Finding God Through Diversity of Prayer

They don’t look like radical thinkers, these silver-haired nuns and other religious women, yet they are breaking down old ideas about God. They have been meeting every two years since 1969, when a small group of Catholic nuns decided to update themselves on their own faith and the traditions of other world religions.

From the first, they explored new ways of putting their beliefs into action. Workshops have covered everything from the prayer life of St. Teresa of Avila, a medieval mystic, to environmentally friendly gardening and household recycling. “It’s a support group,” says Sister Rosalie Bertell, 71, the current president of the Assn. of Contemplative Sisters. “Those who have moved into new understandings of God and the world tend to be isolated. It helps to find people in the same place.”

For their most recent gathering at the Mater Dolorosa Retreat Center in Sierra Madre last week, the theme was prayer and the religions of the world. “There is one God but many approaches,” Bertell says. “We all attempt to reach God through our own cultures.”

Their explorations at this weeklong workshop began with an introduction to Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Sufi Muslim ways of praying. They learned the Sufi way of meditating on an inner point of light, Hindu chanting in Sanskrit, the Buddhist technique of following the breath as a way of clearing the mind. For homework one night, they reflected on a Jewish meditation that asks, “What is the question to which my life is the answer?”

By now there are twice as many laypeople as nuns in the group of 336, which was opened to women of every faith in 1994. But members still include the prioress of a Carmelite monastery, two religious hermits, an Episcopal priest and a Unitarian Universalist minister.

“For me, the question is, ‘Who is God?’ ” says Sister Mary Lavin, prioress of the Carmelite community in Cleveland, Ohio. The answer for her has taken many forms over the years. Most recently, God was a black woman she met in a mall. Lavin was running, as usual, and heard a voice from behind say, “You better slow down.” She turned around and saw a beautiful black woman and answered, “That’s just what God always tells me when I’m praying. You must be God.” The workshops are a forum for her to open herself to new understandings of God, she says.

Christians raised in the recent past, when members of one denomination never even entered another church, let alone a temple or mosque, might find this type of exploration surprising. Anyone who assumed that nuns are interested only in their own religious tradition might even be shocked.

“It is a growing phenomenon, but I wonder how many Christians are aware of it,” said John Borelli, the director for inter-religious relations at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. He says that men and women in religious orders are taking the lead in such exchanges, organizing ways for people of different religions to share spiritual experiences. “They have the lifestyle that promotes it,” he says.

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Though Sunday church services follow traditional lines, smaller groups such as the Contemplative Sisters allow participants to investigate and learn about other traditions. “For anyone interested, the opportunity is there,” Borelli says of the Catholic Church.

At 9 a.m. in the common room, there is the sound of a tinkling bell. Most of the women are sitting in long rows. The bell starts half an hour of silence while everyone focuses on God. It feels as if everyone is helping everyone else along.

“A contemplative is full of God,” says Sister Constance Fitzgerald, a member of a Carmelite community of nuns in Baltimore, Md. “She or he is purified and transformed by a close relationship with God.”

Bertell explains the real-world consequence of that. “Theology and doctrine are not a big part of what concerns us. They have to do with jurisdiction and turf . . . men’s problems.” Men may dominate the power structure of most churches, but a person’s spiritual life is another matter, she says. The group is debating whether to invite men to future workshops.

Listening for God day after day has led members of the group to change their lives, they say. A nun who had been teaching contemplative prayer in her San Francisco convent recently started to teach it to inmates at San Quentin state prison. Another woman, who has eight siblings, loved her life as a health-care worker in Bangladesh but felt called to return to Illinois to take care of her aging parents.

“This group of prayerful women has affirmed me in my own spirituality and made me realize I’m not crazy” for her freewheeling approach to spiritual life, says the Rev. Linnea Pearson, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Miami.

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By week’s end, some members of the group were using Buddhist meditation techniques in their silent morning prayer. “Catch the first thought that comes; it will end once you’re aware of it,” Sister Mary Jo Meadow instructed them. She leads workshops in Mankato, Minn., teaching Christians how to use Buddhist meditation skills to help them understand the teachings of John of the Cross, a 16th century Christian friar.

“John’s idea about how to manage the spiritual life is very similar to the Buddhist way,” says Meadow, a member of the Sisters for Christian Community. “John would agree with the Buddha, who said this moment is all I have. If I’m going to be blessed, to learn something, to gain any understanding, it’s going to be in the here and now.”

At a Hindu meditation session, the leader rubbed sandalwood paste on every forehead, then held a lighted candle reverently before a large crucifix and a statue of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and creation.

Borrowing from one religion or another has its limits. At its worst, says Sandra Burton, who led a Jewish meditation workshop during the week, “it can be an example of American colonial arrogance. We get used to thinking, ‘I want it and I’ll take it.’ ” Burton lives in Berkeley and writes about social justice issues. “That is not what this group is doing,” she says. “They’re looking for ways to keep expanding within their own religious tradition. If this sort of work keeps going, the right form will emerge.”

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Annette Keane, an artist in her 50s who attended the Hindu workshop, was a bit uncomfortable with it. She didn’t mind recognizing two different religions in one prayer service. Rather, she says, “I don’t care for all the ritual. But if we’re ever going to bring about peace, we can’t all stay in our own little world as Catholics, as Hindus or Buddhists. The better we understand each other, the better we can work together.”

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Mary Rourke can be reached at mary.rourke@latimes.com.