Where were you on November 22, 1963?  Perhaps you are too young to remember that fateful day; maybe you were not even born yet. But for those of us now relatively aged, the event that happened forty years ago this week remains seared on our psyches.

That, of course, was the infamous day on which John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The graphic events that inexorably unfolded in Dallas that day have long since become part of American history. Like so many others of a certain seniority, I long ago internalized the dreadful sequence of happenings connected with this death.

For a time, however, I thought the wrong man had been shot. I had spent that day in Liverpool, sent off from my monastic retreat in Northern Wales on a mission to a parish church. On arriving back home to St. Beuno’s College in St. Asaph, I was greeted in the corridor by a colleague who asked if I had heard the news. In reply to my ignorance he announced: “Kennedy has been shot.”

For me it was a shock to think that my spiritual director, Father Kennedy, had been killed. Why would anyone wish to shoot such an inoffensive and loving man, I wondered? This English Jesuit priest seemed not to have any enemies at all, much less someone who would kill him.

When I realized my mistake, I began to grieve for the American president with whom I had most identified. Jack Kennedy was not much older than I and came from the same Boston Irish Catholic background as I. My father had known his father well enough for him and my mother to be invited to Jack’s wedding in 1953. Besides, Jack Kennedy struck me as a thoroughly attractive man, handsome, articulate, a person of style and, I believed, substance.

In the days after his death, by way of special permission I was allowed to watch television along with my colleagues at St. Beuno’s. We saw dramatic scenes of the  events leading up to the state funeral and felt the range of emotions that Americans at home were then feeling. Horror, pity, sorrow, fear and other feelings flooded my heart. I also felt some frustration at being so far away from home when events of such importance were taking place there.

My Jesuit colleagues at St. Beuno’s had come largely from European countries for a year of spiritual training in Wales. Natives of France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, along with some half dozen natives of England, they formed an international community along with a few of us Americans.

The grief that they all felt at the death of Kennedy moved me deeply. It was as if they had lost a friend, this American president with whom they had identified as a person who expressed many of their ideals. The experience of loss bound us together as a more closely knit community, united in an uncommon loss. They, too, could weep that an American hero had been struck down in the prime of his life.

Jack Kennedy had been formed in part by his own experience of Europe. In addition to saying “Ich bin ein Berliner,” with some justification he could have said he was an Englishman or a Frenchman. During some of his growing up years he lived in London and his first –  – highly critical –  –  book was called “While England Slept.” His frequent trips to the continent gave him a familiarity with other European countries.

His wife Jacqueline was well known for her love of French language and culture. On a state visit to France, her husband proudly identified himself as the man who had brought Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.

St. Beuno’s was located at the margins of this European world. But it was in a climate of solidarity and ancient national friendships that we watched the news together. I realized more intensely that week than ever that we belonged to an international religious order, brothers who had suffered a common loss.  

Until the last few years I still found it too painful to watch television replays of the awful events of that November 40 years ago. The loss that we suffered as a nation continued to stir melancholy feelings in me.  But time has its way of healing and I no longer feel the sting so intensely now. From the vantage point of four decades’ distance the assassination does not stir the same pain in me that it did for so long..

Of course, I still regret the wounds inflicted on us all by the assassin. His deadly action robbed us of a leader who gave hope to much of the world. The emotional impact  may have grown weaker with the passage of so many years, but his terrible death continues to reverberate in my memory as one of the most searing public events of my lifetime.

Richard Griffin

To anyone with a long memory of the place, it comes as a shock to hear Boston praised as a “cool” city, a place where “hipsters” wish to settle. To read how Forbes Magazine in recent years chose Boston as the best city for singles seems unreal to us veteran residents of the area.

Social critic Richard Florida goes so far as to to call Boston the third most desirable city in the country for highly talented people. He does so because this place can boast diversity – “bohemians, technologists, and other cutting-edge types” – who find it a comfortable place to live. Professor Florida of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University cites the presence of gays in particular as a sign of a stimulating urban environment. Beyond tolerance of differences, he also places high importance on the city’s acceptance of human diversity as a value.

Talent attracts more talent and that is why cities like Boston and Austin continue to flourish at the present time. They have transformed themselves into “talent magnets” attracting others whom Florida refers to as “the creative class.” The presence of a varied gay community and its acceptance by the local populace also makes a difference, he says.  

The Boston I remember from my growing-up days seems located on a different planet from the one described above. The Old Howard burlesque theater and the Scollay Square district in which it lived were among the few sections of the city that defied convention. The city’s mainline institutions – the Boston Symphony, the Museum of Fine Arts, and hotels such as the Parker House and the Ritz – upheld the tradition of decorum and solidity.

Looking back, I recall a time when the city seemed to be sleepwalking, in absolutely no danger of being called cool or hip or the then equivalents. Yes, Boston had its charms but they were largely of the classical sort, without the dynamic diversity and experimental spirit of other places.

A Boston dowager, refusing to buy a hew hat, said that she had her hats. Like our hats we had our buildings too, and the Custom House retained its dominance while other cities (notably Chicago and New York) grew structures that were imposing and often architecturally distinguished. We allowed the wrecking ball to destroy the Boston Opera House on Huntington Avenue. Though the building may have been past its prime, it still hosted the annual visits of the Met and featured the greats like Caruso and company.

The highways and streets remained unmodern, with the city apparently committed to the charm of its slow-moving traffic. Before Storrow Drive took shape, the main arteries did not offer great  views of the Charles and other beauty spots of the area. And the Southeast Expressway was about to despoil central parts of the city.

The district that I found most congenial was Newspaper Row, that narrow section of Washington Street where the Boston Post, my father’s paper, faced the Globe directly across the way. The Post was housed in five thin ramshackle buildings tied together by no one knew what. When, during one of my college summers, I came to work as a copy boy at the Globe I found it a sleepy tradition-bound publication, filled with cigarette and cigar smoking city room editors and reporters, some of them hung over from the night before.

For lunch I would often hasten down to Durgin Park, the fabled restaurant near Faneuil Hall where the waiters took pride in almost throwing the food at you. Even by Boston standards the food was plain and simple but I used to gobble it down with pleasure. Or sometimes I would go to Thompson’s Spa, a favorite hangout for local newspapermen (and a few women) where gossip about politics reigned.

As in my pre-college days, the only people I knew were much like me. Irish Catholics and Yankees constituted my whole social circle and I never remember the presence of people of color. Protestants made for about as much diversity as I ever experienced in that era of apparent uniformity. The only variant on this sameness I remember came from the trips I used to make to a club on Mass Avenue in Roxbury where jazz musicians like Fats Waller performed with great style.

My memory remains sharp enough for me to resist nostalgia for those days. By and large I find the new Boston much more dynamic and entertaining. That we now have so many immigrants from other countries I see as a revitalizing force. Thankfully, Boston is much more like the rest of the world than it used to be.

The terms hip and cool now applied to the place may strike me as forced but I welcome many of the changes that the transformation of Boston has brought. Though I do not live within Boston’s narrow city limits, I enjoy sharing in the lively atmosphere of the region. The place certainly has formidable problems as always, but it has grown into an area that is indeed worth living in.

Richard Griffin

“I think that our denial of death is almost comparable to the denial of sexuality under the Victorians. And I think that maintaining that level of denial, in and of itself, distorts the capacity to understand the world, to think straight.”

These words come from Mary Catherine Bateson, who engaged in a public dialogue with me last week. A cultural anthropologist of note, she dares to talk openly about subjects that American society likes to keep hidden in the closet.

Asked her feelings about the prospect of her own death, Catherine Bateson replies forthrightly. In the face of this event she feels peaceful but she adds one caveat: “I feel concerned that, if I were very ill, I might not have the clarity of my own convictions about being willing to die.”

It’s important to leave models for the next generation. Just as we have received stories of our forebears’ death  –  – “That’s how granddad was, he said he was ready to die and he was” –  – so we can provide our descendants with our stories. Ms. Bateson believes that of all the things we learn in the course of a lifetime, dealing with mortality may be the most important.

Her mother, Margaret Mead, was one of the first people to write a living will. In it, she stipulated that she did not want anything done to extend her life if she had suffered any mental impairment or lost her mobility. This statement made Catherine, then a teenager, angry because her mother “was saying that it was not worth her while to be alive when she was no longer the famous Margaret Mead.” Catherine’s sharp response was: “But you’d still be my mother.”

Ms. Bateson believes in not being surprised when serious disabilities come along. She sees them as precursors to death and reason for doing what you can to cope. When reading in their memoirs how other people adapt to aging, she has formulated two rules of thumb.

The first is “to keep on learning, observing and thinking about what’s happened.”

The second concerns the need to change self-definition, “not to be caught in a self-definition that says, if I’m not what I was at age 50, then I’m nothing.” Even if her mother had been unable to do scholarship any more, she would have remained an important person – her mother.

On the subject of care for the sick, Bateson is eloquent insisting that being attended goes far beyond high technology and lots of tubes. She sees it as giving care in a personal way, such as sitting by a person’s bed and holding her hand.

“Caring for someone you love, whether it’s an infant or a sick person does have built-in rewards, even though it’s a huge burden.” Bateson considers it a “profound experience that, over a period of time, a great many people have missed out on, the privilege of giving care to a human being you love.”

Professor Bateson has lived and worked in several other countries, experience that has brought her important cross-cultural insights. Drawing on her observations of Iranian society, she poses the question of why women there are not more rebellious about their status.

Contrasting American and Iranian women, she identifies the most important man in the life of women who live in that patriarchal society. He is not her father, nor her husband, but rather her son. “When she has an adult son, she is courted, she’s listened to, she’s treated with veneration.”

One of the things we fail to understand about patriarchy, Professor Bateson says, is how “it’s not just about male versus female, but it’s about elder versus younger.” The women she really feels sorry for are those whose sons marry emancipated women.

In American society with its negative view of advancing age, people cannot look forward to anything good. That makes them feel rebellious because the future does not promise enough rewards.

Catherine Bateson loves being a grandmother, a fairly new and thoroughly welcome role for her. With increased longevity, she points out, the generations are no longer in synch the way they used to be because so many of us now have great-grandchildren and have become part of four-generation families.

Professor Bateson thinks all of us adults need children in our lives. To make that possible we have to build bridges to them. One way of doing that is to be open to them teaching us.

She is fond of asking students what they have taught their parents. One girl told her, “I taught my dad not to interrupt me,” an experience that conveyed to him her sense of personhood.

“There are areas where public understanding has changed in our lifetime and our children are often more sensitive to issues than we are and can usefully teach us,” Ms. Bateson adds.

Many more of Professor Bateson’s insights can be found in her books, notably the paperback “Full Circles, Overlapping Lives,” published in 2000.   

Richard Griffin

“A mission is what does it for you; you must have a mission.” Thus Doris Haddock, a.k.a. Granny D, explains her motivation as a 93-year old, five-foot-tall woman out to change the world.

She strikes the same theme in the subtitle of her 2003 paperback memoir: “You’re never too old to raise a little hell.”

Granny D is the woman who, when she was 89, walked across the whole of the USA. Starting in Pasadena, she ended up 3200 miles later in Washington, D.C. where she climaxed the effort to get campaign finance reform made law.

After initial opposition from her son, she managed to get his approval for the great walk. This she did by engaging in a training program of walks, near her Dublin, New Hampshire home, for most of a year previous to the big trek. She took her son’s interference with a measure of irritation and tolerance, telling me about adult children: “They become our parents when we get to be 80.”

An unexpected personal benefit from this great escapade came in an improvement in both of her main ailments: high blood pressure and emphysema.

On her arrival at the nation’s capital, she was met by 2200 people, with several dozen members of Congress walking the final miles with her. During the final three days of debate on senate floor, she walked around the Capitol building 24 hours a day, some of it in subzero winds and rain, stopping only to rest and to eat.  

On the 14-month hike, she adopted as her guide the motto: “walking till given shelter, fasting till given food.” Presumably she brought extra shoes with her because she wore out four pairs.

In a conversation with Granny D last week, I was surprised to discover how late in life she has turned to political action. Most of her working years she spent in a Manchester, New Hampshire shoe factory until her retirement in 1972. Earlier she had studied at Emerson College in Boston, an institution that gave her an honorary degree in 2000.

I found it a pleasure to converse with this dynamic woman. With the help of two hearing aids she responded articulately to everything I asked. Like so many other people in her age bracket, she expresses amazement at having arrived there. “I can’t believe I’m that old,” she says. At the same time, age has brought her a sense of vulnerability: “I may die tomorrow,” she tells me.

But her mission drives her ahead. Now she is campaigning for public financing of elections on a trip that will take her on a 15,000 mile trek across some of America. This time, however, she is not going to walk the whole route but instead only in cities where she stops.  

“The only thing that will save our democracy is public financing,” she believes. Her message aims especially at working women in the effort to make sure they vote. She says that this group is underrepresented among voters because they are overworked and stressed for time.

To begin her new voter registration campaign, she spoke at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. There she made a ringing condemnation of what big money has done to this country. Referring to the people she met on her walk, Granny D spoke of those “who came to actual tears when they described their frustration at the loss of their America.”

She made a reference to “senior moments” that especially pleased me because of my one-man campaign to get people to use it positively. For Granny D, “it is when I talk to the senior class in high schools along my way, for they are our newest voters and I am going to sign them up, four million of them if I can.”

Getting people to vote is her current passion. “On the road, I will not suggest how people should vote,” she says, “only that they should vote. They should study the issues and the candidates for themselves, and we will be all right if they get enough good information.”

In not a few ways, Granny D reminds me of another woman I knew whose political consciousness drove her on to strenuous action in later life. That was Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers (whom Granny D seems never to have heard of.) Both physically small, the two women were to display a personal dynamism that made them different from most other people. Like Maggie, Granny D cares passionately about the larger community and resists the temptation felt by most of their age peers to focus in upon herself.

Like Maggie, Granny D wants to share this spirit with others. In the words she inscribed for me on the title page of her memoir, she wrote: “One step in front of the next will get you Anywhere!”

Richard Griffin

One afternoon two weeks ago, I went for a brief ride on the Segway. My trip on this new invention lasted only two or three minutes but it was long enough to teach me how to operate this unique new contraption.

I felt privileged in having the inventor, Dean Kamen, serve as my instructor but I quickly discovered that you need no special talent to manage this ingenious form of individual transportation. It responds to simple controls that almost anyone can wield.

To go forward, all you have to do is bend your upper body slightly forward. That means, not a deep bow, but only a shallow inclination.  The machine responds as if to your inner desire to move ahead, little more than a whim.

The same kind of slight motion moves you backward. Again, you simply start to incline your upper body ever so slightly and the Segway slowly retreats. The gyroscopes and tilt sensors embedded in the machine make it immediately responsive to these bodily motions.

To turn, you revolve a steering grip on the left handlebar and the Segway starts to move in a circle. To stop – well that’s another story. You may remember hearing about President Bush falling off the thing.

What sometimes makes people fall is a low power level in the battery. This can happen if, for instance, the rider speeds up abruptly. While I was drafting this column, word came from the Consumer Product Safety Commission announcing a voluntary product recall to install software warning of low battery levels.

My opportunity to get acquainted with both the Segway and its inventor opened up during a conference at MIT’s AgeLab. Professionals interested in improving transportation for older people came from 12 countries and 16 universities to report on their research and to talk about new technology designed to help mobility. The Segway presentation was only one of many made during the two day series of meetings but easily the most dramatic.

Dean Kamen, a short, thin dark-eyed middle-ager, arrived flamboyantly, driving into the room on his invention. All during his talk, the speaker stood on the scooter, moving it forward and back and often turning around in circles.

Kamen turns out to be an impassioned evangelist for his human transporter, as it is also called. He takes pride in having developed, along with his engineers, a device that he considers “a unique and lasting contribution to society.”

Like many others at the conference, I was swept away by the ingenuity of the contraption and felt tempted to credit every claim Kamen made for it. Afterward, some of us crowded around him and vied for the chance to try it out. For the moment, at least, $5,000 did not seem too much to pay for such a valuable device.

Since then, however, I have consulted Astrid Dodds, a friend and neighbor, who has been following the Segway saga in Massachusetts. A woman with deep concern for the public interest, she has raised my consciousness about the drawbacks of this new invention.

At least 40 states have already approved the Segway for use on sidewalks, though most have left the final decision to cities and towns. Astrid Dodds attributes this quick response to “legislators lining up because of the interesting gee-whiz technology.” They did not stop long enough to consider some of the negatives likely to result for both older citizens and the public in general.  

A Segway-related proposal, H. 1150, currently faces reworking in the Joint Committee on Public Safety of the Massachusetts legislature. So much protest about sidewalk use for the Segway has emerged that the bill is likely to impose serious restrictions.  Also the legislation will likely allow cities and towns to make their own decisions regarding usage.

As a devout daily pedestrian myself, I envision problems galore arising from adding Segways to our sidewalks. Already, I have trouble enough coping with bicycle riders, too many of whom use sidewalks illegally and operate by their own rules, not the public’s. They often menace me and other walkers, making us wary of getting knocked down or otherwise injured.

What has happened in places where the Segway has been approved for sidewalk use, no one seems to know. As Astrid Dodds points out, statistics are not available for accidents that do not result in the police being called. Of course, there may be little or nothing to report from those states that have precious few sidewalks to begin with.

It surprises me that among the professionals at the MIT conference not a single person raised doubts about the Segway’s suitability for use in our communities. Perhaps that means these academics do not use sidewalks very much. As noted above, I do, so I feel conflicted. That’s because I love both urban walking and also new technology with its promise of further improving the life of us elders.

Richard Griffin

Fifty years last month, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier were married in Newport, Rhode Island. On September 12, 1953, a reported 750 guests crowded into St. Mary’s Church for the 40-minute wedding ceremony and then traveled to Hammersmith Farm overlooking Narragansett Bay for the reception.

Society weddings, even those of some historical importance, would not normally move me to write, but this one has a connection with my family that stirs memories.  My parents were among the guests at this event, largely because of my father’s longstanding friendship with the bridegroom’s father. My father’s role as a prominent newspaperman and television broadcaster may also have figured in the invitation.

I would like to have fascinating anecdotes from inside the events to share with a wide public. Unfortunately, I cannot remember ever talking with my parents about their experience in seeing a famous couple exchange marriage vows. At that time, I was living away from home in monastic seclusion and focused on higher things than splashy weddings. And events that in retrospect take on historical value are often not recognized as important at the time.

What I did learn about the event was that my mother picked out a gift for the couple that was somewhat offbeat. She chose to give them a leather-bound reader’s encyclopedia, a fine selection for a couple who already had everything. In return, she received from Jackie a graceful note that has been handed down in our family archives.

Looking at the wedding from the vantage point of 50 years later, I feel a mixture of emotions. As with all Kennedy stories, the wedding events have long since become suffused with an aura of sadness. Jack’s assassination remains a catastrophe that contains what the Latin poet Vergil called “the tears of things.” For an assassin’s bullet to have ended a life so valued by a huge world community continues to haunt me.

Inevitably, another dark cloud envelopes the happy wedding scene. Revelations about the way Jack played around, bringing women into the White House for sexual activities, for me inevitably casts a pall over the events in Rhode Island. The vows that Jack exchanged with his bride that day proved to be shallow indeed.

Looking at the wedding photos, one sees a bridegroom who seems thoroughly delighted with his choice of a bride. Jack’s infectious smile looks so genuine, it is hard to imagine him ever being unfaithful to her. They appear to be a couple too deeply in love for that to happen.

Part of the experience of growing older is to become disillusioned with some of our views of the world. If we live long enough, we discover that many of the institutions and people we have known do not deserve the trust we put in them. Ultimately, they disappoint us, sometimes to our chagrin and even our harm.

Trusting other human beings, we find, can prove hazardous. Even family members and close friends sometimes betray our confidence in them. They turn out to be only human, a term that with maturity we come to see as a mixed reality. Part of wisdom, traditionally ascribed to old people, surely includes the recognition of how flawed everything human is.

More than recognition, acceptance of this fact goes far to make us wiser. In later life, we have learned how impossible it is to reform the world. After a while, the knowledge that people will often act badly figures as a given in our expectations.

I fantasize about how Jackie Kennedy must have coped with her husband’s infidelity.  Did she feel depressed in knowing that he did not reserve his sexual love for her?  Or was she enough the woman of the world to accept his misbehavior and go on with her life? Beneath that charming exterior, she may have harbored a cynical view of mankind, at least the male variety.

Jack’s and Jackie’s wedding did not lead to an ideal marriage. He, at least, had a character deeply flawed in some respects that must have made married life even more difficult than it is for most other people.

My faith tradition has always armed me against an optimistic view of the world. The doctrine of original sin is one that I have never had any trouble believing, because it describes so well what we humans are like. Something is askew with the world: sons and daughters of Adam and Eve are deeply flawed.

There are times when we forget this – – as in the early, heady optimism of the Kennedy administration. But when one looks at history overall, original sin looms large. Even our efforts at achieving peace often come to naught instead of producing the transformation of the world for which we hope. The expectation that one day peace will be achieved turns out to be ultimately illusory.

Yet, the same faith  tradition teaches that we are also deeply loved and that love will ultimately triumph over evil. In my book, this justifies being hopeful but not optimistic.

Richard Griffin

Do you remember predictions, confidently made back in the 1950s, about working Americans gaining much more leisure by this stage in our history? As a result of new technology and greater productivity, we would spend considerably less time in our workplaces and become free for travel, activities at home with our families, and cultural events.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t turned out that way.  Employed Americans are spending longer hours on the job than in the 1950s.  The promised age of leisure has become a time of incessant labor. We are working nearly nine full weeks longer each year than do the residents of Western Europe.

Some of our fellow citizens are disturbed enough about this situation that they have organized to change it. Under the title “Take Back Your Time Day,” they are planning a campaign to raise consciousness about the harmful effects of overwork.

The first event in the “Take Back Your Time Day” campaign will take place on Thursday, September 25th at 3 Church Street, Cambridge, opposite the Harvard Square Theater, at 7:00 p.m. One of the speakers will be Juliet Schor, a professor at Boston College and author of The Overworked American.

This event anticipates a national campaign that begins on October 24th with a lunch-hour rally at Faneuil Hall in Boston.  October is to be called “National Work and Family Month,” thanks to a resolution sponsored by Ted Kennedy and Orin Hatch and passed by the United States Senate. A new book, “Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America” edited by John de Graff, will provide added firepower to the campaign.

By comparison with the citizens of France, Germany, and other European countries, we take much shorter vacations. They average five or six weeks annually, while we get just over two.

It may seem inconsistent for me to praise longer vacations after the recent debacle in France. Anyone who saw the photo of the president of France and the mayor of Paris at a city cemetery for the burial of 57 old people who perished in the heat and whose bodies were never claimed, will not soon forget what happened. Neglect of these victims and others like them happened in part because so many younger French people were away on vacation for a full month.

However, the problem did not arise because they took vacations but because residents left the cities en masse, leaving too few care-professionals, family members, and neighbors to look out for those in peril from the heat. The vacations were desirable but not everybody should have been away at the same time.

Concern about overwork may also seem ironic in a time when so many Americans cannot find employment at all. In the past two years, our country has lost some two and a half million jobs, leaving many of us out of work. To make matters even more painful, many of these people have given up as hopeless the search for paid work.

Organizers of the new campaign have compiled a list of harmful outcomes caused by overwork. It threatens one’s health, with an estimated $200 billion lost to our economy through job stress and burnout. It threatens our marriages, families, and relationships. And it reduces employment prospects since fewer people are hired and are made to work longer.

You may wonder what American overworking has to do with older people. I believe it to be a subject on which we elders have something important to say. So does Juliet Schor who told me: “people in older generations have a much deeper understanding of the issue.”

Many of us who have retired or changed gears and entered into a different work mode have discovered the value of enhanced leisure. Finding more time for ourselves and others has unlocked for us entrance into new arenas of creativity. We have surprised ourselves by laying hold of creative powers we did not know we had.

Especially does this new freedom free us for spiritual discovery. We can experience the rewards of exploring our own interior and of finding God or ultimate meaning in new ways. Thus we may relate more vibrantly to Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s words: “Just to be is a blessing; just to live is holy.”

Leisure can free us to appreciate the Sabbath or our own version of it. I keep in mind the example of former neighbors who used to observe faithfully both the letter and the spirit of this special day of the week.

The father of the family, Dr. Michael Rothberg, shared with me some of his feelings and those of his wife and children about this day of leisure: “Our lives really center around it. It’s something that is always there, something that you can look forward to. It’s a time to be with the family and to be reflecting on spiritual matters.”

American society desperately needs more of this contemplative spirit. Perhaps we elders can help show the way.

Richard Griffin