With friends like these two, how can I miss as a writer? The one, an age peer from Winchester, attaches a note to the material he sends me, adding “if you can’t get a column out of this, better hang up your shingle.”

He has sent me an article by Zoe Ingalls in the Chronicle of Higher Education that is all about an artist, Jacqueline Hayden, who exhibits life-size nude photographs of elderly men and women. These photos have reportedly drawn sharply contrasting reactions from viewers.

At the Yale University Art Gallery a 70-year-old woman docent told the artist she found them “repulsive.” But at an exhibit in Northampton, an older woman thanked her because it was the first time “I’ve ever seen anybody on the wall who looked like me.”

Does my friend expect me to construct a peaceful path between zealots who feel turned on by the naked elder body as a sublime new concept of beauty and critics who find the whole idea repugnant? Where’s that shingle?

The other friend of many years’ standing, a Canadian, emails me from Montreal, heading his message “grist for your mill.” Then he states “I presume that Saul’s sex life is good material for your column.”

He informs me about a newspaper story on the Nobel Prize winning writer, Saul Bellow, becoming a father again, this time at age 84. Bellow, it turns out, was born in the province of Quebec and grew up there before his family moved to Chicago when he was nine. And, to make matters even more Canadian, the new mother, Janis Freedman, Saul’s fifth wife, was born in Toronto.

“Perhaps their ‘Canadian roots’ have something to do with their fertili-ty,” my friend suggests.

So should I contact Saul Bellow and ask him if indeed that is true? “Do you, Mr. Bellow, feel more virile by reason of spending the first nine years of your life in America’s attic, as the great Canadian novelist Robinson Davies used to call his country?

Or, perhaps, I should ask him if he takes Viagra. Recently a couple of friends over sixty were telling me about being on this pill. One of them, age 62, reported that his doctor, a woman, had taken the initiative and given him a pre-scription, remarking that she thought it would be good for him.

When I asked these latter two gentleman about the effects of Viagra, they both agreed that it had served them well. Their phrasing intrigued me, their saying that “it helped make the work easier.” I had not quite thought of the activity that way but perhaps thinking about it as a form of work rather than retirement could be provocative.

This being America, I feel sure that I could have provided an interview with many more details from one of those fellows but, again, because of readers’ sensibilities I have refrained.

In place of the interview, perhaps I can simply allude to some new body-oriented definitions that have been making the rounds on the Internet. They de-rive from a weekly contest appearing in the Washington Post.

“Abdicate” is a verb meaning “to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.” Similarly, the adjective “flabbergasted” means “appalled over how much weight you have gained.” And “lymph” is another verb signifying “to walk with a lisp.”

Far be it from me, however, to make fun of my age peers whether round, heavy, or, for that matter, lisping. You will never find me badmouthing anyone who can boast about having lived long. Rather, I leave joke-making about elders  to the boldest of professional comedians.

Among them, Jonathan Winters, himself an elder, stands out for his ability to deliver an occasional anecdote that pokes fun at people of a certain age.

Recently, on the “News Hour,” he told host Jim Lehrer, the following story flowing from a group trip that he and his wife took to Greece.

They were coming out of a temple some 50 miles from Athens. He noticed a woman turning toward him. “I know who you are,” she said.
“Yes, so do I; it’s on my dog tag,” he replied.
“You are him, aren’t you?,” she continued undeterred.
“I’m him,” the comedian admitted. “But the important thing is who you are, dear,” he added.
“I’m Agnes Lenler; we’re from Terre Haute, Indiana. This is my husband, Howard, my second husband. My first husband was run over.”
(“Better be on your toes,” Winters silently admonished the successor.)
“Let me ask you something, Mr. Winters,” the woman went on.
“Yes.”
“What did you think of the temple?”
“I was terribly disappointed,” said Winters.
“Why?”
“Everything was broken.”
“My God, man,” she exclaimed, “it was five thousand years before Christ.”
“It should be repaired by now,” Winters suggested.
The lady shook her head.
Then the somewhat crabbed husband said to her: “You know, honey, a lot of men are completely burned out.”

Richard Griffin

This month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of my return to the world. In Feb-ruary 1975, I signed papers by which the pope released me from the priesthood and, at the same time, the Jesuit order allowed me to depart from its ranks. During that month I began living on my own the way I had never done before.

This double departure brought to an end an ecclesiastical career that had also lasted twenty-five years. My Jesuit years featured many experiences still precious to me: the euphoria of discovering a deeper spiritual life in the novitiate; teaching in Jesuit schools and in adult education settings; living in European countries; and, most of all, ordination to the priesthood and the ministry that flowed from it.

On occasion, people still ask me why I left. When they do, I usually give them the short answer – “I changed.” A more satisfying answer takes several hours of conversation or hundreds of pages of memoir. Just tracing the changes in me takes a long time; when you add the startling changes that took place in church and society during my quarter of a century among the Jesuits, the answer becomes much more complicated.

The leaving itself took place in an atmosphere of mutual respect and affection be-tween Jesuit officials and me. I then felt greater respect for the Jesuit society than I ever had before.

My ties to former colleagues remain strong and I count many members of the clergy as good friends. I feel fortunate that the church had changed enough that my de-parture could happen without the animosity and secretiveness of previous practice.

Despite the satisfactions and joys of my first career, I have never regretted leav-ing. Returning to the world has brought me great blessings. Among them, marriage and fatherhood rank highest, but the opportunity to experience life from new angles has con-tinued to feed my soul. Ordinary experiences that have palled by now for some of my college classmates have remained fresh for me, starting late in life as I did. Just being a householder, for instance, is something that I still enjoy.

To have been given world enough and time for multiple careers and a variety of experiences as a lay person gratifies me greatly. That’s why I’m celebrating in my heart this month’s anniversary.

There does remain one catch, however. Despite serious efforts, I have not been able to escape ministry entirely. The Hound of Heaven, it seems, has not yet done chasing me. Last winter in Florida, I returned to the pulpit after a twenty-four year lapse, to preach about the spirituality of aging, an exercise that I am repeating several times this winter.

Still, I welcome the identity of layperson. This vantage point of not being an offi-cial spokesman has given me a freedom to “experiment with truth,” as Gandhi put it, and to take my place as an ordinary member of society. The mystery that characterized my early career has not disappeared, fortunately. But the mystique has, and I feel freer to ex-plore the world anew.

Aging gives a perspective that increasingly seems precious to me. The accumula-tion of years enables me now to see patterns in my life that previously remained obscure. I can discern a providence at work that has guided me toward fulfillments that I had never expected to experience.

Tentatively at least, I have been enabled to answer for myself various questions. One such question that used to trouble me goes this way:  “Was my entering the Jesuit ranks a mistake, one that I should have escaped from much sooner?

This issue now seems to me artificial, one that does not require an answer. That was simply what I did with my life;  this course of action helped make me who I am. My entering was a good, though mixed, thing; so was my leaving.

For me, it is important to cultivate both continuity and discontinuity in life. That’s why, when celebrating my return to the world, I cherish many experiences from the time when I was living outside the world.

But I also place high value on my breaking with the disciplines of my first career. Doing things that I had never done before, starting in middle age, was welcome to me and I am glad that my life course broke into two parts.

Two peak experiences, one from each half, stand out in memory for their iconic character. The first was my ordination to the priesthood in June of 1962. When Cardinal Cushing laid hands on me, I felt ecstatic with a joy that stayed with me for weeks.

Similarly, when I stood nearby at the birth of my daughter in January 1980, I felt a joy that swept over me along with a mix of other emotions so intense as to bring tears to my eyes.

Both events remain vitally important to me. They help define a life lived in two different spheres of being.

Richard Griffin

Last winter, on a visit to Orlando, I traveled by van to a professional meeting at Disneyworld. On the way I admired the brilliant night sky that featured a full, white moon surrounded by bright stars. All of a sudden, however, I was struck by doubt forcing me to turn toward a colleague with a pressing question – “Is it real?”

This question frequently arises for me in Florida. I feel wary about the tricks of the Disney people and their collaborators. They know how to put moons and stars up into the sky and make them look like the real thing.

On my latest foray into Florida last week, I experienced the same blurring between reality and illusion. This time the site was a town called Lady Lake, some sixty miles northwest of Orlando. The place features a giant retirement community now numbering about nineteen thousand people, considerably larger than the surrounding towns. It is called “The Villages” and encompasses half a dozen or so enclaves in the form of gated communities.

The Villages’ Town Square consists of stores, restaurants, theaters, and other establishments, all made to look much older than they actually are. These buildings wear signs identifying the dates when they were supposedly built. The dates, however, turn out not to be real but rather to be invented so as to make everything seem of another era.

The most prominent building is a church, not built by any religious group, but rather by the developers of the Villages. It looms up tall and serves as the focal point of the surrounding area. In passing, the visitor notices “ruins” – low walls that purport to date from the time of the Spanish settlements. These, too, it turns out, cannot be taken seriously except as artifacts playing their part in the ensemble.

Village residents also make use of paper bills that look like the real thing except that they carry pictures of Mr. Schwartz, the patriarch who founded the Villages, on the twenty and his son on the ten. Everybody calls this “funny money” but it can be used as cash for purchases.

The powerful Schwartz family that developed  the Villages plans to extend them across what are now neighboring fields. They will build many more houses and villas for the crowd of future retired people expected to pour into central Florida.

As must show in these words, I have trouble with the concept behind all of this illusion. Out of sympathy with the developers, I like to take my reality straight, without the sleight of hand that so much of Florida features. Please allow me to live with things as they are, rather than in a reality that has been engineered out of shape.

What I did find real, however, are the people who live in this retirement haven – at least those who come to St. Timothy’s Church where I had the pleasure to giving talks on aging and spirituality. The men and women who take part in the life of that church turned out to be vital and stimulating. My discussions with them renewed my hope for the future of our country, where aging will help shape the coming decades.

St. Timothy’s parish has enrolled an astonishing six hundred people as volunteers in some fifty ministries. They visit the sick, feed the hungry, bring holy communion to shut-ins, and work on social issues. As the woman who serves as a professional coordinator of the volunteers told me, “People here are very giving, they’ll do anything for anyone.”

Sitting down for an hour and a half with a group of six of these people, I discovered a lively sense of their group resources. As Milton, a retired marketing manager, says: “The one thing I love is there is someone here who has been there and done that, anything  you want to talk about from jet engines to the stock market to putting in telephone wires. The amount of knowledge is staggering.”

So, I would add, is a spiritual resource – the will to serve. These volunteers identify strongly with their role as church ministers. They think of themselves as on the edge of a new church, one in which the ordained priest feels happy to acknowledge the lay priesthood of members. These people are unanimous in crediting their pastor for recognizing their role, as not simply supplementary, but as at the heart of what it means to be a church member.

And the volunteers feel rewarded in this ministry. “There is always someone to pat you on the back and say you did a good job,” enthuses one woman among them. Another says, “How much more I gain from this experience than I ever give!”

So in a land where illusion plays a large role, it is gratifying to find so many people for whom the reality of service to their fellow human beings looms so large.

Richard Griffin

My long-time dear friend, (let’s call him Paul), has endured several weeks of life-threatening crises. Major surgery three times, continuing infection, return trips to the intensive care unit, and other horrors have entangled him in a seemingly unending round of severe health troubles. Along with his many other friends, I have felt much grief and foreboding at what Paul has had to suffer.

This suffering began weeks before he entered the hospital. While undergoing a series of tests to determine the cause of weight loss, lack of appetite, and undefined pain, he continued to decline alarmingly.

What shocked us friends was the discovery that Paul’s primary care physician had not actually seen him for at least a month. Instead, during this period Paul was seen by his doctor’s physician’s assistant and by the physicians who supervised his tests, but never his main doctor.

It still seems almost incredible that a doctor with overall responsibility would neglect to take an action probably taught on the first day he began medical school, namely: Look At Your Patient and See How He Appears!

Admittedly, Paul’s illness would have been difficult to diagnose under any conditions. But friends who saw him recognized immediately how badly he was hurting. That he was allowed to decline so alarmingly for weeks without intervention still shocks those of us familiar with this history.

In reflecting on the experience, Paul draws this conclusion: “The medical system is geared to do things in a certain way,  – for example giving tests. If you seem to be getting sicker, you have to do something yourself, even if the medical staff says you’re all right.”

From my friend’s experience and his analysis of it, I have taken at least  two lessons to heart.

First, if we can, we must all advocate for our own health care. We cannot risk waiting on initiatives from professionals. To a certain degree, we must push our health care providers to take care of us. Otherwise we run the risk of neglect that can lead to serious harm.

This holds especially true for us elders. Unless we are rich and famous, we can easily find ourselves deprived of top-flight care or, for that matter, adequate care. In all too many situations, if we do not advocate for ourselves, health care professionals will not give us the attention that we need.

There is at least one large problem with this advice, however. Many people cannot find in themselves this kind of zeal for demanding their rights. Especially when they do not feel well, they may be unable to summon up the necessary bravado. That was my friend Paul’s situation.

My second lesson, therefore, follows. If we can do so, we should find someone to act as our advocate.  It can make a decisive difference for seriously ill people to have a relative or friend  to help push for  needed medical attention.

In Paul’s crisis, several of his long-time friends got together and came to the consensus that he should be hospitalized immediately. We then asked one of our number, a physician himself, to take the initiative and press for Paul to be admitted.

That, in fact, happened and none too soon. It was quickly determined that Paul needed immediate surgery. Further delay might have led to his death.

After his admission to the hospital, though he then got excellent care, Paul continued to need someone to advocate for his needs. Fortunately, at that point he received constant support from one of his brothers who traveled from another state and remained with Paul every day for weeks. Not only did this brother help to sustain Paul’s morale during this ordeal, but he also proved an important advocate with the medical staff.

This saga of my friend Paul dramatizes the need for family members and friends to take initiative on behalf of others. Many do, in fact, but more of us either fail to recognize the need to take action or let obstacles deter us.

It can be touchy to come forward when we judge a friend or family member is ail-ing. We may run the risk of indignant rejection. Persistence may be required if we are seriously committed to helping.  And much tact may be a needed to prove ourselves advocates worthy of the sick person’s trust.

I still think, however, that friends and family can be indispensable when one is hurting. I take satisfaction from knowing that my friend Paul found such people in time of crisis who may have saved his life. Everyone ought to have family and friends like this.

To become good healers, physicians depend upon our sharing with them our feelings about ourselves and our own appraisal of what’s wrong. In many instances they also need to hear from family members and friends who know the patient well.

Far from resenting such advocacy as interference, wise physicians will know how to respond to the benefit of the person who is sick and needs healing.

Richard Griffin