Category Archives: Articles

Death Wished For

A 92-year-old woman told me last week that she wants to die. This she said in a group of fellow elders to whom I have been speak from time to time about spirituality.

Anna (to call her by a name different from her own) made this announcement with clear conviction. She stated her wish in a firm voice that made us all believe that she meant it. Most of the other group members present nodded sympathetic assent and one or two indicated that they also would welcome death.

At first, I felt taken aback and not quite sure how to respond. Such an announcement carries so much emotional power that it can be disconcerting. So, at first, all I did was listen carefully and make some sympathetic noises. Anna is a person easy to love, such is her quiet sincerity and openness to the experience of other people.

When I did form a response, I told her that I understood how she could feel like that. In telling of her desire for death, she indicated that she had been through enough. Without specifying what troubles she had known, she had hinted at a variety of recent health crises. It is obvious that her hearing has become diminished, and she walks with some difficulty.

I responded further by saying that, even though she would welcome death, it would be difficult for me and for others to suffer her loss. We so value her, I said, that her leaving would be a heavy burden for us to bear. To judge by their body language, others in the group identified with this sentiment.

Anna’s death wish reminded me of the prophet Elijah in the Hebrew Bible. The first book of Kings tells how this prophet, threatened by the evil queen Jezebel, felt that he could go on no further. His travails in carrying out the word spoken to him by the Lord had piled up so much that he could no longer take it.

So he went out into the wilderness, and after a day’s journey sat down under a broom tree. There he asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”

The two situations are obviously different – Elijah and my friend Anna  find themselves at diverse stages of life and have different challenges to contend with. It could also be that Elijah has been overcome by depression, a malady that can afflict all of us and one that needs healing.

But both Elijah and Anna feel worn down by the pressures of the world and feel the need for ultimate relief.

“Ich habe genug” (I have had enough) is the way Johann Sebastian Bach puts it at the beginning of a famous cantata known by that title. And it’s a sentiment that almost everyone can feel at times of severe stress. There are moments when it all seems too much.

For old people like Anna, the burden can feel even heavier. And when you add, as she did, the assurance that her life’s work is basically completed, then the desire for death seems even more reasonable. You have to feel deep sympathy for a person who can look back upon ninety years of carrying out life’s tasks and who now experiences more pain than satisfaction.

And yet, for me and many other people, yielding to these feelings must be seen as a temptation rather than an appropriate reason for putting an end to one’s life. We take inspiration from the Elijah story: it does not end with the prophet’s death. Instead, the Lord appeared to him, gave him food and drink, and “he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.”

One can never predict exactly when the most meaningful moments of one’s life will come. As Kathleen Fischer writes: “We do not know what is our ‘hour,’ the time when events of most significance may occur in our lives. It may in fact be the final years, months, or moments of that life.”

If this approach be trusted and taken, one must consider at least possible that spiritual experiences defining for our lives can take place in extreme old age. Perhaps this confidence is worth hoping and praying for.

Richard Griffin

Pain

All during the week when I prepared to write this column, I was in pain. This pain had no clear reason for visiting me – I was not sick – but it made for a difficult few days. The experience does, however, enable me to speak with more authority about pain than I would like to have.

A Gallup poll taken last summer discovered that nine out of every ten Americans experience pain at least once a month. Fifteen percent of them report the pain to be severe.

The same poll found that more than half of Americans over 65 experience pain daily. And a staggering 88 percent attribute their pain to growing older.

As a result of this assumption, many people do not talk with their doctors about pain. Of those who do, less than half think their doctors fully understand how it makes them feel.

Only a little more than one-third of older people, the survey also found, will even talk with family members and friends about their pain. And two-thirds of Americans in all age groups will see a doctor only when they cannot stand the pain any longer.

These findings apply especially to chronic pain, the kind of pain that continues for a long time. Since more than one-half of people over 65 suffer from some kind of arthritis, this disease is frequently seen as the cause of pain.

Several national organizations, including the American Society on Aging and the Arthritis Foundation, have begun a campaign to help people control their pain better and improve their communication with health care professionals about it. In that effort, these agencies have published a brochure called “Speaking of Pain” that offers “tips to help you talk with your doctor about pain.” (To get this brochure, call 800 283-7800.)

The authors of the brochure advise preparing for visits to your doctor by giving thought to questions about where you feel pain, how often, how strongly, and what makes your pain feel better or worse. These are commonsense issues but many people go to their health clinics without thinking them through.

When actually with your doctor, you are advised to ask questions such as the following: What do you think about the options for relief such as exercise, meditation, and so-called alternative therapies? What side effects should I expect with certain treatments? How can various forms of exercise help me?.

Throughout, you might benefit by taking notes to help you remember the doctor’s advice. I would also suggest bringing along a friend or family member with whom you can listen to the doctor’s advice and then discuss it.

The brochure writers end with what they call “the last word on pain.” To quote their conclusion: “You don’t have to live with pain. Follow the suggestions in this booklet and work with your health care professional to relieve your pain.”

The medical director of the Arthritis Foundation, Jack Klippel, reinforces this point of view for elders: “Pain is not a natural part of growing older,” he says, “and is not simply a fact of life.”

To assess just how realistic this outlook is, I contacted one professional health care provider and two retired women who have experienced serious pain.

Robert Furman, as a staff physician at the New England Rehabilitation Hospital, deals with many people in pain. He too does not believe that pain should be considered a natural part of aging. For him, the important issue is “to determine if it represents a disease process that can be remediated or not.”

Dr. Furman feels grateful that so many resources are now available to help people control pain. At the same time, he says “We live in an overly medicated society and I want to avoid simply adding one more item to their medicine cabinet.”

He also makes a distinction between pain and suffering. Part of his job as a physician is to talk with patients and help them sort out the differences. Even with pain, many people manage to keep their sense of themselves intact and carry on their lives rather well.

Asked how she has coped with pain, Joan Keenan gives a lot of credit to her physician, Peter Gross, at Massachusetts General Hospital. “He is very sympathetic and interested in what I have to say,” she reports. “He gives me his complete attention.”

Joan has found that pain “can take over your life” so “you can’t give in to it and have to keep going.”

This comes close to the attitude of Kathryn McCarthy who thinks “the question is what direction you go in seeking help. You can never stop looking for a solution.”

She notes that more and more hospitals nowadays have established pain units, important resources for patients. For her part, she feels fortunate to have a skilled and sympathetic personal physician who has helped her find remedies for her pain and its attendant problems.

Physicians like those mentioned here, and patients such as the two women interviewed, point the way toward doctor/patient collaboration as a creative response to pain.

Richard Griffin

Lieberman and the Sabbath

Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic Party’s candidate for Vice-President, has announced that he will not campaign on Saturdays. As an Orthodox Jew, he holds the Sabbath to be an altogether special day on which work is not an option.

“My religion is very important to me,” says Senator Lieberman, a sentiment that no one doubts is sincere. Of course, religion has importance for the other major candidates as well and they presumably make Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, a time for worship and some other activities different from the rest of the week.

For Orthodox Jews, many laws and regulations govern the observance of the Sabbath (Shabbat, as most of them refer to it). These rules are intended to safeguard the meaning of that day and to ensure that the tradition behind it not be lost. Keeping to these prescriptions enhances the value of that special time between sundown on Friday till Saturday evening each week.

The celebrated Jewish leader and scholar, Rabbi Abraham Joseph Heschel who taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, a few decades ago published a beautiful book called The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. First appearing in 1951, this work later went through several editions and has since become a classic.

In this short but profound volume, Rabbi Heschel offers insight into the meaning of the Sabbath that brings out its many-sided significance. To read it is to develop a new appreciation of what the day may mean for Senator Lieberman and the millions of other men and women who share his faith. Words from this book quoted here make eloquent material for meditation.

Rabbi Heschel insists that Judaism is a religion oriented largely to time rather than to space. The Sabbath consecrates time and overturns people’s ordinary values. “There is a realm of time,” he writes, “where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.”

And again: “Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.”

Many people would argue that the value of the Sabbath lies in its giving us a break so that we can return to the week’s work with renewed energy. But Rabbi Heschel rejects this approach. Standing this argument on its head, he insists “The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath.”

Ultimately, the rabbi finds the worth of this special day, not in anything merely human, but rather in what it tells us about God. “The likeness of God can be found in time, which is eternity in disguise,” says this deep thinker. By focusing attention on time rather than space, the Sabbath reminds believers that God is not a thing. Because it is spiritual, this special time suggests that no definition can grasp God, that the divine eludes human grasp.

So a theology lies behind the Sabbath, a doctrine that begins with the Bible’s story of the creation of the world. After having made the world and all that is in it during the first six days, God put the finishing touches on the final day by taking three actions: God rested, he blessed, and he hallowed, says Rabbi Heschel. That means that the Sabbath is a time for abstaining from work, it is a day that has received the divine blessing, and it is a day filled with holiness.

I asked one of my readers, Phyllis Reichart, a 42-year-old single mother, what Shabbat means to her. Her answer seems in beautiful harmony with Rabbi Heschel’s views and, for all we know, with Joseph Lieberman’s as well.

“I think that we need to have time to stop and listen inside,” she answers. “I hear my connection with God, I get a sense of direction in my life’s task, and clarity in my relationships with myself, with my loved ones, and in my work. I remember (a lot of it’s about remembering) to feel from the deepest part of myself.”

Richard Griffin

Brighton Kids

While waiting for a bus one noontime, a few weeks ago, I was pleasantly accosted by a group of boys and girls who, writing pads and cameras in hand, were seeking answers to a large question – “What will the world look like one hundred years from now?”

The kids, it turned out, were taking part in a summer program sponsored by an organization called “Citizen Schools.” Ranging in age from 10 to 14, these young people were based at the Garfield School in Brighton.  Led by their teacher, 24-year-old Amy Kooyoomjian, they were interviewing adults on the street and collecting the answers for a book.

Invited to meet with them some weeks after they had gathered the information, I had the pleasure of talking with the kids about their interview findings and about aging. They proved to be remarkably perceptive and eager to exchange ideas with me about what they had learned.

In recounting parts of our discussion, I have mixed together what the children report hearing from their interviewees and what they think on their own. Clearly, the two are closely related and flow into one another.

This group of eight kids shows forth the new Boston-area diversity. One speaks Arabic, another Cape Verdean, to cite only two examples of their linguistic range. The variety of family backgrounds in such a small group witnesses to dramatic changes that have taken hold in this metropolitan area in recent decades and adds spice to the views they express.

One theme that kept coming up is the place of technology in the world of the future. Rachel worries that there will be no more human interaction – everything will be done by computer. We are already too dependent on computers and telephones, she thinks. Though nothing dire actually happened, preparations for possible Y2K meltdowns showed how fragile the system is.

Giovanni, age 10, believes that “people might be lazy because they have too much technology.”

Some of the kids feel that older people get left out of technology. But Deema told everyone about the use of the computer in her family: “My grandmother emails me once a week from Saudi Arabia,” she announced. And Keith, age 12, added: “I chat with my grandfather online.”

The boys and girls also express concern about natural resources. It might help that, in the next 100 years, cars will fly and roads will be underground. But Rachel fears that the ozone layer will be depleted, too many trees will be cut down, and water resources will be scarce. After suggesting that “it may be difficult to survive 50 years from now,” she eases that prediction by saying that “maybe in 10 years a new invention will help.”

Frequent mention of city construction projects caught my attention. One fellow whom Athena interviewed told her that in the next hundred years,  construction in Brighton may actually be completed. Deema also mentioned the same issue, suggesting that urban street upheavals and demolition of buildings are getting under people’s skin.

In looking ahead, the kids mixed the predictions they heard from others with their own hopes for a better future. There will be “less poverty, disease, and war.” “People will get along better,” another says, and Amanda adds, “I hope there will be a lot less homeless people.”

“They shouldn’t sell guns,” says Athena.  Deema wants the world “to be cleaner and larger for new populations.” Kelee, age 14, was one of those reporting that “the health care system will be a lot better.”

Joshua, for his part, told me about a time capsule being assembled by the kids and their plans to bury it in the school yard.

Heightened social awareness among these kids emerges as one benefit of this educational project. That comes close to what their teacher Amy sees as the value of the experience: “having them step out of their realm of age, looking toward the future.”

In any event, it is encouraging to see such young people feeling this concern for others less well off than they. It augurs well for the future in which everyone, young and old, has a vital stake.

In response to my question, the children unanimously agreed that they cannot imagine themselves 70 years old. This answer confirmed my suspicion that a benevolent provision of nature makes that impossible for kids.

But the question led to at least one precocious observation. One of the girls said: “Aging has to do with experience.” She went on to explain that how old you feel is determined by what you are going through. If you are on vacation, you might feel ten years younger; if you are feeling stressed out, you are going to feel older than you actually are.

These children show the value of creative education. They even know how to take in stride the views of the fellow who, when interviewed, told them that, in the next 100 years, the world is going to end.

Richard Griffin

Water and Air

Maybe it helps to have learned how to swim only in middle age. As a result of coming to this activity so late, I still feel a vivid sense of wonder that the water holds me up. What a miracle that I can make my way on top of mounds of water, no matter how deep they lie below me!

After all, water would seem not to have enough solidity to support the weight of my body. When you scoop it up into your hand, water appears entirely too weak to sustain a single pound, much less hundreds and thousands. How can it possibly support my weight or that of huge ships of one hundred thousand tons?

By now, my sinking seems hardly a possibility. Unless I deliberately swim beneath the surface, there is almost no way in which I will go under. The water appears to have a buoyancy that keeps me on top, prevents my body from slipping beneath the ocean waves or the ripples in a pond or pool.

There is something so elemental about the water that surrounds me as I swim! Considering that so much of my bodily substance is composed of water, I am not only surrounded by it but almost formed by it, inside and out. What is this mysterious stuff – water –  that remains so close to who I am physically?

The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles considered water one of the four basic elements that make up reality. He thought it one of the fundamental materials of nature. Given the importance that modern science gives to water in the universe, it is not hard to see how Empedocles arrived at his view. His was a profound insight, one still worth thinking about.

So, on these summer days I travel to the water, immerse myself in that delicious world, and marvel at being carried along almost effortlessly. I lie on my back with abandon, in confidence that this fluid will serve as my bed for as long as I wish. How refreshing to feel the coolness of the water; how reassuring to feel buoyed by its all-embracing lightness of being!

For a time, at least, my anxieties flow away. Now I can follow the urgings of spiritual writer Elizabeth Lesser “to be at home with your life just as it is; to rest gently on the waters of the mysterious universe.”

These summer days also bring the subtle pleasures of sitting outside on the porch, breathing in the early morning or late evening breezes. The air is so delicious it makes me feel tempted to stay there long enough to let work go undone. The crisp gentle rush of air touches my face and reaches inward to my soul.

Not surprisingly, Empedocles named air as another of the four elements that make up reality. Again, his was the profound insight to recognize how all-encompassing is the air around us. The Greek philosopher would presumably have welcomed the description that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins gave of air, over two thousand years after the time of Empedocles.

These are the images that Hopkins applied to it:

“Wild air, world-mothering air / Nestling me everywhere.”

And later:

“This needful, never spent, / And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink, / My meal at every wink.”

Air seems even closer to spirit than is water. You cannot see it at all, only feel its effects. It circulates over my face, bringing me refreshment and peace, but I fail to grab hold of it. Perhaps because of its physical subtlety the air can reach into me and touch my soul.

When air forms into wind, as it often does these summer evenings at the approach of thunder storms, then it stirs stronger emotions. Then one feels power, the dynamism of the world around us. Air then evokes in me awe, along with awareness that not all the soul’s surroundings can be peace and quiet.

No, days and nights will also be marked by turmoil, at least at times, and I will have to wrestle with the powers and principalities of evil. But always I hold hope of return to those times when the air will blow peacefully once more.

Richard Griffin

Face Morphing Toward 65

To stand around the children’s face-morphing booth at the Museum of Science’s “Secrets of Aging” exhibit as I did for a couple of hours last week was to encounter loads of kids anxious to see what they would look like at age 65 (and at various intervening points.)

I had been present when the exhibit opened last April to much hoopla among museum officials and assorted gerontologists. Since then, reports had circulated about the crowds of boys and girls who come to see themselves grow old. I wanted to make a return visit to see for myself what was happening.

Also, the more I thought about face-morphing, the more I felt doubtful about its suitability as a tool for teaching the realities of aging. Might it not be, I wondered, that this gimmick was giving the wrong message and thereby going against the purpose of the whole exhibit?

In fact, face-morphing has turned out to be far and away children’s favorite activity in the ongoing Secrets of Aging exhibit. It looks as if some of them must be tearing themselves away from the Museum’s featured attraction, Sue, the recently discovered Tyrannosaurus Rex, looming up menacingly and boasting some ninety percent of its fifty or sixty- million-year-old bones.

Here are some comments I heard outside the two face-morphing booths from kids like eight-year-old Christian from the western suburbs of Boston. Looking as if he had tasted something bad, he commented on another boy’s experience: “He’s disgusting at 42.” About seeing himself at 65, he said, “Not good; I don’t want to grow up.”

Donna, a mother from North Reading, watching one of her sons morph his way to 65, told him: “The girls say you’re getting ugly.” To another son she said, “That’s when you look the best – as a little boy.”

A kid from Hingham named Madeline called the experience “scary” and said she was “shocked” to see herself old. But, by contrast, her sister Natalie judged that she aged well and her mother thought Natalie looked more like her father as she aged.

A smaller girl had a different idea altogether, “I want to go to the mall,” she fussed as she tried to tug her harried mother in that direction.

Some adult passers-by, though ineligible to morph, also took an interest in what was happening. Bill Fennell, a resident of Abington with a face really 65 years old, commented on the scene: “That’s kind of negative. That would depress me if I were young.”

His sister-in –law, a visitor from Dublin named Marie Fennell, leveled a gerontological criticism at the morph-makers: “They should emphasize that you’re made up of body, mind, and spirit.” For her, showing the changing of one’s face alone was leaving out altogether too much.

That comment comes close to my feelings about the demonstration. To me, having kids morph their faces suggests that aging means changes in outward appearance, largely negative changes at best. This particular experiment ignores what is most important about growing older, namely changes in mind and heart.

Yes, as written materials on the wall advise kids, their faces will grow longer, their skin drier, and they will probably develop wrinkles. They may also show receding hair lines and more flab in their face muscles.

But is that nearly so important as the changes that will take place within? Given that many children are likely to focus on face morphing to the exclusion of other parts of the exhibit that might balance this activity, should not someone emphasize that aging involves much more than looking different? Above all, it means being different.

Jan Crocker, the woman who is the museum’s director of temporary exhibits and manager of the “Secrets of Aging,” acknowledges having had some doubts about face morphing at the beginning. “Is aging merely cosmetic?” – that is the question it posed for her. However, she feels that the exhibit as a whole establishes a healthy balance and answers the question clearly. Aging is indeed much more than seeing a person’s face become transformed.

One mother to whom I spoke, Regina Corraro Clanon of Carlisle, made a point of this with her children. In discussions with them she discovered that they all had a bias against growing old. Part of her reason from bringing them to the exhibit was to counteract that bias. In asking them about older and younger, she received the precocious response from one of them, “When you’re older, you’ve done so many more things.”

And another mother who also happened to be from Carlisle, Nancy Di Romuldo, said something beautiful to her kids about aging: “You become wiser and more knowledgeable and life makes more sense.”

So perhaps face morphing, for all its high-tech dazzle, needs to be supplemented by other educational experiences and to be put in context by savvy parents.

Richard Griffin

Spirituals with Barnwell

The power of spirituals sung in community was brought home to me again last month as I took part in a workshop led by a dynamic African-American musician named Ysaye Barnwell. I will not forget anytime soon the way this charismatic woman conducted some two hundred of us in song.

But before we sang, Dr. Barnwell told the story of two women in the book of Genesis. Sarah was the wife of Abraham who, in her old age, became the mother of Isaac. By contrast, Hagar was a slave woman from Egypt who had borne Abraham a son, Ishmael, when it seemed that his wife Sarah would not be able to conceive a child.

Not surprisingly, bad blood formed between the two women in the household triangle, leading to a demand from Sarah that Abraham send Hagar and her son away.

Dr. Barnwell sees the Sarah/Hagar conflict as a prototype of the present-day conflict between Jews and Arabs in Israel. That view leads her to raise the questions: “Could women play a unique role in resolving the current crisis in the Middle East?” “What if Sarah and Hagar were to meet and talk?”

As she explored these questions with members of the audience, Dr. Barnwell sang blues for Hagar the exile. She pointed out that, though this slave woman was forced to wander in the desert with her son, Hagar was only the second woman in the Bible to whom God spoke directly.

When she prepared us to sing, our director divided the group into four parts: sopranos, tenors, altos, and basses. And she taught us how to come in at the appropriate times as we sang each round.

In the first song, “Wade in the Water,” the refrain repeated over and over goes: “God’s gonna trouble the water.” It presumably leads back to the Book of Exodus when the escaping Israelites walked through the sea and their enemies drowned in their pursuit.

The second spiritual was  “Sometimes I Feel Like a Mourning Dove a Long Way from Home.” It featured the refrain “O Lord, don’t you leave me alone.”

Next came “I Wanna Die Easy When I Die.” Here singers repeat the refrain expressing a longing for ultimate fulfillment: “Soon I’ll be done with the troubles of the world – goin’ home to live with God.”

The final two hymns we sang were “Way Over in Beulah Land” and ‘O Lord, Give Us Power.”

As we moved joyously through each of the spirituals, the words took on greater intensity. Repeating them over and over drew us into a kind of trance. That movement was helped by our clapping of hands in rhythm to the music until we found ourselves in a new spiritual place. The old saying, “The person who sings, prays twice,” seemed to take on new meaning for us all.

The themes struck by these traditional hymns give expression to a classical spirituality. The words suggests a background of slavery – that of the Israelites in Egypt but also that of people brought held in captivity in 18th and 19th century America.

Being away from home is another theme, one closely related to that of slavery. The world is full of trouble, especially for people deprived of freedom. But they have confidence in God and rely on his power to deliver them. Even at the hour of death, believers trust to God’s love. They know themselves to be going home to God in heaven.

At the same time, the faithful expect God to empower them on earth. The prayer for power expresses hope for deliverance from oppression. In a refrain from another spiritual, South African women sing “We are the ones we been waiting for.”

Americans of many different ancestries can find in the great spirituals sentiments and emotions that buoy them up. You can easily find yourself swept up into a feeling for what is most important in the spiritual life. These songs seem inspired, like the biblical psalms, and breathe the same spirit.

Returning to the story of Sarah and Hagar, one can imagine the two women, not merely talking with one another, but joining in songs like these great spirituals. Being enabled to sing together to God could perhaps do more to bring them together in peace than mere words can do.

Richard Griffin