Next week, the pope is coming to America.
He will visit Washington and New York. Most important, he will speak at the United Nations.
Boston, however, does not get to receive him. Presumably, he prefers not to call further attention to the scandal of sexual abuse by clergy.
What significance does this visit of Benedict XVI have for American Catholics and others?
In the modern world, the reach of newspapers often proves amazing. They find ways to travel all over the world.
Sometimes it happens when people tap into web sites; at other times the paper that you hold in your hands is sent to unexpected destinations. In both instances, an article can cover vast distances and end up in unexpected places.
A new survey has shown startling changes in religion among Americans. Researchers at the Pew Trust contacted 35,000 people age 18 and over (an unusually large sample) and discovered current religious affiliation to be “both diverse and extremely fluid.”
The findings reveal that 28 percent of our countrymen have left the religion in which they were raised. Some of them have migrated to another religious group, while others have entirely abandoned organized religion.
“No human being can be more human than another.” This is the lesson the poet Maya Angelou draws from learning about the history of her own family and that of some other prominent black people.
Angelou and others appear in the path-breaking public television series, African American Lives 2, aired last month. It follows an earlier series broadcast in 2006 that featured a different set of notable black Americans.
A friend of more than 60 years standing has sent me a thoughtful email from Mexico. It sets me to thinking further about the stage of life in which both of us have taken up residence.
Carlos and I were college classmates, first meeting in 1947 and staying in touch off and on ever since. The occasions when we have been together have always brought me pleasure.
Flowing into China, three groups of fiber-optic cables bring Internet data from virtually the whole world. Thanks to these cables, many Chinese people have access to much of the same material that computer-literate Americans take for granted.
However, at each site the Chinese government has ordered the installation of tiny mirrors, enabling officials to monitor material they find suspicious or politically questionable. Unwanted data can be blocked, and the regime can protect itself against what it regards as subversive ideas or undesirable change.
Yet, at the same time, the government allows another computer link with the outside world to operate without interference. Were not such an open source available, both foreign and domestic businesses would be seriously hampered.
Why, then, do the Chinese people not avail themselves of this channel outside the bounds of censorship? Because they would have to go to a lot of expense and bother to get on that link. The great bulk of computer users will be satisfied with the three main lines even if they know them to be tracked by their national government.
In presenting the above facts I have drawn upon an article written by James Fallows in the current issue of The Atlantic. Fallows, one of America’s best journalists, has been living in Shanghai for the past two years and now knows China well.
While reading about China and the Internet, I was fascinated with the technology that makes the system work. For me, the inner workings of the largest nation on earth continue to be awe-inspiring. Americans can expect to hear further details of such matters when the Olympics open next August in Beijing.
Many people would immediately associate this sense of wonder with youth. Children are supposed to be wide-eyed when they discover the marvels of nature. And students in high-quality high schools and colleges are expected by their mentors to cultivate this approach to their studies.
In practice, however, many young people seem to feel little awe when confronted with science, history, literature, psychology and other fields of study. They often appear to accept what they learn without notable enthusiasm. As a person who talks with students habitually, I always feel disappointed when they show no signs of excitement about learning.
So much for the younger generation. Underrated, in my book, is what a sense of wonder does to enhance later life.
Many of my age peers have discovered or rediscovered late in life the joy of learning and the sense of wonder that ideally accompanies it. Among many others, my friend Hilma Unterberger feels both this joy and wonder.
As a resident of Lasell Village, a retirement residence in Newton that requires everyone to take courses, she loves her studies. This semester Hilma especially relishes what she has been learning about the history of jazz.
Of the learning community where she lives she says, “This place is incredible.” Asked if study like hers extends longevity, Hilma does not hesitate: “No question.”
Thinking about wonder, I keep going back in memory to the day I acquired my first computer, a Commodore 64 that operated through the flickering screen of our late-1970s television set. The moral of that day for me was: “I shall never be bored again.”
This prediction still holds true. The computer, in its present form incredibly much more high-powered than that Commodore, gives me daily stimulation. And that’s without my ever having used it to play games.
In the 1970’s, at our local Council on Aging, I initiated learning sessions with computers for people whom I served. The men and women who took part in that project experienced some of the wonder that even a little computer literacy could stir up. Presumably it gave them motivation in later years for tapping into sources of knowledge of a world larger than they had previously known.
Opening our inner selves to a sense of wonder qualifies as one way to expand what are sometimes the narrow confines of later life.
This openness can counteract the emptiness frequently felt by those of us whose personal contacts have diminished with the passing of years. Wonder at the world can boost the morale of us who may be less involved in daily activities than we used to be.
Though I have focused on computer technology here, I mean to include other areas that can excite wonder. The arts, for example, are so vibrant currently that they can stretch your imagination easily. Newspapers now often carry fabulous reproductions of great paintings and sculptures. And one can find favorite music much more easily than in the past.
In most of my age peers, I like to think, the sense of wonder has not died. However, it may have become less sharp than formerly. Allowing ourselves to be stirred to amazement at the world around us can do much to enrich the days of our lives and perhaps extend them as well.
Richard Griffin
Happiness, it would appear, sells lots of books theses days. Asked why, the current poet laureate of America, Charles Simic, replies frankly. “It’s an industry, it’s really frightening,” he tells New York Times interviewer Deborah Solomon.
“People need to read a book on how to be happy?” he asks. “It’s completely an American thing.”
Searching for happiness has taken its place as the latest fad. Its pursuit, of course, is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence; but the theme has lately acquired a new intensity.
It has become all the fashion to look for ways to lay hold of happiness. More than ever before, perhaps, our nation of 300 million longs for this often elusive good.
Young people are seeking to be happy. The most highly enrolled course at my neighborhood college deals with happiness as its principal subject.
My age peers, too, are looking for this valued prize. In the hope of catching up with it, many of us are still running after happiness. Lifestyle changes, grandchildren, golf scores─all of these goals, and many others─represent happiness in our fantasies.
One place where you don’t expect to find happiness is in your hat. This statement is belied, though, by the marvelous title Oliver Sacks chose for his book (later evolved into an opera), “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”
In my own case, the hat is real. For reasons explained by the hatmaker himself, it has enlarged my own possibilities for happiness. Received as a gift at Christmas, my hat arrived with a message from one Jonathan Richards, self-described as “Irish Hatmaker Extraordinary.”
With the hat, Richards supplies both data on the product’s character and advice about living with it. “How to Enjoy Your Hat” serves as the title of this advisory, a title that has raised my consciousness. Until two months ago, I had no idea of a hat’s possibilities for personal uplift.
Until this Christmas I had thought of hats in purely pragmatic ways. Yes, they could protect you from cold and rain. But I failed to see them as sources of joy. I was still living in the backwash of Jack Kennedy. JFK was the national model of hatlessness and, inspired by his example, I came to wear hats only in blizzards.
This new hat, however, has turned me around. It has opened a broad front of euphoria.
By putting me in touch with my ancestors, it even provides a sense of continuity with the past.
“Your hat has been made for you in the shadow of the Dublin Mountains in Ireland by skilled Craftspeople, in rugged Donegal Tweed,” Richards writes. Every time I put it on I can think of those crafty Irish from whom I have inherited much of my very self.
Donegal Tweed, it turns out, resembles the skin of a modern skyscraper. The wool fibers in the hat continually stretch in rhythm to the temperature of the atmosphere. I know vaguely about the molecules in everything being in motion but, till now, never imagined fiber-stretching going on above my head.
Let me hope that this stretching enhances the thought processes going on just beneath the hat.
As to taking care of the hat, Richards, the Irish Hatmaker, instructs the wearer how to deal with the effects of rain or other water damage. “Leave it to dry in a cool place,” he prescribes. If it needs stretching, you should rotate the hat in your hands, firmly pulling the headband as required.
If the hat gets dirty, Richards would have you “clean your hat carefully by hand with a little soapy water and sponge.” An alternative, for him, would be having it dry-cleaned and reblocked.
His last instruction applies to anyone who wants to freshen up the hat or individualize it. “You can do so, he says, “by holding your hat over a kettle of boiling water and allow the steam to soften the fabric, after which you can reshape the hat to your desire.”
Jonathan Richards may be your kind of guy but he's not mine. I cannot imagine taking any of the hat preservation actions that he prescribes. You will never see me standing over a boiling kettle and later lovingly modeling the hat to its original shape.
But this Irishman personalizes the hat, an appreciation that leaves me behind. His last bit of advice makes clear his basic worldview: “Enjoy your hat! and let it talk for you.”
If I start talking to my hat or, worse still, through it, you will know that I am losing my mind. However, for personal representation, I do favor it over the cell phone.
Back to the poet Charles Simic, I find him wise to reject the pop culture approach to happiness. He finishes his interview by offering some of his own advice.
“For starters,” he suggests, “learn how to cook.”
Richard Griffin