Beads still used as way to count prayers
August 25, 2001 - source: By Peggy Fletcher/ Salt Lake Tribune/Evansville Courier & Press

"The repetitiveness is - A something to occupy our chain mouths while our minds of and our hearts meditate green on the mysteries of plastiChrist so we can imitate beads him." rests - the Rev. Bartholomew casualHutcherson in Taj Mohammad's pocket or hangs from his cab's rearview mirror.

Mohammad, a devout Muslim, pulls out the sacred strand at any odd moment when he feels the urge to pray. He uses the 99-bead circle, made up of three sets of 33, to repeat Muslim prayers such as "There is no God but Allah," "Praise be to Allah" and "God be glorified."

"I use my prayer beads whenever I have time," said Mohammad, who joins a dozen Muslim cab drivers for evening prayers at the Salt Lake International Airport each sunset. "It is not a religious obligation. It just gives you extra rewards."

Muslims are not alone in relying on prayer beads to help count prayers and focus the mind. Buddhists and Hindus use a kind of bracelet, known as a "mala" or garland, typically containing 108 beads, to count their mantras and aid in meditation. Eastern Orthodox practitioners use a woven band known as a "komboskini" or prayer rope, with several notches on it.

Perhaps the most well-known prayer beads are the Roman Catholic rosaries. The term comes from Latin for "rose garden." A rosary consists of a string of 150 beads, divided into groups of 10. Prayers, primarily the "Hail Mary" and the "Our Father," are said while fingering each bead.

"It's a way of centering yourself and screening out distractions," said the Rev. Ruth Eller of St. John's Episcopal Church in Logan, Utah, who has long used a Catholic rosary to repeat either a Hail Mary prayer or the Orthodox's Jesus prayer - "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

"It's like verbal music," Eller said. "It frees you to be in touch with the divine."

In the 1980s, an Episcopalian priest in California developed a unique strand of prayer beads especially for that denomination, which is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Anglican strand is comprised of 33 beads, representing the number of years of Jesus' life on earth, divided into four sets of seven beads called "weeks" to represent the seven days of creation, the temporal week or seasons of the church year.

In many early religions, repeating a prayer was believed to increase its efficacy, writes Charles Panati in

"Sacred Origins of Profound Things." For example, the traveling Knights Templars, founded in the year 1119 to fight in the Crusades, were required to recite the Lord's Prayer exactly 57 times a day, Panati writes. On the death of a fellow knight, the number jumped to 100 times a day for a week.

Devotees first used their fingers, then joints on their fingers to count the number of prayers offered throughout a day. Next they carried loose stones in their pockets, but eventually they strung together fruit pits, or dried berries, or fragments of bones of a deceased loved one as memory aids. "In the Pacific Islands, sharks' teeth were a favorite," Panati wrote.

Legend has it that the Catholic rosary emerged in the 13th century when St. Dominic prayed for a weapon to use against the heresy sweeping through Christianity.

"The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him and gave him the rosary as a weapon," said Father Bartholomew Hutcherson of St. Catherine of Siena Newman Center, which is adjacent to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Members of the Dominican religious order still wear a rosary on the left side of their belts, "the same place a knight would wear a sword," Hutcherson said. But that's a romantic history; the real story is more complicated. Prayer beads probably came into Christianity from Islam in the Middle Ages, he said. At that time, few people - not even most monks - could read, so the church had to find other means of helping people remember Scripture stories.

The Dominicans developed 15 themes and stories from the lives of Jesus and Mary. They divided these stories into groups of five, which they call the "joyful mysteries" of his birth and childhood, the "sorrowful mysteries" of his trial and crucifixion and the "glorious mysteries" of his resurrection and ascension into heaven. That helped pattern the rosary.

"It's a whole program of spirituality, not just a repetitive prayer," Hutcherson said. "The repetitiveness is something to occupy our mouths while our minds and our hearts meditate on the mysteries of Christ so we can imitate him."

Hutcherson said that the use of rosaries began to decline in the 1960s, a trend that continued through the '80s and into the '90s.

"A lot of our devotional practices are associated with our immigrant past, which some linked with illiteracy, lack of education and therefore poverty," he said. "Subsequent generations of immigrants rejected all that as they became more prosperous."

But in recent years, young Catholics have begun to rediscover this devotional tradition, he said. In 1998, Hutcherson conducted a retreat for college students that focused on the mysteries of the rosary.

"The students really got into it," he said. "They made their own rosaries and organized rosary prayer groups."

During his recent visit to Utah, the Dalai Lama, spiritual and political leader of Tibetan Buddhists, could be seen regularly stroking the orange beads that encircle his left wrist. The string of 108 beads is so large the Dalai Lama had to wind it several times around his wrist. Most Tibetans wear one, said Pema Chagzoetsang, who helped organize the Buddhist leader's stay in Utah.

"I have a smaller one with only 21 beads," Chagzoetsang said. "It's less conspicuous." But that doesn't make it less sacred.

"His Holiness blessed it and prayed over it," she said. "Now I feel even more committed to it."

By contrast, Father John Kaloudis of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Salt Lake City no longer uses his prayer rope much. It's not a religious obligation for Eastern Orthodox, just a recommended prayer aid, Kaloudis said.

"It's like a doctor's prescription for medication," he said. "Sometimes people choose not to take their medicine."