| Out and About
» Facebook
» Twitter
» Flickr
» Vimeo
» YouTube SOF Observed
» How I Am Preparing to Get Alzheimer's Disease
"I am building my capacity for love now, so it can sustain me later." —Alanna Shaikh, on Alzheimer's lessons and the love of her father.
» A Quote from a Retiring Football Coach
The head coach of the University of Florida football team on his 18-year-old daughter's jubilant reaction. SoundSeen
(our multimedia stories)
In The Room with Jean Vanier [video, 89:36]
In October 2007, Krista flew to Washington, DC and drove to the Bishop Claggett Center in rural Maryland for a rare interview with Jean Vanier. He speaks with his whole body, especially his hands. We filmed the entire conversation in a converted farmhouse for you to see.
Pictographs by Sitting Bull's Hand: A Smithsonian Perspective [video, 7:28]
A closer look at the Lakota leader's 22 drawings reveals important details the contemporary observer might miss. Candace Greene, an ethnographer from the Smithsonian, describes what to focus on and gives fascinating context to these autobiographical portraits. Upcoming Broadcasts:
The Meaning of Intelligence (January 7)
An expansive reflection on the meaning of intelligence with author and educator Mike Rose. We explore his perspective on hard subjects that drive to the heart of who we are as individuals, families, and a nation — literacy, schooling, social class, and the deepest meaning of vocation. Transcripts
Words matter. We provide free transcripts for you to read and print.
» The Wisdom of Tenderness
with Jean Vanier
» Tatanka Iyotake, Reimagining Sitting Bull
with Ernie LaPointe & Cedric Good House
» The Moral Math of Climate Change
with Bill McKibben
» The Spiritual Audacity of Abraham Joshua Heschel
with Arnold Eisen Unheard Cuts
Hear what we left out of the program. Download mp3s of all of Krista's unedited interviews. Here are some of the latest:
» Jean Vanier
» Ernie LaPointe
» Cedric Good House
» Bill McKibben
» Arnold Eisen About the Image
Top left, clockwise: a Hindu Holy man offers prayer at a temple in India. (Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images); bikers pray during Mass given by Christian Riders Ministry in Florida. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images); a Palestinian greenhouse worker bows in prayer during a break. (David Furst/AFP/Getty Images); a feminist Muslim author Asra Nomani prays with other women during a rare mixed gender, woman-led prayer service in New York City. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images). About Speaking of Faith
Hosted by Krista Tippett, the public radio program is heard weekly on radio stations around the country, bringing a wide range of intelligent religious ideas and voices into American life. Contact Us
We'd love to hear your comments or suggestions about the e-mail newsletter and our Web site. Let us know how we're doing!
| ![]() | | This week on public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas:
Approaching Prayer
We explore creative and generous approaches to prayer in three very different lives: Hindu chant with musician Anoushka Shankar; poetry and "non-religious" prayer with translator Stephen Mitchell; and theologian Roberta Bondi on learning to pray with the Desert Fathers and Mothers. The words of Mary Oliver, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Patricia Hampl also join in. { This program was originally released on May 13, 2005. } A Richer Texture of Prayer and Contemplation
Prayer is as old as time and as vast as human experience, found in every culture across history. Counterintuitively perhaps, prayer is a far more common bond among Americans than religious faith itself. In overwhelming numbers, Americans say that they pray, whether they are religious or non-religious, devout or agnostic. In this — a program we have recrafted and revisited by popular demand across the years — we do not begin to "cover" the subject of prayer, but I think we open it up.
I'll devote most of this reflection to eloquent words that are spoken or quoted in this hour of radio — Rainer Maria Rilke, Roberta Bondi, Patricia Hampl, and Stephen Mitchell. I can't quote my first guest, Anoushka Shankar, because her approach to prayer comes in chant and song and simply must be heard in her voice. It is a wonderful introduction to Hindu theology as well as a glimpse inside a lovely life.
The three conversations in this program couldn't be more different. Taken together, they suggest a far broader and richer definition of prayer than the public, politicized notion that sometimes divides us in cultural and legal battles. Perhaps because I am so averse to that kind of distortion, I am a great lover of the earthy philosophy of prayer of the theologian Roberta Bondi — whom I'll quote here first. "We often have a kind of notion, as part of this highfalutin, noble picture of ourselves as pray-ers, that when we pray we need to be completely attentive and we need to be fully engaged and we need to be concentrating and we need to be focused. But the fact is, if prayer is our end of a relationship with God, that's not the way we are with the people we love a large portion of the time. We simply are in their presence. We're going about our lives at the same time in each other's presence, aware and sustained by each other, but not much more than that… However we are, however we think we ought to be in prayer, the fact is we just need to show up and do the best we can do. It's like being in a family."
—Roberta Bondi "If a man wants God to hear his prayer quickly, then before he prays for anything else, even his own soul, when he stands and stretches out his hands towards God, he must pray with all his heart for his enemies. Through this action, God will hear everything that he asks."
—Abba Zeno,
from the sayings of The Desert Fathers "[The French philosopher Simone Weil said, 'Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.'] I love that. I think that could be as close as someone can get to a wonderful definition of prayer. In that sense, prayer has nothing religious about it. A mathematician working at a problem or a little kid trying to pick out scales on the piano is a person at prayer. … She's not saying prayer is absolute unmixed attention; it's the other way. The attention itself is the quality that she wants to call prayer. So whatever context you're putting it in, whether it's inside a church or inside a toy box, that's the quality that is the sacred one."
—Stephen Mitchell "I love you, gentlest of Ways,
who ripened us as we wrestled with you.
You, the great homesickness we could never shake
off,
you, the forest that always surrounded us,
you, the song we sang in every silence,
you dark net threading through us,
on the day you made us you created yourself,
and we grew sturdy in your sunlight…
Let your hand rest on the rim of Heaven now
and mutely bear the darkness we bring over you."
—Rainer Maria Rilke,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy "Prayer only looks like an act of language; fundamentally it is a position, a placement of oneself. Focus. Get there, and all that's left to say is the words. They come: from ancient times, … from the surprisingly eloquent heart, … from the gush and chatter of the day's detail longing to be rendered.
So what is silence?
Silence speaks, the contemplatives say. But really, I think, silence sorts. An ordering instinct sends people into the hush where the voice can be heard."
—Patricia Hampl,
excerpted from Virgin Time I Recommend Reading:
Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
by Rainer Maria Rilke
There are so many books and CDs I could recommend on this subject, and our Web site this week includes an extended list of works referenced by our guests. Approaching prayer is such an individual process, a matter both of tradition and of temperament. Here I'll single out a book of beautiful, challenging and evocative poems/prayers that speak to many, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy's translation of Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.
| |
