Spirituality & Health Magazine: Winter 1999

Winter 1999

The Many Facets of Forgiveness

An Act of the Heart
Jack Kornfield

Forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts of the spiritual life. It enables us to be released from the sorrows of the past. Forgiveness does not in any way justify or condone harmful actions. While you forgive, you may also say, "Never again will I knowingly allow this to happen." You can resolve to sacrifice your own life to prevent further harm. Forgiveness does not mean you have to seek out or speak to those who cause you harm. You may choose never to see them again.

	A Chance to Begin Again Desmond Tutu
	Desmond Tutu: "Forgiveness is taking seriously the awfulness of what has happened when you are treated unfairly. It is opening the door for the other person to have a chance to begin again. Without forgiveness, resentment builds in us, a resentment which turns into hostility and anger. Hatred eats away at our well-being..."

	Seeking Forgiveness in the World's Spiritual Traditions Ann Kathleen Bradley
	The world's major spiritual traditions have long taught the value of forgiveness as a tool for freeing ourselves and others from the tyranny of past judgments and perceptions -- or misperceptions. The traditions may offer different rationales for why we should forgive, and different ways to go about it, but the ultimate goal is strikingly similar.

The Forgiveness Teacher's Toughest Test
Everett L. Worthington Jr., Ph.D.

The call came on New Year's Day, 1996. My brother's voice was shaky. "I have some bad news," he said. "Mama's been murdered." In the next five minutes, Mike sketched for me what he saw when he and his stepson, David, walked into the scene. That night, my brother, sister, and I talked about it. Mama had been beaten to death with a crowbar, her body assaulted with a wine bottle. Rage bubbled up in me like lava. I heard myself saying, "I'd like to have that murderer alone in a room with just a baseball bat. I'd beat his brains out."

	Forgiveness Susan Wade Brown
	Forgiveness is a healing journey for both body and soul. Yet, even if you know in your heart that you want or need to forgive someone, the path toward peace can be difficult. To move forward, it often helps to have an accurate sense of where you are right now.

The Science of Forgivness

Do you remember where you were the day after President Clinton went on national television to confess he'd had an inappropriate relationship with a White House intern? Dr. Robert Enright knows where he was: on the phone, fielding calls from reporters trying to get a handle on what role forgiveness was likely - or able - to play in our citizenry's future relationship with our chief executive. Enright is a pioneer in forgiveness research and the president of the International Forgiveness Institute. Founded in 1994, based on 14 years of research at The University of Wisconsin where Enright is a professor, the IFI is dedicated to creating a true learning community where scholars and practitioners from diverse fields can enlarge one another's knowledge

	Letting Go of the Role of Victim Rabbi Harold S. Kushner
	A woman in my congregation comes to see me. She is a single mother, divorced, working to support herself and three young children. She says to me, "Since my husband walked out on us, every month is a struggle to pay our bills. I have to tell my kids we have no money to go to the movies, while he's living it up with his new wife in another state. How can you tell me to forgive him?"

	Asking for Forgiveness Helen Prejean
	A forgiveness story from Dead Man Walking.

Features

The Most Powerful Healing God & Women Can Come Up With
Stephen Kiesling

At the California Pacific Medical Center and UCSF, the Army is funding a four-year project to find out if breast-cancer patients who use an integrated smorgasbord of spiritual tools fare better than women in conventional group therapy. But the researchers have larger goals. Says one ebullient staffer, "We're modeling a new way of being a woman." Grandiose? Not at all. Keeping this Integrated Group together is young psychiatrist, Elisabeth Targ, M.D., whose career, like Galileo's, make rock both the scientific establishment and the institutional church

Tall Tales, Shaggy Dogs, and Crowd-Pleasing Sagas
Gustave Reininger

In these days of high bandwidth and uncertain connections, the ancient art of storytelling provides a rich cultural banquet. An evening thunderstorm rolls over the mountains of eastern Tennessee, distracting the 1,500 people gathered in a concert tent listening to one of America's master storytellers. Donald Davis has held this audience spellbound with a side-splitting tale about the mother of all family vacation nightmares -- a trip to Florida in a '57 Chevy with sticky plastic seats, suffocating humidity, no air-conditioning, and a demonic, nearly sadistic, older brother. But pelting rain on canvas, thunder, and lightning unravel the delicate connection between the story, its teller, and the listeners who now worry about a leaking tent and a rain-drenched walk back to muddy parking fields.

Tracking and the Art of Seeing
Jan Goodwin

When we learn to read nature's signs, everything we encounter is what we're looking for. Surely we were insane. Struggling through knee-deep, back-country snow (sans snowshoes), we toiled up a mountain slope on the most Siberian weekend of the year. So frigid was the weather, so biting the wind, tears froze on our cheeks despite protective face coverings. Already, half our small group had turned back, fearful of frostbite. Some, in fact, hadn't made it past the glacial parking lot. "We'll have the hot chocolate ready when you return, if you do." They chuckled cheerfully as they scuttled off to centrally heated comfort.

Give Us Ten Minutes...We'll Give You the Kosmos
Stephen Kiesling

A quick sprint through the mind of author Ken Wilber may change the way you think about the most important things in life. The cosmos is merely the physical universe. Here, were talking The Big K... everything from matter to mind to Spirit. We hope you'll come away feeling that the half of the Kosmos that tends to get crushed flat by modern science -- your emotions, your dreams, your spirituality -- actually provides the high ground we need to make sense of our lives.

Departments

Media:
	The Most Spiritually Literate Films of 1998 Frederic And Mary Ann Brussat

Travel:
	Bali's Eternal Beauty Deirdre Taylor
	Rising majestically out of the Indian Ocean, the Indonesian island of Bali has cast her spell on mortals since the Stone Age. Spirits are believed to rule every aspect of life on this Hindu island. Even in these modern times the Balinese make daily offerings of fruits and flowers to ensure the happiness of the gods that inhabit every rock and tree

What Goes On There, Really?
	world religions, Visiting a Mosque Penelope McCain
	First timer's guide to visiting a mosque. When Penelope McCain, this magazine's research coordinator, discovered that we intended to cover an Islamic prayer service, her own fascination with the topic led her to volunteer. Here is her report

Whats Going On There, Really?
	Visiting a Quaker Meeting Rosemary Cunningham
	Rosemary Cunningham, who ventured into a labyrinth for our premiere issue, finds herself at a place where "peace and stillness are of great importance -- even though it sometimes takes enormous energy to allow myself to have them." Such thoughts prompted her, on All Saints' Day, to attend a Quaker (Religious Society of Friends) Meeting at the Friends Meeting House, 15 Rutherford Place at Fifteenth Street, in Manhattan. That afternoon, she filed this report

Updates & Observations

Soul/Body


	Surviving Harassment: Centering for Self-Defense Stephen Kiesling
	When we think of centering practices to quiet the mind, we typically think of reaching toward God. But there are, of course, completely down-to-earth benefits of spiritual practice -- including self-defense for young women. Consider two recent studies: sexual harassment during job interviews and doing math in a bathing suit. (No kidding.)


	Streetwise Cures Sam Keen
	Ordinary language, street wisdom, tells us more than we want to know about the relationship between lifestyle and illness: "I can't stomach it. You give me a pain in the neck. Get off my back. Pissed. Inspired. Breathless. Stay loose. Suffocating. Senseless."


	Science Studies the Jesus Prayer: Can Seven Words Change Lives?
	It may seem a lot of effort over just seven words: Finding 110 Eastern Orthodox Christians, giving them a battery of tests ranging from psychology to theology to behavioral medicine, and then repeating the tests 30 days later. But the seven words -- "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me" (a.k.a. the Jesus Prayer) -- are among the most enduring in history. What Boston University psychologist George Stavros, Ph.D. wanted to find out was whether repeating the Jesus Prayer for ten minutes each day over the 30 days would affect these people's relationship with God, their relationships with others, their faith maturity, and their "self-cohesion" (levels of depression, anxiety, hostility, and interpersonal sensitivity).


	Ancient Path to High-Tech Healing: Labyrinth Helps Patients Traverse the Medical Maze Mary Elizabeth Allen
	California Pacific Medical Center is the largest not-for-profit medical institution in California. Inside its main hospital, it seems little different from many other modern medical facilities. Physicians and nurses handle life-and-death matters in an increasingly high-tech setting, helping patients and their families deal with the stress of illness and injury. Outside the main entrance of this modern facility stands one of their resources: a labyrinth, a modern rendition of a time-tested tool for restoring spiritual and physical health.

Intimacies


	If You Think Your Marriage Is Divine, It Likely Is Stephen Kiesling
	Remember, in the movie classic The African Queen, the scene where Bogart and Hepburn, nooses around their necks, are wed by the captain of the German warship? Now ask yourself, on the brink of their being hanged, why (other than great acting) do we believe the radiance of their eyes? It's not due to the oh-so-brief ceremony, nor the prospect of long lives together. So maybe it's because we witness their marriage as connecting with something beyond -- something sacred.


	The Ties that Brawl
	Picture two teens: Bill's from a stable family in a tight-knit community; Joe's the product of a broken home and gets little social support. Now guess which boy may be more prone to violence? Now guess again.

Actions


	Two Questions for a Happy Old Age


	What I Should Have Done (poem)


	Small Sacrifices, Big Returns Mary Elizabeth Allen
	There are few things in life more rewarding than finding a need we feel called to meet and discovering that a small sacrifice of a little pleasure or comfort is all it takes to meet the need.

Beliefs

Religious Diversity in America, Milestones: Fall and Winter 1998

The Islamic Society of North America brought together some 20,000 participants in St. Louis, Missouri for their 35th Annual Convention. The theme: "Muslims for Human Dignity." (September)

The Tri-State Sikh Cultural Society in Monroeville, Pennsylvania held their thirteenth Kirtan Samelan, a devotional singing competition for Sikh youth in the U.S. and Canada. (September)


	Delia Calls to Say Miss Leona Gifford Is Dead Jeanne Murray Walker
	So she's gone, the last person, maybe, who believed in/ sin, who couldn't stand the common rule/ that every day must be a good day. Who didn't/ make allowances for personal history/ such as when the Menendez brothers showed/ bruises on their thighs to make us understand/ why they had to kill their mother and father.

Expanding Universe


	Spiritual Intelligence: The Deeper Way of Knowing Beyond Brain and Belief T George Harris
	What's your Spiritual IQ? Is there even such a thing as Spiritual Intelligence -- SI? If so, can we measure the soul's wisdom beyond the calculating mind? Such questions exploded at the latest meetings of the American Psychology Association (APA) and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR).


	Field Notes: Bird by Bird The Rev. John-Brian Paprock
	World spirit


	The Next Wave on Campus? Frederic B. Burnham
	Wellesley's president saw "an emerging new intellectual vision, a moment of truth." A Columbia professor declared, "Head and heart have to be put back together." And an Amherst physicist confided, "We scientists need to broaden and enrich our ways of knowing." Such voices were representative of the 800 college and university presidents, faculty, students, and chaplains from over 400 institutions of higher learning who gathered at Wellesley last fall for a conference called Education as Transformation: Religious Pluralism, Spirituality, and Higher Education. Their consensus: Higher learning and teaching need a spiritual dimension, and religious communities can help.