Spiritual Literacy Blog

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

In a fascinating article written for On the Commons and reprinted on Alternet, David Bollier laments how digital communication tools (email, cell phones, text-messaging, voicemail, Facebook, Twitter, and the World Wide Web) have radically dis-connected us, scrambled our brains, and fostered thinking that is rapid, productive, and short-term rather than deep and deliberative. Even worse, leisure has given way to a 24/7 schedule and an emphasis upon fast-time activities, thus upping the ante so that the most important thing becomes to prolong one's productivity and efficiency.

Bolier notes a recent article in The New Yorker about people using "neuro-enhancing drugs" to boost their cognitive performance. He refers to David Levy's call for an "information environmentalism" to help educate people about the manifold forms of mental pollution including advertising, telemarketing, junk mail, radio, TV, and various digital media. Hucksters now talk about seizing "mindshare." In response, Levy suggests: "We need the equivalent of old-growth forests and marshlands in our mental lives." That means more contemplative spaces and quiet zones in our cities. Here is a contribution that could be made by churches, synagogues, and mosques.

In this exquisite blog post, Nazia Mallick ponders the spiritual practice of silence. She notes that in our fast-paced and frantic everyday world, many are still uncomfortable with quietness and much prefer the noise and energy of constant activity. Mallick sees silence as an opportunity to come home to ourselves, to listen more carefully, and to enter our intuitive mind. We can learn more about this sacred art by encountering it in nature, in the telepathy of lovers, and in the calm minds of others. She closes with lyrics from "Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel.

Satish Kumar, the editor of Resurgence, questions the morality of people in Brazil, South Africa, India, and China following in the consumerism of Americans and Europeans. He prefers simplicity which "requires less ego and more imagination, less complication and more creativity, less glamour and more gratitude, less attention to appearance and more attention to essence." Think of a Shaker chair that is simple, well-made, and lasts a long time. Kumar believes that the economic downturn and financial crisis offer us a chance to re-examine the obsession with fashion and consumer goods, a wasteful lifestyle that lies behind the environmental crisis, the social crisis, and poverty.

At the age of 29, Writer Pico Iyer was at the pinnacle of success as a commentator on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment on Park Avenue in New York City, and a chance to travel around the world. Now he lives in a two-room apartment in Kyoto and has chosen to live without a car, a cell phone, or a television. This simple lifestyle enables him to walk around the neighborhood, play ping-pong every evening, write long letters, read what he wants, and eat tangerines slowly in the sun. Iyer concludes: "Perhaps happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn't pursued."

Journalists Bill Moyers and Michael Winship point out the rash of killings in America involving guns: the guard shot to death at the United States Holocaust Museum, the doctor who performed late term abortions who was killed at his local church, the shootings at an army recruiting office in Little Rock, and the 13 people gunned down in Binghamton, New York, and the other multiple murders across the country this year. Moyers and Winship state that the two political parties have not been able to muster enough power to take on the National Rifle Association which just managed to get its Congressional supporters to attach an amendment allowing concealed weapons in national parks onto a popular credit card reform bill.

Moyers and Winship lament this timidity on the part of politicians and conclude: "There are already some 200 million, privately owned firearms in America. Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and in some years more than 400,000 non-fatal, gun-related assaults. The next time someone wades through a pool of blood to sidle up and champion the preservation of firearms, can't we just say, no thanks? Enough's enough." Amen.

Matthew Fox, one of our Living Spiritual Teachers, pays tribute to theologian and ecologist Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work, The Dream of the Earth, and other books, who recently died at the age of 94. He sees him as "a new Moses" leading religious people out of "bondage of a land of anthropocentrism to a land of cosmology and ecology." He salutes Berry's call for Eco-Justice and his challenge to all of us to make our contribution to "the Great Work" of saving the planet. Fox is convinced that this mystic taught us much about wildness, awe in the presence of nature, praying outside, connecting cosmos and psyche, helping us name the vastness of our souls, taking seriously the yoga of study, demonstrating what it means to be an elder, and modeling for us a deep ecumenism which includes all the wisdom traditions and science as well.

Fox concludes that Berry was a prophet imbued with "the spirit of Teilhard de Chardin, the intellect of Aquinas, the eros of Hildegard, the humility of Francis, the science of Einstein, and the courage and imagination of Jesus."

We wish we could have been at the University of Portland to hear environmentalist, journalist, and author Paul Hawken give the commencement address. He tells them that written in code on the back of their diplomas is this message: "You are brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring." Civilization needs a new operating system and "you are the programmers." Hawken is pleased that there are a multitude of caring people working right now to save the planet and nonprofit foundations dedicated to solving the huge problems of our era. Then another startling images: "Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected." Hawken concludes: "Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss."

We know a group of people who would have been thrilled to hear this earth-cherishing message: the Kogi tribe of elders in northern Columbia who for years have been calling upon the wealthy nations to take up the task of being guardians of the earth.

In this article by Leonardo Boff, one of our Living Spiritual Teachers, this theologian and member of the Earthcharter Commission, salutes the U.N.'s designation of Earth Day, April 22, as the International Day of Mother Earth. Acknowledging the rights of nature, of the eco-systems, and of Mother Earth offers an alternative to the long-standing Western contention that the earth is simply an instrument, a pile of resources to be used and exploited for human consumption. The plants, the animals, the rivers, and the wind all deserve to exist on their own.

Boff also suppors the suggestion that the U.N. should release a Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth which would include the right to life of all living beings, the right of the Planet to the regeneration of its biocapacity, the right to pure life (free of contamination and pollution), and the right to harmony and equilibrium with and among all things.

We agree with Boff. Spiritual people need to do everything in our power to help more people abandon their view of humankind as having dominion over Mother Earth and other beings. Instead we need to practice reverence for the Earth and acknowledge that she, too, has rights.

Anne Marie Valinoti, an internist in northern New Jersey, begins this piece in The New York Times with the story of a young man who came to see her with a 103 fever, red-eyed, shivering, and coughing. She told him to go home and go to bed, but he said he had to get to his Wall Street job, and off he went spreading his illness to anyone he came in contact with that day. "I see the foolishness of this bravura," she writes, "And I confront it almost daily in my primary care practice. No one can miss a day — a minute, even — of work, carpooling, volunteering, vacation, anything. 'I don't have time to be sick!' my patients wail. Everyone must soldier on, leaving sick days to those with less important things to do." Valinoti also talks about the cavalier dispensing of antibiotics by doctors as a way of helping patients carry on with their work even though evidencing symptoms of the flu or colds, which are caused by viruses.

When we read her piece, we thought of what taking a sick day means in the spiritual life. Taking care of your body, a temple of God, is always a good thing. Slowing down, savoring life, is also good. Some spiritual teachers even suggest making the most out of a sick day by turning it into a personal retreat or 12-hour period of silence. Of course, not spreading your sickness to others is also following the universal spiritual mandate of doing no harm.

President Barack Obama salutes the virtue of empathy in this extract from his book Audacity of Hope. Obama, who will soon appoint a new justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, has stated that he is looking for a person who has empathy for "people's hopes and struggles" as his nominee. We applaud that selection criteria. Here's how Obama talks about this moral virtue:

"A sense of empathy is one that I find myself appreciating more and more as I get older. It is at the heart of my moral code, and it is how I understand the Golden Rule — not simply as a call to sympathy or charity, but as something more demanding, a call to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes."

Obama pays tribute to this character quality in his mother, his grandfather, and Paul Simon. He goes on to lament that we seem to be suffering from "an empathy deficit" in our country and need to restore it: "I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of those people who are struggling in this society. After all, if they are like us, then their struggles are our own. If we fail to help, we diminish ourselves."

Empathy is a virtue that we need to practice and teach to our children. We consider it integral to the spiritual practices of openness and compassion. It enables us to stop standing apart from the world and the suffering of others.

In an article written for Intent. com, environmental journalist Simran Sethi says right from the start that saving the planet will not be possible in 10 Easy Steps. We need a concerted effort among all citizens and groups taking a series of baby steps to make important changes. It will not be wise to exclude anyone from this common cause.

Ecology has always represented relationships and that is what Sethi writes about here: "It is our relationships — to the planet, to our stuff, to our communities that contain the most widespread potential for change." This has also been a major emphasis in spirituality down through the ages.

In a hard-hitting column in The New York Times, Bob Herbert charts the growing incidences of "horrifying, blood-drenched eruptions of gun violence, which are as common to the American scene as changes in the weather." He points out that since September 11, 2001, nearly 120,000 Americans have been killed in nonterror homicides, most of them committed with guns. That's 25 times the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And what is the ethical response to this scourge? Texas is only one of a number of states considering bills to allow concealed guns on college campuses. The National Rifle Association wants more, not fewer, guns in the hands of Americans everywhere!

Here's a fact: Someone is killed by a gun every 17 minutes in the United States. Check your watch now. Seventeen minutes from now, say a prayer for the latest person who has died in this terrible manner.

Last night while watching a television news report on the American marksmen who shot and killed three teenager Somali kidnappers holding the captain of a merchant ship, I suddenly realized that in the eyes of the media, this was being viewed as a heroic act on the level of the pilot who landed his failing airplane in the Hudson River! Would there be a special White House visit for them as well?

Then this morning I went to Twitter and saw Ian Lawton's tweet: "With all the talk of pirates, I aspire to the huge, embodied of compassion of Thich Nhat Hanh"; he included a link to Thich Nhat Hanh's classic poem "Please Call Me by My True Names" in which the Buddhist peacemaker identifies with a pirate.

It felt so good to connect with Ian, a kindred spirit who sensed another way of thinking about pirates other than how they might be stopped and destroyed. I thanked him for his wonderful insight only to find out that he lives in Michigan and is an Anglican priest in a progressive Christian congregation.

Ian has just started a website called "Spiritual But Not Religious" (www.sbnr.org). Check out his excellent and pioneering work. And then watch a beautiful version of "Please Call Me by My True Names" from the "You" episode of the Spiritual Literacy DVD series by clicking on the link below.

Given the incidents of bullying in schools, many urban educators are starting empathy workshops to help curb student misbehavior. In more affluent areas, communities see the need for young people to develop more civility in the face of so much gossip and other forms of social humiliation. According to Winnie Hu, who wrote this article for the New York Times, some students find the teaching of empathy to be "artificial or hokey." Others say precious classroom time should be devoted to academic matters. Yet The Character Education Partnership states the 18 states require programs to foster core values such as empathy, respect, responsibility, and integrity. We encourage spiritual leaders and parents to support education programs that develop empathy, compassion, and tolerance in youth. This is one concrete way to combat our violent culture which still encourages gossiping, bullying, and winning at any costs.

"Information Age Prayer is a subscription service utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day. It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget. . . . Each prayer is voiced individually, with the name of the subscriber displayed on screen."

What?! Although we acknowledge that inanimate objects, including computers, can fulfill divine purposes (think of Brother Lawrence's pots and pans), we're not convinced that having a computer say your prayers for you is a genuine devotional practice, even if you can chose the prayers by your religious tradition (Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Unaffiliated, Other Religions). Since this service costs money ($3.95 a month to have the Lord's Prayer said daily, $4.95 a month to have a healing prayer said), isn't this just a form of modern-day indulgences? Feeling bad about something you've done? Buy a month of prayers and be done with it! Seeking world peace? Pay to have prayers said for peace instead of donating to peace organizations.

In fairness, the promoters of this website say that they see it as a "prayer supplement, to extend and strengthen a subscriber's connection with God." They also give 10% of their income to charities. So is this all that different from calling Unity for prayers or asking for them during a congregational gathering? If what's important is the intention behind your prayers, then perhaps buying a prayer subscription with the right intention is a spiritual practice. Something to think about . . .