What do people of spirit do when feeling oppressed by the suffering of others? Often, they pray. And they pray often. This they do especially when the suffering happens far away and they feel unable to do much else.
Some divinity school students of my acquaintance feel deeply troubled by the war in Yugoslavia. Scenes of wholesale murder in a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” violate their sense of human dignity. So do the heartrending images of refugees driven out of their homes with only the clothes on their backs.
These students want to do something. But what can ordinary Americans do in the face of such massive and distant suffering? How can anyone respond to such indiscriminate evil?
These students have chosen to pray three mornings a week during the month of April. They gather in Andover Chapel at Harvard and offer their prayers for the relief of suffering. Though few in number, they represent a spiritual force that deserves to be taken seriously.
Initiative for this prayer group belongs to Nancy Palmer Jones, a 47-year-old master’s in divinity candidate who is preparing for the Unitarian Universalist ministry. A former free-lance editor and actress, Ms. Jones has been motivated by such images as that of people “being herded on to buses and not knowing where they are going.”
Ms. Jones can argue “all sides of the situation.” She feels concern for everybody who has been made to suffer. A friend of hers has been in touch by email with a woman in Belgrade, Milica Pejovic-Milovancevic by name, who has a two-and-one-half year old son. This mother has said that she does not go to the shelters during NATO bombing raids because “if my destiny is to die, I would die on the way to shelter.” She adds: “ we are at home, we have house in the center of Belgrade and have that stupid idea that we are safe.”
Milica says further: “I am afraid of each sound that looks like plane. Trolley and cars alarms are the worst. Please enjoy your freedom and try for a second or minute to be in mine shoes.”
Another woman, Senada Sabiae, this one a Bosnian from the Balkan region, is in touch with Ms. Jones’s friend. Also a mother of a two-and-a half year old boy, she has known war and is working for peace. “I know what a creepy sound a siren makes,” she says, “ I know how your body shakes and trembles when a bomb or grenade explodes. ”
Both the Serbian and the Bosnian women loom large in Nancy’s prayers.
Also taking part in the prayer session at Andover Chapel are Master of Theological Studies students Nina Roberts and Eleanor Mitten. Eleanor, from the Bahai tradition, said she came to pray because “peace has to happen.”
Nina Roberts explains her presence in this way: “My mother has been calling me – – I feel this is the only way I can respond.” Nina describes herself as coming from no affiliation or rather, as she puts it, “I’m affiliated with the Hippie tradition.”
Another divinity student present in the chapel makes us still only five in number. But in spirit we feel ourselves not negligible, perhaps because we believe in prayer as a response to impossible situations.
The format of the prayer remains simple. At the beginning the group leader gives a brief invocation calling on God for help. Then, as we focus our minds and hearts, members of the group remain silent unless moved to speak briefly. The short service ends with a closing word.
After our prayer, one of the students gives me a copy of “Prayer for the Balkans,” written by one Abdu’l-Baha. The first part reads like this:
“O Thou Kind Almighty! We supplicate at the throne of grace for mercy for our sins, mercy for the great destruction of life, the blood that has been shed in the Balkans, the children that are being made orphans, the mothers losing their dear sons, the sons who have become fatherless, the cities that have been destroyed, the many hearts that have been filled with blood, the many tears that are being shed and the many spirits that are in a state of agitation.”
This prayer, in translation, was published in “The Christian Commonwealth” dated January 1, 1913!
Richard Griffin