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Spirit and Life

Two weeks ago a Brazilian archbishop, known in many parts of the world as a champion of the poor and oppressed, died at age 90. I count as one of many spiritual blessings the opportunity to have spent some time with him when he visited the Boston area in 1969 and 1974. His memory will remain with me as an inspiration.

Helder Camara was small in stature but large in spirit. He dressed in a simple soutane, wore a cross made of wood rather than silver or gold, and lived in a small house in Recife instead of the palace reserved for the archbishop of that city.

Dom Helder (as he was called by almost everybody) believed that the Catholic Church in Latin America had to change its priorities and champion the millions of people forced to live without decent food, clothing, education, and other necessities. Together with other bishops in the late 1960s, and the 1970s and 1980s, he attempted to turn the attention of both church and secular society toward those left out.

Dom Helder saw the United States as having a vital role in this mission. Our nation’s power over Third World governments was one thing; another was the part that giant American corporations played in the life of other countries.  

When Dom Helder visited at my invitation in 1969 he came to Harvard University where I was chaplain, and spoke to students, faculty members, and others about our responsibility toward the impoverished peoples of the world and our opportunities to influence our country’s policies to make them more just and humane.

He liked to speak of “Abrahamic minorities,” people who, like the great patriarch Abraham at the dawn of sacred history in the Hebrew Bible, “hoped against hope.”  Even though the chances of ever changing the condition of the world’s poor always seem hope-less, Dom Helder believed that even a minority of people who place their hope in God can make a difference.

If all of this makes Dom Helder seem an ideologue, I have given the wrong impression. In going around my impoverished Boston neighborhood, as well as at Harvard, I noticed the marvelous warmth he showed to the people he met. He made himself fully present to each person, a reality that made me think of him as another Pope John XXIII, whose effect on people in the 1960s had been similar.

The second visit of Dom Helder came at the invitation of Harvard. The university gave him an honorary degree at the 1974 commencement. He seemed an unlikely choice, this man whose style of life clashed with so many of the university’s wealthy associates. But he told me that he found hope in the assurance given him by the Harvard president, Derek Bok, that the university would respond to his calls for help.

Another person who showed himself willing to help Dom Helder was Cardinal Cushing, who was then archbishop of Boston. When I took the visitor over to see the cardinal, the latter gave him a check for a thousand dollars, not in itself a large sum but enough to signify Cushing’s support.

As this century comes to an end, Dom Helder’s style of leadership within the Lat-in American church has become rare indeed. His successor in Recife promptly moved into the archiepiscopal palace and has shown little regard for Helder Camara’s social values. Liberation theology seems, if not dead, at least on a respirator.

However, I like to think myself not alone in continuing to hold in high regard the life and work of a church leader who brought Gospel values to bear on behalf of the dis-possessed. I will not ever forget the way he taught me to link the teachings of Jesus with the real-life situation in which so many people of the world are forced to live. I also ap-preciate the way Dom Helder chose to live simply himself so as to be closer to the poor.

I also continue to draw inspiration from some of the things he said. Writ large on a truck used in my city by people who distribute groceries to those in need are these words of Helder Camara: “When I give food to the poor, they called me a saint; when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”

Richard Griffin

Helder Camara

The archbishop seemed an unlikely candidate for an honorary degree at Harvard. Yet in June, 1974, this diminutive, 75-year-old, Brazilian churchman, dressed in a simple black soutane with a wooden cross around his neck, showed up in Cambridge at the invi-tation of the university. During  the commencement exercises, Helder Camara, Archbi-shop of Recife, was recognized for his charismatic zeal, exercised on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised.

Memories of his visit twenty-five years ago were stirred up in me last week by   reports of his death at age 90. Long since retired from his archdiocese, Dom Helder (as he was commonly called), continued to the end his burning advocacy for people deprived of society’s goods.

In the course of long life, one looks back with thanks for the opportunity to meet great-souled people along the way. That’s how I feel about the time I spent with Dom Helder. Much to my satisfaction, I served as his host during the time he spent in Cam-bridge both in 1974 and earlier when he came at my invitation for three days in 1969.

My main effort, as a Harvard chaplain then, was to put him in touch with students,  faculty members, and others for whom his message could make a difference. Many of those who came to hear Dom Helder speak at our Catholic student center and elsewhere were already aware of his efforts, and that of other South American church leaders, to change the fundamental stance of the Catholic Church.

They wanted to move away from support for the rich and powerful toward the poor and left-out. Emboldened by the Second Vatican Council, these leaders worked to make the church break with centuries of favoring the established forces of society.

This “preferential option for the poor,” of course polarized the church in the coun-tries where it was adopted by the bishops. Even though a majority of Latin American bi-shops had endorsed this radical agenda at a famous conference held in Medellin, Colum-bia in 1968, still the struggle to carry it out met fierce opposition both from secular forces and from those sectors in the church opposed to change.

As I recall Dom Helder’s message at Harvard, it was largely an appeal to us Americans to endorse fundamental change in policies that were causing  misery in Third-World nations. So long as the United States continued to back corrupt governments and to support unjust practices of some large corporations, then the poor would continue to suffer.

The world situation, he said, gave much reason for people to lose hope. But he de-scribed himself as belonging to the “Abrahamic minority”  – – those who continue to hope against hope.

This hard message Dom Helder delivered with great simplicity and in Gospel terms. His was basically a religious, rather than a socio-political message, though his enemies would always accuse him of meddling in matters foreign to his calling.

At one point in his earlier stay, I remember taking Dom Helder to visit Cardinal Cushing, the then Archbishop of Boston. Though Cushing practiced his own forms of austerity, the spacious house in which he lived made a vivid contrast with the simple dwelling where Dom Helder lived in Recife after having refused to move into the archie-piscopal mansion.

With his typical generosity toward third-world bishops, Cushing disappeared ups-tairs at the end of our visit, came down and presented Dom Helder a check for a thou-sand dollars.

Reading the New York Times obituary, I could not help but reflect on the effects of the liberation theology preached by Dom Helder. Though detailing his accomplish-ments, the writer notes the many efforts to reverse his influence.

A friend, Ellen Warwick of Arlington, has called my attention to what she calls “the law of unintended consequences.” One such consequence of liberation theology, in particular, comes loaded with irony. As noted in the Times, many thousands of Catholics in Brazil and other South American countries have abandoned the Catholic Church and have converted to evangelical and Pentecostal churches.

Indeed the tide of Church-led reform seems to have long since peaked. Society in many third-world countries has led a successful counter-attack and returned to the for-tress of the status quo. The heady era of challenge to vested interests in the name of faith would appear to have passed. The president of Brazil can declare three days of official mourning for Dom Helder, but many of his successor bishops have closed the door to ba-sic reform.

Still, I like to think that spiritual greatness makes a lasting difference. I take com-fort in its traces. To me it’s a consolation that a delivery truck of a nutrition program in my city  bears the words of Helder Camara painted large: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”                                

Richard Griffin

Bus Event

The narrator of this story was sitting in a Manhattan bus one day when he noticed an old fellow getting on with difficulty. The man walked haltingly and his arms shook as if he had Parkinson’s. The story teller felt immediate concern about the fellow finding a seat.

Not to worry, the seat next to the story teller became free and the fellow struggled over to it. But he did not stay long; after a few stops he got up, went to the front of the bus, and promptly got off. The story teller noticed that the fellow now walked much more confidently and without any signs of the disabilities that had been so evident a few minutes before.

Then the narrator suddenly remembered something. For a few moments, the fellow’s left arm had disappeared from sight.  This memory prompted the narrator to feel for his back pocket. It was then he discovered that this pocket was now empty.

This urban tale appeared a few weeks ago in “Metropolitan Diary,” one of my favorite sections in Monday’s edition of The New York Times. Since that time, I have moved beyond the humor of the story to ponder its significance.

The story carries punch because of the stereotypes that almost everyone has about elderly people. If it had been a young man who pulled off the scam, no one of us would have been surprised. In fact, there would have been no story.

But no one expects an old man to do anything criminal. We think such a person inoffensive by reason of age. Even though you do not have to be rippling with strong muscles to commit a crime, still we assume that people of advanced years will never rip us off.

In fact, we may go beyond and assume that older people never do anything  wrong. It’s as if the aged have lost the capability of sinning because they are too debilitated for committing acts of immorality.

This view, though it at first seems favorable to older people, in fact robs them of something basically human. The capability to do evil marks our humanity to the very end of our days. So much so that, if we cannot do evil, then we cannot do good either.

Virtue remains a choice for us up through age 100 and beyond. We are not forced to be good; the invitation merely remains open.

Some older people remain remarkably nasty, perhaps the way they were earlier in life. They are not pleasant to be with because they are so filled with harsh emotions. I remember a woman who used to call City Hall when I worked there. Nothing ever pleased her; she would harass city officials like me as her daily recreation. She seemed thoroughly estranged from virtue.

It does not serve older people to sentimentalize them, to make of them children below the age of reason who are incapable of sin. One of the great dramas of age is to see what will become of us morally. I like to quote Jesse Jackson who is fond of saying “God is not through with me yet.”

Like everyone else, we elders must struggle against temptation. No matter how debilitated we might be, we cannot take a vacation from the moral battle. Most of the sins, at least, that were available to us earlier in life are still at hand. And some new ones have come along as well.

The new ones tend to be much more subtle than pick pocketing or shoplifting. One of the most insidious is selling ourselves short. A morose conviction that we aren’t worth much any more is a temptation that assails not a few elders. We are seduced into internalizing what we take to be society’s view of us, that we are has-beens, mere relics of usefulness.

This is a kind of desperation, I suppose, that in our secret heart drives us down in-to low spirits. We lack the power to make a moral statement of our own value. For us, it would be an act of virtue to assert both within ourselves and to the world at large that we continue to count for something.

How the mischievous fellow on the bus felt about himself, I have no idea. Perhaps he went home feeling that he had struck a blow for age. More likely, he was content to splurge using the ill-gotten cash from the unlucky man’s wallet.

But, whatever he did with the loot, he proved to himself and, thanks to “Metropolitan Diary” the world, that he is still a moral agent or, in this instance, an immoral one. There may, after all, be something better about such a condition than there is in despair at one’s ability to do anything meaningful at all.

Richard Griffin

Bubble Gum

One day Megan, a seven- year-old girl, called excitedly to her mother: “Look, Mom, look Mom!” For a time her mother was distracted and failed to turn around. When the mother did take notice, she saw that her child had blown her bubble gum into a large bubble, the first time she had accomplished this feat.

Immediately, and unaccountably, the woman burst into tears. Of course, they were tears of joy, prompted by a sudden feeling of the beauty of her child and her own heightened appreciation of the world’s splendor.

This ordinary human event had become a spiritual experience. The woman had received an unexpected vision of the wonder that surrounds everyone and of the God who created it.

This story comes to me from Jan Gough, a deeply expressive  middle-aged woman who practices the ministry of spiritual direction. She judges the mother’s experience a good introduction to what the spiritual life means. For her, it is a fine instance of what it signifies “to feel one’s heart suddenly on fire.”

This spring, Jan completed a year’s training at the Jesuit-run Center for Religious Development in Cambridge. This internship proved to be an intense and wonderful experience for her. She found the people at this center open to her, a Presbyterian in a Catholic environment. They showed themselves flexible as if accepting a truth that Jan expresses in these words:  “God hasn’t read all the rule books we have written about God.”

Jan learned spiritual direction by two methods: first, by actually doing it (Jan had ten people who came to her each week); and second, by receiving supervision from a veteran spiritual director. The supervisor, in reviewing her work, did not focus on what she might have said wrong, but helped her “identify where you are getting in God’s way.”

That phrase comes close to what spiritual direction is. In Jan’s view, it is “the opportunity for a person to help another person discover how God is trying to speak to them in their life.”

This activity may seem elitist, if only because most people, even those serious about the spiritual life, do not have individual directors. Whatever direction most of us get comes in a group setting, especially in church or in some other formally religious place.

But Jan feels strongly that almost everyone can profit from having an individual director. To her, spiritual direction should not be an activity reserved for the a privileged few, but something that remains accessible to almost everyone.

When I asked her if you must have faith in God, she replied: “Spiritual direction presupposes an openness to the possibility of God or some supreme being that wants to be in relationship with us.” “When spiritual direction works,” she adds, “it’s because people let themselves be loved by God and experience the presence of God.”

In taking on the direction of others, Jan got off to a dramatic start. Her first directee was a 49-year-old woman who was dying. For the last nine months of the woman’s life, Jan helped this woman remain open to God. “It felt like a pregnancy, like giving birth to something sacred,” Jan told me.

“Was it hard?,” I asked of this experience. “It wasn’t hard,” Jan said, “because it was so grace-filled. People who choose to live until the day they die, who choose to be open to where God might be leading them, the gift that they give the rest of us is extraordinary.”

Before her death the woman made Jan and her colleagues promise to get together regularly for a year after her death as “a resurrection group.” Commenting on this experience, Jan says: “The opportunity to think that, even in death, your life can be generative, is an incredibly important concept.”

Jan tells of another woman who felt drawn to God because her husband was dying. But the woman felt scruples about returning to church. “It doesn’t seem fair to go to church now in the hard times when I haven’t been there in the good times to praise God.” As her spiritual director, Jan helped her see that God welcomes everyone when they turn to Him, no matter what.

More detailed information about spiritual direction is available at retreat houses, churches, monasteries, and other religious centers.

Richard Griffin

Kitty Hawk, etc.

Joe Hardman, in retirement, works as a volunteer guide at the Wright Brothers national park in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. There, before large groups of visitors, he explains how Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903 became the first persons to take flight in a motor-driven, heavier-than-air flying machine.

The subject is fascinating in itself: two Ohio bicycle-shop mechanics who dreamed of human flight managing to pull it off and achieving undying reputation. But Joe makes it all the more compelling as he shares with people of all ages this typically American story. Standing in front of two life-size replicas of the original airplanes, Joe explains in expert detail the engineering behind the Wrights’ great feat and also the human drama.

As a tourist myself last week, I listened to Joe with fascination. Afterward I asked this 70-year-old  how he had acquired such knowledge. “They gave me a five-foot shelf of books,” he explained. In others words, his was no canned speech repeated over and over; rather, he had studied his subject and mastered it enough to talk about a wide variety of materials and to answer a wide range of  questions.

In his earlier career, Joe told me, he had been a foreign service officer for the United States and then a manager of the Fulbright program in the federal education department. So he brings much experience and sophistication to his volunteer position in Kitty Hawk. No wonder he carries off his teaching role with such aplomb.

Joe Hardman, though outstanding for his competence, was only one of several elder citizens whom my wife and I encountered on this vacation trip. At Antietam, the Civil War battle site, we found a similarly well-qualified guide in Gary Delphey. This gentleman told me that he is a retired bank officer who now contributes his time to public service.

From a position on a porch looking out over the fields where the Union and Confederate armies clashed repeatedly in 1862, this seasoned guide explained the ebb and flow of the battle. Inevitably the other listeners and I visualized the strategy of Robert E. Lee and the countermoves of Union General McClellan. Even though my sympathies were with the North, I thrilled to the crucial intervention of General A. P. Hill, who force-marched his troops from Harpers Ferry,  and  saved the day for the Rebels.

At Gettysburg, veteran guides abounded. Though our tour around miles of battlefield took place in our own car, before setting out we noted the human resources available. I remember asking one man of mature years who was dressed in a National Park Service uniform if he was a volunteer. His one-word answer amused me: “Almost.”

At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s magnificent home near Charlottesville, Virginia, our guide was Bess Kane, a woman who possessed detailed knowledge both about the house and about its owner. The range and sophistication of her lore impressed me. Only last year I had read American Sphinx, the biography of Jefferson written by the Mount Holyoke College professor Joseph Ellis, so I was well-positioned to recognize a skilled presentation.

What a welcome change all of these superb talks represent! They strike a brilliant contrast with the spiels of the past, parroted by guides who knew precious little about their subject. But I suspect there may be more to it than that.

It seems to me that the guides we encountered on the vacation tour are people who love their country’s history and wish to pass it on to others, young and old. They have imbued themselves with the events of America’s past and have come  to value what we as a nation have experienced on our way through history.

Though they approach their official duties seriously, they seem to go beyond mere duty and take pleasure in sharing with others the knowledge they have acquired through study and reflection. In doing so, they have assumed a role in society that befits older people. Not only do they hand on a tradition vital to our common life but they also offer some evaluation of that history, letting us know what is important and why.

In doing so on a large public stage before huge numbers of people who come from all over this country and, indeed, the world, these guides help us lay more secure hold of our traditions. They help bring to vivid life the pages of history books that previously may have remained dry documents for us.

These veteran guides also help us flesh out the folktales that we learned long ago, correct them, and give them a local habitation and a name. And they seem to relish what they are doing. Gary Delphey, the Antietam guide, told me of his pleasure: “I enjoy it. It’s the least I can do for those fellows who sacrificed so much so long ago.”

Richard Griffin

The Great Secret

“It is told: In the city of Satanov there was a learned man, whose thinking and brooding took him deeper and deeper into the question why what is, is, and why anything is at all. One Friday he stayed in the House of Study after prayer to go on thinking, for he was snared in his thoughts and tried to untangle them and could not.

“The holy Baal Shem Tov (“Master of the Good Name”) felt this from afar, got into his carriage and, by dint of his miraculous power which made the road leap to meet him, he reached the House of Study in Satanov in only an instant.

“There sat the learned man in his predicament. The Baal Shem said to him, ‘You are brooding on whether God is; I am a fool and believe.’

“The fact that there was a human being who knew of his secret, stirred the doubter’s heart and it opened to the Great Secret.”

This anecdote belongs to a group of stories collected in two volumes by the famous Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. Called Tales of the Hasidim, these books are full of brief narratives that breathe religion and spirituality.

The stories center on religious figures of 17th century eastern Europe who were leaders of Jewish communities. Most of the tales are set in  Poland or Russia and reflect the sufferings imposed on the Hasidic people of that time and place.

Not only are the stories charming and graceful in structure; they breathe a piety that is grounded in a deep faith and love of God. Often certain details require explanation but the incidents narrated here speak across the centuries.

This particular story strikes a familiar theme – – the inadequacy of mere human knowledge for grasping the divine being. Personal study about the mysteries of the universe, no matter how profound, can carry a person only so far. In fact such investigation frequently causes a person confusion. The role of the rabbi is to release the thinker from this confusion and lead him to the release of faith.

In this instance the great rabbi known as the Baal Shem Tov calls himself a fool but a fool who, through his belief, has been given access to knowledge not possessed by deep thinkers. This theme, celebrating the sublime foolishness of faith, has also loomed large in Christianity, especially in the writings of Saint Paul.

Miracles also figure prominently in these stories and add to their spiritual charm.  In this instance, the rabbi reaches his destination faster than any modern jet airplane could transport him. The rabbi also can read the human heart at a distance and, without being told, is aware of the philosopher’s problem. And it is this special knowledge of the problem that solves it, that releases the man from his doubts.

The issue itself is expressed with simple monosyllables – – “why what is, is, and why anything is at all.”  These are the questions that greet the person who breaks with routine and takes the trouble to wonder about the origin of ourselves and everything around us.

The answer given to the doubter in the story is described only as “the Great Secret.”  Listeners are not given  a definition but are left to ponder what the phrase means. Clearly we are meant to understand this title as the central mystery of God, the author of all that exists.

The simplicity of the rabbi’s response to the problem  has great power. This power flows, not from the clarity of rational explanation, but rather from the teacher’s ability to read the man’s interior.

Also the man is cured of his doubt, not by argument, but because his heart is stirred. The rabbi’s ability to see into his problem and his concern for the doubter’s spiritual well-being clearly touch the man where he lives.

Time and place are important for full appreciation of the story. But the tale itself transcends these circumstances and speaks to the spiritual seeker of every era. The central issues remain the same; their solution leads in the same direction.

We, too, find ourselves often perplexed by the most important questions. Maybe, at times, we doubt the value of the spiritual enterprise. But the Great Secret, in all its power and fascination, remains.

Richard Griffin

Pool Encounter

Two of us older guys, he my elder by at least several years, arguing strenuously about their space. This scene at the pool where I swim every day must have fascinated those who witnessed it.

He was swimming down the center of a wide lane reserved for people with handicaps. I was prepared to climb in myself and, in accordance with universal custom at the pool, share the lane with him.

As I started toward the ladder, however, the other fellow explained to me in no uncertain terms that he was doing backstrokes and could not guarantee my safety. I told him in reply that I was coming in anyway and would take it upon myself to stay out of his way.

That declaration threw him into a rage. As I climbed down the ladder, he stormed up edging me out of the way. Then I began swimming down the lane taking care to stay on the left side so that, if he wanted to reenter, he would have plenty of space.

But instead of getting back in, he walked down the side of the pool almost foaming at the mouth with anger as I swam, bitterly accosting me with profanity, using in particular one word that I cannot print here.

By contrast with him, I remained calm throughout but resolutely determined to exercise my right to one-half the lane. I found it easy to refrain from abusive language myself but was not above a couple of subtle verbal jabs.

My best line, admittedly the title of a recent book written by a colleague, was “Thank you for being such a pain.” Stunned by this rapier-like thrust, he could only reply by lamely throwing the same words back to me.

The fellow soon gave up, left me be, and went – – presumably to do his backstroke – – to another lane. But all during the rest of my swim, I had visions of him coming back and, in renewed fury, beating me about the head with a blunt object.

How should one evaluate this short but intense conflict between two older men? For me it raises issues that are different from those that would arise from such an encounter between two young guys.

That we could engage in such a duel breaks a certain stereotype of older people. As one writer, the psychologist Mary Pipher, observes: “The old are admired for not being a burden, for being chronically cheerful. They are expected to be interested in others, bland in their opinions, optimistic, and emotionally generous.”

Such a stereotype certainly fits neither me nor my antagonist. On that afternoon, at least, there was nothing bland about either of us, cheerful, nor, I fear, emotionally generous. We were acting with abandon, free from the expectations society has for people of a certain age.

For feeling free to enter the lists of conflict, I am thus tempted to award both of us points. Advancing age has not dulled in us the fires of irascible emotions. When provoked, each of us can rise to the occasion in ardent defense of what we see as our rights.

On sober reflection, however, the event appears more complicated. If age remains indeed free for the expression of emotion, still we elders are supposed to have grown enough in grace and wisdom to have established control over our feelings, especially our irascible ones.

No matter how we justify the exchange of nasty words, there remains something disedifying about seeing two people of mature years engaging in such a conflict. People who heard us going at it could reasonably feel let down by this spectacle.  In some way we seem to have damaged society by resorting to violence, if only in words.

Haven’t we learned by now that disputes can be settled by peaceful means?  Should we not, at least have been able to discuss the merits of our case without resorting to personal abuse?

As I left the pool that day I felt mixed: though I had said something unkind, I never resorted to abusive language.  Throughout the fray I had remained completely calm. And I successfully claimed what I saw as my right.

But I recognized some failure too. I had violated my own code of personal ethics. I could not credibly claim to have loved my neighbor as myself. And there I was, supposedly a champion for the cause of older people, giving offense to one older than myself.

Like most other human experiences, this encounter was a mixed reality. It embodied both good and bad together. If I should happen to meet this unknown fellow again, preferably with our clothes on, perhaps we can talk calmly about what happened. We might be able to walk away from such a discussion as friends or, at least, no longer at enmity.

Richard Griffin