Author Archives: Richard B. Griffin

Three Men

Encounters with three people last week have stirred in me reflections about real-life spiritual issues. They all share a common drive for intellectual achievement that has carried them to positions of eminence in their chosen fields. But each of the men now finds himself facing a turning point in his life that is la-den with challenges and, perhaps, opportunities.

Two of the men I talked with have been friends or colleagues of mine for several years; the third I have known for much longer. And yet, despite much per-sonal contact, it is not easy to write about them because the spiritual depths of a person always remain so mysterious and inaccessible.

Much of what you find here therefore is guesswork, rather than precise knowledge. After all, if we can arrive at knowledge of ourselves only with great difficulty, how can we know other persons with confidence? Who can ever read the inmost depths of a fellow human being, with the secret desires and hopes that the human heart may cherish?

The first man has recently returned to work after a year’s leave of absence. He formerly was the equivalent of chief operating officer of his organization but was forced to resign that position. The president of the agency acted to remove him because the official had been discovered downloading dubious images on a computer that belonged, not to him, but to the organization. Much discussion fol-lowed upon the president’s action, with commentators split about whether it was justified or, perhaps, overly harsh.

In returning to work, this man has presumably had to swallow his pride and win back his standing in the community where he is still employed. It must be difficult for him to face his colleagues again, this time from a position of reduced power and carrying the humiliation of having been in effect fired.

The spiritual challenge facing this middle-aged man must be to accept what has happened and to turn his new status to advantage. Perhaps he has learned greater humility and self-knowledge; he may have become more open to the presence of grace. As a person of faith, he may believe that good may come out of highly undesirable situations; he may see in what has happened a call to greater devotion to God and community.

The second gentleman has passed his ninetieth birthday and is in obvious physical decline. Visiting him in his stately old urban residence, another friend and I talked with this retired professor about his delicate health and about the many friends we hold in common. The young woman who serves as his caretaker confirmed our view that, overall, he was doing better than previously.

At one point, my companion said to the person we were visiting: “You are the greatest philosopher in the world,” a compliment not without credibility. After pondering this statement with some degree of embarrassment, the old philosopher replied, “Maybe that will help me in my gloomy moments.”

The philosopher does not believe in God, not does he seem to attach much reality to the spiritual life. Over the course of many conversations with him, I have never detected in him an interest in any kind of spirituality unless it be intellectual activity. The philosophy for which he is widely recognized is closer to language analysis and logic than to metaphysics.

The third man is another person for whom reputation looms large. In the course of an extended conversation last week, he made two statements that stick in my memory: “I am very important” and “I am world famous.” Though he was talking with me, an old friend, he oriented much of the conversation around this theme of his own self-importance.

Can this friend now experience peace of soul or any real happiness? His achievements are certainly solid but he seems dissatisfied unless everyone recognizes in him a preeminence that he apparently craves. And what about the future, what will come when he retires and has to face decline?

Again, no one can say with confidence what the interior life of these three men is like; only God can do that. Perhaps the best approach is to trust the resourcefulness of their secret hearts and the incalculable power of grace.

Richard Griffin

Woody’s Performances

It’s weird watching a movie star on screen in a film that lasts one hour and a half and then, immediately afterward, seeing the man in person. That was my experience last week when Woody Allen came to town for a preview showing of his newest film “Small Time Crooks.”

The film itself I found hilarious. It’s an old-fashioned comedy graced with the wit and sophistication of a contemporary master of the medium. Two top per-formances by Tracey Ullman and Elaine May place the film among Woody’s best, in my opinion. Revealing too much about the plot would spoil it for fans planning to see it for themselves.

It turns on an effort by Ray Winkler, Woody’s character, and two of his former prison mates to tunnel into a bank. If that does not sound like promising material, wait until you see what this triple threat director-writer-actor does with it. At one point I felt a tear flowing down my cheek, a delicious but uncommon experience for me to find such amusement in a film.

In person, Woody is slight and rather shy, though seemingly not so neurot-ic as the image he has long cultivated. Of course, he was bound to seem dimi-nished after his image was shown for so long on a large screen. And, in the course of the film he appears in various settings and guises that can make him larger than life.

Answering questions from a large audience composed mostly of Harvard students, he held everyone’s attention. The very first question seemed to throw him, however. A young woman asked him “What is comedy?” He acknowledged it to be appropriate but did not quite know how to answer it. There was something intriguing about seeing an acknowledged master of the genre wrestle with its meaning.

Of course, Woody did not need to feel embarrassed at inability to define an art form that defies almost anyone’s definition. Ultimately, his answer seemed to be something like – comedy is what makes people laugh.

Philosophers would probably focus on incongruity. That means the gap between what you expect and what actually happens or is. For instance, in the film Ray comes home to the apartment where he and his wife Frenchy live. He turns the key to the front door and steps inside. He calls to Frenchy and she an-swers “Who’s that?” Ray then says, “the pope” and explains that the pope has al-ways wanted to visit their place.

Many other incongruities occur as the film moves along. They provide a running series of events calculated to draw laughter. Some of them happen, not because of clever one-liners but because the characters are so full of amusing and often contradictory personality traits.

If I could have broken into the students’ question period, I would have in-quired about Woody’s experience of aging. At age 65 he is now no longer young; his film career has lasted thirty-five years.

I hope that he will continue to be a productive artist for many years to come. For that to happen, I don’t know whether it’s an advantage or disadvantage to have a physician for every part of his body, as Woody has claimed to have.

The methodology Woody follows in coming up with ideas for new films I found particularly interesting. He takes events that he has heard about and gives them various twists. In the most recent instance, he read of the attempt by thieves to tunnel through to a bank from a building nearby and used his imagination to develop a twist in the plot that upsets expectations.

That approach makes writing comedy not seem very far from anyone’s grasp. But those of us who have attempted to be funny in print know better. We can all testify that nothing is harder than making people laugh when they read words you have written. The authors of failed comedies are legion, while the ranks of those who have succeeded at it remain paper thin.

Another question had the great merit of giving Woody the chance to show his mythic self. A young-looking student asked him about his mother’s habit of deflavorizing the chicken. Woody responded with animation and said that indeed his mother used to do that to all the chickens she served. That made the chicken taste “like blotter,” Woody assured us. As a result, he used to love being invited to the homes of friends and neighbors where real chicken would be served.

Woody’s mother, incidentally, is ninety-four and his father one hundred. So Woody knows something about old age. Perhaps, as he grows older, we can look to him for a wry gerontological masterpiece that will have us laughing at the experiences of advanced years. And it will be good, too, if he mixes in some of the strange surprises the onset of age springs on us.

Richard Griffin

Spirituality A La Carte

Almost one-half of Americans under age thirty (46%) believe that “the best religion would be one that borrowed from all religions.” By contrast, only about one-third of people over seventy (31%) think so.

These figures emerge from a new survey of Americans’ attitudes about spirituality sponsored by the New York Times. The Times reported these figures in its Sunday magazine of May 7th.

Given attitudes distrustful of institutions among younger people, their opting for a religion made up of borrowings from all does not come as a great surprise. In fact, many people of all ages seem already to have crossed boundary lines and have adopted practices from religious traditions not their own.

In doing so, some Christians, for example, may have been inspired by spiritual leaders such as the Catholic monk Thomas Merton who journeyed to Asia in order to learn more for his spiritual life from Buddhist monks.

This new openness to different practices and beliefs different from the ones familiar from childhood must be judged admirable. Clearly, it can enrich the lives of individuals and communities of spiritual seekers. It might even promote prospects for peace among nations, at least if you believe that spirituality can influence world politics.

However, this approach runs the risk of watering down religion, of making it a grab-bag of beliefs and practices. Forming a deeply held religion cannot be the same as walking down a cafeteria line and choosing the foods that most make your taste buds salivate.

Borrowing from religions in this way could easily leave a person spiritually superficial. Instead of plumbing the depths of any one heritage, seekers of truth might end up forever roaming about in the world of religious thought and practice without coming to grips with the full richness of any single tradition.

Most masters of the spiritual life, even those sympathetic to a radical openness to the traditions of others, urge us to concentrate on one. The Muslim theologian Seyyed Hossein Nasr, for instance, says: “To cling to one’s own religion – this is the normal situation of humanity.” This he says while at the same time believing that “all religions are true.”

Of course, it would be a mistake to exclude the possibility of conversion from one faith to another. This experience usually results from a long spiritual search and often encourages us to keep searching even more ardently.

This past Easter I took part in celebrating the baptism of a dear friend, Madeline, as she became a Christian. She did so, after much prayer and some agonizing experiences of death among people closest to her. Through a long heal-ing process she discovered Jesus as her main source of spiritual enlightenment.

Her decision to be baptized did not, however, make her think that she was giving up her own Jewish heritage. Rather she felt herself to be bringing to her baptism all that she had learned growing up Jewish.

At the same time, in an intriguing twist, one of her daughters who was brought up Christian was embracing the Jewish faith. Friends and family members joined together in wishing for both mother and daughter inspiration and joy in their new-found faiths.

So, at the risk of appearing unsympathetic toward the majority of young people who favor a religion made up of borrowings, I choose a middle ground. Yes, I would say to youthful seekers, avail yourself of precious elements from traditions not your own. But do not believe that the “à la carte” approach to religion will satisfy your deepest desires.

I myself have profited much from other traditions. But my experience is that, while I come away from experience of other faiths with a broader vision, I feel strengthened in my own faith.

For many years I have felt free to incorporate into my religious practice prayer methods of the Asian religions and American Quakers, for instance, to my own spiritual profit. At the same time, I hold on to the meditation learned from teachers nurtured in my own tradition.

Of course, if you grown up without being gifted with a religious tradition at all, your situation is different and perhaps more complicated. You may then need to explore world religions for yourself. Even there, however, it makes more sense to plumb the depths of one religion rather than rely on mere borrowings.

Richard Griffin

Success

Two weeks ago my brother-in-law Tom Keane received the Lavoisier Medal for Technical Achievement, the highest honor the DuPont company gives to its scientists and engineers. Close family members were invited by the company to Wilmington, Delaware for several days where we celebrated the recognition received by Tom and five other long-time fellow achievers.

Amid all the hoopla of a professional high-tech award ceremony before a large audience, the six received medals from the CEO. The next day, in another ceremony, the company unveiled plaques engraved with the faces of the honorees. It seemed the private industry equivalent of adding their images to the side of Mount Rushmore.

Tom received all these honors with modesty. In his acceptance speech after being given the medal, he told the audience that what counted for him most was his family. And he acknowledged that he could not have accomplished anything, during his forty-six year career, without the collaboration of many colleagues.

Success like this comes to relatively few people. Most of us never achieve so much or receive recognition of this sort during long years of work. Instead, we may be tempted to envy the success of others. “Could I but achieve something worthy of wide recognition,” this subtle temptation suggests, “then that success would heal whatever is lacking in me.”

We live in a culture that is notoriously success-driven. People everywhere in America crave becoming wealthy and recognized. Nowadays dot-com millionaires are envied for having scored brilliant successes so quickly.

The myth of the self-made man still holds its grip on our society. “Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” and other such clichés retain their power to influence our imaginations when we think of what success means.

Success in itself is something good. Whenever we manage to accomplish some-thing significant, our strong impulse is to feel good about it. If others recognize what we have done and honor us for it, so much the better. An accomplished life, an honored life is much to be desired.

At the same time, success can be spiritually dangerous. It can close us off to what is most important in life and make us think of ourselves as self-sufficient. The person whose success has gone to his head has fallen victim to illusion and may have damaged his soul.

Of course, failure has its dangers as well. Repeated failing can make us lose heart. It can cause us to give up confidence that anyone, human or divine, really cares about us. Ultimately, it can drive us toward despair.

Let me suggest here an approach to success that can satisfy both our natural craving for achievement/personal recognition and the deeper demands of the spirit.

Perhaps the answer is to be prepared to accept as gift whatever success may come our way. After all, there is no such thing as the self-made person, man or woman. We all get somewhere only through God-given talents and by the help of countless other people. Seeing success from this angle can enrich our spiritual life.

Besides recognizing success as a gift we also need to redefine it. Seen spiritually, success cannot be identified only with material achievement or reputation or power, but must include fidelity and self-knowledge and the ability to love. Devoted spouses, parents who truly cherish their children, and people of spirit who reverence all life and show compassion for other human beings – all these people must be recognized as truly successful.

Public television this week featured the life of Joe DiMaggio, the storied Yankee center fielder. According to the program, DiMaggio, when off the baseball field, was a painful failure as a husband, a father, and a human being. He seems never to have had the spiritual values necessary for success in these roles. On the diamond, he set a consecutive game hitting streak that has lasted almost sixty years. But in real life, he failed miserably at roles infinitely more important than hitting.

I feel happy for my brother-in-law that he has achieved so much and has been accorded such honor. But I feel even happier that he has the spiritual vision not to be seduced by the sweet-smelling incense that has wafted his way. He has clearly shown him-self a man of spiritual values who knows what is truly important in life.

Richard Griffin

Lillian Glickman

Interviewing Lillian Glickman proves an enjoyable experience indeed. Gracious in manner, warmly personal, and well-organized in her thinking, the Secretary of Elder Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts knows how to put a questioner at ease and make his task a pleasure.

Now marking her second year in the job, Secretary Glickman feels proud about her accomplishments as chief of the Executive Office of Elder Affairs (EOEA). And, to judge from a follow-up discussion of her record that this writer had with a veteran critic of her agency in the past, the Secretary’s pride is amply justified.

She counts half a dozen new or expanded services that are proving valuable to older citizens around the state. Among them, the supportive housing program stirs her special enthusiasm. For a relatively modest $75,000 average annual cost per building, the EOEA now provides benefits of assisted living to residents of three public housing sites. The agency plans twelve more such sites this year.

Three kinds of benefits are offered:

twenty-four hour on-site personal care;
reminders to take medications;
one group meal each day.

Though the program thus far operates only in public housing, it could be extended to private housing as well.

The second achievement mentioned by the Secretary is increased accessibility to all services. “There are so many people who do not know the elder service network exists – we are invisible to them,” she laments.

But EOEA now has a special telephone number (1 800 AGE-INFO) that serves as an entrance to all the services. It ties into the twenty-seven regional home-care agencies, also known as ASAPs (Aging Services Access Points), that cover every part of the state. All one needs do from now on is dial that single 800 number to reach the right service.

EOEA’s web site (http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=eldershomepage&L=1&L0=Home&sid=Eelders) also merits mention. As a user myself, I complimented the secretary for its excellence. The links it provides to other agencies in Massachusetts and around the country I have found especially valuable.

The fourth arrow in the Secretary’s quiver of accomplishments is expansion of the state’s pharmacy program for elders. She mentions specifically the advertising campaign that has helped increase enrollees to some forty-eight thousand elders.

The community care ombudsman program also wins praise from Lillian Glickman. She sees it as an important resource for elders living in their own homes. If they find services inadequate or flawed, they now have a way to register complaints.

Finally, she cites the strengthening of the state’s home care services. One of the most pressing problems currently, she explains, is the difficulty of finding workers. In response, the Secretary has begun an experimental program whereby eligible elders themselves or their family members can hire a home care worker directly and then get reimbursed for the expense.

Toward the end of my session with the Secretary I suggested a new program. Her sympathetic response, as you might imagine, pleased me. I would name this program “Friends of the Patient” and find people who would accompany elders on visits to doctors or hospitals to serve as their personal advocate. Most of us feel vulnerable at such times and badly need the support of another person.

For a second opinion about Secretary Glickman’s work, I spoke with a home care agency director deeply involved in elder services. Because of his negative views about some previous administrations, he describes himself as “pleasantly surprised” at what the current secretary has done. He also claims that this opinion is widely shared by his fellow home care agency directors who have regular dealings with EOEA.

In his eyes, Lillian Glickman has shown herself “very accessible,” making a prac-tice of answering her own phone. At the beginning of her secretaryship, she was “very cautious,” but she has grown in confidence in the job and now does not hesitate to make needed decisions.

Another source of excellence is mentioned by my friend: “There’s a real flexibility that there hasn’t been for a long time.” He details instances in which EOEA has responded quickly and decisively to situations in which his own agency needed state approval.

My friend attributes much of the Secretary’s success to her wisdom in hiring people who are skilled and reliable. If she feels political pressures in hiring, her appointments do not reflect them.

About individual programs, the friendly critic has some minor criticisms. In the pharmacy program, for instance, co-payments and deductibles are still too high. The community care ombudsman program is just getting started and thus too new for praise. And the 800 telephone number takes callers through a menu of numbered choices. “This is a turn-off for many people,” says my friend.

About my suggestion for a “Friend of the Patient” program, my friend says, “We don’t have that kind of advocacy; I think it’s a great idea.” If only for agreeing with me, he shows himself a person of sound judgment.

Richard Griffin

Nasr on Crossing Frontiers

Seyyed Hossein Nasr may not be a household name in the United States but he has rightly been described as “one of the world’s leading Islamic thinkers.” Currently Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, he brings to spiritual is-sues wide knowledge and profound insight. I had the privilege of hearing him lecture recently and came away with much to think about.

A native of Iran, this distinguished scholar came to the United States for advanced study at M.I.T. and Harvard receiving his doctorate from the latter. Before taking his present position, he was professor at the University of Tehran and founder of the Iranian Academy of Philosophy.

Warm and personal, Professor Nasr is a pleasure to talk with and his common touch belies the stereotype of the highly accomplished but distant academic. I valued the chance to listen to him and to ask him a question about the effect of secularization on Is-lam.

Taking as his theme the crossing of the frontiers that divide the religions of the world, the Muslim scholar calls such crossing “a journey in spiritual space more exciting than space travel.”

The relationship between human beings and nature looms large in every religion at its best. However, Professor Nasr feels that something has gone awry in the modern world, upsetting the healthy balance between us people and the world around us. One large reason for this imbalance is the havoc that secularism has worked on religion, especially Christianity.

For most modern Christians, the world has lost its sacred character leading us to abuse the beautiful creation that God has given us. The effort to understand the other religions of the world can help us to restore that sacredness of nature.

Dr. Nasr believes that “there is no possibility of peace among nations without peace among religions,” a fact that secularism denies. He regrets that UNESCO, the United Nations Economic, Scientific, and Cultural Organization based in Geneva, does not have religion as a defining category.

To appreciate a religion, ;you cannot study merely its history, as some scholars do. To focus exclusively on history would be to ignore the qualities – changeless truth and transcendence – that make a religion what it is. Rather, you must enter into its truth and appreciate its vision of God.

This scholar holds that every religion is complete in itself. “Religion must en-compass all that we are,” he says, “or it is not religion.” Also, every religion is true and those unfamiliar with traditions other than their own must often struggle if they wish to understand the way another religion works for its adherents.

In every religious tradition there are many people who stand opposed to crossing over the frontiers of religion. They fear that this spiritual travel will destroy their own faith. Professor Nasr, however, believes that in the modern world we have no choice, Either we try to understand the faith of others or our world falls into chaos and armed struggle.

But to cross over and understand, we must deny false absolutes. Only God is ab-solute. If you make anything else absolute, you make it impossible to cross over.

“You should not ask religions other than your own: ‘What is your concept of God?’” The question is too abstract and does not suggest the rich spiritual life and practice of each tradition.

Every religion offers salvation and, to do so, uses various rites. It is the inner meaning of these rites that can bring religions together.

In summary, Professor Nasr lists five positive consequences of crossing over:

Seeing our own religion in the light of another one brings us to know ourselves better.
We can remember things that have been largely forgotten in our own tradition, for example, the mystical tradition in Christianity.
We can be motivated to reexamine secularism, the philosophy that denies the reality of religion. In studying Islam, for example, Christians can recognize more clearly the negative impact of secularism on their own tradition.
We can develop a spiritual and theological understanding of the other faces of God that our own tradition may not have shown us.
We can find common ground in the determination to protect the world of nature.

Richard Griffin

The Vietnam War Ends

The Vietnam War ended twenty-five years ago this week. This anniversary of an event that roiled American society and changed so many lives cannot pass without mov-ing me to memory and reflection. Looking back on this time of turmoil, I recall myself as caught up, for the first time, in a struggle against the policies of my own national gov-ernment and moved, with others, to take previously undreamed of action to reverse those policies.

Until the war heated up in the middle 1960s and the United States became more and more deeply embroiled, our national involvement in Vietnam seemed to me a matter of only slight concern. Since the mid-point of the century, after all, my life had been caught up with the search for God and the service of the church.

What did this spiritual quest have to do with political and military matters, no matter how pressing? During much of the previous war, that in Korea, I had been living in monastic seclusion and, literally, did not even know that the war was going on!

From a vary different vantage point, however, namely that of a university chap-lain, I began to look at American politics in an entirely new way. Now the connections between my religious faith and the actions of my government started to emerge more clearly. Prodded by students, colleagues, and others for whom those connections were already clear, I saw the Bible and the teachings of the church as a call to take a stand against an unjust war.

So I joined others in demonstrations and used my position as a platform for speak-ing out against bombing and other military measures that seemed to me in violation of basic morality and the teachings of Christ. I remember sitting down in the streets of Bos-ton outside a marine recruiting center in protest; another time I sat outside the Kennedy Building, along with thousands of others, barely escaping arrest and the Mace used against many of my fellow protestors.

I also went to Washington more than once for mass demonstrations against the policies of Johnson and Nixon. The latter’s decision to continue bombing of North Viet-nam during Christmas of 1972 especially stirred me to righteous indignation. This action seemed to me clearly to violate principles of justice and peace proclaimed by the church at the Second Vatican Council concluded only a few years before.

At this time I published an article blasting a fellow Jesuit, John McLaughlin, who was one of President Nixon’s assistants. He had attempted a religious justification of Nixon’s bombings of dikes in North Vietnam in a way that I judged outrageous.

In 1971, I made a decision that amounted to the most radical action of my life. I accepted an invitation to go with a group of forty religious war protesters to Paris in order to talk with leaders of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam governments. Only later, after my return, did a lawyer friend inform me that what we did was in violation of United States law and made us liable to prosecution and prison sentences.

While in Paris we did discuss peace with our “enemies” and took part with them in religious services. A photo of me with two Vietnamese priests was widely circulated and I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times which quoted them about the freedom of religion promised them by their government.

I also carried with me to Paris a secret plan from the then governor of Massachu-setts to propose to the North Vietnamese that, if their government agreed to release pris-oners from Massachusetts, the Commonwealth would not send any more of its citizens to fight in Vietnam. My instructions from a staff person in the governor’s office were to wait for a signal to proceed with this proposal.

In fact, the go-ahead did come and I passed the word on to a delegation member. However, nothing further happened: the North Vietnamese presumably decided it not worth pursuing. This is the first time I have revealed the plan, one that even to me now seems highly unlikely.

As I look back on this series of adventures into new territory, religious and politi-cal, I cannot help but feel mixed. My younger self was admittedly somewhat naïve. I knew little or nothing about the world of power politics. The Paris expedition in particular now strikes me as a mixture of zeal and simplicity.

However, I feel gratified about having taken decisive action in accordance with my faith convictions about non-violence and peace, convictions that still mean much to me. The cause was just and my friends and I had acted in the great American tradition of civil disobedience. With all the ambiguities that are involved in great public events, our protest may have helped change our nation and bring to an end a conflict that our nation should not have been fighting in the first place.

Richard Griffin