“I will take my chances on the power of intercessory prayer,” my Protestant theologian friend replies with an impish smile. I had asked him what he thinks about the many prayers promised me by friends during a recent illness.

“You’ll be in my prayers,” they have told me over and over. Having heard about my being sick, they promise to include me in the daily requests they address to God.

I cannot remember explicitly the names of all the friends who have responded to my need for comfort with the same kind of spiritual gift. They obviously consider their prayers for me the best gesture they can offer.

I much welcome these offerings of spiritual support. It gladdens my heart to realize how many people care enough to make mention of me in their prayers a priority

However, I have lived into an age when many people have given up any credence in the value of prayer. Normative in some ways is the attitude expressed in an affectionate letter I have received from a friend in her twenties. She writes: “I just wanted you to know you have been and will continue to be in my thoughts.”

This experience has made me reflect on prayer and the belief that it can change things. In that effort I welcome the reflections of others who have studied the history of this prime spiritual activity.

In their newly published book entitled Prayer, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski offer many examples of traditional prayer that is integrated with a larger culture. This they contrast with the kind of prayer often associated with modernity that is little more than therapy. Deeply individualistic, it seems valued because it works.

Of prayer directed toward bodily healing, these authors emphasize its connection with community. “Healing prayer, we submit, is a work of repair, reknitting the social fabric that is frayed by illness or ruptured by death. It is a divine work, but its natural medium is a flourishing religious culture with a robust sense of communion between self and society, between society and the transcendent. Failing that sense of communion, healing prayer often takes on the appearance of a strange embellishment or an oddball obsession.”

To me, the prayers of friends are evidence of that sense of communtion and reflect a deeper spirituality than may ordinarily be evident. Meister Eckart, the 14th century German mystic once said “There is nothing so much like God as silence.” Some of my well wishers may have discovered through silent prayer an approach to God that has given them deeper insight into reality than one would otherwise imagine.

Do I think that prayer has enough power to change my health for the better? Though I remain open to this possibility, this is not a question I focus on. For me it is enough to be included in the daily chorus of petitions that people everywhere make to God on my behalf. I welcome being part of that mysterious process.

I do not expect, much less demand, divine intervention directly delivered to improve the functioning of my bodily organs. Rather, I believe in the ways my physicians and other health care providers have to express the goodness of God toward me.

Similarly, I look to family members who gift me with precious loving care at home; they also give expression to divine providence toward me. Visiting nurses and others suggest to me that someone attaches significant value to my life and well being.

Our historical era also features bizarrely opposite attitudes toward prayer. Many people, Americans especially, show themselves fanatic on the subject and feel free to direct God’s thunder upon those whose politics they dislike. The spoutings of televangelists on the right have precious little in common with the faith that has marked my whole life.

I value the tradition of prayer that has graced every stage of my lengthening life. To have prayed for others all during this time and to have been included in the prayers of countless other people has made me part of an expanded world. I look back with pleasure on the many occasions when I have joined with people of other nations and traditions as we have stood together in expressing our needs to God.

Often I feel dissatisfied with the quality of attention I give to prayer. The best remedy for this problem, I have discovered, is to rely on the prayers of others. They can pick up for me my lack of spirituality by including my prayer in a widespread chorus of believers.

Among its other features, prayer offers a fine remedy for isolation. It can bring us into contact with a community much larger than we normally imagine, one made up of those who strive for spiritual gifts such as hope and love. When this chorus comes marching in, I want to be of this number and I feel thankful for those who have reached out toward me.

Richard Griffin

My friend has announced surprising news. In the near future, Bill, as I will call him, intends to get a hearing aid. Family members have been telling him that he often does not hear what they are saying to him and he has noticed himself missing what others tell him.

You would expect me, as a more or less rational person, to welcome Bill’s decision to invest in hearing assistance. After all, I’m the guy who years ago in another column approved of Bill Clinton acquiring hearing aids for each ear. When still in the White House, Clinton announced the change, explaining that long exposure to loud music and blaring political meetings had damaged his hearing.

Similarly, I have applauded other friends when they have outfitted themselves with artificial hearing devices. I have also condoled with them in their complaints when the aids do not work as well as advertising promised.

In Bill’s instance, however, I confess to feeling resistance to the idea. Perhaps it’s that he is the friend I have known the longest. Ever since we were schoolboys together, decades ago, we have remained close. Ours is the pleasure of frequent association that includes sharing the major events, both joyful and sorrowful, that have marked our lives.

What bothers me about Bill’s prospective new move is that, to my inner feelings, it seems like diminishment. Bill is becoming deaf, as he freely admits to me and others, and that grieves me. Of course, I admire his courage in making this admission; not everyone can summon up the gumption to recognize this disability, and many stubbornly resist the efforts of others to make them get help.

Given the rational choice, I would certainly want Bill to hear what is said to him, rather than to hold his ground and refuse to get a hearing aid. Knowing from such long experience what a marvelous friend he is, I want him to be fully involved in my life, in that of his family, and with his other friends.

So why should I be saddened? For a long time, I have been an enthusiastic admirer of the technological advances that improve the livers of other people. And I have advocated the kind of openness that allows us to change. Bill is, to me, a model of such openness.

Still, there is my emotional response that refuses to welcome instances of decline among those that I care about. Perhaps the strength of my emotion comes from a series of diminishments that I have recently experienced thanks to emergency surgery. I now find myself feeling closer to disability and diminishment than I have ever felt in my adult life.

On the deepest level, experiences of this sort are sobering because they remind us of the ultimate decline that leads to death. I shrink from facing my own diminishments because they are a prelude to the final taking away of my human functions.

Perhaps I can here invoke a man who speaks and writes with wisdom about these matters. Dr. Andrew Weil recently gave an interview to the online service Beliefnet on the subject of aging and its spiritual values.

He finds the denial of aging, so pervasive in American society, to be based in the fear of death. “Aging is a constant reminder that we’re moving in that direction,” he says, “so I think that’s the root fear.” He adds that we fear other things as well such as the loss of independence and of familiar pleasures in life.

Weil’s formula for dealing with these fears is “facing them squarely and being honest about them.” But his main response is to pursue a vigorous spiritual life, a recommendation that I second heartily. Spirituality, in my book, remains a strong support for people struggling with some of the difficult issues of later life.

As part of that approach Weil believes in meditation. About this practice he says: “I think meditation has, first of all, really helped stabilize my moods. I think it has also increased my concentration and made it easier for me to be more mindful .  .  . and I think it’s made me more aware of my non-physical self.”

My own appreciation of meditation goes in a somewhat different direction but I also value Weil’s approach to it. I rely on this spiritual exercise to help me deal with the mixed feelings I experience at many stages of my later life. Meditation, especially with friends, buoys me up when I face unexpected challenges.

In meditations over the coming weeks, I hope specifically to sort out my feelings about my friend Bill’s decision and what they reveal about my attitudes toward my own life. Perhaps a tension will remain between my rational and elemental self on this issue but I will look toward a better integration between the two.

Richard Griffin

If Bob O’Shea had ever wanted to bring all his friends together in one place, he would have needed to rent Fenway Park. At least this was my fantasy─and that of many others─about the number of people he could call friend.

Last week. Bob died, some three months before his 77th birthday. His death made me weep both for him and his family, and for the loss that I suffered of my longest and best friend.

Bob and I remained close for 63 years, ever since we started high school together in 1943. In both high school and college, he majored in friendship, focusing on personal relationships that always meant more to him than anything else.

At St. Sebastian’s Country Day School, founded only two years before we began as freshmen, Bob led the way in a vibrant social life. While most of his fellow students, notably me, were gangly adolescents, Bob had an assured poise in almost every situation. It was said that, when he called on a girl to take her out, he would also charm her mother as well.

He had a great gift for humor, then and ever afterward. Conversation with him typically provoked laughter, no matter how seriously he took the subject at hand. He had an acute sense of the ridiculous, and never took himself too seriously.

But his life revealed dimensions that we would not have suspected 60 years ago. Some of us thought him destined for an early marriage, often surrounded as he was by charming young women. However, he had the patience to wait for the right one. He married in his 50s, and his life was happily transformed.

Long ago, his friends observed that although he was a bright student, he never allowed school work to interfere with real life. Nor was he obsessed by rules, being celebrated for his ability to charm his way out of uncongenial restrictions.

Throughout his life, his intellectual interests remained strong and active. And his early skepticism about rules belied a steadfast moral sense that helped him provide a compass for those in search of one.

A line in the newspaper notice of Bob’s death describes him well: “Beloved friend of many.” Understating it this way merely hints at the intensity and the scope of his friendships. He was deeply loved by an unusually large number of people.

His family was at the center of his world. When he was 55, to his continuing happiness, Bob married Lauren Curry. A few years after their marriage, he and his wife adopted two daughters in South America. They were a great gift in his life and Bob observed to a friend that he and Lauren had secured the national treasures of Bolivia.

The family circle extended further, for Bob’s love and concern for others included his brothers, his nieces and nephew, as well as numerous cousins. One younger cousin has written of him: “I always knew I could call on him to get grounded, when I felt like a lonely planet out there.”

There were others as well. His niece Janique says: “At last count, his godchildren were numbered in the 50s.”

Much larger was the group of people with whom Bob did business as an insurance agent. He did not regard his customers as mere purchasers of insurance coverage. Instead, he made friends of them and their concerns became his own.

He took his faith tradition seriously all his life but he was not uncritical about it. When the sexual abuse crisis erupted in the Archdiocese of Boston, Bob was deeply angered by both the perpetrators and the authorities who had done nothing to stop it. He loved his Church and, for that reason, felt deeply critical about those who misused its authority.

For me, Bob was the epitome of love and concern for others. I once wrote a column about him in my series on spirituality. Since I did not dare ask his permission, knowing he would reject any suggestion that he was any sort of paragon, I used a pseudonym to describe a man who practiced a ministry of helping other people.

Without indulging in sentimentality, I described him as a kind of saint. This portrayal would have horrified him, but to me it was the reality of his character. The spiritual tradition that he and I espouse says that, ultimately, all you have to do is love.

But this statement drips with irony because loving is one of the most difficult of human activities. It must have been difficult for him too, at least sometimes. But that is the way he lived his life.

This, ultimately, is what made him unique. He was a man whose concern for others stretched wide. If the fulfillment of spiritual life is to love, he reached fulfillment long ago. That is the reason why he leaves behind so many people who both mourn his loss and celebrate his life.

Richard Griffin

To take part in a meeting this fall, I went to the Executive Office of Elder Affairs in Boston. This agency is located in a state office building on Beacon Hill, a block or two from the State House.

On entering the building, I was confronted with a security apparatus that featured a moving conveyor belt and a passageway for screening weapons. Dutifully I placed my jacket on the belt along with my outer coat.

After I walked through the frame and set off beeping, armed guards equipped with handheld devices for detecting dangerous items in clothing surveyed my body seeking the reason. After emptying my pockets of loose change and keys, I was cleared to enter.

You know this routine by now. Maybe you even feel comfortable with it. I do not, nor do I wish ever to accept it as normal. To me, this procedure, however widespread, comes as an infringement of civil liberties, something I do not want to forget.

Though it may seem unrealistic on my part, I also question whether much of what is demanded by so-called security is actually necessary. The chances of a terrorist attack on a building like the one I visited are extremely low. But chances that we citizens will be discomfited by being frisked before entering a structure that ultimately belongs to us –  –  these chances approach 100 percent.

My main point here is the importance of recalling what we have lost. To young people, this way of living our lives in public will have come to seem normal. Having remembered nothing else, they will take as an expected part of civic life the presence of security devices and procedures all around us. One service my age peers and I can offer is to recall an America where this kind of militarization was regarded as neither necessary nor desirable.

At the risk of sounding paranoid, I confess feeling wary of government using security as a pretext for exercising control over citizens. Given the widespread use of surveillance techniques and other tools of repression directed toward us, it is appropriate to be skeptical of the appeals by federal officials for unquestioning trust.

This applies especially to parts of the Patriot Act, now before Congress for renewal. With precious little debate until recently, some of our legislators have stood prepared, not only to extend the current law, but to add provisions that would further erode civil liberties.

Among the requirements in force over the last four years, one gives the FBI authority to rifle through the records of private citizens without a judge’s approval. An especially outrageous part of this provision forbids the agency asked to hand over the records from even telling the person who owns the documents (though that person’s lawyer may be told.)

This so-called gag rule applies to libraries and doctors’ offices, for example. Is this the way we choose to live now, or is Congress pushing through legislation that trades away our liberties for a mess of pottage in the form of dubiously valuable information?

Again, people who have had long experience of our national community will remember when we lived removed from an atmosphere of fear and overreaction. Yes, the terrorists deserve blame, and, yes, they too possess new and subtle means of attack; but, too often, we allow them to defeat us by cutting back on our own freedoms.

Americans now growing up may also come to think it normal that the president seized power to tap messages of our own citizens without recourse to the courts. They may also judge it to be standard operating procedure to hold prisoners for years while denying them access to a trial. Of course, the president has the right to take such action, they may think, since these procedures have become so familiar.

My juniors may not be shocked by hearing the sitting vice-president fiercely defend an alleged right of the executive arm of government to approve the use of torture against suspected terrorists. Again, repetition may have made torture seem a normal practice for the United States to use. In this instance, fortunately, Congress finally rose up against the executive branch, forcing it to forbid its intelligence and military agencies from using this practice.

The older generations can perform an important service for our youth by alerting them to the ways in which this country has changed. Governmental actions, attitudes, and values looked upon as normal now were not always so regarded. I hope to see the day when our national government champions the freedoms that made America unique in world history.

Of course, I am not suggesting that all the old ways of doing things could or should be reinstituted. We will not again take our seats on airplanes without having to show identification, as I remember doing.

But we do well to remember when the norm in this country was jealously guarding our civil liberties and careful oversight of presidential prerogatives.

Richard Griffin

Last month, I had an unexpected experience that continues to send waves of awe through my spirit. I held in my hand the oldest known object that exists on earth.

That evening, I had been attending a lecture by a scientist who had brought the object as part of his presentation. He was speaking about the currently hotly debated ways of looking at the origins of the universe and wanted to display something that would dramatize the discussion.

What I held in my hand was part of a meteorite that fell in a field near the small town of Allende, Mexico in 1969. It was a small portion of a larger rock-like substance (perhaps weighing as much as several tons) made up of various iron and calcium aluminum strata. Had it fallen on the town itself instead of an outlying field, this out-of-the-heavens missile could have caused havoc for the people who lived nearby.

As to its age, there is no scientific debate. The long established carbon-dating method has established this object as being some 4.3 billion years old. Simply to have been in the presence of such an object inspired in me feelings of wonder, almost reverence. Lifting up the object and fingering its surface stirred further questions about the time scale of physical reality.

Did handling the rock make me feel any younger? Yes, by providing a new standard of comparison with the length of human life, I suppose it did. A 77-year span of living seems a mere moment next to the amount of time that this meteorite has held on to its admittedly mute, but nonetheless deeply communicative existence.

In a recent article about science and American politics, journalist Jim Holt notes that “three-quarters of the public haven’t heard that the universe is expanding, and nearly half, according to a recent survey, seem to believe that God created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years.”

In fact, many Americans appear terribly threatened by scientific evidence of ages, distances, and sizes that differ from those they imagined as children. Their God seems not large enough to deal with the sheer immensity of the universe and its continuing expansion.

Though I often undergo surprise, and occasional shock, when science reveals new data about the earth, the origins of man, and the behavior of the galaxies that extend so far beyond our small planet, I can reconcile this new knowledge with the religious faith of my early life. A central tenet of this faith is the incomprehensibility of God. The God of my spiritual heritage was always proclaimed to be infinite, that is, without any limit.

The temptation for contemporary religious people, myself included, is to narrow the divine to our own proportions. And, of course, my particular tradition, Christianity, can seem to violate the immensity of God by its teaching of the Incarnation, God becoming man. In a sense, there is a reduction, by virtue of which the divine takes on the limitations of being human.

My tradition has made me comfortable with evolution. The idea that creation as we know it has developed through a variety of forms does not threaten my view of reality. In fact, I consider evolution to be among the most brilliant and most beautiful of the ideas that human beings have ever deduced from observing nature. I don’t know if Charles Darwin was worthy of being hailed as a saint, but I venerate him for the gifts of insight into the natural world that he bequeathed to us all.

I do not need a doctrine of “intelligent design” to safeguard my faith in a creative God. That God has chosen to bring the universe into being by stages and by development suits me just fine. Why must so many of us continue to fear the wondrous ways in which species of living beings have descended through huge portions of time?

Last week’s ruling by federal judge John Jones in Harrisburg correctly defined  intelligent design as a formula used by some religious people to affirm the work of God’s hands in the development of the world. Judge Jones, a Republican appointed by George Bush, stated that this teaching has no scientific standing and cannot be used as an alternative to the teaching of evolution in public education.

This judgment seems unlikely to quiet those many Americans who are afraid of  scientific teachings that leave out God. They can be counted on to press their agenda, even though the new district court ruling adds weight to a previous Supreme Court decision on the subject.

For me, however, the teachings of science serve as a corrective to easy faith. Science does not allow us religious people to domesticate God the way we so often do when left to ourselves. My encounter with an almost impossibly old extra-terrestrial object makes me thankful for touching hard evidence of a vastness that should not be seen as threatening God.  

Richard Griffin

Last week marked the 25th anniversary of the holiday party hosted each year by our next door neighbors, Emily and George. Our hosts have been surprised by how many such parties have occurred. They can hardly believe in the longevity of an event that, when it started, seemed a one-time happening.

They and we were fairly new to the neighborhood then, purchasers of property when real estate prices were as abnormally low as they have been abnormally high in the decades since. We formed a small wave of people attracted by urban living combined with suburban friendliness.

Our street was, and is, a fine place to bring up children, an area where they could walk to their daily destinations without needing to be chauffeured everywhere. For us adults, another strong attraction was having most of our basic services within walking distance or, at least, accessible by public transportation.

Yes, the houses were awfully close together but that could serve as an inducement to good relations with people living cheek by jowl with us. Those of us who lacked yard space – – and horticultural talent – – were happily confronted each summer with the riotously beautiful gardens of near neighbors. And each Halloween, even the smallest tigers and ghosts could easily navigate the short distance from one front door to another.

As time went on, we came to know residents whose families were established here long before us. They helped us to realize what a rich past can be contained in one city block. In turn, we were happy to welcome new neighbors and another generation of children

The annual party has welcomed neighbors old and new, plus alumni of the neighborhood. Those who know the routine expect to sing for their supper, under the skilled leadership of Emily, a professional singer and voice teacher. Gathered around her piano, we sing our favorite carols with a high point reached in the performance of three brave volunteers intoning “We three kings of orient are.”

Then we share in a rambunctious meal to which guests have contributed their most delicious specialties. The abundance and variety of food always brings me back to Christmas as I first experienced it, when my parents would show my siblings and me how splendid a feast day it could be.

Desserts of various kinds complete the party. For me, the hardest choices are forced by the several flavors of ice cream contributed by a maestro of the genre. How can anyone be forced without cruelty to choose between burnt caramel and mint chocolate chip?

Taste treats aside, conversation is another main course available at this gathering. I enjoy the opportunity to talk with friends and neighbors, when we are feeling relaxed and mellow. In the past, politics have occasionally enlivened the discussion, but this year I am resolved not to let my feelings about that man in the White House disturb my peace or anybody else’s.

It is always a special pleasure to see the children who live nearby and to talk with them as they dart in and out of the adult groups. Watching their growth and development provokes continual wonder in me, not unmixed with some wonder on my part if they, in turn, notice me and my age peers growing old.

We used to have a much older generation on our street; now, we suddenly realize that some of us are that generation. Of late, I have come to experience previously unknown disability and can see myself entering into a new stage of maturity. Of course, this is not the whole story of growing older but it does provide an important perspective.

In parts of this neighborhood conversation has already begun about ways of joining together to provide informal services to older people when they may need help. The bonds we already feel among older and younger may provide a foundation for such a plan.

Though it is never fashionable to do so, I also like to remember the beloved dead, people who came to the party year after year and have now passed on into our local history. People like Maud come into my consciousness at this season, a woman whose old age enlivened our neighborhood. Through the paintings that became her trademarks and by the creativity in the way she lived, we appreciated what our own lives in the later years could be.

So hurrah for George and Emily! To them, I lift high my glass and salute their initiative. They have gifted us with a legacy of celebration that has endured for a quarter century, no small achievement.

By sharing festivity with us they have revealed for us the pleasures of living among other people. By wining and dining us all, they have exposed some of the joy inherent in the tradition of Christmas and the other rites that make this season precious.

Richard Griffin

Mary Ellen Geist has returned home. She has surprised everyone—colleagues, neighbors, family members, and perhaps even her former self. At age 49, this woman, who seemed to have achieved everything she wanted in the workplace, has decided to put her career on hold and return to her parents’ home.

Her story, although not unique, is extraordinary enough to have rated a front-page lead in a recent New York Times. Ms. Geist was known to be an active and ambitious woman. She was earning an excellent salary, and her career was full of promise. She lived in a lively and interesting city. She has left all this in order to return to a small, quiet town and  help to care for her 78-year-old father, who has been stricken with Alzheimer’s disease.

Obviously, this step represents a break from an agreeable and affluent lifestyle. We might wonder if Ms. Geist’s decision was taken reluctantly, perhaps motivated by guilt. By her own account, this is not the case. “Nobody asked me to do this, and it wasn’t about guilt,” she has said. In contrast to her former career, this is a situation in which she can make a real difference. She adds, movingly, “And it’s expanded my heart and given me a chance to reclaim something I’d lost.”

As I read these words, my reactions are somewhat mixed. As a father, would I want my daughter to do this? I would be pleased and flattered, and would want to honor the impulse. But I would feel scruples about blocking her professional life, and maybe her personal relationships as well. At the same time, I would honor my daughter’s recognition that professional rewards and economic success are not everything. Such a decision would be a confirmation of her upbringing and of the values we have tried to pass on to her.

Finally, though, I am reminded that my own daughter is much younger than Mary Ellen Geist. A decision that is heartfelt and rewarding for a 49-year-old could be unbearably burdensome for a 25-year old. I believe that there are times in life for certain things. In his book Aging Well, Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant points out that life has its seasons, and that youth is the time to create something new, to see what you are capable of. To disrupt this rhythm is a violation.

Some cultures have certainly been guilty of this abuse. I have known Irish families, for example, in which the oldest unmarried daughter was expected to devote herself to the care of her aging parents, carrying heavy responsibilities without ever developing a life of her own. If her only role in life was to be a daughter, she was denied a certain autonomy to which we are all entitled.

In the case of Mary Ellen Geist, however, these reservations do not seem to apply. Her role was not imposed on her by others. She made her decision freely. She had proven herself in the professional world, and achieved independence. The word “daughter” is not sufficient to describe her.

At the same time, the daughter’s role continues. Her mother has to restrain herself from commenting on her driving, or asking when she will come home in the evening. But both mother and daughter seem to be able to laugh at these impulses. And I cannot fail to be moved by Ms. Geist’s tender relationship with her father as he moves into the twilight of dementia.

To what extent does Mary Ellen Geist’s choice provide a model for our society? The New York Times article cites a number of cases in which daughters have returned home to care for their parents. One is tempted to detect a significant trend here.

But letters from some readers indicate that the situation of such caregivers is not always easy. Affluence helps. Ms. Geist, with her successful career, has a measure of economic security; and her mother is able to provide her with a modest salary that doubtless bears symbolic as well as monetary value. But what of the daughter who faces the loss of income, job security and health insurance, and the risk of a deprived old age? Her situation is not much better than that of the unmarried women whose caregiving responsibilities were imposed on them in youth.

So the decision made by one generous woman does not really show us a universal solution. It does, however, point out one path that is full of spiritual possibility. I reflect that the German word “Geist” means “spirit,” and think how revelatory this name is in this case. Mary Ellen Geist spoke of reclaiming what she had lost. It is heartening for us to realize that a responsibility that might be seen as burdensome is, rather, the means of retrieving something immeasurably precious.

Richard Griffin