Spiritual Literacy Blog

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

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 . . .

We're taking this opportunity — the observance of Earth Hour — to recommend a website and daily email service Ideal Bite, which describes itself as "a sassier shade of green." Their emails highlight a wide variety of ways to stop global warming, quit polluting the environment, and generally live green. You can read their archives to get a sense of the scope of what they do. Suffice it to say, we've found leads to many good and green buys through them.

Today's email highlights the benefits of turning off the lights Saturday night, March 28, 2009, from 8:30 pm your local time. They also give you the link to the Earth Hour website so you can sign and pledge and keep up with ongoing activities.

In an article in The New York Times, Christine Haughney identifies a trend during these hard times: binging on sweets: "The recession seems to have a sweet tooth. As unemployment has risen and 401(k)'s have shrunk, Americans, particularly adults, have been consuming growing volumes of candy, from Mary Janes and Tootsie Rolls to Gummy Bears and cheap chocolates, say candy makers, store owners and industry experts." Why? Some think it has to do with sugar rushes; others link it to nostalgia for the past and better days. Candy companies are doing as well today as they did during the Depression, a time when many familiar candies (Snickers, Tootsie Pops, Mars bars, Three Musketters) were introduced. Our alternative suggestion is to find sweetness in your spiritual practice and take good care of your body at the same time.

We watched the excellent interview with Karen Armstrong, one of our Living Spiritual Teachers, on a recent Bill Moyers Journal and were pleasantly surprised to find a full transcript of the interview on his website. She calls herself a "freelance monotheist" and demonstrates once again her mastery in the study of the world's religions.

The focus of this interview is on the spiritual practice of compassion, which is expressed in the Golden Rule — "Don't do to others what you would not like them to do to you." She sees this as the essence of all religions and has gathered a group of international religious leaders to draft the guiding principles of a Charter for Compassion. Armstrong admits that advocating this empathy for others does not come easy to members of the Abrahamic faiths where judging others has often been the religious norm. Other subjects covered in this wide-ranging interview include the many different brands of contemporary idolatry, the challenge to dethrone ourselves and our idea that we alone possess the truth, the role of aggression in the politics of our times, and the terrible effects of war and fundamentalism in religion.

"The new American Religious Identity Survey reports that the number of Americans identifying as Jews has fallen from a mere 1.8 % to a miniscule 1.2 %. We are joining the ranks of the Nones, the Spiritual But Not Religious who find little value in organized Jewish life."

Shapiro states that it is unfair to blame God for this development: instead he suggests that rabbis are the source of the problem. He laments their resistance to real and meaningful change, which would involve a new theology, a new liturgy, a new understanding of Torah, and more. "Calling on Jews to return to tradition is like asking us to abandon our cars for horse drawn carriages." Progressive change is what is needed.

Reuters reports on the findings of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh who followed more than 100,000 women ages 50 and over since 1994. The findings: women who were optimistic (looking on the bright side of things) were 14 % less likely to die from any cause than pessimists and 30% less likely to die from heart disease after eight years of follow-up in the study. Optimists were also less likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes, or smoke cigarettes. The pessimists were generally mistrustful of other people. So cheer up and maintain your spiritual practice of joy’: it will bring you a harvest of health and happiness!

According to an article on AlterNet by Alexander Zaitchik, the economic recession has forced many late-middle-age homeowners to take in boarders or risk becoming boarders themselves. Jacqueline Grossman, Chicago coordinator for the National Shared Housing Resource Center, notes: "The trend now is getting younger and younger. People in their 50s and 60s who have lost large portions of their nest eggs are willing to give up the privacy in their homes in exchange for rents of $500, $600 a month." For many baby boomers this is the only way they can make mortgage and utility payments. Households headed by those ages 55 to 64 have lost 38 percent of net wealth.

Many also predict the return of the idea of intentional communities, popular in the 1960s, as a good thing for elderly people. Living with others and sharing resources may well be the wave of the future as we settle in to living with less. Religious monastic communities have long lived this way and there is much to be learned from them.

In an article in The New York Times pediatrician Perri Klass singles out Miss Manners' Guide to Rearing Perfect Children by Judith Martin as her favorite child-rearing guide. She once asked Martin why teaching kids about courtesy is so important and the response was, "Every infant is born adorable but selfish and the center of the universe." It is the parent's job to teach that "there are other people and people have feelings." These lessons are steps in the child's moral development.

Rudeness and incivility are afoot in our times. As Klass points out, "manners" is a dated term which has been replaced with "social skills." As we read this article, we wondered whether a larger role should be played by religious communities to help children develop social skills that are based on spiritual practices such as love, kindness, compassion, openness, reverence, and hospitality. Perhaps if parents learned to see courtesy as an essential part of the spiritual life, they would give it a higher priority.

Unitarian minister Robert Fulghum always has something fresh to say about everyday spirituality. On his official website, he muses on the different blends of love in a post-Valentine's-Day collection of vignettes. The author looks at the hearts in the window of the elementary school across the street and states that real hearts are not symmetrical like the ones on display. Listening to little girls shriek, he states that love is explosive, and that it's always good to skip and shriek at the same time. In our favorite piece, Fulghum recounts how he went to Nails Salon, and as an exercise in vitality and nurturing, had his toenails painted red. Then he spent the day with "a foolish smile on my face." Fulghum helps us to see that love should always entail playfulness.

Rami Shapiro (one of S&P's Living Spiritual Teachers) writes several blogs. In Toto: Behind the Curtain with Rabbi Rami, he writes about his outer critics and inner adversary. He points out that according to Musar, the Jewish ethical training system, each of us has an Inner Adversary (Yetzer haRah) who challenges us to grow ethically at every stage of our development. He calls this voice the moral coach, and recently he's been hearing a lot from this adversary.

Shapiro's spiritual commitment to the practice of hospitality has been tested recently by the criticism (much of it hostile) from those upset that he is teaching a three-week introduction to Islam for Jews. For this, he has been called a self-hating Jew, anti-Semite, a Muslim sympathizer, and a terrorist collaborator. How to respond? Read this thoughtful piece as Shapiro looks deeply, with the aid of his Yetzer haRah to look deeper at what he was doing.