Spiritual Literacy Blog

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat read the "book of the world" for spiritual meanings.

Carolyn Winfrey Gillette is the author of Songs of Grace: New Hymns for God and Neighbor (Discipleship Resources Upper Room Books, 2009) and Gifts of Love: New Hymns for Today's Worship (Geneva Press, 2000) and the co-pastor of Limestone Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware. She has written many hymns to help churches and individuals respond to disasters and other current events. Carolyn visited Haiti on a mission trip when she was a Lebanon Valley College student. Here is her hymn for Haiti. You can read more about Carolyn and the hymn, and hear an audio download, at DelawareOnline.com.

In Haiti, There is Anguish
ST. CHRISTOPHER 7.6.8.6.8.6.8.6 (“Beneath the Cross of Jesus”)

In Haiti, there is anguish that seems too much to bear;
A land so used to sorrow now knows even more despair.
From city streets, the cries of grief rise up to hills above;
In all the sorrow, pain and death, where are you, God of love?

A woman sifts through rubble, a man has lost his home,
A hungry, orphaned toddler sobs, for she is now alone.
Where are you, Lord, when thousands die — the rich, the poorest poor?
Were you the very first to cry for all that is no more?

O God, you love your children; you hear each lifted prayer!
May all who suffer in that land know you are present there.
In moments of compassion shown, in simple acts of grace,
May those in pain find healing balm, and know your love’s embrace.

Where are you in the anguish? Lord, may we hear anew
That anywhere your world cries out, you’re there — and suffering, too.
And may we see, in others’ pain, the cross we’re called to bear;
Send out your church in Jesus’ name to pray, to serve, to share.

Tune: Frederick Charles Maker, 1881.
Text: Text: Copyright © 2010 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette.

Churches that support Church World Service are granted permission for free use. Other groups can email Carolyn for permission at bcgillette@comcast.net.

The Kogi, descendants of a pre-Columbian civilization in Columbia, see themselves as guardians of the Earth. They call themselves the Elder Brothers. In a column in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes about the concerns of another group called the Elders, a small council of retired leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela. They have issued a joint statement calling on religious leaders to "change all discriminatory practices within their own religions and traditions." Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter spoke out on this subject at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Australia:

"Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths, creating an environment in which violations against women are justified. The belief that women are inferior human beings in the eyes of God gives excuses to the brutal husband who beats his wife, the soldier who rapes a woman, the employer who has a lower pay scale for women employees, or parents who decide to abort a female embryo."

It is refreshing to see these Elders speaking out when many religious institutions still exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals. Like the Kogi, they have wisdom to offer the world that is sorely needed. It is also imperative for us to be receptive to what these Elders are saying out of respect for their lives and service to humanity.

Friendship is not what it used to be. In this era of Facebook and other social media, we have "friends" we may not know very well. In this well-developed article for The Chronicle Review, William Deresiewicz runs through a brief history of friendship from ancient times to the present. The capitalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries took the idealism and emphasis upon virtues out of friendship and made it more impersonal, focusing on affection and affinity.

In modern times with the faltering of family life and the rise of divorce, friends become the family we choose. Deresiewicz notes: "We're busy people; we want our friendships fun and friction free." Facebook enables us to devolve this closeness from a relationship to a feeling. Instead of conversations, we and our friends engage in "broadcasting our stream of consciousness." The author is very hard on the idea of this new group friendship and claims that it fosters an emphasis not upon experience but information.

We agree with some of Deresiewicz's criticisms of the new face of friendship in the era of social networking. That's why we have made our Spirituality & Practice Facebook page a content-rich arena where people can share stories and experiences from their spiritual journeys. We are also emphasizing the ancient virtues — many of them also known as spiritual practices. When we engage with practices, we can upgrade the way we interact with social media.

In The New York Times Barbara Strauch reports that in middle age (from the 40s to late 60s), the brain has trouble holding on to information. One example is that you get interrupted and instead of picking up where you left off before the distraction, the brain falls into the default mode where it wanders off and begins daydreaming. Another is that the brain's neural connections weaken and we experience "tots — those tip-of-the-tongue times when you know something but can't quite call it to mind."

But there's good news. Researchers have discovered that there are ways of training the aging brain: it is possible to "jiggle our synapses a bit" by confronting new or alien viewpoints. Another way is to critically reflect on long-held assumptions. We leaped for joy upon reading this fascinating article for it presents the spiritual practice of openness as "a way of cracking the cognitive egg and scrambling it up." This receptivity to the bizarre, the unknown, and the alien has many more advantages than we ever thought possible!

On January 4-6, 2010, PBS will air a three-part documentary series titled This Emotional Life. Vulcan Productions and NOVA/WGBH have joined forces with Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Daniel Gilbert (Stumbling on Happiness) to examine the important role of emotions in our lives. We were able to screen it in advance and highly recommend this series.

The first two-hour episode, "Family, Friends & Lovers," covers the social relationships that are central to our development as human beings. The second segment, "Facing Our Fears." examines feelings we consider to be obstacles to our happiness — anger, fear, anxiety and despair. The last episode, "Rethinking Happiness," covers the positive emotions (silence, compassion, forgiveness, and altruism) which play a major role in our happiness and well-being.

Each of these two-hour programs includes stories of ordinary people and the latest scientific research on the emotions. Anyone interested in emotional intelligence and the impact of our feelings upon all dimensions of our lives will want to tune in. It also provides an added perspective to two books edited by Daniel Goleman that grew out of conversations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the confluence of science, the mind, emotions, and spirituality: Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? and Healing Emotions. This Emotional Life also nicely complements our recent map to Happiness. The film is supported by a content-rich website, www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife.

Jody Williams was the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, for which she was awarded, along with the organization, the Nobel Peace Prize. So imagine her shock when she learned that the latest Nobel Laureate, Barack Obama, and his administration have decided to follow George W. Bush's example and not sign the International Mine Ban Treaty which was established in 1997 and has the support of 156 nations. All of the United States' major allies — including the 27 other members of NAT0 — are on board. All the countries in the Western hemisphere have signed, except the U.S. and Cuba. Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Algeria support the ban. The holdouts besides the United States are Russia, China, and India.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly explained the Obama Administration's decision: "We determined that we should not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we sign this convention." Williams finds this answer to be patently absurd and goes on to say that Obama's position on land mines calls into question his expressed views on multilateralism, respect for international humanitarian law, and disarmament. How true and how sad. We hope and pray that one day these insidious weapons of indiscriminate violence will be banned by all the nations of the earth.

John Dear is one of our Living Spiritual Teachers, and we treasure him as one of the most articulate and passionate advocates of nonviolence in our time. In his column in the National Catholic Reporter, he laments President Obama's decision to expand the war in Afghanistan even though most Americans want us out of there and only about 100 Al Qaeda members remain there. Dear writes: "The war is illegal, immoral, impractical, and plain foolish. It will further divide us. It will lead us into debt beyond our means. It will sow the seeds of terrorist attacks to come."

Pondering the messages of this Advent season, he lays out things to think about including the challenge to stop making an idol out of Obama, the need to rise up and speak out against our nation's imperial ambitions, the necessity of building a new nonviolent movement from the ground up, and the importance of putting our hopes in the peacemaker of Jesus who modeled for us a life of forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion, and love.

Scientists are finding by testing children and then comparing this data with research on chimpanzees that helping is a natural inclination, not something imposed by parents or culture. In this article by Nicholas Wade in The New York Times, he points out that many children are more cooperative outside the home where they are not acting within a pattern of family competition. Michael Tomasello, a developmental psychologist and author of Why We Cooperate, notes that "Children are altruistic by nature." What animates them to do good is shared intentionality.

Much of same conclusion is reached by Frans de Waal in The Age of Empathy. Now if we could only rid ourselves of the cooperative venture of war making, the world would certainly be a better and more peaceful place!

Here's something to be thankful for: three clergymen who call themselves "the interfaith amigos." Laurie Goodstein writes in The New York Times about their presentation at a Presbyterian church in Nashville, Tennessee, with 250 people in attendance. Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie, and Sheik Jamal Rahman "put everything on the table: the verses they found offensive in one another's holy books, anti-Semitism, violence in the name of religion, claims by each faith to have the exclusive hold on truth, and of course, Israel."

This certainly takes interfaith dialogue beyond the traditional areas of discussion. Each also emphasized what was most important in his faith: the rabbi chose "oneness," the minister "unconditional love," and the shiek said "compassion." We have reviewed their book Getting to the Heart of Interfaith. The three amigos are to be commended for offering churches, synagogues, and mosques a viable and imaginative model of the spiritual practice of hospitality.

Here's something to be thankful for: three clergymen who call themselves "the interfaith amigos." Laurie Goodstein writes in The New York Times about their presentation at a Presbyterian church in Nashville, Tennessee, with 250 people in attendance. Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie, and Sheik Jamal Rahman "put everything on the table: the verses they found offensive in one another's holy books, anti-Semitism, violence in the name of religion, claims by each faith to have the exclusive hold on truth, and of course, Israel."

This certainly takes interfaith dialogue beyond the traditional areas of discussion. Each also emphasized what was most important in his faith: the rabbi chose "oneness," the minister "unconditional love," and the shiek said "compassion." We have reviewed their book Getting to the Heart of Interfaith. The three amigos are to be commended for offering churches, synagogues, and mosques a viable and imaginative model of the spiritual practice of hospitality.

In a report on global pop culture for the Christian Science Monitor, Amelia Newcomb writes that Japan is "setting the trend in what's cool." Japanese women are experimenting with blogs and cellphone novels but the big news is in serial cartoons. "The American 20th-century ideal of the individual superhero is wearing thin," says Roland Kelts, professor at the University of Tokyo. "The Japanese model is of self-denial and the sublimation of selfish desires for the sake of group harmony. This is becoming a multipolar world. The desire to be part of something harmonious rather than the leader of the pack is growing." Manga creators Shin Kibayashi and his sister Yuko believe that the way we perceive villains and good guys is also changing: "Now the world has changed. Nobody is sure who is good or who is evil . . . The whole world is becoming borderless and unstable. The manga world's ambiguity has become realistic."

We have noticed this Japanese contribution in the films of Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle) where there is no simplistic division of "us" versus "them." Humans, demons, sorcerers all demonstrate moments of goodness, selfishness, and folly.

Japan's pop culture creators deserve to be commended for advancing our appreciation of the interconnections of all beings, no matter how strange or unappealing they may seem at first!

Nanci Rose-Ritter, a writer and student of world religions and philosophies for over 35 years, pays tribute to the life and writings of the American-born Tibetan Buddhist monk Pema Chodron. She, as we do, appreciates her unique blend of Tibetan wisdom spiced with personal stories and practical suggestions for spiritual practice. Rose-Ritter singles out Chodron's emphasis on the eleventh century lojong (mind training) teachings which spark the cultivation of compassion. Equally important are her tonglen exercises which open our hearts to others. Chodron teaches regularly at Gampo Abbey, Nova Scotia.

The "Idea of the Day" column in the New York Times quotes an article in Travel & Leisure by Peter Jon Lindberg, He complains about the noise pollution in public spaces — not people talking, but the omnipresent bad music in shopping centers, elevators, fancy resorts (even underwater in pools), airports, and on and on. He makes a whimsical point that if he has to listen to music, he would much prefer Mozart to Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Bob Dylan to The Eagles.

We concur with his affirmation of "the right not to listen to music." Why do we have to have some kind of noise always besieging our already fried brains? Can't we do anything without a soundtrack? And what does this assault on our ears say about our fear of silence?

On his official website, the prolific and always entertaining Robert Fulghum notices that in these economically depressed times, shoe shine stands have proliferated. Many of those doing this work are now old men. Fulghum recalls that when he was a freshman in college 50 years ago he landed a part-time job in a shoe repair shop in Boulder, Colorado. Meryl, the owner, gave his customers 100 per cent attention and always knew what they needed just by looking at their shoes.

Fulghum remembers his experiences there and muses on the importance of taking care of your feet, shoe maintenance, the realization that no job is small or unimportant, and that you can apply creativity and imagination to everything that you do. He outlines what it means to practice spirituality at work.