Prayer with Hands as Grace at Meals
Leader: Invite group to join with the motions, repeating the words after you:
This is my daily bread (hands out in front, cupped, palms up);
Take it (lift both hands slightly, palms still up);
Bless it (place one cupped hand over the other);
Break it (hands like breaking a loaf of bread);
Give it to everyone I meet this day (lower hands, open toward others).
Second time: Invite group to follow the motions and say the words you.
Third time: Invite the group just to do the motions, without words.

Open-Eyed Grace: Gracias!
This table “grace” can be used at home or at church, temple, or community gatherings.
Leader say: “Be aware of our unity with all people and creation… breathing in the same air with rich and poor… Notice the food… smells… colors… Imagine the seeds… the dark soil, the bright sun… farmers planting it… migrant farm laborers harvesting with their hands.

Leader invite: Gently lift your hands on their behalf.
Conclude saying the word Gracias! three times in unison:

Gracias! Gracias! Gracias! (The Spanish word Gracias!  can mean “thanks” for the food and “grace” for those in need)

Uno, Dos, Tres…
Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez:
Thank you for the food before us,
Friends beside us,
Love between us!
You may eat! (as all raise hands and clap!)
—Anonymous from a grandson’s preschool

God is Great, God Is Good
God is great, God is good (hands cupped in front)
and we thank God for our food.

By God’s love we all are fed, (hands stretched our to others)
Give everyone our daily bread. Amen.

Table Grace from Latin America
O God, to those who have hunger give bread,
and to those who have bread give a hunger for justice.
Repeat (explain justice as “fairness” if used with young children).

Johnny Appleseed Grace (sung or spoken)
If anyone knows the tune to this camp song, invite the group to sing:
Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord,
For giving me the things I need,
The sun and the rain and the apple seed.
The Lord is good to me! Amen! (clap hands once.)

For every seed I sow, there grows another tree,
And someday there’ll be apples there,
For everyone in the world to share.
The Lord is good to me! Amen! (clap hands once.)

Celtic Cross Hand Grace
Begin after everyone has food on his or her plate…
At top of plate: Join thumb, index and third fingers (either hand):
Move fingers from top to bottom of plate (toward you);
Think or say the words:
We give thanks that our paths have crossed;
Move fingers to left side of plate, then across to the right:
and we give thanks for the cross of Jesus;
Now circle the outside of the plate:
and we pray for God’s love to encircle the whole world.
Leader says: You’ve now made the sign of the Celtic Cross (cross with circle).
Invite group to follow your gestures and say the words; a third time without words.
—Kent Ira Groff adapted from a Swiss friend

Come Lord Jesus
Come Lord Jesus, Be our Guest,
And let these gifts to us be blest.

Note: This blog is adapted from my book What Would I Believe If I Didn’t Believe Anything?: A Handbook for Spiritual Orphans (Jossey-Bass, 2004).

The dark night of the soul has a long history. It is especially linked with the fifteenth century Spanish mystic John of the Cross, whose childhood poverty contained a seed of his suffering and genius. Young John worked in a hospital and went to school by day. He would study late into the night. Thus as a youth John had already made “night” his friend. Scriptures and science shed light on the dark night.

“Moses entered the thick darkness where God was,” says the Torah in Exodus 20. Right after receiving “light” in the Ten Commandments, Moses enters the dark via negativa, hiding out in the shadow of the divine wing, close but unable to see directly.[i]

Nicodemus came to see Jesus by night, when Jesus told him, “You must be born anew.”[ii] The Apostle Paul, after encountering Christ, retreated at once to Arabia, then to Syria. Only after a three-year “blackout” period did Paul contact the establishment church in Jerusalem.[iii] Plotinus, Denys and Gregory of Nyssa in the early church spoke of the abyss of God’s love as a “dark ray”—which we now know scientifically as black light.

At times the “night” can arrive without an outward crisis. This night corresponds to the “abyss” in mysticism, and is akin to “chaos” theory in science, and to disintegration in psychological literature. In Sacred Sorrows: Embracing and Transforming Depression, Andrea Nelson writes about “Chaos Theory and Depression”:

“The new tools of Chaos mathematics reveal patterns of order deeply embedded in the tempest seething around us. It rekindles an ancient idea of creative tension between order and chaos that dates to early Greek philosophers and to diverse creation myths that invoke a primordial state of chaos from which all things spring forth… The Greek roots of the word chaos convey a sense of an empty space or abyss—a formlessness that contains the seeds of creativity.”[v]

“All things ceased; I went out from myself,” wrote John of the Cross. Sometimes the abyss seems like a night that never ends, sometimes like a winter that will not go away. Camus wrote, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there lay within me an invincible summer.”[vi]

Depression and Dark Night. A student asked her therapist, “What would be the difference between depression and the dark night?” The counselor paused, then answered: “The outcome.” For some, depression ends in burnout and bitterness. For others it is a brief stage: lose a job, get a new one. For still others it issues in transformation: you begin to ask, what do I have a job for? The same experience is a night to open the depth of Life. The key is in how one responds.

“Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair,” writes Andrew Solomon in The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression.[vii] F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Crack-Up that “in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” Those night demons have visited me.

NIGHT DEMONS

They come in the night,
these demons of self-doubt—
they come to disqualify me,
kidnapping my confidence:
How can you be spiritual
yet be this anxious?
How dare you offer
your needy self to be
a spiritual guide for others?

Then the Spirit comes—
to comfort, to console,
fortifying me with
the ancient assurance
that I am one beggar
showing other beggars
where to find bread,
that my very neediness
validates my credentials,
as one who surely seeks
and just as surely finds,
—as one already found.[viii]

Medical Treatment and Spiritual Transformation. Driving back from lunch I confided in a trusted colleague, “Art, I’m sorry I wasn’t a very good conversationalist today—one of my down times.” He jibed, “I like you better this way!” When I am not so full of myself there is more space to listen.

“The opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality, and my life, as I write this is vital, even when sad,” concludes Andrew Solomon in The Noonday Demon. “Every day, I choose, sometimes gamely and sometimes against the moment’s reason, to be alive. Is that not a rare joy?”[ix]

Emotional illness, whether mild or major, may become an occasion for deepening spiritual life and love. If insulin for diabetes or if psychotherapy for depression can free a person to follow Love’s call, that too is the Spirit’s work. Like diabetes, if mental illness requires medical treatment use it. Or like a broken leg, use the crutches till it heals.

But unlike diabetes or a broken bone, because of the shame our culture projects on us who suffer emotional pain, I believe a spiritual lens on this goofy gory gift is not a luxury, but essential to staying vital—even when you feel sad or others think you are wacko.

If you’re on crutches or insulin or Prozac you can still meet with a spiritual companion to talk about patterns of meaning in your life journey and where it is leading you. That can color prosaic days with nighttime’s mysterious intimacy.

I pray for the masses of youth and their elders to celebrate inklings of spiritual vitality even within their sadness. The mystery of death and rebirth goes on everywhere. The world is filled with bits and pieces of Eucharist.

The Digital Divide: Exchanging Wisdom across Generations

Many, many… have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now… You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement.” —A mentor to Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

When my son was in his twenties, I enlisted him to help me learn the complexities of a new computer. Sitting next to me, he noticed the anxiousness and impatience in my voice, and I realized there was more going on than my anxiety about a computer. I heard his crisp words: “Just relax. Don’t panic, Dad; one thing at a time.” I had an instant flashback: I’m seeing myself, as clearly as yesterday, next to my son on the front seat of my car, saying those same words to him as he clutches, shifts, and brakes, anxiously learning to operate a stick shift transmission, just as his two older sisters had done before him.

Could this moment of frustration morph into a moment of intimacy? I paused, recalling how my own father would pull back in such tense moments. Could I discover a new dimension to this craft of fathering in my fifties? I found myself telling my son of the flashback. We laughed and embraced. Then we proceeded with the task.

When is the younger the elder? So quickly the apprentice-mentor role reverses itself. No one has ever been an elder in the twenty-first century. So we cannot say, “This is how it is in your twenties,” because no elder was ever a youth in the twenty-first century.

When life expectancy was only 35, midlife began at puberty—imagine that! You were an elder in your teens. You were still getting into mischief. Look at Jacob and Esau tricking each other and Jacob deceiving his dying father Isaac to get his brother’s blessing. Youthful “pilgrims” rebelled against their parents by leaving Europe for the Americas in the 1600s. Recently, Zimbabwe was reported to have the world’s lowest life expectancy—34 for men and 37 for women.

Let’s say “midlife” is still the time for becoming an elder. But what is midlife in the twenty-first century in Western countries? If 70 is the new 50, is 50 the new 30? Or is it the other way around: is 20 the new 40—younger mentoring older in understanding pop culture and high-tech worlds of iPods, mp3s, blogs and texting? What if we turn such questions on their head? When is the younger the elder?

However, this is not just about elders learning from techies. A 17-year-old in a refugee camp, whose parents died of aids, is now in charge of the care for her three remaining younger siblings. I call that young woman an elder in experience. I would be awed in her presence and learn from her suffering.

When the teacher is ready. The paradox of being an elder today invites us to a new paradigm of a mutual exchange of wisdom: mentoring and being mentored by younger generations, who are the “natives” in a changed world.

No longer can elders pour wisdom into the lives of the young. Rather, a wise elder discovers creative ways to connect and learn with younger journeyers as together they explore issues across cultures.

“When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear,” runs the ancient proverb. But try turning it on its head: “When the teacher is ready, the pupil will appear.” It works both ways. If you befriend your own inner questionings as an edge of growth, you may be amazed at how seekers will appear on your doorstep as your teachers.

I say to those over forty, create safe spaces for listening with youthful seekers and it will be life-giving for you. I say to those under forty, lots of dislocated older folks would treasure a safe youthful mentor to converse with and learn from. I say to both, cultivate ways to connect with the struggles and questions within yourself then you will be a safe person for any yearning soul.

The digital divide in four generations. A teacher tells me of preschool children who explain to their parents how to activate the parental controls for the child’s computer!

A totally new cultural phenomenon has occurred in our time that makes today’s demographics unprecedented: four generations are living and working together simultaneously. In their groundbreaking book When Generations Collide, Baby Boomer Lynne Lancaster and Generation Xer David Stillman describe these four generations and show their clashes and gifts as they interact in the workplace.

I’ve adapted Lancaster and Stillman’s four categories, although their generalizations invite lots of crisscrossing, especially across layers of races and cultures. By eavesdropping on their conversations we can gain powerful insights into mutual mentoring for our families and religious communities.

Traditionalists (1900-45) place their greatest value on loyalty and tend to express their allegiance in commitment to a lifetime career: “the legacy of a job well done.” You may save up your vacation for extra retirement income; family and self-care often come in a poor second to work, making it hard to understand the Xer and Millennial mindset.

Boomers (1946-1964) value success and achievement, expressed in pursuing an outstanding career: “money, title, the corner office.” Boomers, like their traditionalist elders, value task over relationships, while making connections for a promotion.

Generation X (1965-80) value relationships over the boss’s approval and choose portable careers based relational concerns: “Freedom and adaptability, work in Chicago from L.A.” “Everybody’s in this together” explains an Xer’s faux pas of failing to alphabetize the team names in email memo. Instant Boomer reaction: “Insulting! So-and-so spent decades getting to be manager, only to see some new guy’s name ahead of his.”

Millennials (1981-present) value meaning with a sense of purpose and they adapt parallel careers: “Multitasking work that has meaning for me.” Millennials take on several projects simultaneously that tap their passion and purpose. And they value process over finished product. For example, in the movie The Social Network, business-minded Eduardo Saverin explodes at Mark Zukerberg about the sluggishness of Facebook project, “So when will be it finished?” Zukerberg says, “It won’t be finished. That’s the point. The way fashion’s never finished.” One of the things my task-driven generation learns from the tech generation is that life often does not have a finish line; several major projects may be developing simultaneously. (Kierkegaard worked that way with his writing projects.)

This description of the generational puzzle provides a laboratory for learning for spiritual seekers and religious leaders. For purposes of Clergy Table Talk, I’ll refer to these as “older generations” and “younger generations.” Many Generation Xers along with their younger millennial siblings grew up as natives in the new digital landscape: they view the smart phone with its apps in their hand as an extension of their body.

The real generational crisis: radical opportunity. Everyone knows mainline churches (yes, even Southern Baptists according to Diana Butler Bass) face a demographic crisis. But I say statistical extinction is not the issue. Rather, it’s a spiritual crisis. The problem is not whether church as we know it exist in the 22^nd century. Rather the crisis is that my generations are missing out on God’s work in our lives by failing to welcome new generations as our teachers. I must intentionally draw on my Christian roots as we explore.

From modern to postmodern to primodern. Compare the traditionalist “slug-it-out, back-to-the-daily grind” work ethic to younger generations’ value of relationships, and spontaneity in work that has meaning and purpose. Can we integrate older generations’ value of lifelong commitment and rational concepts (modernity) with the spontaneity and portability of the younger generations (postmodernity)? I call it primodern, because it integrates our modern learnings with our primal yearnings (see Chapter 14).

From paternalism to partnership. Among younger generations there’s a movement from paternalism to partnership, and understanding before acting. This fits with the idea of purpose and meaning: why would you spend good time helping people do something they don’t want? Or why would you try to give people a good thing without understanding their culture first, so that indigenous leaders could interpret and implement the project?

For example, in attempting to introduce common Western vaccines in African countries, traditionalist generation leaders failed to consult the African elders. The project failed because the “do good” Americans failed to explain the need and win the support of the elders first.

What other cultural institution has the potential for mining the spiritual reciprocity of learning from each other from preschool through retirement?

Obstacles to mutual mentoring. If the reciprocity of learning among generations is important, then what are some of the obstacles that keep us from investing in each other?

Preconceived stereotypes. Not all youth are restless or socially concerned, and not all elders are tradition-bound prigs. Some youth are more conservative than their elders, politically or theologically. Many elders, who “played it safe” in working years for the sake of career or family, now feel they’ve got nothing to lose by getting politically active in later years. I value cultivating a few edgy friendships on the cultural right as I do edgy friendships on the left.

Fear of being perceived as patronizing. “Most elders I know back off, or at least don’t risk trying to relate to young adults, because they don’t want to be perceived as patronizing or paternalistic. And, honestly, I don’t know a lot of youth who feel it’s worth taking their time to connect with elders,” a midlife parent told me.

Fear of being perceived as dumb. “A barrier for me in connecting with younger people,” said a 72-yearold woman, “is fear of showing how little I know.” Maturing as an elder does not mean achieving perfection; that would turn off young generations. Rather, it means being real. Tech generations are not care if God exists; rather is God real? The same goes for any relationship: Is this person real?

A multigenerational team was meeting with their new department director, an African American, as Lancaster and Stillman tell it. “As the employees were getting to know their new boss, the Generation Xer piped up: ‘I’m never sure what the right terminology is. Do you consider yourself black, African American, or a person of color?’” Traditionalists and Boomers were stunned and embarrassed. “To their relief, the African American boss actually thanked the Xer and gave a thoughtful response.” Older generations’ fear of lawsuits, coupled with looking stupid, made talk about diversity a thing to avoid rather than learn from. The story leads into the paradox integrating the transparent spontaneity of youth with the serious lifelong commitment of elders.

Playful yet serious: the youth in the elder, the elder in the youth. When Adam Werbach was the youngest-ever president of the Sierra Club at age 23, he related “a cautionary tale for our times.” Researchers, he reported, went to a preschool and asked the youngsters, “Who knows how to sing?” Everyone’s hand shot up. “Who knows how to dance?” They waved their hands. “Who knows how to draw?” Again, all hands up. Fast forward a week and the researchers posed the questions to college students. “Who knows how to sing?” A few hands were raised. “Who knows how to dance?” Two hands went up halfway. “Draw?” No response.

Somewhere between preschool and so-called “higher” education we lose track of vital means of self-expression. No wonder—pun intended!—we resort to violence. Dancing, drumming, drawing, and dreaming get squeezed out of us.

To advance spiritually means returning to a childlike habit of mind in all religious traditions. “The great person is one who does not lose the child’s heart,” writes Confucian leader Mencius in the third century B.C.E. When Jesus tells a Jewish teacher Nicodemus that “to see” the realm of God he must be born again, Nicodemus takes Jesus literally: “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” The Sufi Muslim poet Hafiz asks God to “take care of that / Holy infant my heart has become.”

We can create playful projects for serious purposes. “The best scientists are those who retain the somewhat naïve curiosity of a child,” says Margaret Geller, chief scientist at the Smithsonian Astrological Observatory. “They see the world with a special eye.”

Paradigm: the youthful Jesus teaching the elders. The Luke’s Gospel offers an archetype of the “the elder in the youth.” Jesus, at age twelve, worries his parents sick that he’s lost in the crowd. “After three days, they find him in the temple among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:46-47). The story is a paradigm of the Jungian dream archetype of “the precocious child,” pointing to why scientists often make discoveries in a playful, spontaneous moment. The story is also a paradigm of how listening to stories and asking questions act as a shuttle to weave our conscious and unconscious selves together, and to connect the generations.

In Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot, Richard Restak says, “You can enhance your creativity by playfully altering your perceptions and trying to look beyond the obvious, most practical interpretations of what you see around you.”

Alexander Fleming’s lazy lab students, by neglecting to clean the moldy Petri dishes, became his unwitting mentors. Fleming’s surprise discovery of penicillin is still healing generations.

In young adulthood we need “guarantors of our identity,” Erik Erikson says in his classic Childhood and Society. And later years we need to experience “generativity” by conferring that kind of identity and self-reliance on younger people. What if it works a bit both ways? Is that not a beautiful reciprocal arrangement?

Spiritual Practice 12. Contemplating Qualities of a Child

Find the lyrics to the child’s lullaby “Hush Little Baby” (don’t you cry). Or listen to Yo-Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin’s version on their CD Hush as they have fun, counterpointing classic ’cello and pop styles. Have pen and paper ready. Pause. Contemplate childlike qualities. Begin to write words, phrases or images of childlike qualities—or draw smiley faces, sad faces, or stick figures jumping, kneeling, or dancing. You might let a poem emerge. Find a way to name these childlike qualities with another person or in a group.

Check out this poetry class by Peggy Rosehthal

“An unanswered question is a fine traveling companion. It sharpens your eye for the road.” —Rachael Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom

Our culture programs us to value answers. Yet scientists will tell you that empty space (the Greeks called it kenosis) can be essential for discovery. The poet John Keats gave us a fine phrase that’s now found its way into science and literature and spirituality.

In a letter to his brother dated December 21, 1817, Keats referred the state of unknowing as “Negative Capability.” He tells how he was walking home from a Christmas drama with two friends. Keats describes one of them, Dilke, as a person who has “already made up his mind about everything”: he would never learn anything new. In a moment of irritation, Keats’s insight dropped in.

“Several things dovetailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a [Person] of Achievement, especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when [one] is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without an irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

Next time you take a walk with an irritating friend or drop a note to a family member, marvel at this: you may play host to an explosive spiritual paradigm for generations yet to come.

Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Prize winner for his famous Uncertainty Principle of quantum physics, would speak to his researcher in the middle of some problem. “Wait, I think we have touched something very important here. Let’s not talk about it… Let’s wait for two weeks, and let it solve itself.”

Every creative person knows the void of unknowing as the womb for a new creation. Novelists empty their own personality in order to enter the character they write about. Scientists may halt an experiment to let an idea ferment. Urging Quakers to free their slaves in the 1700s, John Woolman writes in his Journals how often his act of saying nothing in a Friends’ Meeting had more impact than words.

Sometimes you experience kenosis by immersing yourself in passionate action. You empty yourself of any attachments to consequences; you are free to act with love.

In The Shawshank Redemption, a movie based on Stephen King’s novel, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is wrongly convicted of shooting his cheating wife and her lover. As prison librarian, he receives LP records. Locking the warden in the bathroom, Andy boldly enters the prison office and plays a Mozart duet over the sound system. Prisoners inside rise from sleep; outside they stand at attention. Red (Morgan Freeman) describes the music as “so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it…. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away… and for the briefest of moments—every last man at Shawshank felt free.” Then Freeman’s voice announces that Andy “got two weeks in the hole for that stunt.”

Genuine humility means following your passion to bless people—like Gandhi, King, or Rosa Parks. Love frees you to claim your gifts and risk being thrown into a dark hole. In Christian experience, it’s the three days in the dark tomb that gives rise to the resurrected Christ. “Negative Capability” is more than reframing; it’s practicing resurrection.

In Lake Wobegon, says Garrison Keillor, “All the Norwegians were Lutherans, of course, even the atheists—it was a Lutheran God they did not believe in.” The theism a lot of atheists reject describes a God I cannot believe in either.

Many grew up, as I did, with an emotionally or physically absent father, at the same time hearing of God mainly as a male figure, so God seemed distant. Images and language skew our attitude toward the Sacred. Lots of religious words make spirituality seem irrelevant. The word repent is one such example.

Desmond Tutu tells of brutal killers in South Africa who had slowly cooked people alive at one end of a campsite while enjoying a barbecue at the other end. Later in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, these perpetrators would confess without emotion that they were sorry. They might be staring across the room or down at their shoes as they spoke. But if the victim’s family member would say, “Turn to me; now say what you just said.” Then the confessor would be deeply moved, hardly able to gasp the words.

In telling this story, the word turn became flesh: a simple human act of turning embodies spiritual power. That is exactly what the word shuv in the Hebrew Bible means: “turn”—though it usually gets translated “repent.” And the New Testament Greek word metanoia literally means “turning one’s thoughts” or “changing one’s mind.” Yet when translated into English as “repentance,” both words convey moralistic scruples and miss the basic human connection. So the Bible sounds more religious than it really is.

If the victim had said, “repent to me” instead of “turn to me,” it would have missed the vulnerable place in the perpetrator’s heart. In this way ordinary words and gestures can have more power than religious language.

Meanwhile the radio preacher goes on pounding the pulpit: “Repent!” And we go right on driving to the mall to buy clothing made in child sweatshops. The simple language of “turn” can embody more power than “repent.” What if we actually turned our thoughts toward the sweatshops? Or turned toward the real needs beneath our wants?

What are some religious language barriers that get in the way of genuine spirituality for you?

Portions are adapted from What Would I Believe If I Didn’t Believe Anything?