Category — Spirituality

This sweet film is a short story, simply told, about compassion and generosity of spirit expressed in an unexpected way by an unlikely person.

Go on, watch it, you know you want to!

[Hat-tip: Vida Stendardo.]

Technorati Tags: film, blindness, generosity, compassion, story, begging

Visit Soul Talk

I’ve just joined this excellent place on the web called Soul Talk. It’s a place to explore concepts of spiritual import.

Soul Talk’s aim?

Welcome to Soul Talk. Our aim is to bring souls together to engage in conversations on topics of spiritual import in an atmosphere of love and humility, and using “…an etiquette of communication worthy of the coming maturity of humankind…” None of us have a privileged access to truth so come and join us in these spiritual discussions because it is through the diversity of opinion and a humble posture of learning that our consultations can become a powerful tool of discovering, learning and attaining the truth.

Why not sign up and take part in some fascinating conversations?

Technorati Tags: soul talk, spirituality, discourse

Heavy evening traffic slows our progress towards New Southgate and the grave of Shoghi Effendi. By 8.20 p.m., when the three of us in the Secretary’s car arrive outside the green custodian’s hut, the other six have already gathered in the enclosure around the familiar eagle-topped marble column.

This is the time for prayers in this special place that the National Spiritual Assembly (the national governing council of the UK Bahá’í community) had long promised itself.

There’s a certain attitude, a certain posture, that Bahá’ís adopt as they pass between the overhanging pines and wrought iron gates that open into the outer, brick-walled court of this holy place. They pace slowly with slightly lowered head and hands clasped in front of them along the red gravel path until they reach the two steps that lead through the opening in the stone balustrade surrounding the monument itself.

And then they raise their eyes to the gilded eagle with partly opened wings that perches on the stone globe at the top of the column.

Shoghi Effendi

That eagle symbolizes Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith from 1921, when he was in his 20s and a student at Balliol College, Oxford, until he died prematurely at the age of 60 during a trip to London. A man who wrote books setting out his vision of a future world civilization built on unity and justice, a man who laid out gardens and oversaw the building of great edifices, a man who wrote letters of encouragement to the small but growing Bahá’í community around the world, a man who guided the Bahá’ís through the early stages of building the administrative institutions ordained by Bahá’u'lláh and by Shoghi Effendi’s grandfather, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi was a man of extraordinary achievements. Sadly those achievements are as yet little known to the world outside the Bahá’í community.

A posture of reverence

The posture of reverence that Bahá’ís adopt when they approach this place of prayer is not required, it is not a ritual, it is not set down in any text. It is a response of the spirit to the power of the place and the knowledge of the extraordinary responsibility laid on Shoghi Effendi by his Grandfather’s Will and Testament while Shoghi Effendi was still a child and which remained unknown until the Will was read after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s death in 1921.

So there we nine stand on the white gravel of the inner court, as the twilight deepens, facing the column. A breeze rattles the leaves of the tall trees that grow nearby. There’s a hint of rain in the air.

Prayer list

The Secretary clears his throat and begins to read out our list of the sick, the departed, those who have achieved something special, those who are suffering, the Bahá’ís in Iran, those who have particularly asked for the National Assembly’s prayers. As he reads, the distant sound of the trains rushing through New Southgate station on the Great Northern line floats up the hill, but does not penetrate the prayerful peace surrounding us.

The Secretary comes to the end of the list and falls silent. One of the other members clears her throat and recites a prayer. One by one, along the line, each in turn reads a favourite prayer or a prayer that seems particularly appropriate as we remember the triumphs and the suffering, the victories and the crises, as we express our love for our friends, for the Bahá’ís, for suffering humanity.

Transcendence

These prayers connect us to God. And they connect us to Shoghi Effendi, whose forebears, the Báb, Bahá’u'lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, revealed them in matchless language to give expression to the deepest yearnings of our hearts.

I love to pray outside. When I pray outside I feel a connection not only to God but also to the natural world, which in itself is one of the books of God. But praying as night falls in this particular spot, so holy for Bahá’ís across the world, opens a unique door to transcendence.

The last prayer read, we remain silent for a time. Someone shifts his feet on the gravel. Someone coughs. And then we begin to move, to tear ourselves from this place that so strongly links us to the divine world. We reverse down the steps from the inner court, along the red gravel and back to the wrought iron gates. This walking backwards marks the kind of respect subjects give to a king, in our case a servant king who always signed his letters to the Bahá’ís “Your true brother”, or “Your co-worker”.

But more than that, we can scarcely bear to leave this place and to return to our responsibilities in the quotidian world.

Photo: © Brenton Edwards

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Shoghi Effendi, holy place, prayer, spirituality

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Today has been the Bahá’í Holy Day known as the Declaration of the Báb. It marks the very beginning of the Bahá’í Faith in the Iranian city of Shiraz in 1844.

My great treat for the day was a trip to Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s historic residence in London, to take part in a private meeting of religious representatives with the Dalai Lama.

Demonstrators

Two small groups of demonstrators, penned by the police across Lambeth Palace Road from the palace gate, shouted the odds as I arrived (not, please note, because I arrived). One group wanted China out of Tibet and accused the Dalai Lama of betraying Tibet. The other group seemed to favour China’s remaining in Tibet.

Inside, as always, Lambeth Palace was a peaceful retreat from the constant noise of London traffic.

The Prime Minister, the Archbishop and the Dalai Lama

I was conducted across the courtyard from the main gate to the Atrium, an unusual informal space which subsequently proved to suit the nature and mood of the meeting very well. As the Buddhist monks and leading Christians, Hindus, Jews, a Jain, a Muslim, a Sikh, and a Zoroastrian gathered, conversations started. Some of us knew each other well, others were meeting for the first time.

Suddenly media teams arrived, quickly followed by the Prime Minister, the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Gordon Brown, not looking at all fazed by the result of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, shook our hands and smiled (looking much more natural in this act than he does on TV), chatted with a few, and then left.

We took our seats in a circle with the Dalai Lama: Archbishop Rowan Williams, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor in his scarlet skull-cap and scarlet edged cassock, the various Buddhists, the Sikh, the Jews, the Hindus, the Jain, the Bahá’í, the Zoroastrian, the Director of the Inter Faith Network, a panoply of spirituality. Archbishop Rowan welcomed all of us and invited the Dalai Lama to give a short meditation.

Actually, it was a short homily, simple but profound, as one has come to expect of the Dalai Lama.

Our common humanity

He relates to human beings, he said, on various levels. The foundation is the level of our common humanity, a level he referred to as “secular ethics”. In other words, all human beings have the same needs and can agree on common values, regardless of whether they have any religious beliefs or not. Everyone wants a happy life and wants to avoid suffering.

But there is a great deal of suffering in the world, despite the advances in science and technology. All spiritual traditions, he said, address suffering through love and compassion. All human beings come from one Source.

Human unity, religious diversity

However, when one relates to people at the level of religious doctrine, differences are infinite. Religions are either theistic or non-theistic. Within each broad category, there are many different beliefs and practices.

• And yet, despite these different approaches, all traditions have the same message of love and compassion.
• The theistic traditions see all humans and sons and daughters of one God.
• The non-theistic traditions cultivate right action towards all human beings.
• And at the level of our humanity, one can find common ethical ground with everyone, including those who have no particular religious belief or who are atheists.

Religion and ecology

To close his meditation, the Dalai Lama called on the religions to be more active in environmental protection, a call that was echoed by Archbishop Rowan.

Questions to the Dalai Lama

After the meditation, we were, one by one, introduced to the Dalai Lama, who made namaste to each of us. We then had some time for questions and discussion. Mostly questions, it has to be said. Who is going to engaged in debate with the Dalai Lama?

The first questioners asked about religious extremism and intolerance. One or two of the questions focused on ethics. What did he mean by “secular ethics”? What practical steps, asked an ayatollah in black robe and turban, can we take to put these ideas into practice?

Compassion and the motivation to act ethically

When my turn came, I said I thought religion provided an important motivation for people to follow an ethical path. The Archbishop nodded. How, I asked, did the Dalai Lama envisage people being motivated to follow secular ethics?

The Archbishop nodded again.

Compassion, said the Dalai Lama. Everyone has the capacity for compassion. Compassion is what motivates people to ethical acts.

Archbishop Rowan brought the meeting to a close, referring to compassion as a release from the prison of self. And, he said, one of our prisons is the prison of greed. He endorsed the Dalai Lama’s call for greater religious involvement in the environment.

Once again the Dalai Lama made namaste to each of us.

Photographs and farewells

Afterwards we went outside into the warm and rather humid sunshine for photographs and farewells. Archbishop Rowan said he wished the meeting could have gone on much longer. We had been touching on some really interesting questions, especially in the field of ethics.

This is how the Archbishop’s own news release described the meeting:

The religious leaders who had gathered to welcome His Holiness the Dalai Lama listened with great appreciation to what he had to say about the priority of compassion in all our religious traditions. He also spoke about the need for all of us to engage with our culture not only in the vocabulary of our specific convictions but out of a recognition of a common humanity – a ’secular ethics’ alongside the doctrines and disciplines of faith. A warm and searching discussion took place, and the meeting ended with a time of shared silence. It was a privilege to have this opportunity of engaging with a great spiritual teacher.

Reflections

In some ways, what the Dalai Lama said seemed obvious. In saying that, I do not mean to denigrated it (or him) in any way. My guess is that it was obvious because he was drawing on the common spiritual heritage of humankind and citing wisdom that is to be found in every genuine spiritual tradition.

It was undoubtedly a great honour to spend some 90 minutes in the presence of one of the world’s great spiritual presences. What I love about the Dalai Lama is that he manages to combine this great spirituality with humility and humour, delicious and down-to-earth.

As I emerged from the gate of Lambeth Palace onto the noise and bustle of the street, the protesters were packing up their banners and heading off towards Waterloo.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Dalai Lama, Archbishop of Canterbury, religion, spirituality, wisdom, common humanity

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The Barber’s Diaries is a film crying out to be made. In fact, David Henderson, a very good friend of mine in Washington DC, has been working with Charles Ellis’s descendants and with contacts in the movie industry to persuade someone to fund the production. They are also looking for a novelist or a scriptwriter to write the movie. David and the head of Outpost Pictures have produced the video at the top of this post as a story treatment to show to potential supporters of the project.

It’s an inspiring treatment - and, indeed, an inspiring story. Charles Ellis, a Black American (or Negro, as he would have been referred to at the time), remained with his family in the Midwest town of Altamont, Illinois, despite the terrible race riots, lynchings and house burnings of the 1920s and 1930s. He was the town barber and the only Black man in town. In 1933 the Great Depression forced him to close his barber’s shop and hitch-hike 1,500 miles to Arizona to continue his trade and keep his family together.

In 1927, on his 40th birthday, he resolved to bring focus, meaning and inspiration to every moment of his life, and he started to write a diary. He kept the diary faithfully for 44 years until his death in 1971 at the age of 84. In those years he wrote 2,600 pages in 6 volumes, reflecting on world events, on his family, and on his intellectual and philosophical journey. In his Altamont barber’s shop he would have heard many conversations, but he would have been silent and all but invisible to his white customers. Yet, whatever his white customers thought, he had, as his daughter Adrienne says, a life of the mind.

This is not the diary of an angry man. Nor is it the diary of a victim. Far from it. Rather, this is the diary of a quiet, reflective, spiritually strong man, who resolved to live by his faith and principles, whatever the challenges and tests he faced in life.

I am honoured to count Dr Wilma Ellis, one of his daughters, amongst my good friends. When one meets Wilma - and I am sure the same is true when one meets other descendants of Charles Ellis - one can see the fruit of Charles Ellis’s life. Wilma’s penetrating wit and intelligence maker her a spiritually uplifting person to know and converse with. Amongst her many other qualities and accomplishments, her years of service at senior levels to the Baha’i Faith, including her time as the Baha’i International Community’s representative to the UN, are, I am sure, a reflection of the spiritual and intellectual quality of her heritage.

A poor Black barber Charles Ellis may have been on the face of it, but the tree of his life has produced the most remarkable fruit.

If you know of anyone who might be willing to fund the project or a novelist or screenwriter who might be willing to write the script, please let David Henderson know. Visit his blog and click on the email me link.

Technorati Tags: Black, African American, diaries, film, racism, faith, hope

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Photo © John Barnabas Leith

Erica and I have been running a weekly study circle on the theme of reflections on the life of the spirit since mid-September. We’ve been using the first book of the Ruhi Institute materials. For the past few sessions, we’ve been studying the third unit of Book 1, which is about life and death.

Last Wednesday, we got into some pretty deep stuff with Lindsey and Val, two of the ladies who’ve been regular participants in the study circle. Lindsey’s husband passed away about 15 years ago, when their daughter was 5, and she’s been searching for an answer to the question “Why?” ever since. She’s a strong person; she’s made her own life and brought her daughter up by herself, but she still wants to know why God deprived her daughter of a father.

The third unit of Book 1 takes us into a deep study of some of the most thought-provoking passages from Baha’u'llah’s Writings about life after death. At some point in the discussion I rushed to fetch my copy of Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah. Only that morning I had read a passage that seemed to me to express exactly what needed to be shared at this particular juncture in the study circle:

O My servants! Were ye to discover the hidden, the shoreless oceans of My incorruptible wealth, ye would, of a certainty, esteem as nothing the world, nay, the entire creation. Let the flame of search burn with such fierceness within your hearts as to enable you to attain your supreme and most exalted goal—the station at which ye can draw nigh unto, and be united with, your Best-Beloved….

That prompted me to think about this anyonmous quotation I picked up from Roger Prentice’s excellent website:

God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.

Perhaps you see the common theme. It is to do with the shorelessness, the unlimited nature of the Transcendent.

And then I found this poem by Mary Oliver (I read it in Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds, published in 2007 by Bloodaxe Books) to read to the group. The poem seems to me to ground us and, at the same time, offer us a glimpse of the life beyond. Mostly it expresses our need for meaning and to live a meaningful life:

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my lie something particular and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Did all of this prompt a moment of that heart-felt recognition that is known in Arabic as irfan? I got the feeling that it may have done.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, spirituality, transcendent, divine, life, death, life after death

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There is nothing sweeter in the world of existence than prayer. [From the writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá]

Erica and I are co-tutoring a group who are studying Book 1 (Reflections on the Life of the Spirit) of the courses of the Ruhi Institute in our home on Wednesday nights. There are seven of us. Four are not Baha’is, three are Baha’is, and I am the only man in the group.

Baha’is across the globe invite their friends to join them in small groups in their own homes to study the Baha’i sacred texts and teachings by means of the Ruhi courses. It’s one of what we call our “core activities” - things that we do to encourage our friends, whether Baha’i or not, to embark on the spiritual journey with us. We also have devotional gatherings, spiritual and moral classes for children, and classes for 11-14 year old “junior youth”.

Last Wednesday we began to study the course unit on prayer. Oh, that was a sweet and wonderful thing to do, to spend an evening sharing and deepening our understanding about prayer. Sadly, Beverley and Lindsay were unavoidably absent, but Mary, Valerie, Fariba, Erica and I plunged into the ocean of the Word of God.

Mary is a practising Catholic and relates what we are studying to what she believes and how she acts. Valerie, on the other hand, is reserved and hasn’t said anything very much about herself - and there’s no call for her to do so, if she doesn’t want to. Both Mary and Valerie maintain a privacy about themselves in what seems to me to be a very English manner. We don’t necessarily want everyone to know our life histories, nor do we want to tell people what we think and believe before we have created a relationship of trust.

Mary attended a 9-week meditation course (using the CALM - community approach to learning meditation - handbook) that our Baha’i community ran in a neighbouring village hall; we held the last three sessions in our home and it was then that Mary, like others (including Beverley), felt able to be more open about her spiritual life. The whole group shared some deeply personal things and created a very strong bond at that time.

Ruhi Book 1 is rather different from the CALM meditation course. It is really designed for Baha’is who are new to the Baha’i Faith, so there are concepts and language in the course that need to be explained to those who aren’t Baha’is. Erica and I were rather anxious about this when we started this particular group, fearing that our non-Baha’i friends might find the concepts difficult or alien to their experience. For example, the first unit of Book 1 explains that Baha’is don’t confess their sins to priests or other individuals. Would Mary find that difficult to accept? Well, no, she accepted that Baha’is don’t do this, but she explained quite cogently why confession to a priest is important for her as a Catholic. And we moved right along.

Section 2 of the Book 1 unit on prayer mentions, without any explanation or introduction, the Long Obligatory Prayer. Obligatory prayer is a concept and practice which is important to Baha’is but which may be unfamiliar to Christians. So we took a little time to explain the nature of daily obligatory prayer and the three prayers from which Baha’is can choose one each day.

Section 1 asks participants to say who ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is. Again, OK for Baha’is, but Mary, quite understandably, asked, “Who is ‘Abdu’l-Bahá?” Time to say something about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and to tell some stories of His life.

All of these potential difficulties turn out not to be difficulties at all. In fact they provide opportunities to share information about aspects of Baha’i life and history.

The intimate and trusting atmosphere of the study circle encourages participants to share their own thoughts and feelings about the subject under discussion. I spoke about the challenge I have in maintaining a consistent prayer life - some days prayer opens what a friend once described many years ago as the “trapdoor” that separates from the worlds of God; other days the trapdoor shuts on my head. The days the trapdoor opens, even if only a crack, bring an inner peace and joy that other days lack.

When I said this, Mary looked at me quizzically and said, “You’re very honest.” Well, what else was I to be?

At the end of the evening, Mary said that she now felt very comfortable sharing her personal feelings and experiences of prayer and the spiritual life. Valerie said little throughout the evening; I’m trying to figure a way of inviting her to open up (but without putting any pressure on her). At the moment it’s as if she’s observing the course but not fully participating.

To finish the session everyone read the following quotation out, and then we spent a few moments in silent meditation, so that we could absorb the meaning of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words:

There is nothing sweeter in the world of existence than prayer. Man must live in a state of prayer. The most blessed condition is the condition of prayer and supplication. Prayer is conversation with God. The greatest attainment or the sweetest state is none other than conversation with God. It creates spirituality, creates mindfulness and celestial feelings, begets new attractions of the Kingdom and engenders the susceptibilities of the higher intelligence.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Ruhi Institute, prayer, spirituality

I have just been amazed and cheered by this video. Dr Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon University, who is facing death within a few months from pancreatic cancer, reflects in the university’s “Last Lecture” series on his life, on achieving his childhood dreams, and about what he’s learned from life. He’s funny, he’s positive and he’s not in denial. He says he won’t talk about spirituality and religion, but he has had a death-bed conversion - he’s just bought an Apple Mac (good man).

At the time of the lecture, Dr Pausch was facing, with extraordinary strength, the greatest journey that we all have to make. Inevitably the video has set me to wondering how I would face death if I knew that I had only a few months to live. Knowing how long he had to live, Randy Pausch decided to make the best use of his remaining time to live his values, to help others achieve their dreams, to created good memories for his wife and particularly for his kids. The family bought a new house, moved, he bought a new computer; and he demonstrated that he was in really good physical shape.

I don’t think I would have the spiritual and psychological fortitude, if I were faced with what Randy Pausch was (still is?) facing - but, then, who knows how they will respond to the ultimate challenge until they actually face it.

You can watch the whole lecture by searching the ABC News site on “Pausch” you can find links to the whole lecture.

Technorati Tags: death, cancer, spirituality, virtue, family

Today is the 800th anniversary of the birth of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi’s birth in Balkh (in present-day Afghanistan). Charles Haviland of the BBC went to Balkh to find out if Rumi’s influence is still alive there, as he tells in this story.

Baha’u'llah, Founder of the Baha’i Faith, quotes from Rumi’s Mathnavi in His mystical work Haft Vadí (The Seven Valleys):

Love setteth a world aflame at every turn, and he wasteth every land where he carrieth his banner. Being hath no existence in his kingdom; the wise wield no command within his realm. The leviathan of love swalloweth the master of reason and destroyeth the lord of knowledge. He drinketh the seven seas, but his heart’s thirst is still unquenched, and he saith, “Is there yet any more?” He shunneth himself and draweth away from all on earth.

Love’s a stranger to earth and heaven too;
In him are lunacies seventy-and-two.

It is of course, the last quoted couplet that is from the Mathnavi.

You can find a nice account of Rumi’s life and spiritual milieu on the website of the Threshold Society.

In honour of this anniversary, what better than to quote Mawlana himself:

You that love Lovers,
this is your home. Welcome!

In the midst of making form, Love
made this form that melts form,
with love for the door, and
Soul, the vestibule.

Watch the dust grains moving
in the light near the window.

Their dance is our dance.

We rarely hear the inward music,
but we’re dancing to it nevertheless,

directed by Shams,
the pure joy of the sun,
our Music Master.

[Rumi, Like This, 43 odes in versions by Coleman Barks, published by Maypop, 1990]

Technorati Tags: Rumi, Baha’u'llah, Bahaullah, mysticism, mathnavi, spirituality

It might seems highly unlikely at the present time to sit down with 30 or 40 young people to talk about life after death and to pray together. And yet that’s what I had the privilege of doing during the recent Baha’i summer school in Bath, UK.

Young people are gaining such a scary reputation - hoodies, knife crime, bullying, vandalism are all things that are blamed on teens and early 20s youth. But there are plenty who run counter to the stereotypes the media are providing us with right now, and I sat with some of them on the second and penultimate evenings of the summer school.

Come the end of the main evening programme at 9.30 p.m. and I descended into a basement area of Kingswood School known as The Piazza to enter into conversation with young Baha’is aged anywhere from 12 to around 23. During the first of these evenings we conversed about identity, starting by asking “Who am I?” and going on to consider what are the markers of our identity and what it might mean to identify oneself as a Baha’i.

On the last but one evening of the summer school we talked about death, life after death, near death experiences, the soul and so on. I quoted one of my favourite mystical poets, Jalaluddin Rumi:

On the day I die, when I’m being
carried toward the grave, don’t weep.

Don’t say, “He’s gone! He’s gone!”
Death has nothing to do with going away.

The sun sets and the moon sets,
but they’re not gone. Death
is a coming together.

And the opening lines of T. S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton, the first of his Four Quartets:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction.

This led on to a discussion of the nature of time and eternity as we sat illuminated only by four candles and by a series of slides projected onto the ceiling. The young people sat on chairs, lay on cushions all around, and listened, offered their thoughts and asked questions.

An hour of discourse and discussion segued perfectly naturally into prayers and music. The youth, some of whom would only just have finished their first year of secondary education and others of whom will be going to university or on to a year of voluntary service in September, picked up prayer books and, without any encouragement, without any priest or prayer leader (following Baha’i practice) recited prayers revealed by Baha’u'llah and ‘Abdu’l-Baha. Eighteen year old Arjun, who has just won a place at Cambridge to study medicine, played his guitar and led us in a couple of prayerful songs.

There was no sense of strangeness in this group of young people praying together. It was the most natural thing to do as we closed the session around 11.15 p.m.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, youth, young people, prayer, life after death, spirituality