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Letter to a 100 Year-Old Friend

Dear Elliot:

I am writing in celebration of your 100th birthday.  To me this anniversary of yours comes as a truly marvelous event. Only one American in 10,000 lives as long as you have. I thank God for having given you this gift of such rare longevity.

That you are now living in Florida, so far from here, frustrates me because I cannot be with you for the occasion. It would be a joy to talk with you face to face about your life at this milestone. Looking back on our conversations when you lived nearby, I relish your recollections of family members and friends we both knew.

You were my father’s best friend, a relationship that still means much to me even though he died almost 50 years ago. At his death in New York City, you were with him, something that served as a consolation to us, his family. He admired you not only as a friend but as a fellow journalist with high professional and personal standards.

One of the benefits that comes with your long life span is that your work as drama critic continues to be recognized and honored. People realize that your reviewing of more than 6,000 plays, along with your teaching and television broadcasting, make a unique record of achievement.

I hope that the annual awards given in your name make you feel rewarded for your many years of hard work. Much to my own satisfaction, a recent book entitled “Eminent Bostonians” includes a chapter about you.

However, knowing you as a person for whom spirituality has always been vitally important, I suspect you do not place ultimate value on the world’s honors. Rather, I have reason to judge that your relationship with God and the interior life are more significant to you than any recognition from others.

I also suspect that your prayer life looms as even more important now than before. Perhaps your later years have brought you spiritual consolations like those of some people in the Bible.

In the Gospel of Luke, Simeon and Anna, two old people, appear when the child Jesus is presented in the temple. Simeon took the child in his arms and thanked God saying  “now you dismiss your servant in peace.” For him, it was the fulfillment of a promise and a moment of spiritual joy.

And the prophet Anna, 84 years old, also praised God for her encounter with the child. For her, too, it was the fulfillment of a lifetime, seeing the child  who was to redeem his people.

Here the Bible presents old age as a time of fulfillment, a stage of life when spirituality can reach its full flowering. Anna and Simeon serve as a model for late life and the rewards it can bring.

However, I know it is a mistake to think of old age as simply a time when good things happen to good people. Realistically, it cannot be easy to be 100 years old. Almost everyone who has reached this milestone has experienced serious physical problems along the way.

I remember you telling me about finding it hard to have lost most of your eyesight. For a man to whom reading was a favorite activity, it is surely a trial not to be able to pick up a book now or to read the newspapers that formed your daily diet at work.

Even more difficult, living with loss of people dear to you is another trial of old age. You have shared with me how you feel about the loss of your dear wife and the deprivation of living without her. No one can take her place, a situation that you have had to live with for several years.

Despite the hardships that come with 100 years of living, however, your birthday is a day of celebration. Members of your family and your legion of friends feel joy at this rare anniversary of yours. Some of the friends are looking forward to an event in your honor tomorrow evening when awards will be given in your name.

I thank God for the gifts that have brought you this far and I pray that you may receive abundant blessings on this occasion.

Richard Griffin

Elliot and Henry

On May 17th, Elliot Norton will be 100 years old. Retired in 1982 after 48 years of writing about theater for Boston newspapers and 24 years broadcasting on his WGBH television program and some 20 years teaching at Boston University, he now will celebrate his birthday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Last fall he moved to Florida after living for several years at an assisted living residence in Newton Corner. His move was intended to bring him to his son David’s area where they could see one another often.

Selfishly, perhaps, I regret this old friend’s moving away to a place where I cannot visit him. I would have much enjoyed being with him, celebrating his birthday, and talking about the old days. This I did when he was still in the Boston area.

Elliot Norton was my father’s best friend, the one who was with him on a visit to New York City when a sudden illness brought death to my father. My thinking about Elliot will always be connected with this fateful event of January 1954.

However, I also relish memories of Elliot’s triply distinguished career as journalist, television host, and teacher. I will always cherish the image of him as a tall, graying, somewhat formal gentleman who brought so much class to the often unmannerly newspaper business. In particular, I recall encountering him on the Watertown trolley one day in 1949 and having an extended conversation with him about my career plans.

How did it happen that Elliot has lived longer than almost every other of his contemporaries?  Rare genes, it would seem, and a balanced life style. Studies of centenarians suggest that having many friends and a clear purpose in life counts for much. If so, then Elliot would certainly qualify.  

About his friends, he loves to talk: I remember him telling me five years ago about Rodgers and Hammerstein and how he enjoyed being with them. But he knew just about everybody who figured largely in this country’s theater scene and many in Britain’s. Of all the great actors he saw, he considers Laurence Olivier the greatest.

His faith has remained important to him as well. Perhaps that is what has always enabled him to carry off his high level of success with such grace and a kind of humility.

As he celebrates his completion of 100 years, I join with his other friends and admirers in wishing him blessings and joy.

His old television home, WGBH, plans this month to show and repeat several times a ten-minute segment within its Greater Boston Arts in celebration of Elliot’s longevity. I have previewed the program and found fascinating the brief clips of him with the young Al Pacino, Ethel Merman, Jerry Lewis, and Neil Simon, among others.

I also want to take note here of another long-lived old friend, Henry Horn. This beloved Lutheran pastor is celebrating his 90th birthday this month and many people have joined in the observance.

Pastor Horn has had a distinguished career serving his church, not only locally, but across the nation as well. He is widely known as a writer, preacher, and seminary teacher.

Among American Lutherans he bears the unofficial title of “the dean of  campus ministry.” For 25 years he served at University Lutheran (“Uni Lu,” as people call it familiarly) in Cambridge, where he ministered to students, faculty, and staff at Harvard and also involved himself deeply in the larger urban community.

He and his wife Catherine are the parents of ten children, all of them graduates of public schools, and each of them the holder of at least one university degree. The Horns also have 21 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Like many others among us, Henry Horn is now feeling some of the burdens of age. Caring for his spouse now looms large in each day’s agenda but he manages to exercise and to maintain his contacts in the community. His spirit of devotion to God and to other people make manifest a strength of character that wears well.

On the first weekend of this month, family members, members of his church, colleagues past and present, and other friends came together at Uni Lu in Pastor Horn’s honor. In prayer and festivity they gave thanks for the abundant years showered upon him. This birthday was a big event on many levels – family, church, and civic society – and resonated in the community.

Henry and I worked together for several years as fellow campus ministers. His spirit of ecumenism was such as to make me feel a strong bond with him and his church. Together, we tried to achieve a balance between change and continuity for the communities we served.

I feel myself blessed to have enjoyed the friendship of Henry Horn and Elliot Norton for so many years. Like others, I hope for them the blessings of long life and I thank them for the rich legacies they have already left to their family and friends.

Richard Griffin

Two Sayings of Rabbi Heschel

“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”

These words come from Abraham Joshua Heschel, a man who inspired many during his long and distinguished lifetime. After escaping from his native Germany, Rabbi Heschel taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York from 1945 to his death in 1972.

Beyond that, he allied himself with Martin Luther King in the struggle for civil rights, he led protest against the Vietnam War, and he provided spiritual dynamic for the age liberation movement of the1960s and 1970s.

“Just to be is a blessing.” A friend with whom I have frequently exchanged views of the world recently received the gift of a deeper understanding of what these words mean. My friend, a physician by training, underwent surgery for a routine health condition. The surgery was expected to take only an hour and recovery would be rapid, everyone thought.

Something went terribly wrong, however, and the operation took much of a day, most of it turning into an effort to save my friend’s life. Two days later, he woke up in the intensive care unit, not knowing what had happened. He had narrowly escaped death and, by now, has recovered completely.

My friend tells me that as a result of this near-death experience his outlook has changed in two ways. First, life has become more precious to him, a gift that he appreciates more than he did before. And, secondly, he has lost his fear of death. No longer is he afraid of what is going to happen to him when his turn comes to die. He is surprised by how free he now feels about the threats to his life that may loom up before him.

My friend now feels more deeply than ever before the truth that being is a blessing. A person of faith, he realizes that his very existence is a gift of God. Being comes from God who creates human beings and everything else out of nothing. Created things share in the mystery of God, the supreme being.

“Just to live is holy.” By right, holiness belongs to God alone. But  the creator has made creatures to share in his holiness. We are flawed, and thus never perfectly holy, but just by living we can partake in what belongs to God.

The heart of holiness is love. So, to the extent that we live by love, we live in holiness. Walking in love, we can embody the holiness of God and bring out the potential of life to be holy.

The classical response in the presence of the holy is awe. When we become more deeply aware of our lives as holy we can feel this amazement at having life. Being alive is a mystery, it goes beyond any explanation we can give, no matter how far our knowledge of genetics advances.

Recently I visited an old friend who is in sharp physical decline. He suffers from the terrible disease abbreviated as ALS. But while his energy and physical abilities diminish each day, his spirit amazed me. He manages to regard his life as precious despite the assaults on it the disease inflicts. Undoubtedly, he must have private moments of doubt, but he seems to cherish his life and care about others around him.

Rabbi Heschel’s two sayings discussed here do not come from a merely optimistic view of human life and the world. This spiritual leader was too sensitive to the presence of evil to have indulged in facile Pollyannish upbeat philosophy of life. Instead, his outlook took root in the hope he had in God.

Hope places confidence in God’s power to accomplish what human beings cannot. This quality of heart also leads toward that reverence for life expressed by the rabbi. “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.” These two statements reflect a soul that has made deep soundings in spirituality and has come up with pure gold.

I propose these two sayings as suitable for carrying around in one’s heart during the day and night. They can serve as mantras, fixed guides that can make our activities spiritually meaningful. Repeated over and over they can ground a person in reality and enable us to lay hold of more of reality than we otherwise could.

Richard Griffin

Brad’s Meditation

My fellow writer and friend, Brad, will not share his mantra with me. It’s private, something he discloses to no one else. In any event, this mantra is not made up of words but rather of sounds. My friend uses these sounds to anchor his daily meditations.

The name I use here is not his real one. Quite understandably, Brad wants me to use a pseudonym and to keep his identity secret. Though one of his most important activities, meditation remains something he considers deeply private. He honors me in sharing details about this activity so precious to him.

Morning and evening, for the last 16 years, Brad has been meditating. Each of his sessions lasts about 20 minutes, time that he considers extremely well spent. What he values most is the way meditating relieves stress. His work is demanding and he looks forward to this routine that enables him to stay calm even under pressure.

“You hit the pause button,” he says, explaining how he gets rid of the stress that accumulates during the day.

Strangely enough, meditation for him also relieves boredom. It gives an edge to daily life, he finds, that counteracts the feeling he often experiences of some activities not being interesting enough to hold his attention. “It’s like taking a shower, you don’t see this as boring. Instead, it’s refreshing and you experience the benefits all day long.”

After summoning up the mantra, getting into the meditation is easy. “It’s largely a question of sitting quietly and closing one’s eyes.” When thoughts arise, Brad does not fight or resist them but simply returns to the mantra. Thus “the mind kind of settles down this way, leaves disturbances on the surface and the mind sinks into these greater states of calm.”

In his meditation, Brad tries to avoid thought. Yet, as with everybody else, this highly experienced contemplator finds distracting thoughts an almost constant presence. These pesky intruders fly into his consciousness unwanted but Brad knows by now how to handle them. What he does is to return to his mantra, those sacred sounds that keep him on track.

Rarely does Brad meditate with other people. That is because the Transcendental Meditation center where he got his start is no longer housed  nearby. But he does attach a special value to doing it with others.

“When you practice with even eight others, there is an absolute palpable difference in the quality of the silence,” he says. “There is a multiplier factor – we’re able to affect each other’s consciousness – without any verbal exchange at all.”

Brad does not regard his kind of meditation as a form of prayer. Rather he relates it to health. In fact, he considers it the most important single thing he does for his health. It affects your physical body, he says, by reducing the stress factor.

He feels the effects of meditation every day: “It’s harder to knock me off my horse,” he reports, “much harder to disturb or upset me, not that I’m unable to be upset by any event.”

Asked whether his kind of meditation has anything to do with God, Brad gives a sophisticated answer. You don’t need any belief in God to practice it; this meditation can be a purely secular activity.

But, on second thought: “In my case it’s a vehicle that I can use to get in touch with the divine aspects within oneself.”

Does that make it religion? “Not religion as taught with dogma or theology, but opening up an aspect in one’s own experience that could be connected with larger consciousness and a larger sense of self.”

This opening can lead to a unity with the divine, Brad believes. “One long respected version of spiritual life,” he says, “is the destiny of the human being is to become God. You can do in your own life what brings you closer to the divinity your own life.”

At the end of the discussion Brad returns to meditation as a hedge against boredom. “That’s important,” he emphasizes, “ because I was able to keep it up.” For him to have continued this practice so long, it had to be intriguing enough. And he holds firmly to meditation as a fascinating and deeply rewarding human activity.

Richard Griffin

Easter Senior Moments

Easter Sunday this year was, for me, a time full of senior moments. No, by that term I don’t mean forgetting but, on the contrary, I mean remembering. For months I have been on a one-man campaign to substitute a positive meaning for the negative phrase that so many people have accepted. In my book, senior moments are times to cherish, not to regret.

These are events, people, and places from the remembered past that continue to provide us with psychic value. This remembrance of things past enriches our lives and make us appreciate the worth of our human experience. Remembering in this way enhances our present lives and reaches forward to give greater value to our future.

On Easter morning I drove to Weston, there to visit some of my old Jesuit colleagues. The expression “old colleagues” evokes three things for me: the number of years they have lived; my being no longer a member of their religious community; and the affection I feel for them.

Though almost 30 years have passed since I left the Jesuits, they  receive me as if I still belonged to them. And, in a sense, I do. We share a history of lived experiences that remain fresh even after the passage of so many years. Over lunch at the Campion Residence, my old Jesuit friends and I laughed about events that happened long ago and still retain power to entertain us and remind us of the bonds that hold us together.

With one of my tablemates, I felt a special tie. Paul Lucey, now 87 years old, was my teacher, 50 years ago, when he was professor of metaphysics at the then Weston College. He gave me an appreciation of the fundamental concept of being that has stayed with me through the years. Scholasticism, the philosophical system that we studied, has largely faded, but some of its basic insights have retained their value, thanks to teaching like his. If I have cultivated and retained a sense of wonder, it is in part due to him.

On a less elevated level we swapped stories of Jesuit characters we had known. One, “Foggy” MacKinnon, a scholar famous for his absentmindedness, was alleged one time to have driven an automobile from Boston  to a convention in Chicago and then to have forgotten the car and returned back home by airplane, a story all my Jesuit friends swear is true.

We also recalled one of Father Lucey’s fellow faculty members, Joseph Shea. His deadly pedagogical practice was to read, year after year, from the textbook he had written. At the bottom of a certain page of this book, students long before had written the Latin sentence “Hic stat P. Shea,” (This is where Father Shea stands up.) Such was his spontaneity that every year he could be relied on to rise at this exact point in the text. And he did in my year. He never did understand why his students all laughed then.

In the course of our conversation, Paul Lucey observed the positive feelings that leavers like me have about their old religious family. That remains true of me because I feel grateful to the Jesuits for all the values, spiritual and human, that they shared with me. My having left almost 30 years ago does not negate those precious experiences witnessed to by my senior moments.

Many of the Jesuits whom I saw on Easter reside in the assisted living or health center sections of Campion. Many of them suffer serious disabilities that have brought to an end their professional work in ministry. One of them, Daniel Lewis, had been teaching at Boston College High School last fall until a crippling illness required him to leave the school. I enjoyed sitting with Father Lewis and recalling some of the experiences we had shared, especially during the year 1964-65 that we spent together studying in Belgium.

Nothing here should be taken to sentimentalize the experience of  the Jesuits in old age. I often felt shocked to see the ravages of disease on men I had known when they were young. I know myself ultimately not exempt from these ravages –  – it’s just that my time has not yet come. In my mind’s eye I could see these former colleagues as they looked decades ago and the contrast assailed whatever complacency I might have harbored.

The Jesuits long ago developed a graceful and meaningful way of describing the retirement of their members. The official catalogue that lists the Jesuits of the United States, some 3500 in all, has a special designation for the work of those who live in retirement. They are described as “praying for the Church and the Society.” Thus their continued existence, no matter the level of their bodily or mental disability, is recognized as of value to their religious family.

Richard Griffin

100 Tips

Americans are famous for believing in self-help books. Starting with Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac of 1733, we have been publishing and buying them at a great rate ever since. Walk into a bookstore and you will find shelves full of advice adapted to every stage and condition of life.

Self-help, however, turns out to be something of a misnomer. Actually, it’s other people wanting to help you. All sorts of people are ready with counsel, flying in the face of mankind’s almost universal experience: no one really welcomes advice from anyone else about how they should live their own life.

And yet the books sell. Can one suspect the lurking presence of masochism, self-torture, which drives us to heed the imperatives that figure largely in such volumes? Something in us, after all, wants to be told what to do.  

But is there not often something patronizing about advising people who have reached 80, 90, or 100 on the subject of how to live? If they have been successful enough at this kind of longevity, perhaps they have been doing something right.

Al Franken, a leading comedian on the current scene, has also got into the act. But he, at least, has fixed his tongue firmly in his cheek. Most recently, he has authored “Oh, the Things I know!: A Guide To Success Or, Failing That, Happiness,” a 2002 book, newly in paperback, that satirizes the self-help genre.

I confess mixed feelings about “100 Tips For Healthy Aging,” a new manual from the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center For Aged, just published in celebration of its 100th birthday. The tips are more than the word suggests. They all begin with imperative verbs, driven words such as “Get” (8 mentions), “Have” (6), and “Protect” (3).

After some 70 years of doing it on my own, do I need to be told “Snack Well?” Or “Wear properly fitting shoes?” Or must those who have them be instructed: “Spend time with your grandchildren or great-grandchildren?”

However, for fear of seeming overly curmudgeonly, let me single out some creative injunctions that do not offend the sensibilities of even purists like me. Here, too, I would prefer exhortation rather than imperatives but these commands have enough merit to make me forgive their style.

“Maintain a sense of humor about life,” the folks at Hebrew Rehab tell us.  In this column, that’s what I am trying to do. As you can see, however, it’s by no means easy to pull off. And isn’t this virtue something you either have or don’t have and will find it impossible to manufacture?

At least, we are not told: “Have a nice day.” To that I might have replied, “Excuse me but I have other plans.”

“Listen to or make music,” they order us.  Bravo!, except they have never heard me play the piano, or, even worse, sing. However, I do believe in listening to the pros and continue to take delight in opera, a dubious habit contracted in my early teenage years.

Under the heading “mental stimulation,” our Hebrew Rehab friends tell us “Keep a journal,” and “Write your memoirs.” Perhaps they should have added a caveat “Take Care Who You Show Them To,” advice that I have been known to violate, to my continuing chagrin.

Another injunction that grabbed my interest is “Pursue spiritual meaning in your life.” Amen, I say, Amen. But I have been running after spiritual meaning for years without having yet caught up with it.

Of course, catching up with spiritual meaning may be worse than pursuing it. As the monk who was rumored to have become enlightened replied when asked how he felt: “Just as miserable as ever.”

Though it belongs in my banal class, the instruction “Wear your seat belt” can at least claim the virtue of simplicity. I need no convincing of its value but, again, must we, who never fail to do it, be told what to do?

This Poor Richard prefers some of the imperatives in Roger Rosenblatt’s 2000 book “Rules For Aging.” For example, he urges: “Do not attempt to improve anyone, especially when you know it will help.” When what Rosenblatt calls the muse of improvement whispers in your ear, he succinctly tells you what to do: “Swat it.”

Now you know what a misanthrope I can be, a guy who can look quizzically at an excellent booklet, full of prudent advice, much of it based on solid research, and tested by experience. And it comes, to boot, from an institution that enjoys an international reputation for its fine tradition of care.

So “100 Tips” is a brochure that you, a person of sound judgment, may well want to have. It will cost five dollars, plus a shipping and handling charge. You can find out how to get it by calling (617) 363-8385 or by emailing
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
.

Richard Griffin

The Mairs and Activism

Some people are worth an encore. That’s the way I feel about Nancy and George Mairs, who were the focus of my previous column. Hearing them talk further has prompted me to share more of their experience and their thinking in the hope readers will find inspiration in both.

Before flying back to their home in Tucson, this spiritually dynamic couple talked about what they call “the activist demands of faith.” They thus gave expression to what they believe to be the requirements prompted by their Christian beliefs.

Joining the discussion on this occasion was their son, Matthew Mairs, who lives in New York City but who came to see his parents during their East Coast visit. Though he shares many of his parents’ values, Matthew modestly says of his own earlier social action: “I didn’t have the guts my parents had.”

There is no disputing that they indeed have guts. Needing help with almost all the activities of daily life and requiring a wheelchair for mobility, Nancy still reaches out to others. George devotes much of his time to assisting Nancy; he has had a life-threatening bout with melanoma; he also makes it a priority to stay involved with others who need help.

George and Nancy ask themselves: how can a person use his or her gifts to make a difference in the world? This is a question asked by many spiritual seekers who want to respond but often feel overwhelmed and do not know what action to take.

In response, Nancy admits being daunted because the world is in such need. As the world’s population grows larger, the number of people in dire need increases, putting potential volunteers in a quandary.

Speaking practically, Nancy says: “My first recommendation is this ― think small.” Instead of trying to fix the whole world, Nancy suggests doing something specific on a regular basis.

What she and George do is visit a nursing home, once a week. During this visit they see only two people but talking with these people takes the entire hour.

They are both convinced that what they do makes a difference. “It does matter that we do it,” says Nancy. “it does not matter that we don’t prevail.”  

In visiting the nursing home residents, George senses himself to be part of a faith-inspired activism that is happening all over the world. About the effects of this experience on himself, he says: “This makes me feel healthy and whole.”

This activity also promotes in Nancy and George a sense of peace. It comes in part from integrating their activities. Alluding to his retirement from teaching, George says: “Now I’m more relaxed because I now have time for caregiving.”

Nancy also sees peace as flowing from an acceptance of death. She recognizes the subject as off-putting for a whole lot of people. For her, however: “I know I’m going to die. After that, you’re free.”

They know first-hand the temptation to allow caregiving and being taken care of to dominate their outlook. If allowed full sway, the need to give and receive the care that makes Nancy’s life possible can eat up concern for anyone else.

To their great credit, George and Nancy do not permit themselves to focus only on their own needs, pressing as those needs remain.

The faith that is expressed in the Eucharist drives them on. That this sacrament has been celebrated in their house has changed their feelings about where they live. “It feels like a sacred space,” says Nancy about their home.

And the community of people with whom they celebrate their weekly house Mass means much to them. That is a source of their drive to reach out to others.

Besides the nursing home visit and the other actions in which she and George take part, Nancy regards her writing as a form of ministry. She calls her books “a critical, but not a commercial success.” It feels good to see reviewers praising her work but it does not produce much income. More important, however she values them as a sharing of spiritual insights and experiences with her readers.

My current reading of her latest book, “A Troubled Guest: Life and Death Stories,” has made me appreciate more this ministry of hers.

Richard Griffin