Prayer Inspiration

On its face, prayer seems the most wasteful of activities. It comes perilously close to doing nothing. And it sometimes starts a conversation with a God that seems not to be there.               And yet, modern-minded people galore welcome knowing more about prayer. Many of us are eager to grasp the insights of others into this practice. When it comes to praying, we all remain amateurs and need whatever help we can find.

Last week proved a fruitful one for me. It provided me with insightful words about prayer from two quite different women. I feel grateful to them for helping me along the path where light shines.

The first woman to offer me inspiration was a Bible scholar, Ellen Aitken. Based in Amherst, MA, she shares in my community what she has learned from her studies of Holy Scripture. On this occasion, she spoke to some fifty people gathered together for a church service.

“Prayer is, at its base, the habit of bringing everything to God, the whole of one’s life,” says this student of the Bible. To me, these words offer inspiration suggesting the benefits of making prayer a familiar activity, something one does every day. Habit is a way of making actions accessible and even comfortable.

What Professor Aitken says also points toward the content of prayer, what we can pray about. This part sounds simple: everything about us is material for conversation with God.

This same woman says that, when you pray, “You are gathering up all sorts of the pieces of life.” This makes prayer a remedy for the scatteredness felt by many people as we find themselves torn in several directions at once. This makes us crave becoming centered so that we can focus on something important instead of feeling poured out all the time.

Professor Aitken also sees in prayer a force expanding outwards: “Prayer leads to radical acts of compassion.” If it sometimes seems detached from real life, we are deceived. Genuine prayer contains the seed of actions that will express love for our neighbors. Talking with God impels us in the direction of feeling the pain of those God loves.  

A second person who shone light on prayer for me is author Anne Lamott in her book “Traveling Mercies.”  She often presents herself as rather a kooky person, full of weird and entertaining points of view, but at the same time spiritually insightful.

On a day she was struggling with what she calls an “ice-pick headache,” she turned to God in her distress. Of this experience, she writes: “But the way I see things, God loves you the same whether you’re being elegant or not. It feels much better when you are, but even when you can’t fake it, God still listens to your prayers.”

So it does not make any difference if you are having a good or bad hair or head day, you can still turn to God in prayer. God is always ready to start a conversation with us, no matter how harried we may be.

Then Anne Lamott goes on to say: “Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, ‘Well, isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do about your stuff.’”

The familiarity with which the writer puts breezy words in God’s mouth can at first seem shocking. Such words may strike as irreverent those trained to use pious Sunday school language. But they flow from a woman accustomed to dealing intimately with God in prayer. With the freedom of friendship, she dares to write a script for God, giving him his speaking lines.

Notice also how the message echoes what Ellen Aitken, the biblical scholar, says about prayer leading to compassion. Anne Lamott puts it more concretely: it means relieving an old lady’s thirst by getting her a glass of water. But both agree that prayer overflows its apparent boundaries and issues in love of other people.

Ms. Lamott obviously has confidence about God answering prayer. It’s just a matter of priorities: service to the old woman, before God gets to Anne’s stuff. The word “stuff” suggests the mess that her life is frequently in. That does not make any difference to God; the important thing is she needs help so God is prepared to give it.

Richard Griffin

Harvey Cox Talks

Last week, before an audience of some 50 people at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, I had the chance to talk about aging with theologian Harvey Cox. Now age 73, Cox has established a wide reputation as teacher, writer, and spiritual leader. Our conversation demonstrated once again why he is so highly regarded by his own students and other people interested in religious issues.

My first question wondered how my friend’s spiritual life has changed over the years. Some of the answer I already knew because Professor Cox, in his most recent book “Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian’s Journey Through the Jewish Year,” tells of the joy he has found through sharing in the Jewish tradition of his wife and teenage son.

When younger, he felt suspicious of the external marks of religion, but now he has come to appreciate the “tangible signs of the spiritual realm.” The Jewish faith, based on a calendar of events rather than a creed, now speaks to him. So does the Mezuzah that now hangs on the door of his house. “Thank God, I’m home,” he says to himself as he touches this object on arriving back from a hard day of work.

My second inquiry raised a difficult question, even for a theologian. I asked my friend how his ideas about God have changed. In response he said: “When I was younger, I thought I knew a lot more about God than I do now.” This theologian went on to explain how he learned from his teacher at Harvard Divinity School, Paul Tillich, that the biggest mistake is to take religious images literally. God remains beyond all imagery, even Tillich’s famous description of God as “the ground of being.”

I next asked Cox how he responds to the “small insults” of later life, the pains and other sufferings one encounters along the way. He calls them “a drag,” and often feels resentful of them. But when, because of eye surgery, he had to lie on his stomach for two weeks, he experienced warm feelings stirred by friends coming by to talk with him and offer their support.

About new sources of creativity in later life, Cox feels convinced of their power to preserve the health of our brains. He recommends doing something that “has not been part of your repertory,” such things as writing poetry or taking up a new language. This latter is what he is doing as he studies Islam and tries to learn some Arabic.

My question about meditation and contemplation evoked some more of Cox’s spiritual history. Decades ago he felt drawn to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and especially its practice of contemplative practice. The person assigned to teach him meditation was Allen Ginsburg, the famous Beat poet, whom Cox calls “a terrible teacher.”

In time, he was referred to the Benedictines and, for years, has made it a point to stay twice a year at Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham, making his own retreats. Another vital element in Cox’s spiritual practice is his family’s weekly observance of the Sabbath. Starting on Friday evening, he shuts off the computer and abstains from doing any business through Saturday. In this weekly practice he finds great spiritual value.

A member of the audience asked our guest about “the next thing” –  – what is likely to be most significant in the near future. Cox believes it may be religious diversity, now all around us. He cited the answer given by one of his undergraduate students from whom he had asked his reasons for taking a course in world religions. “My roommate is a Muslim, my chemistry partner is Jewish, my girl friend is Buddhist,” the student repied.

Another person asked about the connection between science and spirituality. In response, Professor Cox shared what he learned from the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould when they taught a course together. “I’m grateful for what science has done because it has made religion more honest,” he replied. The other main impact of science has been to raise questions that science itself is incapable of answering, moral issues that confront everyone.

A woman sought more details about the pilgrimage that Cox had referred to earlier. He then told of visiting the South where he had been active in the 1960s in the struggle for civil rights. Traveling with his 16-year-old son, Cox wanted to introduce the boy to a part of American history that looms large in his own life also. As he showed his son the jail in North Carolina where he was held for a few days, the excitement of that time came back. He looks back with some longing to an era in our history when people were empowered to fight for something vitally important.

This pilgrimage struck me as a fine response to an question many older people ask themselves: How can I pass on to my children and grandchildren my legacy of precious personal experience?

Anyone inclined to judge theologians out of touch with real life has obviously never talked with Harvey Cox.

Richard Griffin

John Paul II Adds to the Rosary

By now, the world has come to expect innovation from John Paul II. Surely he will go down in history as a pope who knew how to surprise people by change. Some of the changes have proven controversial indeed, but no one can accuse him of lacking creativity.

The latest example of John Paul's willingness to change tradition is his adding five additional mysteries to the rosary, a devotional prayer beloved by many Catholics. This move will not strike most people as highly significant; even Catholics will see it as a small change, affecting the piety of those who hold dear this particular form of prayer. However, for these people, it will come as a welcome gift from the pope.

If, before 1965, you had walked into a Catholic church while Mass was being celebrated, you would almost surely have seen some people praying the rosary. In those days the language of the liturgy was Latin, so many Catholics preferred to whisper the Hail Mary in their own language while also paying attention to the Mass.

However, with changes in the liturgy brought about by the Second Vatican Council forty years ago, saying the rosary during Mass has become relatively rare. Now that the public prayers of the church are said in the language of each country, Catholics find the Mass more accessible and they tend to give it their full attention.

However, the praying of the rosary has retained its popularity as a private prayer with not a few Catholics, and John Paul wishes to promote its use. He thinks highly of this practice and strongly encourages the habit. For him, it does not conflict with the official public prayer of the church, but instead “serves as an excellent introduction and a faithful echo of the liturgy.”

The genius of the rosary as a prayer comes from its combining spoken words with contemplation of events in the life of Jesus and his mother Mary. It also gives you something to hold in your hand – – beads strung together along which you move your fingers after saying each individual prescribed prayer.

A series of “Hail Marys,” each repeated ten times, forms the center of each section of the rosary. For the person praying, they become a kind of mantra, while he or she ponders the sacred events called “mysteries.” In the spiritual tradition the events receive this name because they have depths in which a person can find ever richer layers of meaning.

Up till now these mysteries came in three groups: joyful, sorrowful, and glorious. Those added this month the pope calls the five “mysteries of light” all of them taken from the public life of Jesus.

These five events, as listed by the pope, are: 1) The baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River; 2) His self-manifestation at the wedding of Cana; 3) His proclamation of the Kingdom of God, with his call to conversion; 4) His transfiguration; 5) His institution of the Eucharist.

John Paul sees contemplation of these five events as filling something of a gap between the five joyful mysteries relating to the infancy of Jesus and the sorrowful mysteries that center on his passion and death. The five events added by the pope will provide additional rich material for prayerful reflection, all of them based in the New Testament.

Those who pray the rosary every day of the week are accustomed to saying one set of five mysteries a day. For these people, the pope suggests that the “luminous mysteries” (his term for those he has added) be prayed on each Thursday. Some who give more time to the rosary each day, of course, can include all four groups at once.

Some Christians, including some Catholics, have often been troubled by what they see as too much attention to Mary in the rosary. That criticism, which the pope does not agree with, would seem to be deflected by the addition of the new mysteries so clearly focused on the life of Christ.

In any event, many spiritual seekers will welcome the rosary's new content and find it food for their souls. They may also agree with Sister Janice Farnham, professor of church history at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, who says simply of the new material, “It is beautiful.”

Richard Griffin

Pacelli Elected Pope

In my personal files there is a postcard that I count as a precious possession. It was sent from Rome by my father in March 1939 to my mother at home in Watertown. The message did not go beyond the conventional: a few words about the weather and looking forward to the trip back to Boston. Nonetheless, for me it holds historical meaning.

My father had traveled to Rome in order to cover the election of a new pope. The election qualified as big news, especially in Catholic Boston. But getting there had also been a matter of widespread interest to readers of the Boston Post, the large newspaper which employed my father as a reporter.

The story of getting there centered on the archbishop of Boston, William Cardinal O’Connell (often referred to as “Gangplank Bill,” for his frequent vacations by ship). Twice before, in 1914 and 1922, he had failed to reach Rome on time for the elections of popes Benedict XV and Pius XI, so he was especially anxious not to miss this one.

He wanted to arrive at the Vatican before the group of 62 cardinal electors was sealed behind closed doors. The only passage then available, in those days before commercial air travel had become common, was on a ship of the Italian line, the Saturnia, sailing out of New York.

Two weeks after leaving North America, the Saturnia reached Algiers where the cardinal and his party transferred to another Italian ship, the Vulcania. This liner arrived at Naples, two days later, enabling O’Connell to reach Rome on March 1 just in time. Each day from shipboard my father would dispatch a cable back to his paper in Boston detailing the cardinal’s passage and informing readers about the suspenseful chances of beating the Vatican deadline.

Later, O’Connell narrated these events in a privately printed book entitled “A Memorable Voyage.” There he simply refers to Mr.Griffin and his colleagues from two other Boston newspapers as “genial correspondents.” About the papal election itself, he supplies only some ceremonial details, leaving out anything about the actual deliberations.

The choice of the successor to Pius XI would come as no surprise to readers of the Boston Post. By virtue of an extensive tour of the United States in 1936, this Vatican insider was well known to the American cardinals, other clergy, and the American public as papabilis (pope-able.)

This election of Pacelli would prove fateful. The outbreak of World War II a few months later ensured the importance to the world of this new pope. In particular, his stance toward the Jews in their hour of mortal peril would become highly controversial and remains so to this day. Pius XII, as he became known, still has his determined critics for his alleged failure to speak out and act forcefully to save the European Jews from destruction, but he also has his defenders.

Though I appreciate having the postcard in my files, seeing it also causes me some pain. It serves, after all, as a reminder of an important personal fact: I never once asked my father about his experiences traveling with Cardinal O’Connell and covering the election of Pius XII.

True, I was only eleven years old when my father went on that historic trip. My not having then talked with him about his adventures does not surprise me. But that I never did any time afterward now seems to me astonishing. My father was witness to other dramatic historical events but I never got to hear from his lips anything of them either.

As time went on, and I entered into my teenage years, World War II fascinated me. I followed the battles and other military news every day and was rabidly interested in the progress of Allied forces. News about the Catholic Church also became important to me as I grew older. Still, I did not ever ask my father about his impressions of Pacelli or his appraisal of the church’s stance toward the two warring sides.

Perhaps there is something providential about young people not being able to talk to their parents or even to listen with interest to their parents’ experiences. Maybe they would not mature as distinct personalities if events in their elders’ lives impinged too strongly on them. In any event, I could not rise above my own narcissistic self enough to take in what my father could have told me of his life.

At age 21 I was to leave home and the world in search of God. That leaving would deprived me of the opportunity to talk with my father, adult to adult. And when I was only 25, my father died.

I often fantasize about talking with him at my present age. Now I could ask him about that fateful papal election and about many of the other significant events he wrote about as a journalist. Maybe I could listen now with the understanding and sympathy that age has brought.

Richard Griffin

Jimmy Carter, Peace Prize Winner

What are the most important realities in life? According to Jimmy Carter, the right answer can be found in the words of St. Paul. These realities are the spiritual things that cannot be seen. The former president lists justice, humility, love, and compassion among the unseen qualities that make human life precious.

This was his comment in response to the announcement last week about his winning the Nobel Peace Prize. In the midst of his fellow townspeople of Plains, Georgia – – all 637 of them it seemed – – he was shown on television celebrating the news. Despite his having been honored numerous times previously for his work in bringing peace to various parts of the world, this recognition of his efforts came as especially sweet.

Asked on television to comment on the award, historian Douglas Brinkley said of him: “Jimmy Carter does not wear his religion on his sleeve, but in his heart.”

Zbigniev Brezinsky, his former national security advisor, spoke in admiration of the way Jimmy Carter, when president, “combined the spiritual dimension with the use of power.”

Another commentator, columnist Thomas Oliphant, said that “hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, are alive today because of him.”

According to the Nobel Committee that chose him, Jimmy Carter’s brokering of the accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978 could have won him the peace prize by itself. That mediation brought about a peace between those two countries that has endured through many crises, although it is seriously threatened today.

After retirement from the presidency in 1981, Mr. Carter has traveled to far sections of the world, in the cause of peace. His work of conflict resolution and election monitoring in Ethiopia, North Korea, Bosnia, Sudan, and Uganda, among other places has won him the world’s admiration.

To each site he brings the prestige of a former president along with an ability to listen to all sides. The charm of his famous smile also must win him friends who see in him the power of benevolence.

Some consider his greatest achievement in this era to be persuading the military junta in Haiti to step down, thus saving that small nation a bloody confrontation involving United States military forces.

So this is a man eminently deserving of the world’s most honored peace prize. The only question about it is why it was so long coming.

What strikes me as deserving of attention is not only the scope of this man’s achievement, astounding though this certainly is. But I like to focus on President Carter’s motivation. He is a man who lives by the spirit. His religious heritage continues to be the most important force in his life.

Carter is not simply a do-gooder. His service of others gives every evidence of coming from a deeply rooted love of God and other human beings. Steeped in the Bible and the teachings of his Baptist tradition, he believes in using his personal gifts for the benefit of others. His is a classic spirituality that sees in other people other Christs and gives highest priority to their service.

At a press conference in Orlando three years ago, I had the opportunity to see him answer questions from journalists interested in the subject of aging. I also asked him a question of my own, about whether, with the advance of years, his ideas of God had changed.

In response, he indicated that his ideas had indeed changed and he went on to talk more broadly about his spiritual life. Having taught Sunday school since the age of 18, Carter reflects on the teachings of his faith. As he approaches the end of life, he thinks more about the hereafter. “Members of my family,” he noted, “have approached the end of life with a very healthy attitude, with a sense of humor.”

He then added: “I think that whether or not we believe in life after death, we do have to face the prospect of what we’re going to do in our final days, how we’re going to be a blessing instead of a curse to the people we leave behind.”

As the Nobel Peace Prize confirms, Jimmy Carter has already been a blessing to a whole lot of people.

Richard Griffin

Older and Younger Together

At the end of a lecture I gave last week about ministry to older people, a member of the audience asked me how he could promote better relations between the younger and the older members of his religious community. He belongs to a Catholic order in Peru where he will be returning after his theological studies here.

To hear him tell it, men of different generations within his religious household have trouble communicating with one another. They experience a fair amount of tension because of differing outlooks and values. He would like to find a way of easing those tensions and opening hearts among older and younger members.

Like many questions posed in public, this one was difficult. Anyone can ask a question that I cannot answer. And what do I know about religious communities in Peru?

Making a brave effort, however, I shared with him my own experience of living in religious communities in a past era when tensions between generations had grown large. It was a time of great change in the church and many older men felt their values and way of life under threat.

I remember one older colleague who, to my consternation, literally would not exchange a single word with me during dinner. If I had asked him for the salt shaker, he would not have passed it to me. Such was the degree of bitterness he felt about people like me who favored changes so threatening to him.

I never did find a way to deal with such divisions within my community, nor did anyone else. Only the passage of time eased the problem as new outlooks gradually took hold and the younger generation grew older.

Since that time, I have learned some approaches to older/younger relationships that may promote mutual sympathy and understanding. Sharing these approaches with the questioner, I hoped he could act as a bridge between the two age groups in his community.

For young people, I suggested, the challenge is to come to grips with their own aging. Though it is extremely difficult for young people to imagine themselves as old, they might try to make this spiritual leap. Doing so would require them to come to grips with their own aging so as to enter with empathy into the experience of people grown old.

For young persons to enter into the experience of the aged might mean: 1) realizing that wealth, success, achievement, – welcome as they are – do not define human life; 2) seeing their own life and aging as a gift; 3) regarding old people, not as a race apart, but as their future selves; 4) recognizing that someday disability and dependence may loom large in their own life as it does with so many older people now; 5) allowing that God may have special gifts in store for them when they get old.

These would be ways for younger people to find the older person in themselves. Another approach might be to see the young self in the old man or woman. Often young people act as if they think the older person was born old. They do not realize how some people, now aged, still still think of themselves as young.

Of course, in looking for the younger person in themselves, all older people have the advantage of actually having been young. They do not have to rely upon imagination to know what it is like; they can remember.

However, it may still require spiritual power to understand how being young now differs from being young two or three generations ago. The year 1940 and the year 2002 show more than a few differences between them. The challenges and opportunities of contemporary culture are not the same as people now old once faced.

Their challenge is to bring empathy and love to younger people and take an interest in the generations that have come after them. Older people who can identify with young men and women in a disinterested and loving way will almost surely find in younger generations a precious source of renewal and revitalization.  

So, ideally, the problem posed by the questioner after my lecture calls forth a spiritual approach. It may require a revision of attitudes and values that will enable older persons to find the hidden youth in themselves and, in turn, for younger persons to discover in the aged their future selves.

Richard Griffin

Morning Has Broken

Sometimes, in later life, the simplest activities bring the most pleasure. An early morning walk on a crisp fall Sunday, for example, delivers satisfactions for both body and soul.

I pass through my front gate just after seven, the only householder to be up and out. All the neighbors are still sleeping, it seems, their cars keeping vigil for them on the street. On one bumper, scrunched together, several weighty slogans catch my eye: “Stay Human.” “Question Assumptions.” “Save Tibet.”

The first hours of the new day have a clarity about them unique to 7 A.M in early October. As I walk, the sun’s rays slant across the streetscapes, illuminating everything in sight. Each object emerges sharp in the light, with borders clearly etched. Subtle shadows shade parts of buildings, providing a delicious chiaroscuro in black and white.

The color blue holds total command of the sky, the way it will almost surely not by afternoon. No clouds yet dare spoil the splendor of the world above, a purity I want to hold on to.

Morning has broken, as the folk singer once called Cat Stevens used to sing. The world does indeed look like a new creation, fresh from the Creator’s hand. Even things made by humans look renewed in this hour.

As I follow my accustomed path through parts of the neighboring university, its structures stand out eloquently. Two rhinos, formidably sculptured in tarnished bronze, stand stolidly at the entrance to the biological labs.  

The multi-storied psychology building, soars in white stone far above my head, a temple to pure reason. The museums that I pass mix light and dark in unaccustomed formulas. Off to my right, the slender spire of the college church, sparkling white, reaches for the sky.

As well as sights, my route offers delicious sounds. Not yet ready for songs, the birds chirp to one another and, perhaps, to me. They almost have the field to themselves, the usual noisemakers – cars – being few at this early hour.

Nor does human chatter distract me since few people have yet appeared, no cell phones either. And, thank heaven, no one drives by with his car radio blaring rap.

Passersby, if any show up, may greet me now more than at other times. We walkers are few enough to appreciate the wonder of other human beings’ existence. It’s almost as if we were alone in the big world and free to be amazed that additional persons also inhabit this place.

Students nearby in their thousands will sleep for hours more, with no regrets for missing the best part of the day. Instead they have cheerfully reversed the order of nature, turning day into night and night into day. When they greet one another with the words “What’s up?” as they invariably do, the answer must be: “Not me, at this hour.”

I relish the silence and feel grateful for interior space and reflection. Musing about the week, I cherish the hospitality of former colleagues, two nights before. Also thoughts about faith from Anne Lamott, a quirky author newly discovered, amuse and inspire me. And columnist Tom Friedman’s views of America’s future stir me to wondering where we are heading as a nation.

But thinking takes second place to feeling. Now is a time to swing one’s arms, as I do, and set a brisk pace. Inner peace, punctuated by moments of elation, powers my walk. Sunday is my favorite day of the week, the day when I practice leisure.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel was right in finding the beauty of the Sabbath precious, and Huston Smith in lamenting its loss in the modern world.

I look forward to worship at the end of my walk. Then I will join with others, old and young, in rites familiar to me since childhood. Reciting the ancient texts will bring to my spirit the peace and joy stirred up by sacred words and mystical thoughts.

Even when the liturgy feels perfunctory, as it will today, and the celebrant’s style casual, even slapdash, I will have started the day right. Though this preacher knows no more than I when or how his sermon will end, God will have provided.

This day will bring further welcome events. Another meeting with members of the faith community, this time over coffee and cake; my weekly softball game with its never-failing joy of friendly competition ; a televised slice of the Patriots’ game from Miami; a reception for fellow writers who have published new books this past year; and a delicious dinner with family members.

The walk indeed turns out to have been the start of a fine day. Typical of Sundays spent in my 75th year to heaven, this one may not have had everything but it had a whole lot. The beauty of the world, physical and spiritual exercise, community, family – is it the passage of years that makes these goods feel more precious than ever before?

Richard Griffin