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Freya’s Husband

“He was a wonderful husband.” That’s what Freya von Moltke told me about the man who was executed by Hitler’s government in January, 1945.

Helmuth James von Moltke died as a hero of conscience, unjustly found guilty of treason, along with others who opposed the terrible crimes of the Nazis. They took leading roles in the German resistance, a  movement that still shines out from  the spiritual darkness that enveloped their nation at that time.

Now 89 (90 in March)  years old and living in Vermont, his widow remembers him with love and admiration for his courage. He himself was enabled to face suffering and death in large part because of his wife’s loving support.

A record of their relationship, as well as of this terrible period of history, is found in the English-language volume called “Letters to Freya: 1939 – 1945”  published by Knopf in 1990. These letters were hidden by Freya in her beehives, for fear the police would find them; some of them were published soon after the war.

The letters reveal the qualities of soul required of anyone who dared oppose Hitler’s ruthless regime. Helmuth James, as he was called, drew upon his own  religious faith especially as expressed in the New Testament. Though his parents were Christian Scientists, he grew up as a Lutheran Christian, a faith that deepened as he faced the end.

A paragraph from the last of his letters shows how he saw the meaning of his life: “Dear heart, my life is finished and I can say of myself: He died in the fullness of years and of life’s experience.  This doesn’t alter the fact that I would gladly go on living and I would gladly accompany you a bit further on this earth. But then I would need a new task from God. The task for which God has made me is done.”

At this time Helmuth James was only thirty-seven years old. Though he would have wanted to live longer, united with his wife and their two young sons, he dared to recognize in faith that the purpose of his life was fulfilled. He was ready to die as a witness to the truth.

The story of the Moltkes is not well known to Americans, unfortunately. The two generals of the same name – one who led German troops in the Franco-Prussian War, the other the chief general at the beginning of World War I – stand out prominently in the historical record. However, when you look at what really counts, the life and death of Helmuth deserves to be remembered.

Dartmouth College, to its credit, gave an honorary degree to Freya von Moltke at its graduation ceremony last spring. She was honored in recognition of her own stature as a person and of the history of her family.

When I spoke to her recently, Freya said of the era, “It was a very high period in my life.” She also said: “Germans are lucky there were a few  who died in all conscience against Hitler.” In talking with her, I felt myself to be encountering some of their history and thus sharing in some small way in their spiritual legacy.

Freya does not romanticize her husband’s heroism but retains a realistic sense of his values. She told me, for instance, that Helmuth James was not opposed to violence in every circumstance. “He was against silly wars,” she said, “but he was not a pacifist.” He did not share, it seems, the view that Hitler should be assassinated because he feared that action might make it harder to reconstruct Germany on principles of law and universal justice. So he did not take part in the famous attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944.

Helmuth James was a leader in what came to be called the Kreisau Circle, a group of Germans who were planning for the time when their country could be restored as a law- abiding member of the international community. The group took its name from the town where the Moltke family estate was located. The place is now located in Poland and has become a center where Poles, Germans, and people from other nations can come to strengthen bonds across national boundaries.

Freya sees this center as a sign of hope. “That’s very beautiful. They will make is a success.”

Richard Griffin

Freya

Every once in a while one meets a person who represents history. To look into that person’s face is to be reminded of events that have made a notable difference in the world and continue to resound.

Such was my encounter with Freya von Moltke. Hers is not a household name, at least in most American families, but it reverberated in me when she introduced herself at a party following a concert last month at the New England Conservatory of Music. She had come, as did I, to listen to her sister-in-law, Veronica Jochum of Cambridge, play beautifully the piano music of Gunther Schuller, Brahms, Schubert, and Bach.

Freya von Moltke, now aged 88, is the widow of Helmuth James von Moltke who died in 1945, a hero of conscience at the hands of Hitler’s executioners. He bore a name celebrated in German history  for the military exploits during the Franco-Prussian War and World War I of his ancestors, the two famous Moltke generals.

In 1990 a book appeared called “Letters to Freya 1939-1945” that made available to readers of English the words that her husband sent to her in the years before his imprisonment and those that led up to his death. These letters provide a moving testimony to the man’s spiritual stature (and hers) as he faced the penalty for following conscience in the face of Hitler’s murderous regime.

This saga deserves to be better known because Helmuth was one of the relative few among believing Christians who worked to save Jews and to resist the Nazi atrocities against his country. Recognition of these actions and of her work since that time led Dartmouth College last spring to give an honorary degree to his widow Freya von Moltke.

A distinguished woman in her own right, Freya has preserved her husband’s memory, distributed the books and papers of one of his professors, and founded a publishing company. As she approaches ninety, she serves as a vital link with the German Resistance,  the story of which gives hope in the midst of the darkness of the Nazi era.

Helmuth was a leader of what is known as the Kreisau Circle, a group of Germans who felt anxiously concerned about what was happening to their country. In 1940, he gathered some people who shared his concerns in order to plan what principles should guide Germany after the war had ended.

Meeting in Kreisau (now named Krzyzowa and located in Poland), the  Moltke family estate, these men dealt with issues such as political structure, education, universities, and church/state relations. They had some variety of opinion with regard to a proposed attack on Hitler himself. Moltke usually favored nonviolence but, Freya has told me in a subsequent interview, “He was against silly wars but he was not a pacifist.”

His letters make clear that Helmuth had a deep religious faith that gave structure to his thought and his actions. The New Testament, from which he quotes frequently, provided inspiration in his terrible ordeals. He showed great courage as he faced death knowing that he was acting by the truth. The distortions of the Nazis could not make him lose sight of the scourge that was devastating his own country and much of Europe.

In his last letter Helmuth, as he awaited execution,  wrote: “Dear heart, my life is finished and I can say of myself: He died in the fullness of years and of life’s experience. This doesn’t alter the fact that I would gladly go on living and that I would gladly accompany you a bit further on this earth. But then I would need a new task from God. The task for which God made me is done. If he has another task for me, we shall hear of it. Therefore by all means continue your efforts to save my life, if I survive this day. Perhaps there is another task.”

The former estate of the Moltkes has become a center where young people can come and learn habits of peace and unity. When it was dedicated in 1989, the leaders of German and Poland came together as a Mass was celebrated to mark the beginning of a new era of peace and understanding among nations.

This history, both the terror of it and the new hope, came to my mind as Freya von Moltke introduced herself to me. To me she continues to represent the brave few who stood up against a murderous regime that had no respect at all for human rights and violated universal standards of human behavior.

I was a teenager during World War II, one who followed with rapt attention daily reports in the newspapers about the battles and other horrors of that great struggle. Had I then known of the Moltkes’ heroic efforts to combat Hitler and to plan for a future marked by peace and justice, I would have had reason for being more hopeful that some good might emerge from the catastrophe.

Richard Griffin

Phil, After Exile

The early stages of the New Year demand a report on the current status of Phileas J. Fogg, our redoubtable cat. Like his human companions in our household, he appears to be aging remarkably well, all things considered.

On January first, in fact, he celebrated his tenth birthday, an anniversary that in the past would have made him quite old. However, the proprietor of our local pet store whose husband is a veterinarian, informs me that ten now qualifies only as middle age. Change has a ways of creeping up on us, doesn’t it?

This woman claims that her cat customers are now living twice has long as they did when she first started her business some twenty years ago. My guess at the reason for this increased longevity proved correct: scientific diet. The stuff that looks so unappetizing to me has the power, it seems, to lengthen feline life wondrously. If I ever thought I was going to get off easily by serving only one ten-year term of living with our beast, I have been sadly deluded.

So, clearly, was my friend the author Tom Lynch who in his most recent book “Bodies In Motion, Bodies At Rest,” promises on page 199: “By the time you read this, the cat will be dead.” But Tom was so severely provoked by his beast that I strongly suspect he was planning a desperate act of ailuricide rather than allowing nature to take its certain but slow course.

My conversation with the pet-store proprietor  mentioned above took place recently on the occasion of Phil boarding at her place of business for four days. Because of interior renovations in our house, he had to get out of it during that time. For him, it turned out to be a bitter exile; for me, it was a welcome first experience in a long time of living in a Phil-free zone.

When we came to pick Phil up after this exile, the store manager suggested that he could not possibly be that difficult at home; there he must surely be better behaved, she wanted to think. My wife Susan, though she felt impelled not to betray the whole truth about Phil, for fear of perjuring herself could only mutter something like “well, not all that better.”

So Phil’s reputation for decorum may have been seriously damaged in the community. If word gets around town, we will have to deal with even children knowing his real nature – –  untamed and ornery.

You would think, however, that his period of exile might have made Phil more appreciative of the sweet comforts of home. After four days of being confined to a small space, our house should now seem to him luxury in itself. And the face time he gets from us every day should have forced him to recognize when he is well off.

But, if he felt at all chastened, he was determined not to show it. Instead, Phil claimed all the same privileges he had enjoyed previously. In fact, he protested loudly at any moves on our part to limit his freedoms. Where we thought ourselves magnanimous toward him, Phil looked upon our largesse as simply his due.

Phil’s trip to the vet’s place was his first licit excursion outside the house in several months. From the vantage point of his carrying case, he had the chance to survey the scene on our street and to take in the winter vistas of nearby city blocks.

How that looked to him has not yet emerged but we presume it must have stirred dreams of freedom. As noted in this space previously, I would be glad to make those dreams a reality but find myself inhibited by the hardheaded approach of my wife and daughter. They seem resolved to keep Phil immune from the dangers of the street, insuring that he will live long.

Despite my willingness to expose him to the unexpected outside, I consider myself a fairly responsible cat manager. However, a chance encounter at a neighborhood party has made me enter into a period of doubt about whether I am fulfilling my basic duty toward Phil.

Among the guests at the party was a woman who felt guilty about having taken inadequate car e of her cat. What bothered her, she confessed to me, was that she had not flossed her cat’s teeth that day. She felt conscience-struck about this dereliction in her duty to take care of the animal’s dental health.

To show you how delinquent I have been, I must confess never once having imagined that I should floss Phil’s teeth. Perhaps my lack of awareness came from the unacknowledged desire never to get my fingers close enough to Phil’s mouth that I might lose any of them. In any event, I am sufficiently calloused not to have lost sleep over comparing myself unfavorably with the lady who flosses her cat’s teeth every day.

Richard Griffin

2001: A New Beginning

“By 2000, machines will be producing so much that everyone in the U.S. will, in effect, be independently wealthy. With Government benefits, even nonworking families will have an annual income of $30,000 to $40,000 (in 1966 dollars). How to use leisure meaningfully will be a major problem, and one expert foresees a pleasure-oriented society full of ‘wholesome degeneracy.’”

This quotation from the February 25, 1966 issue of Time Magazine looks into the future and sees what has not come close to happening. Unless you, unlike me, have become independently wealthy and are overwhelmed with leisure, this prediction has proven spectacularly wrong-headed. Time’s crystal ball thirty-five years ago must have had a few cracks in it.

As the Danish physicist Niels Bohr once wryly observed, “ prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” Throughout history, those who have tried to foresee the next decades or centuries have most often failed to guess right.  I myself used to predict that by this time in history international air travelers would be shot in rockets from continent to continent and arrive in minutes rather than hours.

Still, our arrival at the year 2001 – a new year and, by some reckoning, a new century and a new millennium – almost inevitably stirs thinking about change and renewal. For some of us it is a time for resolutions, for setting right things in our life that need fixing. It is also a time for new hope and starting over.

If we have any spirit at all,  the new year is going to be a time for renewal. Have not people always felt it to be so? There seems to be something built into us human beings that takes the swing of years as an inducement for new beginnings.

In the spiritual life, past failures do not mean we cannot start again. The beauty of living as a searcher is that each day presents new opportunities for  growth and inspiration. If we stay open to being surprised, then moving into a new era can indeed fool us in many welcome ways.

There was a time in my life when I thought I knew exactly what the future held for me. All the years lay ahead in my imagination along a time line that seemed to me perfectly predictable. The initial religious training given me in a Jesuit novitiate amounted to a plan for living the rest of my life; I considered it foolproof. At age 21 I naively wrote in my journal: “I am going to make progress in proportion as I follow the route I have planned for myself.”

As it has turned out, however, my life has become quite different from anything that I imagined. With decade succeeding decade, I entered upon new experiences which surprised all my expectations. New people, new opportunities, new skills – all came tumbling toward me as time moved on. Very little of it could I ever have predicted, nor could anyone else.

I feel glad that life has turned out so differently from expectation. Mind you, there has been a lot of trial and error connected with these changes. More often than is comfortable to think about, I have made mistakes that hurt me and other people. There were times in my life, as in just about everyone’s, when I did not know where I was headed.

And, even now in this new age of 2001, I have no guarantee of safe passage toward the future. Inevitably, things will go wrong for me and I will be entangled in sometimes desperate struggle to find my way.

But is it not good for us that we cannot predict the future, either our own or the world’s? That counts as one of life’s treasures, our being unable to see clearly ahead. Just as utopian visions of the world’s future fail to discern what is really going to happen, so visions of our own future cannot ever be assured of coming true.

The vital need is not to sell ourselves short. As people with spirit inside us, we have a future, whether long or short. That future being unknown is what makes our life an adventure, a high-wire act that can prove worth sticking around for.

Richard Griffin

Harvey’s Gig

Of his role as alto sax player in the big band Soft Touch, Harvey Cox says: “What I do most of the time is very cerebral; to do something that uses another part of my brain, a whole other side of me, is an activity I really enjoy.”

The “very cerebral” job refers to Cox’s position as theology professor at Harvard Divinity School. Now age seventy-one, he has built a fine reputation for teaching both ministerial students and Harvard undergrads. He also is skilled at analyzing trends in religion worldwide, producing books on such subjects as liberation theology and the Pentecostal movement.

Last week Cox took me with him to the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Bedford for Soft Touch’s Christmas gig. Nineteen men strong, with a female vocalist, the band entertained a large audience assembled in a gymnasium on hospital grounds.

In attendance were veterans of World War II and all the other conflicts in which America has been involved since then. I sat among men who fought in Korea, Vietnam and in the Persian Gulf war. But no longer does a veteran of the First World War live at the Bedford institution: the last one died there two years ago aged one-hundred-and-four.

The vets obviously loved hearing the songs of the big band era along with some tunes appropriate to the Christmas season. Some of them kept returning to the dance floor at the invitation of uniformed girls from the Bedford High School junior ROTC and other guests from outside. Often they swayed very slowly from side to side, obviously working against disabilities.

Currently some five hundred veterans are hospitalized at Bedford, fewer by a half than there used to be. One explanation I heard from a physician with experience in veterans’ hospitals was that, because the United States has not been involved for a generation in wars with heavy  casualties, there are no longer so many vets with service-related injuries.

About a hundred of those at Bedford are men with Alzheimer’s disease. Some of them usually come to the monthly celebration but, for various reasons, they were not there this time. Speaking about the participation of these patients, staff member Jim Cutrumbes told me that “it’s a great therapy.”

The band members themselves turned out to be older than most of the veterans for whom they played. The majority of the band members are aged enough to have danced to the big band tunes they now play.

Murray Sheinfield of Newton, eighty-five, has been playing drums for sixty-five years. I discovered him to be a person who likes a challenge: “Anything that’s new, I like to do,” he told me.

Eighty-year-old Don Gillespie of Lexington, on piano, is himself a veteran of World War II and loves playing in this band “primarily because they play music of my era.”

Roy Fowler, of Waltham, plays the tenor sax, an instrument that he did not start until he was fifty-nine. Previously, he had never played any instrument at all. Now approaching seventy-eight, he served for many years as an Olympic trainer for the American hockey team.

My friend Harvey Cox shows the same spirit of enterprise as his musical colleagues. After many years of playing the tenor sax, often with his own band “the Embraceables,” he recently took up the alto sax.

It’s a whole other instrument and has demanded a lot of effort for him to learn. But he relishes the challenge and works hard at it, as I could tell from observing him in action at Bedford.

From that evening one scene will stay lodged in my memory for a long time. As the last number of the night, the band played a medley of patriotic pieces. One after another, the theme songs of the military branches all came rolling out. The army, the navy, the marines, and other groups had their hymns performed with snappy martial beats.

During this selection, the veterans present gathered in a large circle and marched around the dance floor. Not all really marched – some were pushed in reclining beds, others traversed the circle by wheel chair. All these men, in various states of disrepair (some missing legs), made a spectacle, at once grand and inevitably somewhat distressing.

I admired these veterans of America’s wars and peacetime military service too. They have given so much for their country and are continuing to suffer the isolation of hospital living. No matter how kind the staff and attentive their visitors, it cannot be an easy life for them.

Those who marched, at least, would seem to have remained believers in patriotism. So far as I could tell, most of these veterans still carry, along with their wounds, faith in their country’s causes.

As they finished the evening by singing “God Bless America,” I hoped that divine blessings will fall, not just on the country at large, but upon them in particular.

Richard Griffin

Mary Saving Her Life

A middle-aged woman whom I will call Mary is trying to get her life together. (Besides the name, I have changed other significant details in this true story to preserve confidentiality.)

Many things have gone wrong for her over the years; now she hopes that this long era of misfortune has come to an end. Mary has determined to keep to the straight path that she has finally found.

As she talked with me last week, my heart went out to this woman who has known so much trouble and loss. It is not had to imagine myself in her situation, confronted with the mistakes and afflictions that makes of human life a constant struggle.

A drinking habit has led to much of Mary’s grief. It was a large factor in the break-up of her first marriage. This addiction caused much harm to Mary herself and to the people closest to her.

The worst part of it came when, after her divorce, a judge ruled that Mary’s children could not be entrusted to her custody, because of her drinking. Since her husband was also found to be too unreliable for taking care of the children, they were given over to foster parents.

Another factor in Mary’s troubles had nothing to do with her conduct. In a tragic accident last year, her twenty-year-old son was killed. The loss that Mary and her family suffered then and continues to suffer is too painful for words.

As a mother, she thinks of her son constantly. Not a day goes by without Mary thinking of him, his beauty and the love that they shared. Since his gravesite is far from where she lives, Mary has set up in her own house a memorial to him where she can stop and offer prayers in his memory.

But the most important memorial to her son is the resolution Mary has made not to take another drink. Thus far, she has kept this promise made to herself and her son. She knows that there is no better way in which she can honor her son and the love she feels for him than to preserve her own sobriety.

She knows that the struggle will not be easy. Another addiction shows how vulnerable she is to the grip of destructive habits. Every time she takes a break from her work as a home health aide, she steps outside and lights up a cigarette. But this smoking addiction can only ruin her health and shorten her life; it cannot bring down everything else in her life the way drinking can.

The struggle with the awful urge to drink has become the spiritual center of Mary’s life, as it has with so many other people. If she can cope with this challenge, then she will have passed the supreme test in her life. You can say that, if this happens, her life will have become successful, no matter what her other failures have been.

Let’s hope that she is not carrying on the struggle by herself. Any- one who has known the fearful demon of alcohol addiction needs the help of other people to break its grip. Mary may already belong to an A.A. group made up of other women and men who have learned to cope with the pressures of addiction.

Mary probably does not think of herself as having a spiritual life. She has become so used to failure in her personal and family experience that language about the spirit may seem quite foreign to her. Quite likely, she does not belong to a church or other formal religious community.

But her struggle is basically spiritual and, if indeed she gets her life together again, her triumph will be spiritual. The writer Thomas Lynch describes what happened to change him: “What I’ve learned from my sobriety, from the men and women who keep me sober, is how to pray. Blind drunks who get sober get a kind of blind faith – – not so much a vision of who God is, but who God isn’t, namely me.”

Coming to believe more strongly in her own worth as a person and in the love that supports her life will give Mary the motive force for change. If she pulls it off after so much failure, what a triumph of the human spirit that will be!

Richard Griffin

The Lights Above

One of the advantages of being an early riser, I have discovered, is the sight of the still dark sky. As I walk the streets of the neighborhood on the way to our corner store to buy the newspaper, I look up and gaze in wonder at the brilliant planets and splendid stars that, when clouds do not interfere, burn brightly before the arrival of the day.

At this time of year I look with special attention toward the east where the planet Venus shines. This vision makes me think back to St. Luke’s Gospel and its account of the wise men who “saw the star in the east.” Formed by a lifetime of biblical imagery, I conjure up images of people connected with the birth of Jesus in the little town of Bethlehem. This association of stars and holy happenings sparks in me spiritual reflection about my place in the great universe, and that of my fellow human beings.

The sense of wonder I feel is itself a gift from above. This spiritual gift I hope never to lose – an awareness that at the heart of everything lies mystery, more reality than we can ever lay hold of. In the face of so stupendous a creation, how can we ever stop wondering about it all? And yet, even my astronomer friends confess hardly ever looking at the night sky; instead most of them nowadays focus on print-outs from their computers.

But these scientists do teach that there is much more to the universe than ever appears to us. Beyond our solar system, other systems further away than we can comprehend stretch out almost infinitely. Just hearing about these distances also provokes awe.

Down below, the lights that my neighbors display at this time of year also provide inspiration. The bulbs they string across small trees and bushes invite association with  the ineffable brightness of being. Local residents looking out from their windows and curious passers-by can take heart from this heralding of a sacred season.

Christmas and Hanukkah, coming in the same month, suggest many points of convergence between two great spiritual traditions. Both faiths call people to celebrate events of deep meaning. I recall former neighbors, now moved to Israel, whose weekly observance of the Sabbath and annual celebration of Succoth and other feasts moved me to admiration and reverence.

Other traditions, too, move their adherents to mark this season. Now that Americans find value in a variety of religions, from the Asia and elsewhere, we are learning to respect diverse approaches to the sacred. I recall gathering with Muslims in their local mosque where they shared with me the food and drink that ended their day of fasting during the holy time of Ramadan.

Still others among us gravitate toward new styles of spirituality, creating fresh forms of worship arising from new insights into the holy. They may find inspiration in the world of nature or newly fashioned rites of meditation.

Some people, however, feel no need of the transcendent or, perhaps better, find the transcendent in the merely human. This kind of secular spirituality can also lead to joyous celebration.

Whatever our approach, we can all discover motives for recognizing what is precious in this season. All of us are gifted, not only in qualities of mind and heart, but also in the country where we live.

We live in one of the places on planet Earth that has been most favored. This is a place of abundance, though unfortunately some have been left out and still await their fair share. Still, we are at peace, at least externally – if only that peace can take root in our hearts, then the promise of this season will be realized in our children.

The smallest children in our neighborhood also give me hope. One, named Peter, arrived only last month. What a blessing for us all his presence is! And those others slightly older – –  Georgia, Sam, Heloise, and Hayley – – growing up near people who treasure them, inspire me with what the future can be. Citizens of a new century and a new millennium, they will help shape the decades to come.

So there’s much reason to celebrate our having come into this season of festivity. For our children this means days free from school and freedom to play for hours on end. It may also bring with it the pleasure of unexpected gifts. I hope to see them  outside slid-ing along on new skis or sleds, and wearing bright jackets.

For grown-ups, beyond shopping sprees, may this time bring us fun at parties, reunions with extended family and friends, and (if we’re lucky) some leisure. We may even hope not to let this time speed by without our seizing the opportunity for prayerful reflection on the meaning of it all.

Richard Griffin