Saturday, November 7, 1998

Take time to ponder the imponderables

By Tom Schaefer

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Let's slow down for a minute and ponder the imponderables, before we get back up to speed and race toward whatever finish line's ahead.

The election hoo-ha (or was it ho-hum?) is over. Time now to reflect on the meaning of public service. After all, we have to live with the winners, warts and all.

Maj. Dallas Raby of the Salvation Army in Wichita, Kan., alerted me to an interesting quote by President Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia, who on May 28, 1991, was awarded the Sonning Prize for his contribution to European civilization. The biennial prize has been awarded by the University of Copenhagen since 1950.

Read carefully and see whether Havel's ideas of responsible leadership match the qualities of those just elected:

"Politics is an area of human endeavor that places greater stress on moral sensitivity, on the ability to reflect critically on oneself, on genuine responsibility, on taste and tact, on the capacity to empathize with others, on a sense of moderation, on humility. It is a job for modest people, for people who cannot be deceived.

"Those who claim that politics is a dirty business are lying to us. Politics is work of a kind that requires especially pure people, because it is especially easy to become morally tainted. So easy, in fact, that a less vigilant spirit may not notice it happening at all. Politics, therefore, ought to be carried on by people who are vigilant, sensitive to the ambiguous promise of self-affirmation that comes with it. I have no idea whether I am such a person. I only know that I ought to be, because I have accepted this office."

What's ahead -- faithwise -- in the new millennium? Richard Cimino and Don Lattin tackle the question by studying the relevant data, talking to the spiritually informed -- and then giving us their best guesses.

Cimino is editor and publisher of Religion Watch, a newsletter that monitors trends and research in religion. Lattin is a religion reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. Their book is "Shopping for Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium" (Jossey-Bass Publishers, $25).

So, what have they learned? Here's some of it: Religious belief and values will reappear in public schools (the role of religion in U.S. history will have a stronger role); experiential truth will supersede doctrinal teaching; believers will be linked by computers, less by denominational communications; the religious right will remain strong, while the left will retain a relatively smaller presence in the public square; doomsday predictions will extend beyond religion to political and economic ideas; Christianity's predominance in the country will continue.

Surprised? Me neither.

Fifty years ago, an extraordinary book about a man's journey from restlessness and despair to spiritual awakening became an almost-instant hit.

The book was "The Seven Storey Mountain," and the author was Thomas Merton.

As a result of his journey, Merton joined one of the most demanding religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church, the Trappists.

His book has inspired untold millions who hear in Merton's voice their own cries for meaning and hope in this world.

On this 50th anniversary of the book's publication by Harcourt Brace, I urge you to put his book on your must-read list.

It's one imponderable worth pondering.

Want to avoid heart disease? Need a surefire treatment for depression that isn't limited to medications?

Try prayer.

Or going to church.

The studies that bolster the contention that faith and health go hand in hand keep coming in:

1. A survey of more than 90,000 patients in Maryland found that people who went to church at least once a week had half the heart disease of those who didn't.

2. A 28-year study by the University of California at Berkeley concluded that wellness and healing can be attributed to the fact that churchgoers are more likely to have more social contacts, exercise more often, not smoke and drink less alcohol than non-churchgoers.

3. A 1995 study of 232 heart-bypass surgery patients in Dartmouth, N.H., found that 9 percent died within six months of the surgery. The death rate was 5 percent among those who attended churches.

And some people think religion is only about pie-in-the-sky.

"The moment of grace comes to us in the dynamics of any situation we walk into. It is an opportunity that God sews into the fabric of a routine situation. It is a chance to do something creative, something helpful, something healing, something that makes one unmarked spot in the world better off for our having been there. We catch it if we are people of discernment." -- "A Pretty Good Person," by Lewis Smedes.

(Tom Schaefer writes about religion and ethics for the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Write to him at the Wichita Eagle, P.O. Box 820, Wichita, KS 67201, or send e-mail to tschaefer@wichitaeagle.com )