not only are the stories charming and graceful in structure; they breathe a piety that is grounded in a deep faith and love of God. Often certain details require explanation but the incidents narrated here speak across the centuries.

This particular story strikes a familiar theme – – the inadequacy of mere human knowledge for grasping the divine being. Personal study about the mysteries of the universe, no matter how profound, can carry a person only so far. In fact such investigation frequently causes a person confusion. The role of the rabbi is to release the thinker from this confusion and lead him to the release of faith.

In this instance the great rabbi known as the Baal Shem Tov calls himself a fool but a fool who, through his belief, has been given access to knowledge not possessed by deep thinkers. This theme, celebrating the sublime foolishness of faith, has also loomed large in Christianity, especially in the writings of Saint Paul.

Miracles also figure prominently in these stories and add to their spiritual charm.  In this instance, the rabbi reaches his destination faster than any modern jet airplane could transport him. The rabbi also can read the human heart at a distance and, without being told, is aware of the philosopher’s problem. And it is this special knowledge of the problem that solves it, that releases the man from his doubts.

The issue itself is expressed with simple monosyllables – – “why what is, is, and why anything is at all.”  These are the questions that greet the person who breaks with routine and takes the trouble to wonder about the origin of ourselves and everything around us.

The answer given to the doubter in the story is described only as “the Great Secret.”  Listeners are not given  a definition but are left to ponder what the phrase means. Clearly we are meant to understand this title as the central mystery of God, the author of all that exists.

The simplicity of the rabbi’s response to the problem  has great power. This power flows, not from the clarity of rational explanation, but rather from the teacher’s ability to read the man’s interior.

Also the man is cured of his doubt, not by argument, but because his heart is stirred. The rabbi’s ability to see into his problem and his concern for the doubter’s spiritual well-being clearly touch the man where he lives.

Time and place are important for full appreciation of the story. But the tale itself transcends these circumstances and speaks to the spiritual seeker of every era. The central issues remain the same; their solution leads in the same direction.

We, too, find ourselves often perplexed by the most important questions. Maybe, at times, we doubt the value of the spiritual enterprise. But the Great Secret, in all its power and fascination, remains.

Richard Griffin

My daughter, recently rooting around in our attic, has rediscovered some old prayer books. These slim volumes used to serve my spiritual life on a daily basis. One contains all the Psalms from the Hebrew Bible, prayers here presented to suit the needs of each day. They come with ink drawings that show the psalmist in various poses, illustrating key verses.

Since King David is traditionally the author to whom the Psalms are credited, one sketch  portrays him as a majestic figure with a sword in one hand and his harp in another.

I used to carry this little book in my pocket and, from time to time in the course of the day, especially on solitary walks, I would take it out and read parts of it. Or I would bear in my mind and heart lines from these inspired prayers and repeat them over and over. These verses would form a kind of leitmotif, a theme for each hour.

The beauty of the Psalms is their way of giving expression to a wide range of emotions and spiritual sentiments. When you feel enthused about life, they serve you by giving you words that exult; when you feel down, with everything going wrong and everybody against you , they express your heart at those times too.

My little book contains all 150 Psalms. In front it has a guide that recommends certain ones to answer current feelings.

“Are you impatient?” Psalm 30 is a good remedy: “In God I put my trust; I shall not fear.”

“Are you wanting in confidence?” Psalm 26 begins, “The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear?”

“Are you depressed?” In Psalm 41, the psalmist expresses great longing, “As the deer longs for the streams of water, so does my soul long for thee, O God.”

Thus one can pray in need, “O God, hear my cry, listen to my prayer./ From the ends of the earth I cry to thee, for my heart is faint.”

Or, when everything has clicked, “I will bless the Lord at all times . . . I sought the Lord and he answered me.”

Since the Psalms form such an important part of the Christian liturgy, I have never strayed far from their use. But the recovery of this little book prods me to renew daily recourse to them from now on.

Even when people have long experience with prayer, they still need the support of inspired words. Trying simply to stay in God’s presence without saying anything at all can often prove too difficult. But too many words can sometimes stifle the spirit; that’s a reason why the verses you pick and choose from the Psalms can serve your needs so well.

One psalm in particular holds a special place in my life. That’s the 23nd (or 22nd for some). “The Lord is my shepherd,” despite its frequent use, never cloys. It has survived sentimentalized illustrations and has proven its value over and over. Surprisingly enough, I owe my familiarity with it to public school. In the early grades of elementary school we used to recite the verses of this psalm often.

The lines that move me most are “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me.” This expression of confidence in divine protection even in the worst of times impels me toward a courage that I often do not feel.

I also love the prayer of Psalm 16 that says to the Lord: “Guard me as the apple of thy eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings.”

The use of the Psalms as daily prayer can respond to the frustration many people meet in trying to live the spiritual life. As Elizabeth Lesser, author of The New American Spirituality, writes: “Sometimes the spiritual quest feels like knocking, knocking, knocking on a closed door; like a volley of questions bouncing off the walls of our own limited capacity to reach beyond ourselves.”

The Psalms, I suggest, can help at times like those described and at other times as well. They can open closed doors and help us reach out further toward a loving God.

Richard Griffin

This past May third was a desperately hard day for members of my extended family and me. On that day we came together to mourn the loss of a beloved nephew who died in an automobile accident at the age of nineteen. As we said good-bye to him at his funeral, all of us – – his parents, uncles, aunts, and cousins – – found it hard to believe that Greg had left us. It seemed like something that was happening in a nightmare world.

Adopted as an infant by my brother and his wife, Greg grew up in Mont Vernon, a small New Hampshire town that nurtured his young life. Early on, he showed himself able to take on responsibility. He learned valuable skills at all sorts of practical tasks such as building, repairing machinery, and, in his last two years, helping run a business. When you wanted to get something done, Greg had already proven himself a valuable fellow to have around.

Though usually fairly quiet in family groups, he had endeared himself to all of us and we looked forward to seeing him on special occasions. As he matured, we family elders looked on Greg as a person of promise who would carve out a solid future.

With the tragic crash, all of those hopes came to a horrible end. If only, we felt, the vehicle had not ended up near the tree that killed Greg, the only passenger in the car to die. We had a hundred other “if onlys” but, to our deep chagrin, no one of them availed to bring him back.

As I, together with his other uncles, carried Greg’s casket into the church where his funeral was celebrated, the weight of our burden brought home the reality of his death. Externally, I felt hard-pressed to carry this physical weight; interiorly, I found it more difficult to bear the weight of our loss.

Looking back over a period of several weeks, I continue to regret that Greg is no longer with us. I especially grieve for his parents who provided him with such love and nurture. And I feel for his sister, two years younger, for whom Greg was an altogether special person.

Though nothing can replace him, Greg’s immediate family has received some consolation. First, signs that he was so beloved of so many people. All of his cousins came to his funeral, some from great distances. Large numbers of people resident in Mont Vernon and surrounding towns also came. Fellow students from the high school from which Greg was about to graduate helped fill the church.

Neighbors reached out to Greg’s parents with food and with expressions of sympathy that were truly touching. What a grace it was to family members to realize that anyone was so loved! It seemed as if people, on this one occasion at least, were acting God-like in directing toward Greg’s family their love and support.

But still, for Greg’s parents, a long period of grieving would be just beginning. Though they carry with them the support shown them by so many others, nothing will ever quite fill up the gap in their lives made by Greg’s sudden death.

Maybe, however, this ongoing gap offers something we should try to understand. Perhaps, paradoxically enough, the continuance of this void, bitter though it may be felt, may keep Greg’s parents close to their son.

That’s what the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggests. He died in 1945 at the hands of the Nazis for his refusal to accept their hateful ideology. His words seem to me profound and important for those of us who have suffered loss.

“Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time, it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; God doesn’t fill it, but on the contrary, keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain.”

Richard Griffin