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Today's discussions about religion tend to leave everyone exhausted and discouraged. People debate about the existence of God, about the value of religious tradition, about God's role in the world -- and come away bitterly divided. Common ground seems a distant dream.
My interest in faith isn't about any of those debates. I come at religion from the perspective of the inner life.
With neither George Bush nor Dick Cheney on the political landscape, both Republicans and Democrats in the presidential race are free to demand that we start over. Now more than ever, Americans feel we are at an ending and we need change by leaps and bounds.
This is where our religious experiences should be instructive, because starting over is fundamentally a spiritual invitation. At the deepest level, our longing for a restart points to our longing for beginning -- not a slight turn, but a fresh start. It's not incremental. When we're ready to start over, we want to start over -- cleansed, freed, opened. We want what we cannot give ourselves: We want faith.
I can't remember where I read the comment, but it stayed with me: "If you get your grief wrong, you get everything wrong." I would add a correlate: It's really hard to get grief right, and few of us do.
Right now, I'm trying to get it right as I face the death of my surrogate father and friend of 25 years, Salvatore "Red" Verderame. Red, who died Saturday, was a mentor, a role model, an icon. If you live in Connecticut and are of a certain age, you know Red Verderame. In every way, he was larger than life.
When I was a kid, Fidel Castro was referred to as a "godless Communist" and we were afraid of him. Now Castro, the last lion of the godless threat, is stepping down.
Ironically, we're no longer afraid of him or his type. Now, we're much more afraid of the God-full than the godless. The communist youth leagues have yielded to the fundamentalist youth leagues: same ideological fervor; same zealous combativeness, same threat to "our way of life."
Make no mistake: the Communists earned their godless title. Stalin and his henchmen made the crushing of religious institutions a part of their program. They closed and destroyed churches, executed religious leaders, and touted atheism as the vanguard of a new socialism. Invasions of countries like Afghanistan were designed in part to crush the religion of the place, Islam. Religion was to be destroyed.
To misquote one well-known politician, many candidates run on the fear of nothing but fear itself. Just as Hester Prynne's scarlet letter made her into a symbol of public disgrace, politicians are terrified of being labeled with their own loathsome letter: "L" for loser.
We can all think of politicians whose campaigns—in fact whose whole careers—seemed predicated on nothing more than getting elected and not having to bear the ignominy of the L letter. They've got it written all over them: they'll do anything, try anything, be anything as long as they don't lose. Those candidates may win elections, but they can never win hearts.
Ironically, when a race is as tight as the current Democratic primary struggle, the winner is often not the one who wants to win the most. It's the one who is least afraid to lose. That's the candidate who can not only get the most votes, but also get believers.
The recent publication of the Landscape Survey of Religion in America revealed a striking finding: Americans are more willing than ever to change religions. According to the report, “44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.” In short, religiously, we’re on the move doing what Americans do best: Shopping. And we’re shopping for God.
Ironically, religious leaders should see this as a good sign. Why? Nobody makes the effort to shop for something they don’t want. The data suggest that spiritual hunger is strong among Americans, since somewhere around 90% of us retain some form of spiritual or religious faith. But what’s clear is that we’re not going to accept religion based on the past. It’s got to meet our spiritual needs or we’ll move on.
The flare-up over the hateful words of Barack Obama’s minister, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., dominated the news cycle this weekend. But this is more than a distraction; this is a life-and-death moment for Obama’s campaign. If I’m correct, the future is hanging on how Obama responds to the revelations that his pastor, friend, and spiritual mentor is mean-spirited and divisive. A hidden affinity for a harsh and ruthless preacher may be the one thing that could destroy him.
Hanging in the balance is not just the Obama campaign but also the idealism of the millions he has inspired.
As I was reading the newspaper last week, my 10-year-old daughter came home from her 5th grade human development course so proud of what she’d learned: “Penis!” she said with glee, “and vagina! See, Dad. I’m not uptight about saying the body parts like you and Mom!”
At first, I was proud of her precocious announcement—my wife and I have tried to teach our children to be comfortable with their bodies. But then I couldn’t help but notice the irony of the fact that her announcement interrupted my reading about Governor Paterson of New York, his wife, and his predecessor, Governor Spitzer–all struggling with public failings centered on their sex lives.
Our country is repeatedly mesmerized by the sexual misbehavior of our leaders, while at the same time, we’re teaching our children to be comfortable with themselves as sexual beings. We’ve got to be careful not to confuse the two: just because they understand their bodies better doesn’t mean they’ll understand sex any better.
There’s something spiritual about Opening Day in baseball. Spring invites a sense of new beginnings. The standings for the home team show no losses. Both committed fans and those with only passing interest in baseball tune in. Everyone gets a fresh start on Opening Day. “When you win the first one,” as Early Wynn noted, “you can’t lose ‘em all.”
When I think of Opening Day, I can’t help but think of my 92-year-old Dad. Born in Maryland in 1915, he grew up in Westminster, Owings Mills, and Baltimore, a child of the land and a child of a deep faith. Right alongside his religion and his family came his love of baseball.
Because his parents moved to New York before the Crash, he became a Yankees fan for a few brief years. The legacy of living in New York was his love of the Murderer’s Row lineup of the ’27 Yankees, which he could recite complete with batting stances, averages, and home runs for each man. “Combs, Koenig, Ruth, Gehrig, Meusel, Lazzeri...” he would announce, “one hell of a lineup!”
Benedict XVI's upcoming visit to the U.S. is sure to provoke unfavorable comparisons to his more charismatic predecessor, John Paul II. So it's time for him to change his image. How? The cerebral theologian needs to interrupt his schedule, put on sweat clothes, and drop in on a yoga class when he's in town!
He'd accomplish more than an image upgrade. There, sweating in exercise clothes and sneakers, he'd find growing numbers of Americans who have turned to the ancient Hindu practice for both physical and spiritual centering. The Pope would do well to understand the yoga students and their spiritual lives if he is to be fully successful at communicating the message of the gospel to this nation.
Last week, inspired by a bunch of high-powered celebrities on Idol Gives Back, Americans donated over $60 million to a bunch of indisputably good causes. Egged on by Miley Cyrus, Billy Crystal, John Legend, Fergie, and Snoop Dogg, American Idol's fans rose to the occasion.
But we shouldn't lose sight of the most important element of making a difference: it's to get up close and personal with others who need a hand. It's to match giving with service, the kind of service that is personal, intimate, and authentic. It's to make service a relationship with dignity and respect at the core. It's going eye to eye with someone in need so that someone in need can make a difference for you too.
I am proud.
I am proud to be a Catholic after reading Benedict XVI’s homily from the mass he celebrated yesterday. He spoke of the gift of “the hope born of love, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (cf Rom 5:5). He spoke of renewal as a gift of God, of forgiveness as a gift for which we each hunger, of the work of so many in “forming the hearts and minds of the young in knowledge and love of the Lord.” I long for that hope, that love, that faith too. May I have eyes to see it and ears to hear it today and forever.
With all the excitement surrounding the Pope’s visit to the United States last week, Gordon Brown’s visit went almost unnoticed. But while the Pope was calling for a renewal of love, the British Prime Minister proposed something that could make such a renewal happen.
In a major speech in Boston, Brown called for the United States and other countries to join together to create a new series of institutions to lead the globalized world. Much of what he called for were changes in regulatory and financial institutions. But he also proposed new institutions of service to build a global society, one focused on aspirations that transcend national borders and foster mutual interests grounded in common values.
Specifically, Brown challenged citizens around the world to create a “global peace and reconstruction corps”–a sort of Peace Corps for citizens and governments of all countries to participate in service, to respond to crises and to help build the citizen institutions necessary for peace and stability everywhere.
That’s a good idea for a lot of reasons.
Theres’s a lot of talk in this election about experience. Whose is more valuable, who has more of it, who has the right type? Right now, voters who prize experience are voting more for Clinton on the Democratic side while Republicans are said to be excited about the prospect of comparing John McCain’s experience to either Democratic hopeful.
These debates tend to overlook one point: the kind of experience that will make the greatest difference in the future has little to do with policy or politics. The presidential experience that is most needed is experience understanding the conditions and attitudes of humiliated and angry people.
In Iraq? Yes. Whatever military success may occur, a political solution must go along with it. But which candidate really understands the divided and angry people of Iraq? Who has the experience to know that what’s needed is a process of citizen reconciliation, a program of community building, the goal of creating law and literacy block by block?
And not just in Iraq. Grinding poverty consumes two thirds of the human family, creating a giant tinderbox of humiliation and explosive anger. These battered billions represent the greatest threat to our future safety and economic stability. Which candidate has a realistic view of what the United States can do about that?
This is the season of stretching—of sleepy old tendons being stretched into action and of young growing muscles being stretched into competition. The fields of America, sprouting eager grass, are ready to be filled with the pounding of feet making their cuts toward goals. The cheers of spring are an invitation to renew the physical—a reminder of the ligamental and the limber; of the energy released by your body in motion.
Pumping blood at cardiac speed can awaken an appreciation of the elegance of fit. The very word is easy to say, and comfortable to imagine. Fit. To fit in. To be fit. It fits. There’s a promise of harmony in fit and, at the same time, an aspiration to what is good.
Imagine the ancient Greeks creating the Olympics as their own tribute to the fitness of their bodies, their temples of the gods. Think about their rituals to greatness, their runs of marathon distances, their goddesses of celebration, trying to rouse sleepy Athens to believe in the physical, to celebrate its beauty. Imagine the audacity of that stretch.
When I was a child, May was Mary’s month. My mother demanded that we children convene after dinner and say the rosary every night. We complained, cut corners, giggled, and misbehaved. But for the most part, we did it.
How could I have known that 40 years later, I would be saying the same Rosary with my mother as she lays in bed at 86, struggling for health. Some days, speech is difficult for her and walking impossible. Some days, it’s all she can do to raise her head.
But even on those days, the words of the rosary come easily.
“Do you want to lead Mom?”
“Yes. Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee…”
In the traditional language of religion, Mary is her “devotion.” And for her, Mary became not just an object of veneration but also a guide for how to raise children, how to work, and how to live a life of meaning. Mary is my mother’s role model.
Now that Barack Obama has all but sealed the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, there is great anticipation that he might lead the country toward a world of postracial politics. But the opposite fear has also emerged—that of a divisive and potentially mean-spirited debate that only deepens misunderstandings between ethnic and racial groups. While Obama’s campaign has inspired great hope, it has also revealed deep and persistent wounds.
Of course, the problems run deep. Despite the great legislative victories of the 1950s and 1960s that moved the nation toward social and political justice, the divides remain—in some ways reduced but in other ways stubbornly persistent.
What we don’t need at this time is another “conversation” because our national conversations on race feel like bad marriage counseling sessions. We vent, we point fingers, we name the problem over and over again only to find ourselves getting up off the couch in the exact same state of mind as before we sat down.
Why not put the conversation on hold and try a more active approach? What about challenging Americans to focus less on how to identify the problems of race and more on how to solve them?
It’s time for deeds, not words. The goal is not dialogue, it’s understanding. And understanding requires a lot more than talk.
On this Memorial Day, we’re reminded to pay tribute to those who paid with their lives in the many wars our nation has fought in defense of our freedom and our beliefs. Memorial Day has its origins in the years after the Civil War as survivors on both sides struggled for ways to pay tribute to the dead—the largest number of fatalities by a long shot in any American conflict at home or abroad.
Sadly, many thousands more have fallen since the 19th Century as war after war has demanded the ultimate sacrifice of our young men and women-- the “last full measure of devotion” as Lincoln termed the bravery of the dead at Gettysburg. We pause today in humility and in sadness to remember, to pray, to pay tribute.
But to pay tribute begs a question: what can we possibly do to honor those who died? How can we, the living, do anything worthy of the bravery of those who fought? Are we really left with nothing more than parades and flag salutes as our role in remembering?
Scott McClellan has made the news circuit in recent days because of his shocking reflections on his tenure as the President’s press secretary. I don’t believe there is any comparable book where a former presidential press secretary has so completely disavowed the messages that he himself promulgated. Whether on war or crime or policy, McClellan has confessed to either being a source of error himself or of being deceived by the most senior people in the White House.
It’s disturbing enough to see someone of his stature accuse the administration of willful deception. After all, he was the administration. He was the one standing before the cameras, he was the one spinning the message, he was the one who was on the record. If he’s claiming deceit, then there’s no real debate: deceit it was. He was getting his talking points directly from the boss.
What’s even worse than feeling totally let down by one’s government is having to endure the explanations of what went wrong. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank captured McClellan’s repeated attempts to deflect responsibility in his Friday column. He was, in his words, “in the White House bubble.” “You get caught up in the…bubble.” He blamed “the permanent campaign culture.” Now he is “disappointed,” “dismayed and disillusioned.”
How about “responsible?”
Hillary Clinton’s amazing campaign is over. Regardless of what one thinks of her, we can all appreciate the model she has set for women and girls. She’s redefined the possible in politics, and our country is forever changed because of her.
Pundits have already begun to evaluate her next political move. Senate leader? Legislative powerhouse? New York governor? None of the options seems exactly right.
At times of transition, when people don’t know where to turn, the spiritual world has an answer: Do nothing. Do nothing every day. Do nothing at all for several days and then continue doing nothing at least once a day for the rest of your life!
That’s how the spiritual teachers frequently counsel those of us who, like Hillary Clinton, are in the midst of upheaval, facing uncertain outcomes with no clear road map.
C.S. Lewis once wrote, “You have never met a mere mortal.” Those words came to me as soon as I heard of the sudden and heartbreaking death of Tim Russert. He was no mere mortal.
The last time I saw Tim Russert was just 10 days ago. He came up to me as I was talking to his sparkling wife, Maureen Orth, about the school in Colombia that bears her name and is the focus of her passion. Tim asked me about my uncle Ted, who’s fighting cancer. He told me that he’d written to Ted to express his support. “I wrote him,” he said, “and told him that I was praying for him with my wood bead rosary. I told him that nothing beats praying with the wood bead rosary.”
Last week, I joined my daughter Caroline’s 5th-grade class on a visit to Colonial Williamsburg. In Bruton Parish Church, I sat in Thomas Jefferson’s pew and looked up at the altar where there was a seat of reverence for the bishop and one for the governor, too.
I imagined Jefferson coming to the realization that something was wrong with the relationship between the church and the state. Somehow, he realized that the King’s Governor and the King’s Bishop didn’t belong on the altar together.
The names in this post were changed because I was not able to confirm permission to use them. The accounts however, are completely accurate as I saw and heard them at L'Arche. I apologize for my oversight in not noting this when the column was originally posted on Monday.
“How’s your mum?”
That’s what Peter Frey says every time he speaks to anyone. He says it maybe 50 times a day. He says it every single day. He’s been saying it for as long as anyone can remember, over and over again. “How’s your Mum?”
Peter works on a farm in Canada, lives with friends and has a severe intellectual disability. To most, he appears an unlikely teacher. Short of stature, with an extra chromosome in every gene, to the world he’s vulnerable and hopelessly disabled. He can’t do anything. Except say, “How’s your Mum” over and over and over again.
But to Jean Vanier and to his thousands of followers around the world, Peter is among the world’s most gifted teachers of the art of relationship.
Vanier is a man just months short of his 80th birthday and is the cofounder of L’Arche. In L’Arche homes all over the world, people with severe disabilities live, work and pray together with non-disabled assistants.
The summer slowdown is now fully upon us. The beaches are crowded, the weather is steamy, and clothes are skimpy. It’s time to relax.
Summer reading is a big part of reducing stress and creating quiet in a multi-tasking world. The books on the summer reading list therefore tend to be light novels that don’t tax the mind. But for the spiritually inclined, a long trashy read may not fill the bill.
Consider an alternative. Try a spiritual classic. Keep the reading short and the quiet time that follows it long. Try putting fewer shallow plots into your head and instead giving your spirit some time to express itself. Your spirit has much more interesting plots to share than any airport novel.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, President Bush’s former deputy chief of staff and master strategist Karl Rove compared Barack Obama’s recent policy statements to Richard Nixon’s strategy of moving to the center after a tough primary. Rove argued that policy issues were becoming “Mr. Obama’s biggest problem” and contrasted him with George W. Bush, the candidate of unshakable positions. In Bush’s 2000 campaign, he wrote, “there was no repudiation of past positions, no chameleon-like shifts in positions.”
Unfortunately, unshakable positions have made for a shaky country. What many voters once saw as a Bush strength—his firm and inflexible convictions—turned in practice into close-mindedness and a lack of intellectual curiosity. Conviction can quickly degenerate into obliviousness. And it did.
Commentators increasingly compare the current presidential campaign to the one in 1960—full of idealism and inspiration, dominated by youth. But the 1960 campaign was only the first phase of a powerful surge in citizen activism, a surge that moved quickly from eager idealism to a potent combination of disaffection, anger and violence. The 1960s ended with tragedy, upheaval, and riots.
Today might not be so different. In some quarters, lurking beneath the exuberance of hope is deep anger--anger that may be ready to explode. That is the clear message of Youth Speaks, a group of young poets who performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington last week. They’re full of idealism but they’re also angry. And they’re most angry about the environment.
The largely peaceful environmental movement of naturalists and clean air believers could become unrecognizable if fury takes over. These young people aren’t like Al Gore, ready to devote years to patiently persuading people of the rightness of their cause. They want action.
Last week, pictures of Barack Obama on military maneuvers in a helicopter, with heads of state throughout the Middle East and Europe, and with hundreds of thousands of cheering fans in Germany dominated the airwaves. But the most important stop he made wasn’t any of those; it was his visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel.
That’s where he saw evidence of evil. And there’s no religious or political problem more troubling than the problem of evil.
Like many world leaders who have preceded him to Yad Vashem, Obama grappled with the enormity of the Holocaust by echoing the words, “never again.” But the challenge that he would face as President is that more than 60 years after the end of World War II, the stark reality is that evil has returned again and again. From Srebrenica and Darfur to Rwanda and Myanmar and the World Trade Center and more, evil has resurfaced, unchecked, vicious, and bloody.
Everyone's hollering about the Chinese Olympics - the repression of dissidents, the restrictions on the press, the crackdown on human rights. Many question whether the Olympic spirit can survive in such an atmosphere. But China has already had an Olympic moment. It's worth looking at.
Last year, the Olympic spirit hit the big stage for the first time in China - at the Special Olympics World Games in Shanghai. President Hu Jintao called the games a pillar of his country's effort to build a more harmonious nation. That's notable because it has a spiritual overtone.
Whenever human beings rise above their limitations, reach for what seems beyond them, strive to become great, that's a spiritual moment. And when a young person with an intellectual disability does all that against the odds to the cheers of mother, father, and friend, the spirit is not far away. It was evident in Shanghai.
Last week, "Tropic Thunder" hit movie theaters, and I hit the protest line. I joined with a crowd of disability advocates, self-advocates, and my own family to challenge the film's unfortunate and disparaging use of the word "retard" and it's unacceptable stereotyping of people with intellectual disabilities. We held signs, marched in lines, and chanted to moviegoers, "Stop the show, the "R" word has got to go.
But I was taken aback by one moviegoer, a young woman in her late teens or early twenties. She marched by us indignantly, refused to take our literature and snapped at one of our young protesters, "Get a life."
For millions of Americans, it's back-to-school time--that confusing mix of excitement and anxiety. Anticipation, fear, uncertainty, opportunity--they're all wrapped up in the first days back.
It's time for schools to pay serious attention to these emotional pressures, on display particularly during back-to-school, but also part of daily life all year round. We're living in times of enormous stress and complexity, and our kids are just as vulnerable to being stressed out as the rest of us. That stress can in turn produce some of the most difficult behavior problems--bullying, alcohol and drug abuse, depression, and more.
In the national debate on education, very little attention has been given to issues such as the social, emotional, and even spiritual development of children. We've been fixated on the academic issues, on standards and testing. The era of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the signature legislation of the Bush administration, has been all about high expectations in reading and math.
With the introduction of Governor Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) onto the national political scene, one thing is for sure: the pro-life/pro-choice divide is sure to become a significant issue in the coming election. We already know that John McCain is pro-life while Obama is pro-choice but there's a new factor: Trig Paxson Van Palin, the infant son of the governor, who has Down syndrome. Trig could be a game changer.
Trig was born on April 18, 2008. By the Governor's account, she and her husband were aware that Trig had Down syndrome early in the pregnancy but they chose not to abort him. Estimates are that close to 90% of couples who are confronted with an early Down diagnosis take the opposite approach and terminate. In most situations, Trig doesn't make it.
Here's what Governor Palin said when Trig was born: "Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed."
On the anniversary of 9/11, people of faith do well to be cautious in what they say about the positive elements of religion. When suicide bombers kill ruthlessly in the name of God, all religions are implicated. We are all called to repent of religious violence.
It's no secret that religions are vulnerable to being overtaken by violent and hateful agendas, and most have been. Messages of disdain and disrespect for non-believers are often promulgated in church. And disdain and disrespect are only a short step away from rejection and hate. We need no further evidence of that after 9/11.
But the devastation of 9/11 should not obscure the possibility that religion can be a source of unity. I started this week of 9/11 remembrances in a Catholic church in Beijing, celebrating mass in Chinese, listening to hymns in Chinese, and standing together with average workers and citizens who are Chinese. I don't speak a word of Chinese, but there in St. Joseph's church, the incense, the host, the images in stained glass all were a common language.
Just when we face an enormous crisis and need spiritual insight in our public debate, it's missing. That's because religion has become so politicized around issues like gay marriage and abortion rights, no one thinks it can play a role in other areas. And that's plain wrong.
Consider the strange career of Governor Sarah Palin. When she made her national debut, the country was mesmerized and the Republican base was energized. Why? Most credit her appeal to her stands on so-called cultural and religious values: her pro-life position, her anti-gay marriage agenda.
Those may be values, but they're not the only values that come from faith and they don't help much in an economic meltdown. Our faith traditions offer far more.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
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