---

Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before,
“Samuel! Samuel!”
And Samuel said,
“Speak, for your servant is listening.”
--1 Samuel 3: 10

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking;
if you hear my voice and open the door,
I will come in to you and eat with you,
and you with me.
--Revelation 3: 20

He has come with love to our door;
His knock is a blessing.
We go from house to house,
Asking of him. Any answer is a
Blessing.
--Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi

The wind of God’s grace is always blowing.
But we must unfurl our sails . . . .
--Sri Ramakrishna

In this dark time of the year we think of journeying toward Bethlehem. We seek what the Fourth Gospel calls the Light that shines in the darkness, the true Light that enlightens all people. We ask that it shine in the darkness of the worldwide hatred, injustice, poverty, violence, and death for which we bear some responsibility.

In the fall of 1945, soon after landing on a Japanese beach with the 98th Infantry Division, I walked through the firebombed streets of Osaka, searching in vain for a family address given me by a Nisei friend. I might well have walked the streets of Dresden or London, as others have now searched the rubble of Manhattan and Afghanistan.

Millions of Jews had then been murdered in the gas chambers, and millions of Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now millions of Africans have killed each other in national and tribal warfare. Millions of children are starving in Africa and the Middle East. Pakistan and India have risked the lives of fifteen million people through nuclear brinkmanship. Palestinian young folks, in their desperation, have become suicidal murderers. Israeli tanks have rolled into Bethlehem, laid siege to the traditional birth-site, and spread devastation northward. “Bethlehem, from the social point of view,” its mayor has said, “is dying.” The United States has embarked on a global war against “evil evil” and has declared its intention to remain the world’s dominant power. As I write these words, it plans a “pre-emptive” attack upon Iraq.

In 1919 W. B. Yeats cried out in his prophetic poem “The Second Coming”:

What beast? The giant shadow of our fear, pride, and anger - and our addictions to power, possessions, and petroleum. Nations therefore remain hypnotized by what Walter Wink calls the old tribal myth of self-justifying and redemptive violence. “This myth,” he has said, “speaks for God; it does not listen for God to speak. It invokes the sovereignty of God as its own; it does not entertain the prophetic possibility of radical judgment by God. . . . Its metaphor is not the journey but the fortress.”

If we hope for a very different Second Coming, we must listen for God to speak. Joel Goldsmith told his students, “We do not meditate that we may find our peace, but that through us peace may flow to the world.” We must therefore undertake our own journeys toward Bethlehem - toward what Saint Teresa of Avila called “the very interior center of the soul, which must be where God Himself is.”

These meditations may suggest a few roads. Although they range widely, I hope they contain nothing fundamentally at odds with two books that have helped to sustain me for decades: Evelyn Underhill’s magisterial study, Mysticism, and her penetrating meditation on the Lord’s Prayer, Abba.

Six years ago an Israeli checkpoint had blocked all traffic to Bethlehem. A taxi driver said, “I can take you there. Meet me tomorrow.” We drove with him, my daughter Gwen and I, almost to the checkpoint, where he veered off and took a back road. Suddenly he stopped, got out, moved stones away from the roadside, and headed the taxi across a bumpy field to another road that approached Bethlehem from the east. That morning we were almost the only visitors to the Church of the Nativity. After viewing the traditional birth-site, a barren and much decorated cave, we returned to Manger Square and bought an icon of Christ and the Disciples. This year the Church’s bell-ringer was killed by an Israeli sniper.

“Christ could be born a thousand times in Galilee,” said Angelus Silesius, “But all in vain until He is born in me.” For that birth we must journey from the war-torn Jerusalem of our ordinary life, not to the cave declared by Helen the mother of the Emperor Constantine to be the birth-site, but to the Bethlehem at the center of our being - what the Upanishads have called “the cave of the heart.”

In this Christmas season let me therefore return, with the help of Basil Pennington, to the ancient practice of centering prayer. This evening let me begin by sitting in quietness, relax from head to toe, and begin a gentle and deep breathing. On the out-breath, a silent “I will be still.” On the in-breath, “to learn of Thee.” On the out-breath, “Spirit of peace.“ And on the in-breath: “within.”

Silence then, just watching the breath. Then let me thank the Source of peace for being truly present, closer than hands and feet, closer than thought itself. Let me rest in the center, listening, open to the ground of Love. Then let me invoke the prayer-word “Peace.” Perhaps repeating it with the breath, or with the heartbeat. When the word disappears in the silence, let it go. But when the mind leads off into past or future events, let me return through the word “Peace.” A gentle mantra to anchor me in the Presence.

And then, after a while, let me return from this listening through a meditation on the “Our Father.” Let the prayer unfold slowly, phrase by phrase, deepened by the wordless experience of loving peace at the heart of the world.

The sweetness of the music, the nostalgia of the hymn, our longing for an unspeakable change in our lives, can transport us to an imagined place, an imagined timeùwhich is no-place, no-time, in the dark streets of the heart.

But Phillips Brooks knew that this was only the beginning of our journey, and he added this prayer:

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.

How may that birth take place? On my desk is a card on which another sentence by Phillips Brooks had been written out by my wife Dorothy, who learned and relearned its meaning: “Prayer is the laying hold of God’s willingness - never the pressing of His reluctance.” According to Luke’s story, that was Mary’s prayer: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (1: 18) This Christmas season let me rediscover that prayer.

For centuries, Christians have engaged in devotions to Mary as the human mother of Jesus or as “Mother of God.” The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins compared her to “the air we breathe” - ”Wild air, world-mothering air” - and recognized that she can bring Christ to birth in the Bethlehem of our heart. For at least sixteen centuries she has been known as Maris Stella, Star of the Sea. A passage from a homily by St. Bernard (beautifully chanted by Noirin Ni Riain) puts it this way: “ . . . it is said, the Virgin’s name was Mary, which translated means ‘Star of the Sea.’ She is . . . that luminous and choice star necessarily raised above this great and wide sea, gleaming by her merits, enlightening by her example. O, whoever you are, . . . tossed about between storms and tempests . . . in the flux of this world . . . , look to the Star, call upon Mary. Following her you will not go off course . . . .” Her shrines are found on seaside promontories, near what T. S. Eliot called “the sound of the sea bell’s / Perpetual angelus.” The angelus-bell has called many worshipers to a moment of prayer, the “Angelus Domini,” which focuses on the angel’s announcement to Mary and her response.

Every morning as I wake, let me prepare with Mary’s help to find in the day’s events God’s word for me. Let me visualize a shrine by the sea, and listen for the sound of the surf and the clang of the sea bell. Then each in-breath can be accompanied by a silent “Hail Mary, Star of the Sea,” and each out-breath by “Show me . . . the Way.” Soon I may visualize on the in-breath the streaming of blue light into the heart - Mary’s blue, the blue of the heavens and the seas - and then, on the relaxing out-breath, the flowing of that light to every part of the body. Let me breathe so, listening to the sea bell’s angelus, waiting to learn of the way ahead. “Let it be with me according to your word.”

How many miles to Bethlehem? It’s a long trek. From that hill town you must descend
into the valley, past the brow of the hill over which men from the synagogue
may later have tried to hurl Jesus (Luke 4: 29),
and then travel past Mount Tabor, where Barak had brought
an army of ten thousand men to meet Sisera (Judges 4: 6),
past the ancient fortress of Megiddo, which overlooks
the site of the prophesied battle of Armageddon (Revelation 16: 16),
past Shechem, where Joseph’s brothers conspired to kill him (Genesis 37: 18),
past the sites of the much later towns of Jenin, Nablus, and Ramallah,
which in two millennia would be trashed by Sharon’s army,
past Jerusalem, which would be destroyed by Roman soldiers
four decades after the Crucifixion,
on to the city of Jesse the Bethlehemite, where after Saul's death
David had been anointed king over Israel (1 Samuel 16; Luke 2: 4).

What was it like to travel that rocky road, on foot or on donkeys, with crowds of others, through a landscape of past and future violence? Francis of Assisi, who made the first creche, could imagine that journey. So could Ignatius Loyola, who included in his Spiritual Exercises the discipline of “composition, seeing the place.” And Anthony de Mello, in Sadhana: A Way to God, has suggested to us how we can meet those who traveled that road.

Let me quiet myself this evening, and become aware of all the parts of my body, one by one, letting them relax. Then let me then focus on my breathing. Let me reflect that this air is charged with the presence of God. Let me stay in that awareness for several minutes.

And then let me imagine that I’m with a jostling crowd of tired travelers at evening, approaching Bethlehem to register for the Roman census. What is that group just ahead? Their dress, their manner of walking and riding, their weary talk? With them a man leads an ass that carries an obviously pregnant girl. What are their faces like? They tell me they’ve been on the road for days - an eighty-mile journey. We stop together at the khan, a series of stalls for travelers opening off a common courtyard. But there is no room in the stalls. With others we bed down in the courtyard where the animals feed. I smell the cooking fire, hear the animals nickering. The stars overhead are bright, one especially bright. I doze off, but am awakened by the sound of a woman in labor. I know that sound . . . have stood by a London bed at night as an Indian midwife lifted my daughter Gwen into the air for her first breath. I watch now as a woman helps the girl, watch as the baby is born, hear that first cry of new life . . . .

Let me silently express my gratitude as the precious gift is given. And let me spend a while now in quiet prayer in the company of the baby Jesus.

THE FOURTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS: Journeying toward the Heart

The baby Jesus is one image of the creative Heart toward which we journey, as William Blake has suggested in “The Lamb”:

Taking a little child in his arms, Jesus said: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark 9:36-37) And again: “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10: 15) But of course we must journey toward that Heart through our individual adult consciousness - which is why Greg Brown’s setting of “The Lamb” is a gutsy and plaintive folk song, sometimes almost bleating, and John Tavener’s setting is a subtly melodic and ethereal choral piece.

One way of journeying is what Saint Paul called “praying without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians, 5: 17) and Brother Lawrence called “practicing the presence of God.” Such practice can help us to let go of the deeply rooted fears and desires that make up our adult “selves.” A useful method, followed in the East for centuries, is the breath-prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Here “mercy” means not just “pardon” or “forgiveness” but also “grace” and “loving-kindness.” The monks on Mount Athos knew the prayer as “the natural method of entering the heart by breathing.”

Let me begin today as Anthony de Mello has suggested. After quieting myself, let me become aware of the presence of the Risen Christ standing before me. Then let me concentrate on my breathing for a while. On the in-breath, let me say, “Lord Jesus Christ.” As I do so, let me breathe in the love and grace and presence of the Risen Christ. Let me hold the breath for a moment, believing and knowing that my whole being is suffused with his presence and his grace. Then, on the out-breath, let me say, “have mercy on me.” As I do so, let me breathe out all my impurities, all the obstacles I put in the way of his grace.

During this Christmas season let me give myself to this prayer. Let it sink deeply into the unconscious mind that shapes my fears, desires, perceptions, and choices.

Another Christmas song invites us to journey from our bleak and hard adult consciousness toward the childlike heart that can enter the kingdom:

There, as Christina Rossetti tells us, “a stable-place sufficed / The Lord God incarnate, Jesus Christ.” Imagining our presence there, each of us must ask:

But to give my heart is to recognize that we all share in one Heart. “Our own pulse,” as Barbara Deming has said, “beats in every stranger’s throat.”

Belief in the hard reality of my individual self has erected walls that shield me from that fact - walls that I have maintained by conscious and unconscious judgments. I must let those walls come tumbling down. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” (Matthew 7: 1) Having judged, I must forgive.

Forgiveness is “a complex act of consciousness,” Carolyn Myss has said, “ . . . that liberates the psyche and soul from the need for personal vengeance and the perception of oneself as a victim.” And Stephen Levine has said: “Forgiveness . . . touches, in ourselves with a new mercy and understanding, those same states of mind that we judge in another. The qualities we forgive in another are qualities we have long judged in ourselves. Forgiveness heals us back into our heart.”

Today let me trace with Stephen’s guidance a process of forgiveness. Let me bring to mind the image of one for whom I feel some resentment, and let me invite that person gently into my heart. What fear or anger arises to limit or deny that entrance? Let me soften gently all about it. Let me say, in my heart, “I forgive you. I forgive you for whatever pain you have caused me in the past, intentionally or unintentionally, through your words, your thoughts, your actions. However you may have caused me pain, I forgive you.” Then let that person remain there in the stillness, in the warmth and patience of the heart. Let the distance between us dissolve in mercy and compassion.

Let me continue the meditation by bringing to mind someone who has resentment for me, someone whose heart is closed to me. Let me ask that person’s forgiveness. Let me ask to be let back into his or her heart. And let me close the meditation in the same gentle way by turning to myself, in my own heart. Let me quietly observe what I most hate or fear in that image of myself, and say, “I forgive you.” Let me have mercy on myself. Let us be loved. Let us be love. And let us begin to share this miracle of forgiveness with all those about us.

THE SIXTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS: Praying with Jesus

According to Luke, Jesus of Nazareth managed at the age of twelve to lose his parents for a few days by sitting among the teachers in the temple, “listening to them and asking them questions.” (2: 46) The Jesus who “began his work” at about thirty years of age (3: 23) had become deeply familiar with the prophetic tradition. Returning to Nazareth, he read in the synagogue from the prophet Isaiah:

Though these stories may be inventions after the fact, they point toward the prophetic faith within which Jesus lived and spoke. How can we, who live in the functional equivalent of the Roman Empire that ruled first-century Palestine, rediscover that faith?

In The Prayer that Jesus Taught Us, Michael Crosby shows how “the Lord’s prayer” may have equipped the “house churches” of Matthew’s time to live in contrast to a commercial and imperial world of violence, injustice, and domination - and how it may still function in that way for us. In Excavating Jesus, John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed argue that this prayer - and indeed the phrase “the Kingdom of God” as used by John the Baptist and Jesus - were, in harmony with Jewish Torah, part of a non-violent revolution against the Kingdom of Rome.

In Prayers of the Cosmos, Neil Douglas-Klotz also unfolds the connotations of the original Aramaic prayer. (Six years ago, deep in that book while traveling along the Sea of Galilee from Capernaum toward Tiberias, I was warned by my somewhat embarrassed daughter Gwen that I had startled others in the bus by intoning the prayer’s opening phrases: “Abwoon d’bwashmaya, Nethqadash shmakh. . . .”) Neil expands those phrases in several ways - for example, these:

Father-Mother who births Unity,
You vibrate life into form
in each new instant.

Help us breathe one holy breath
feeling only you - this creates a shrine
inside, in wholeness.

To “hallow” the “name” or nature of our Father-Mother we must make an interior shrine for prayer. “The silence is the shrine, the room. The fullness is the Name, God’s light.” Tonight let me open to that grace by praying the Aramaic “Hallowed be Thy name” - on the in-breath “Nethqadash,” and on the out-breath, “shmakh.”

THE SEVENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS: Journeying from Vietnam

During these first six days of Christmas I’ve re-enacted from a Western perspective the journey of the three Wise Men - not so wise as they had thought - who brought gifts to the Child. But in some ways that journey has also been re-enacted by recent travelers from the East - Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, and Jews. And my journeying has begun to merge with theirs.

I think of one of them now in gratitude when I focus on the anger that still festers in my heart - as those whom I love, and have sometimes lost, have dared to tell me. It is anger that has grown from seeds of loss, of grief, of guilt - of unaccepted suffering. Like the anger in all our hearts, it can fuel our domestic and international violence. In seeking to dispel such anger we have the help of the exiled Vietnamese Buddhist monk, poet, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, who has recently written of Buddha and Jesus as brothers. “The Buddha taught,” he says, “that the fire of anger can burn up everything we have done to bring happiness to ourselves and others. There is not one of us who has not sown seeds of anger in his heart, and if those seeds are daily watered they will grow rapidly and choke us and those around us.”

This evening let me recall the deeply peaceful presence of this teacher of “inter-being” - the understanding that each is in all, and all are in each - as I experienced it in a retreat with him five years ago. And let me “look deeply,” as he calls it, at my own anger through one of his breath-meditations:

Let me also try to understand a difficult but hopeful aspect of our “inter-being.” The therapist Rachel Naomi Remen suggests that we are all wounded, and that our wounds may evoke the healer in those who care about us. “My wound evokes your healer. Your wound evokes my healer. My wound enables me to find you with your wound where you have the illusion of having become lost.” Let me meditate on how my wound of anger may enable me to find others who have the illusion of having become lost.

THE EIGHTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS: Journeying from Tibet

We were chanting - several hundred of us, in a ballroom in the World Trade Center, four years after the bombing attack of 1993. It was a conference on “The Art of Dying.” Many of us were suffering from AIDS, cancer, or other terminal illnesses. Many were nurses, doctors, therapists, psychologists, hospice workers, or clergy. Many were recently bereaved. All knew that death is always imminent. Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, or of no explicit religion - we were chanting and chanting together, “OM MANI PADME HUM.” A monk in exile from Tibet was leading us in a haunting melody through six repetitions of the mantra . . . a melody then repeated twelve times. Seventy-two melodic repetitions of the six sacred syllables - pointing the mind toward the jewel in the heart of the lotus, which signifies love for all living beings and evokes the Way to final realization. It was good in that moment, in that interfaith congregation or sangha, to belong to a shared music on the very edge of death.

Today let me be mindful that the Heart in which we participate is a worldwide Presence, a Light that lightens all people in all times and places. Let me remember the Buddha’s farewell: “Go forth on your journey, for the benefit of the many, for the joy of the many, out of compassion for the welfare, the benefit, and the joy of all beings.”

And let me add to my Christmas practice the Buddhist breath-prayer known as tonglen. As Sogyal Rimpoche has suggested, I must begin by sitting and bringing the mind home. When calm and centered, let me imagine someone to whom I feel close, someone who is in suffering and pain. As I breathe in, let me imagine that I take in all their suffering and pain with compassion; and as I breathe out, let me send my warmth, healing, love, joy, and happiness streaming out to them.

As I continue the breath-prayer, let me gradually widen the circle of my compassion to embrace others to whom I also feel close. And then to embrace those about whom I feel indifferent. And then those whom I dislike or have difficulty with. And then even those whom I may feel to be actively monstrous and cruel. Jesus had also said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven . . . .” (Matthew 5: 44) Let my compassion become universal. As I breathe in, let me take in all suffering and pain; and as I breathe out, let me send warmth, healing, love, joy, and happiness to all sentient beings. Let me breathe that light into the night.

THE NINTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS: Journeying from India

Twenty-one years ago, my wife Dorothy gave me as a returning-home present a copy of Bede Griffiths’ Return to the Center, which with other works by him has since helped to direct my thought, though not yet sufficiently my life. Leader of a Benedictine ashram in India, Bede Griffiths lived as a sannyasi and incorporated Hindu chants and readings in his celebration of daily Mass. “The divine Mystery,” he said, “is present everywhere in the hearts of all men. It is present in every religion. The mystery of the Church, which is the mystery of the divine life among men, has to be seen in the light of this universal revelation.” His teaching has now been further elaborated by Wayne Teasdale in The Mystic Heart and Andrew Harvey in The Direct Path.

Tonight let me meditate first on an ancient prayer from the Rig Veda that I shared with my Methodist mother, Sarah, who came to use it in the last decade of her life:

May the river of my life flow into the sea of love that is the Lord.
May I overcome all the impediments in my course.
May the thread of my song not be cut before my life merges in the sea of love.

And then on what Krishna says in The Baghavad Gita about the yogi whose heart has become still:

He sees himself in the heart of all beings
and he sees all beings in his heart . . . .

And when he sees me in all and he sees all in me,
then I never leave him and he never leaves me.

He who in this oneness of love, loves me in whatever he sees,
wherever this man may live, in truth this man lives in me.

Remembering the very similar words in John 17: 21-23 and in the prayer of Saint Patrick, let me then adapt a Buddhist breath-prayer given by Thich Nhat Hanh:

THE TENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS: Journeying from Balkh and Baghdad

“Our work,” said the Blessed John Ruysbroeck, “is the love of God. Our satisfaction lies in submission to the divine embrace.” That aim is also central for the Sufis, wayfarers from the East who follow the mystical path of love within Islam. For them, as Seyyed Hossein Nasr has said, the very substance of existence is the “Breath of the Compassionate.” Their most important poet, Jalaluddin Rumiùperhaps the greatest mystic poet the world has known - was born early in the thirteenth century in Balkh (a town soon to be destroyed by the Mongols) in what is now Afghanistan.

Last spring I had hoped to travel to North Carolina to attend the first conference of Sufi orders in this country - a wayfaring that was prevented by blows both physical and psychological. George Leonard, an Aikido master who knows that God’s creative love can transform body and soul, says, “Take the hit as a gift.” Yesùmore than two centuries ago the Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre de Caussade had also said, “if we were alert and attentive . . . we should find in every circumstance that we had received a gift from God.” No easy task! Listening to those admonitions, I journey at home and read Rumi, where I find a startlingly apt definition: “A Sufi is a man or woman with a broken heart.” But Andrew Harvey explains its deeper meaning: “Someone who is always sensitive to the heartbreak of the world and who is always sensitive to the Divine Beauty of the world. Once you see it, your heart breaks open forever and goes on breaking at the beauty and majesty and agony of the experience.”

How can we begin to see it? Sufis “practice the presence” through the dikhr, the repetition night and day of one of God’s names, which may infuse the heart with the boundless Awareness and Love that has called us into being. The Sufi says, “In the name of Him who has no name, but who appears by whatever name you call him.” Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee adds: “If you call Him by the name of Christ, He will appear as Christ; if you call upon Him as Ram, He will appear as Ram. But the name of Allah is loved by the Sufis because it is closest to the nothingness which is His essence.”

In Original Prayer, Neil Douglas-Klotz, who has become a Sufi, suggests such a chant that leads beyond our cultural boundaries. Jesus used the word Alaha to point toward God, a word that is similar to the old Hebrew Elohim or Eloha, the old Canaanite Elat, and the Arabic Allah. Neil tells us: “Alaha and Allah both point to Unity without boundary or qualification. Elohim points to the One that is also Many - Unity with Diversity. Elat points to the Unity that is Here and Now. Chanting these four traditional Middle Eastern names of Sacred Unity will deepen your sense of connection with the great Mystery behind all names and God ideals. As you chant, you may experience a gradual unity of your own divergent voices within - your own, inner Middle East. This body chant can be felt as a prayer for peace, both within and without.”

This evening let me chant over and over: “Alaha, Allah, Elohim, Elat . . . .” May this prayer allow me to be infused with the sacred Presence, so that I may glimpse what it would mean to be lost in the embrace of that Love . . . . .

Two signs of peace encountered six years ago in another time of darkness have recently been haunting my dreams.

One sign: On a sunlit morning my daughter Gwen and I were heading out into the Red Sea, near where Moses and the children of Israel may have crossed as they fled the Egyptians. The boat’s PA system suddenly flooded us with song: “Morning Has Broken.” Who was singing? Gwen told me. It was Cat Stevens - who, as I discovered, had found Eleanor Farjeon’s song in 1971 in Hymns Ancient and Modern. Six years later, the singer born as Steven Georgiou would abandon his career as Cat Stevens and be reborn as Yusuf Islam. “Islam,” he said, “comes from the word Salam, which means peace.” And he added: “I had discovered the ultimate composition in the Qur’an.”

The other sign: Several days after our Red Sea voyage, Gwen and I walked through Old Jerusalem, following the Way of the Cross until we stood in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, near the rock of Calvary. A feather floated ever so gently down from the dim reaches above, and I caught it on the back of my hand. “A sign,” said Gwen, smiling. Hildegard, I thought: “My new song,” she had said, “must float like a feather on the breath of God.”

These recent mornings, after yoga and meditation, my breakfasts have sometimes been lightened by Cat Stevens’ retrospective album, “In Search of the Center of the Universe,” which includes Yusuf Islam’s beautiful hymn, “God is the Light,” and by Hildegard of Bingen’s “Vision,” with Richard Souther’s bold arrangements and counterpoints on the synthesizer. They take me back to those signs, and they point ahead. “In a dark time,” said the poet Theodore Roethke, “the eye begins to see.”

Yusuf Islam established an Islamic school in London, devoted himself to disaster relief efforts in Bosnia and many other charities, and founded a media company that has brought the singing and poetry of Islamic cultures to many for the first time. Interviewed on television shortly after September 11, 2001, he spoke of his hope for peace. Asked to sing one of his old songs, he said: “I gave away my guitar many years ago and have not played since then. But I remember some of the words . . . .” And he chanted quietly, in a now husky voice, the song that ends:

According to our Christmas story, on this day the Magi from the East, having found “the child who has been born king of the Jews,” were “warned in a dream not to return to Herod” and “left for their own country by another road.” (Matthew 2: 2, 12) What will be our road after glimpsing in our hearts the birth of the Prince of Peace?

Shortly before the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, author of The Prophets, introduced him to an assembly of rabbis by saying: “Where in America today do we hear a voice like the voice of the prophets of Israel? . . . God has sent him to us. His presence is the hope of America . . . . His mission is sacred . . . . The whole future of America will depend on the impact and influence of Dr. King.”

And not just America’s future. In his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? - a book that recalls the warnings to the Israelites uttered by the prophet Hosea - King urged us to respond with God’s help to the evils everywhere that threaten world peace. We must join with other nations, he said, to overcome racism throughout the world, to eradicate global poverty, and to pursue nonviolent alternatives to war. He warned of “the fierce urgency of now.” Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, has recently said, “The best response to the hatred of the past is to pursue a path that affirms love, justice, and peace . . . .” So today and throughout the coming year, let me keep in mind the words and the passion of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

But let me also remember these recent words of hope from Tom F. Driver of Union Theological Seminary. Even though the political sphere in our time “feels to peace lovers very bleak and dark right now,” he said, “there is nevertheless a candle burning within it - what I may call the candle of the peaceable imagination. It is the inextinguishable vision of the peaceable kingdom. Our task is not to light but rather to lift this candle, which is already burning, to carry it to the hilltop, where, like a lit-up city, it may be seen.

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New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
_______________, The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic
Jesus. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1999.
_______________, Original Prayer: Teachings and Meditations on the Aramaic Words
of Jesus. (6 audiotapes and study guide.) Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2000.
Tom F. Driver, “Learning from Terror: September 11 and its Aftermath,” Fellowship 68
(September/October 2002): 4-8.
Eknath Easwaran, ed., God Makes the Rivers to Flow: Passages for Meditation.
Petaluma, CA: Nilgiri Press, 1982.
Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988.
___________, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths. New
York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000.
Frederick Franck, Messenger of the Heart: The Book of Angelus Silesius, with
Observations by the Ancient Zen Masters. New York: Crossroad, 1982.
The Gift of Prayer: A Treasury of Personal Prayer from the World’s Spiritual Traditions.
A Fellowship in Prayer Book. New York: Continuum, 1995.
Joel S. Goldsmith, The Mystical I. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
______________, Practicing the Presence. New York: Harper & Row, 1958.
Joseph Goldstein, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism. New York:
HarperCollins, 2002.
Bede Griffiths, Bede Griffiths. (Selections from his Writings arranged for Daily
Reading.) Intro. and ed., Peter Spink. Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1992.
___________, The Marriage of East and West. Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1982.
___________, Return to the Center. Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1977.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. New York: Riverhead Books,
2001.
______________, The Blooming of a Lotus: Guided Meditation Exercises for Healing
and Transformation. Trans., Annabel Laity. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
______________, Cultivating the Mind of Love: The Practice of Looking Deeply in the
Mahayana Buddhist Tradition. Foreword, Natalie Goldberg. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1996.
______________, Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers. New York: Riverhead
Books, 1999.
______________, Living Buddha, Living Christ. Intro., Elaine Pagels. New York:
Riverhead Books, 1995.
______________, No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life. Riverhead Books,
2002.
______________ and Daniel Berrigan, The Raft Is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward
a Buddhist-Christian Awareness. Foreword by bell hooks. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001.
Andrew Harvey, The Direct Path: Creating a Personal Journey to the Divine Using the
World’s Spiritual Traditions. New York: Broadway Books, 2000.
____________, The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi. New York:
Tarcher/Putnam, 2001.
Morton T. Kelsey, The Other Side of Silence: A Guide to Christian Meditation. New
York: Paulist Press, 1976.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? New
York: Harper & Row, 1967.
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God. Trans.,
Donald Attwater. Intro., Dorothy Day. Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1974.
George Leonard and Michael Murphy, The Life We Are Given: A Long-Term Program
for Realizing the Potential of Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1995.
Michael Lerner, Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and
Complementary Approaches to Cancer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, “‘Self-Hating’ Jews Champion Jewish Values,” Fellowship 68
(July/August 2002), 9-10.
Stephen Levine, Guided Meditations, Explorations and Healings. New York: Doubleday
Anchor, 1991.
____________, Turning Toward the Mystery: A Seeker’s Journey. New York:
HarperCollins, 2002.
____________, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year As If It Were Your Last. New
York: Bell Tower, 1997.
Anthony de Mello, Sadhana: A Way to God. Christian Exercises in Eastern Form. New
York: Doubleday Image, 1984.
______________, The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello. New
York: Doubleday, 1992.
Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer. Intro., Thich Nhat Hanh. New York:
Doubleday Image, 1971.
Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind. New York: Doubleday, 1993. See especially the
interviews with Dean Ornish (“Changing Life Habits”), Jon Kabat-Zinn (“Meditation”), Michael Lerner (“Healing”), and Rachel Naomi Remen (“Wholeness”).
Carolyn Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing. New
York: Three Rivers Press, 1996.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity. New York:
HarperSanFrancisco, 2002.
Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O, Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer
Form. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980.
Sri Ramakrishna, Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna: An Exhaustive Collection. Mylapore,
Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1981.
Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal. New York: Riverhead
Books, 1996.
Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi. Trans., Coleman Barks with John Moyne. New
York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.
_____________, A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi. Trans.,
Shahram Shiva and Jonathan Star. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.
____________, The Soul of Rumi. Trans., Coleman Barks et al. New York:
HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.
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Church. Rev. ed. Loren Gavitt, ed. West Park, NY: Holy Cross Publications,
1967.
Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. New York: HarperCollins,
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Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s
Religions. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001.
Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism. New York: New American Library, 1974.
______________, The Fruits of the Spirit. Light of Christ. Abba. New York: David
McKay, 1956.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Bond with the Beloved. Inverness, CA: Golden Sufi
Center, 1993.
___________________, Sufism: The Transformation of the Heart. Inverness, CA:
Golden Sufi Center, 1995.
___________________, ed., Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters.
Inverness, CA: Golden Sufi Center, 1995.
Vox de Nube: Voice from the Cloud. Noirin Ni Riain and the monks of Glenstal Abbey.
CD. Sounds True, 1996.
Esther de Waal, A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton. Foreword by Henri
Nouwen. Photographs by Thomas Merton. Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications,
1993.
Walter Wink, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. New York:
Galilee/Doubleday, 1999.

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SOME MUSIC FOR MEDITATION, YOGA, OR BODY PRAYERS

Agnus Dei: Music of Inner Harmony. The Choir of New College, Oxford. Edward
Higginbottom, dir. Erato Disques. 0630-14634-2. Choral masterpieces spanning
four centuries. (Imagine, say, a 40-minute session with slow asanas to Barber’s “Agnus Dei,”Faure’s “Cantique de Jean Racine,” Palestrina’s “Kyrie,” Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus,” and Bach’s “Jesus bleibet meine Freude,” and meditation with Rachmaninov’s “Ave Maria,” Elgar’s “Lux Aeterna,” and Gorecki’s wonderful and seemingly endless “Totus Tuus Sum, Maria.”)
Brother Sun, Sister Moon. The Cambridge Singers. John Rutter, dir. American
Gramaphone AGCD588. A cappella choral music of the morning and evening rites.
The Mystery of Santo Domingo de Silos. The Monks of Silos. Dom Ismael Fernandez de
la Cuesta, dir. Polygram. 445 399-2. Gregorian chant from Spain.
Meditation Chants of Hildegard von Bingen. Sung by Norma Gentile. Ave Maria Press.
TT 59:35.
A Feather on the Breath of God: Sequences and Hymns by Hildegard of Bingen. Gothic
Voices. Christopher Page, dir. Hyperion. CDA66039.
Vision: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen. With original compositions, arrangements,
and interpretations performed by Richard Souther. Featured vocalists: Emily Van Evera, Sister Germaine Fritz, OSB. Angel. CDC 7243 5 55246 2 1.
Nada Himalaya. Deuter. New Earth Records. NE 9706-2. Tibetan bells.
Buddha Nature. Deuter. New Earth Records. NE 2104-2. Japanese flute, crickets,
layered melodies with synthesizer.
Divine Bliss. Shri Anandi Ma. Sounds True. 1-56455-415-5. Hindu devotional music.
Shakuhachi Meditation Music. Stan Richardson. (2 CDs) Sounds True. 1-56455-420-1.
Traditional Japanese flute for Zen Buddhist contemplation.

For more active participation in music and words:

Sergei Rachmaninov, Vespers. (All-Night Vigil..) The Choir of King’s College,
Cambridge. Stephen Cleobury, dir. EMI Classics 5 56752 2. (Wonderful if you want to soar with the service, which includes passages of fortissimo intensity.)
Philip Glass, Symphony No. 5: Requiem, Bardo, Nirmanakaya. Vienna Radio
Symphony Orchestra, Morgan State University Choir, and the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir. Dennis Russell Davies, conductor. (2 CDs.) Nonesuch 79618-2. (For those who may appreciate Glass’s distinctive style, a marvelous evocation of creation, love and joy, evil and ignorance, suffering, compassion, death, judgment and apocalypse, paradise, and dedication of merit - with texts drawn from a great variety of religious traditions.)

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Cristo non ha mani, Christ has no hands,
ha soltanto le nostre mani he has only our hands
per fare to do
il suo lavoro oggi. his work today.

Cristo non ha piedi, Christ has no feet,
ha soltanto i nostri piedi per he has only our feet to
guidare gli uomini guide people
sui suoi sentieri. upon his paths.

Cristo non ha labbra, Christ has no lips,
ha soltanto le nostre labbra he has only our lips
per raccontare di se to tell about him
ogli uomini di oggi. to the people of today.

Noi siamo l'unica Bibbia We are the only Bible
che i popoli leggono ancora; that the nations still read;
siamo l'unico messaggio di Dio, we are the only message of God,
scritto in opere e parole. written in works and words.

--a 14th century prayer

The back cover of this booklet offers a reproduction of a polychromatic wooden crucifix from the early 13th century, which is in the collection of the Museum of Sacred Art in the church of San Gimignano near Siena, Italy. When Joan Whitaker and I visited Tuscany in 1998, we were impressed by the crucifix and by the poem the Museum includes with its reproduction of the image. I have here translated the poem. In thought and wording, it is very close to a poem that is attributed to Saint Teresa of Avila, “You Are Christ’s Hands,” which may be found in The Gift of Prayer, p. 163.

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