“Stuart, this is a voice from your past. I am the fellow who grew up across the street from you long ago, the boy you played ball with so many afternoons after school. I wonder how you and your family are now. I just wanted to be in touch with you again after all these years.”

With words like these, I called up my old friend (his name is different) after a silence lasting decades. I did so with an expectation that he would welcome hearing from me and might even propose our getting together for old time’s sake. In the past, such calls to old friends had often produced happy results.

To my shock, my boyhood friend expressed no interest in me whatsoever. He responded to my words with a minimum of his own and made clear his lack of enthusiasm for renewed contact. His indifference to me made me feel terribly let down as I tried to cope with unexpected rejection.

On another occasion I telephoned someone who had been a friend during his graduate school days. We had shared much, Jack and I, and that community of interest extended to his wife. I considered the two of them among my bonded friends and expected that personal relationship to last through the indefinite future.

For a long time Jack has lived in a southern state, far from my own. So when I found an obituary for one of his former mentors, a person whom he had been close to. I telephoned him to share this news and to wonder if he would be coming back to Cambridge for his teacher’s funeral.

Here, again, I met a surprisingly cool response. Jack did not seem to appreciate my having called nor did he express much of any interest in me. The changes that had taken place in my life since we had last been in contact failed to excite any questions on his part. My questions about his own family he answered only perfunctorily.

Another married couple with whom I was once close still live in a Boston suburb near me. From conversation with the woman’s brother at a party, I know that they and their now grown-up children are well and flourishing. Years ago, we had shared varied experiences, yet I have had no contact with them since. They have not called me even once nor I them.

These three sets of lost friends, the two couples and my boyhood neighbor, strike me as examples of what happens during a long life. Along the way, we lose contact with many people who have once been close to us. They may still play a part in our psyches but no longer do we encounter one another bodily. We have passed out of their lives and they from ours, except that we may continue to think of them, as I do.

The reasons why this estrangement happens are probably many, perhaps different in each instance. I often speculate about what I may have done to precipitate the loss of active friendship with some people. The answer, of course, may be nothing. As the circumstances of their lives have changed along with their interests, they may simply have moved on to new friends and other involvements.

But that does not stop me from wondering if, in some instances, I was at fault. My situation is complicated by the fact that 30 years ago I took the radical step of departing from my first career, the priesthood. For those friends accustomed to seeing me as a counselor and spiritual guide, it may have been alienating to encounter me in a different guise. Catholics, especially, could have found it difficult to accept my having surrendered the role in which they had first known me.

As we go through the various stages of life, however, we all experience changes in our tastes, including the people we like to associate with. So my feelings of loss and, in some instances, rejection probably do not merit self-accusation. Yet, I often wonder if I have said or done something that has induced them to stop considering me a friend.

It’s very different when you lose friends to death. Then, despite the physical absence of the person, the friendship seems secured in place. Nothing is going to change the place that this friend holds in your heart except that he or she may come to be even more precious. This experience now marks my inner life much more than in the past.

The loss of friends still alive does find compensation through the new friends one acquires through the years. But that does not stop me from remembering those of the past. They contributed something important to my life despite the ending of our relationship. I still care about them and hold open the possibility that, in some instances at least, they care about me. But, in the absence of any evidence, I must guess at what happened to our friendship.

Richard Griffin

I can point to almost the exact spot on Concord Road in Weston, Mass. where, in 1955, my best friend told me devastating news. His message sent me into emotional shock that, for a time, changed the way I looked at my world.

David confided to me that he was about to leave the Jesuit community in which he and I had lived for the previous six years. We had both entered the novitiate on the same day─August 14, 1949─taking on the challenge of a life marked by austerity and separation from our families and from all worldly activities.

It did not take long for me to recognize David as the most stimulating young intellectual I had ever known. At age 19, he already displayed a dazzling range of knowledge, especially in literature and the arts. For our vow day, an event that marked our formal entrance into the Jesuit order, he wrote me a poem that showed both rare literary skill and spiritual insight.

Intellectual that he was, David also cared deeply about the spiritual life, and would make it his task to integrate the two spheres. In both, he strove passionately for  excellence.

During those years of early adulthood, I benefited from my friendship with David, learning from conversation with him about issues that arose from our studies and our contacts with visiting Jesuit scholars. Thanks in part to him, I enjoyed a vibrant intellectual life that balanced some of the austerity of our monastic existence.

With typical passion and lucidity, David detailed for me on that day in 1955          the reasons why he was leaving the Jesuit society. Chief among them was a conviction that he could not pursue the intellectual life under the burden of a narrow orthodoxy that had become the norm for American Jesuits at that time. He spoke of one of our Jesuit professors of English, a disappointed old man whose early promise had never matured. David dreaded finding himself in the same situation.

He never did. After he left the Jesuits, his scholarly career was brilliant, marked by excellence in both teaching and publication. He was also known to be a kind and generous colleague and mentor.

The great gift of his life was his family. A happy marriage, three children, and more recently two grandchildren, broadened his outlook and enriched his personality in ways that he would not have foreseen as a young man.

Last month, David died, a few months short of his 75th birthday. Death came to him in a hotel room in Lisbon where he and his wife were vacationing. At first, the news seemed unbelievable to me; I had visited him in Villanova only a few weeks before, at which time he seemed to have no notable physical problems.

Losing friends to death has become a significant part of my growing older. One after another they have died, classmates and others who I thought would be mourning me, rather than me them. With reluctance, I have learned to look death in the face as people who are dear to me leave this world.

As I stood before David’s body, just before his funeral, our 56-year history of friendship came flooding over me. In particular I gave thanks for that last visit in which we and our wives had rejoiced at coming together again. As usual, conversation with one another flowed fast, with David setting its pace.

Before leaving, I assured David that we would not allow a long time to elapse before getting together again. That was a promise death would not allow us to keep.

At his funeral, a eulogy was offered by one of his colleagues from the English department at the University of Pennsylvania. Admiringly, he applied to David what the poet Tennyson once wrote: “He wore all that weight of learning lightly.”

The colleague also recalled the electric quality of David’s conversation. A particular phrase, delivered rapidly, struck me and those others who knew him well as typical of the man: “You understand what I’m saying.”

We could all assent to the English professor’s conclusion: “Truly, we will not see the likes of David again.”

The Catholic funeral liturgy gave expression to the faith that my friend continues to live, in a transformation that we can imagine only with difficulty. For myself, I have never been able to believe that death brings a definitive end to human existence. Like that of every other human being whom I have known and loved, David’s life was too rich ever to cease entirely.

Seeing a friend dead continues to be a sobering experience, of course. But I do not consider it to be the end. The older I become, the more I want to believe in life ongoing beyond death. But just because I want to believe it does not make it untrue.

I am waiting and hoping to be surprised.

Richard Griffin

Do people become more religious as they enter into late life? Does the approach of old age make them gravitate toward religion and its practices?

As so frequently with complicated questions, the answers are not simple. To both, the response would seem to be yes and no.

At least, that is the conclusion of a visiting researcher whom I recently heard discussing her findings at Boston College. Michelle Dillon is an Irish-born sociologist who teaches at the University of New Hampshire.

Professor Dillon reported on a long-term study of Californians born in the early and late 1920s. Over their lifetime they have been repeatedly surveyed to find out their attitudes toward religious practice.

Partway through her presentation Dillon offered a generalization that she considers a valuable rule of thumb: “We tend to exaggerate how religious people were in the past and we also tend to underestimate how religious they are today.” However, on the basis of her research she does believe that the year 1958 was the highpoint of religious participation in the United States.

The answer she gives to the questions posed at the beginning of this column is two-fold. As they approach later adulthood, Americans tend to return to the level of religious practice that marked their years of early adulthood. But, in general, they do not become more religious than they were then.

This latter conclusion can be taken as contradicting widely held impressions. You can easily suppose that, for most people, the prospect of death makes them think more about God and the afterlife. From this viewpoint, the issues connected with the end of life would seem likely to provoke a more active religious practice.

But Dillon’s research does not support this impression. Instead, she believes late adulthood to be a time when people are likely to return to whatever level of activity was theirs at an earlier stage but not to go further.

Also, you have to distinguish male and female. At every stage of life women are religiously more active than men. They take to worship and other forms of practice with greater devotion than do males.

A large factor that complicates this discussion, however, is the question of spirituality. The latter ranks as notoriously difficult to define and frequently is associated with some kind of vague interest in non-material reality.

In her research, however, Dillon takes the kind of spirituality that includes putting into practice the encounter with the holy, a higher power than oneself. This experience of transcendence triggers activity that characterizes meaningful spirituality.

As people approach later life, their interest in spirituality does increase. This may or may not be connected with religious practice. After all, the goal of religion is to support and stimulate the spiritual life and that is the way it works for many people.

For others, however, the institutional aspects of religion have become alienating, even obstacles to their spirituality. They may break with their church, synagogue, or temple in order to find inner freedom. In doing so, they may surrender social involvement and other values offered by institutions.

A question I posed to Professor Dillon drew from her a somewhat jocular response on a serious issue. Does fear of death provoke older people to become more religious?

In general, no; Dillon finds that those who don’t go to church and yet half believe in an afterlife are in the worst position. What she calls “half believing” combined with completely secular living makes one vulnerable to this fear.

Of course, almost everyone dreads the prospect of a long-drawn-out and painful death.

Among the values brought by both religion and spirituality Dillon cites generativity as one of the most significant. Generativity helps people to grow and to share themselves with others. This value can give you a broad approach to society that supports the impulse to help other people.

My own views on about religion and spirituality have been shaped by the experiences of my first career. Mine was an intense experience of a religiously oriented community of men closely connected to the institutional church. I never drew a sharp distinction between religion and spirituality because the two were united in my daily life as a Jesuit.

In later adulthood, I continue to profit from the habits formed when I was young. To me, religious practice has long been congenial despite the bitter travail that has come over the church in recent years. There is much that I do not approve of in the institution that has given me my spiritual life but this disapproval does not incline me to turn away from it.

This does not make me complacent, I hope. I stand prepared to take action to help reform the ways of my church whenever possible. But my perspective remains that of a person who expects fallibility in every human institution, even or perhaps especially in those that consider themselves sacred.                               

Richard Griffin

Among current religious leaders in America, I am tempted to consider Jim Wallis the most important. His name may not yet be a household word, yet he is doing more to mobilize churches and other religious groups than just about anyone else. His Call To Action has brought together a wide range of religiously concerned congregations for joint advocacy.

In recent months he published God’s Politics, his eighth book about faith, spirituality, and our nation’s values. Already a best seller, this work presents, often eloquently, what the subtitle calls “A New Vision for Faith and Politics in America.”

Married and the father of two young sons, Jim Wallis is also a minister in the Evangelical tradition. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area, from which he travels widely, speaking to audiences about values and morality as they affect national well-being.

The magazine Sojourners, available both in print and online, claims him as parent. He also does some teaching at Harvard University, both in the government and divinity schools. I was fortunate in becoming acquainted with him when he taught in the divinity school, and I can vouch for his thoughtfulness and his skill in dealing with students.

About the current political situation in the United States, he feels regretful.  Wallis thinks that both the Republican and the Democratic parties have misinterpreted and misrepresented the moral issues and the values vital to the common good. He reminds readers that God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat. He explains “why the right gets it wrong and the left doesn’t get it.”

Contrary to what those on the right often suggest, abortion and same-sex marriage are not the only moral issues that face the nation. Poverty, war, and capital punishment also deserve attention.

Mind you, Willis believes that abortion and gay/lesbian marriage are important and need to be dealt with. But, as he points out, the Bible speaks more often about poverty than about any other moral subject, yet you would not know that, listening to some preachers.

He faults the left, as well, for leaving out of account the vital importance of spirituality. In fact, he holds that “history is most changed by social movements with a spiritual foundation.”

An outstanding example of this is the struggle for civil rights. Martin Luther King brought to that struggle a spiritual vision based on the Bible that established his leadership on a solid basis. Similarly, South Africa’s breakthrough toward racial justice happened because Nelson Mandela lived by spiritual principles of nonviolence and loving forgiveness.

The pages of God’s Politics often feature views of spirituality that conflict with those popular in present-day America. Speaking in response, Wallis says: “We are all guilty of succumbing to a diminished religiosity that is characterized by private belief systems, devoid of the prophetic and social witness of Jesus and the prophets─ultimately, nothing more than ‘small-s’ spirituality that is really only ad hoc wish fulfillment or a collection of little self-help techniques we use to take the edge off our materialistic rat-race lives.”

Throughout his writing, Jim Wallis emphasizes a prime teaching of theology. “God is personal, but never private.” That God cares about each person with a deeply felt personal love is a vital part of Wallis’s outlook. Without it, religion would lose its meaning.

At the same time, however, God in the Bible is shown to be concerned about public issues. The Prophets in particular talk about secular subjects such as war and peace, economic justice, and economic division.

When religion loses its public focus, it becomes banal and irrelevant to the real lives of people. As Wallis puts it: “Exclusively private faith degenerates into a narrow religion, excessively preoccupied with individual and sexual morality while almost oblivious to the biblical demands for public justice.”

Like a modern-day prophet himself, Jim Wallis does not shrink from speaking out about the distortions in American values. For example, he asks: “How did the faith of Jesus come to be known as pro-rich, pro-war, and only pro-American

My enthusiasm for Jim Wallis’ vision, however, is not shared by everyone. I have discovered that, like almost everyone else, he has his critics.

One such, the Boston College professor and political scientist Alan Wolfe, describes himself as non-religious and, despite personal respect for Wallis, does not identify with a political agenda that is based on the teachings of Jesus. “Count me out,” writes Wolfe, “because Jesus is not my God.”

Last week I asked Jim Wallis about this objection. “In the public square, the questions become moral issues, not religious,” answers this spiritual leader. “Religion must be tempered by democracy,” he adds in recognition of the intolerance and other excesses that faith often leads to. He believes that moral discourse can create common ground for those of many different religious views as well as for those who do not identify with any religion.

Richard Griffin

Who is so unwise as to talk about wisdom?  It’s a subject that defies the attempt to discuss it. After all, if you think you have it, you almost surely don’t.

Wisdom is found in stories and parables rather than in definitions. That is why I love the tales of the Hasidic rabbis of 17th century Europe, who left such a rich legacy of instructive narratives.

Similarly, I value greatly the stories of Jesus and his parables. They, too, deliver wisdom in ways deep enough to warrant pondering them throughout a lifetime.

The stories belonging to other traditions – notably the Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim – also help me appreciate what wisdom is.

Here’s what wisdom sounds like to me. “You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality. When at last age has assembled you together, will it not be easy to let it all go, live, balanced, over?”

These words come from a woman with a flowery name, Florida Scott-Maxwell, who was approaching 90 when she wrote them. Her phrase “fierce with reality” suggests an appreciation of human life that inspires wonder.

A saying of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel also strikes me as wisdom-graced. “Just to be is a blessing; just to live is holy” said this deeply spiritual teacher. To sustain this approach to one’s existence might prove the key to vibrant living.

By common agreement of sages through the centuries of human history, another marker of wisdom is the facing of death. Living with the reality of inevitable dying  affords us a perspective that throws into relief the value of human life. To appreciate fully what Rabbi Heschel said─ “Just to be is a blessing; just to live is holy”─ can be best appreciated when we know that our lives will reach an earthly end.

Wisdom itself often seems too sublime for anyone to reach. Perhaps the best we can do is to desire it. That very desire could turn out to be the truest sign that a person has wisdom.

Another approach to wisdom finds expression in the following consideration: Wisdom is knowing what matters and what doesn’t; what matters a lot and what matters only a little. If you can maintain this distinction, you have perspective, an angle on the world that surely rates as an important part of wisdom.

Closely related to perspective is the Serenity Prayer. It begins: “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

These charismatic words were composed by the brilliant Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in 1943 for the church he attended in the small Berkshire town of Heath, Massachusetts. Though it may at first sound individualistic, this prayer uses the plural and calls for gifts─acceptance and courage─not easily cultivated.

How one struggles with the evil in the world counts as a test of wisdom. Complacency about how awful the world frequently is can corrupt the soul; but so can despair about ever being able to change anything, for the better.

Progress toward wisdom necessarily remains ironic. A deepening realization of how much you lack wisdom serves as a sign that you are making some headway.

So does acceptance of one’s own flawed nature and everybody else’s also. Elizabeth Lesser, author of The New American Spirituality, offers this approach:

“Don’t worry about being good. Instead, discover how good and bad live within you. Deeply accept the shadows even as you seek the light.”

Loving more deeply the true, the good, and the beautiful also leads toward wisdom. These three sublime values, if we pursue them, can lift up our lives. This path betokens an openness in us to human experience and to the deepest reality.

When you get older, learning becomes a somewhat different experience. You do not run the risk of becoming prideful because, by this time, if you have any sense at all, you have learned how much you do not know.

This acknowledgement of not knowing can be seen as one of the beauties of religion. So suggests the French writer Madeleine Delbrêl: “Faith is the knowledge of our basic ignorance.”

Wisdom remains a close relative of the two lode stars of religion: enlightenment and compassion. Both give expression to wisdom and lead to its further unfolding. Of the two, compassion remains the more precious. Virtually all the great spiritual traditions of the world agree on this point: when you come right down to it, all you need is love.

That prescription, however, has its own ironies. After all, the truly wise know how sublimely difficult it can be to love.

Richard Griffin

On a recent visit to the home of a longtime friend, I observed something in him that astonished me. To my certain knowledge, I had never seen David react the way he did on this occasion.

Others who were present were almost certainly not struck as much by his reaction as I was. Perhaps it was being an age peer of David that made me notice something that was so subtle as to escape the attention of those others. In any event, they probably would not have attached much significance to it.

What happened was this. David told us the story of the novelist Richard Ford who, when he was a boy, was given a Christmas present by the assembled staff members of a hotel which his family owned. On receiving the gift, the boy looked up and said aloud: “Is that all?” As an adult, he came to understand and regret what he had said, and he has made continued efforts to make up for it.

In telling us about this novelist, whom he admired for his atonement, David choked up and his eyes became teary. Emotion took hold of him as he described the novelist’s efforts to make up for a mistake he had made as a child.

If it had been a friend other than David reacting this way, I might not have felt surprise. But this friend was very intellectual, brimming over with ideas and insights. In all the time of our friendship, I never remember seeing him close to tears.

But David had recently celebrated his 74th birthday and his emotional life seemed to have subtly changed. At least, that is the way I interpret it. To judge from my own experience of life in the seventies, and that of other friends, a delicate transformation of inner life was taking hold.

As if to provide confirmation of my theory, another David, a more recent friend, has surprised me by acting the same way. Against all expectation, he displayed emotion as I had never seen him do before. I dare say that no one of the other friends gathered with us had either.

This David is a widely published poet who told us of having recently celebrated his 70th birthday. For the occasion, he had arranged for some of his poems to be produced by hand press. At our lunch, a young woman from the press brought in the pages on which the poems were printed.

Then David read the poems aloud to us, his friends, much to our pleasure. All of these short works related to his recent birthdays and offered image-filled reflections on their meaning for him. His words were beautifully crafted and emotionally affecting.

What amazed me during this brief reading was seeing David choke up and his eyes watered by tears. Like the other David, he is very intellectual and not given to displays of tender emotions, at least in the company of us friends. Suddenly, he seemed to be acting out of character and advancing into unfamiliar territory.

Finally, I confess feeling this way myself now in my middle seventies the way I never did before. To cite a recent instance, I felt tears running down my cheeks at a recent concert. The occasion was the Boston Symphony’s performance of Wagner’s opera, The Flying Dutchman.

Toward the end of the second act, the Dutchman and his lady love sing a duet that ranks, for me, as the best aria in the opera. When Deborah Voight’s voice soared out over the audience and filled Symphony Hall, I was overcome at the beauty of the music.

This strong a response to an esthetic stimulus would not have happened in my younger days. In fact, as a young person, I was not particularly sensitive to artistic expression, although I have loved opera since my teenage years. An overly rationalistic schooling had knocked some of the emotional expressiveness out of me.

You could dismiss my experience and that of the two Davids as mere sentimentality, emotion outrunning stimulus. But that would be to shortchange the events.

Instead, the sudden emotion described here witnesses to the richness of the inner life in the later years. These are precious senior moments, responses to events that are full of meaning. They can be sparked by small happenings but these interior events suggest changes that enhance the passage to old age.

To see if my observations hold water, I checked with Wendy Lustbader, an esteemed colleague based in Seattle. By reason of her long experience as a social worker, Wendy has a much sharper sense than I of the emotional life of my age peers.

She thinks I’m on to something. For her, tears shed by men often signify the “transition to another emotional life.”

By expressing tender feelings, many men in later life are come closer to experience that has been long familiar to women. In laying hold of inner territory formerly closed off to them, these men can even be thought of as becoming all the more human.

Richard Griffin

In order to ensure a short pontificate, the Catholic Church has found it necessary to elect an old man rather than risk choosing someone young. The previous pope, John Paul II, was only 58 when he succeeded to the highest office in the church; by contrast, Cardinal Ratzinger – –  now Pope Benedict XVI – –  has just celebrated his 78th birthday.

Clearly, the cardinals who assembled in the Sistine Chapel last week wanted someone whose tenure in office would not come close to the 27 years that John Paul served. Most of the electors would probably judge the Polish pope’s reign highly successful, but hardly anyone would wish to follow it with another long pontificate.

In any event the electors opted for an old pope and a relatively short reign. Given average life expectancy, one can anticipate that Benedict will not stay in office for a great many years.

This outcome strikes me as unfortunate because it effectively deprives the church of new and vigorous leadership. You cannot have it both ways: if you choose a relatively young man, you run the risk of having him reign for a long time; but if you select an old man, then your church will be deprived of a youthful leader.

The newly elected pope was born in 1927, one year before my appearance on the scene. So it may seem strange to hear me, his age peer, regretting his election. Add to that my signature appreciation of fully matured talent as evidenced in so many people older than the new bishop of Rome.

However, I think that, in general, institutions need to bring younger people into leadership positions. It is not beneficial to maintain gerontocracies that keep control of things in the hands of old people. Again, I say this, not because of age prejudice on my part, but because I believe in the desirability for the church of allowing younger candidates to rise to the top.

A relatively easy solution lies at hand. The way to facilitate the election of younger candidates without fear of overly long pontificates could be handled if the institution were to establish terms of office for its popes.

One approach to doing so is already at work, namely the requirement that Catholic bishops around the world hand in their resignation at age 75. That applies to all bishops except one, the bishop of Rome. To change the rule would not be easy: to require the bishop of Rome to retire would probably require direct action on the part of the pope himself or, perhaps, the initiative of a general council like Vatican II.

Such a change would also help deal with another problem that confronts the church in modern times. Currently the church has no way to handle a situation in which the pope might fall victim to dementia. Were he to get Alzheimer’s disease, for example, the church does not have at hand a mechanism for dealing with such a disability.

Some observers suspect that John Paul II was basically incapable of managing the business of the Vatican in the last few months of his papacy. Parkinson’s disease had so enfeebled him physically that he must have neglected some matters of importance. The church was fortunate that the deterioration of his health did not cause a more obvious crisis.

However, even a church law that required all popes to resign at age 75 would not solve the problem of electing younger popes without risking long reigns. If someone were elected at age 50 (an age many other institutions do not consider young), he could still hold the office for 25 years before retiring.

That is why I favor a term of office for anyone who is elected pope. Church law currently does not allow this constraint on papal service, but I believe it should. It would allow the electors to choose the relatively young without risking too many years of any one papacy.

Yes, there can be some disadvantages to my scheme. Giuseppe Roncalli, who became Pope John XXIII at age 77 and stood the church on its head in the first half of the  1960s, could not have been elected under this plan. And we would have missed out on a epoch-making five-year papacy.

It remains possible that the former Cardinal Ratzinger will prove to be a dynamic leader for the early 21st century. If so, he will have to become more flexible about certain moral and theological positions he has held in the past. I hope he turns out to be like John XXIII, capable of change and responsive to the needs of an incredibly diverse church and world.

But, looking toward the future, I believe the church, if it is to exert the influence it should, needs to open a path for younger leaders to succeed to the papacy.

Richard Griffin