Category Archives: Articles

Prayer Groups

“We should not judge the effectiveness of our prayer by how prayerful we think we are. Our very attempt to pray is, in fact, prayer.”

So advises Rev. Paul Witmer,  minister at the Central Presbyterian Church in Des Moines, Iowa. He convenes the prayer group to which my friend, Nick Tormey, belongs. (The latter has shared the pastor’s words with me.)

On a visit to Des Moines last week, I did not have the opportunity to meet with the prayer group because members have taken a recess until August. Nick Tormey misses the meetings during this break. “I like the regularity of knowing that on Friday noon I would be spending some time in silence.”

He expresses appreciation  of the meetings despite experiencing ups and downs in prayer. “Sometimes my mind would shut down,” he explains, “and I would feel at peace, while at other times I would feel distracted but I still value that time apart.”

The peaceful atmosphere of the place where they meet counts a lot. “The quietness of the chapel,” Nick observes, “the picture of Jesus and the rich young man in the fancy hat; the light streaming through the tall rectangular window.”

He also values the bonding with other people. One other participant shares with him the pain he feels as he goes through a divorce.

Summing up the experience, Nick says: “I always feel as if I’ve done something, even if it wasn’t very prayerful.”

What Nick reports of his group sounds much like the spiritual benefits I have derived from the prayer group to which I have belonged over the past three years. It is representative, I suspect, of what people experience in many other such groups across the country.  People in search of spirit come together and find much value even when they encounter distraction, dryness, and only intermittent peace of soul.

Anglican priest and theology professor Sarah Coakley, in the current Harvard Divinity Bulletin, writes about the prayer group that she has run for eight years. Right from the start Prof. Coakley discovered two practical advantages of silence: first, it bridged the sometimes wide religious and political differences among members, and secondly it created “a brief haven of rest from our (often frenzied) intellectual activities.”

After not using rituals in the early days, the group soon discovered the need of at least a few. Now, they begin with the sound of a bell and they light a candle to focus attention. They also instituted  the practice of exchanging the kiss of peace at the end of each session, a gesture that has evolved from a mere handshake to a more emotionally expressive sign of friendship.

In assessing her group’s experience, Prof. Coakley lists five features:

  1. It has led members to adopt other spiritual practices such as liturgical prayer and the prayer of intercession. Thus they have discovered a fuller spiritual life through the habit of praying regularly.
  2. They have found their group to have a life of its own that goes beyond that of individual members. As Prof. Coakley puts it, “Its sum is mysteriously more than its parts,” a reality that produces “a deep sense of communion, trust, and peace between the participants.”
  3. The group has traveled beyond ecumenism and, with the addition of Jews and Buddhists among others, has become inter-religious. This sometimes leads to a “level of mutual regard and trust beyond words.”
  4. Members now welcome requests to pray for certain requests and intentions. Before the bell rings for prayer, these intentions are quietly mentioned.
  5. Some members have carried over their prayer into social action. Thus some students are engaged in work in prisons, hospitals, and other places where people are in dire need of help.

Summing up, Prof. Coakley writes: “I like to think of the group as providing an open-ended invitation to such ‘wasting of time’ before God in a School (and culture) of obsessive busyness.”

One hopes that prayer groups can share this kind of experience with one another. The Des Moines group, at least, will profit from what the Harvard group has learned. Having read Sarah Coakley’s article, my friend Nick plans to ask his fellow members to add two features. “I am going to suggest intentions and the kiss of peace at the end,” he says. “I think this will help solidify the group.”

Richard Griffin

Forgetting

Last weekend at a church coffee hour I introduced a visitor to a couple of my good friends. Unfortunately, however, I could not at that moment remember the last name of either friend, despite having frequent association with them. So I mumbled their first names while trying desperately to summon up their last ones.

Many would call this a “senior moment.” For reasons explained in another column I would never use such a negative term to typify the inner experience of growing older. Instead, I think of it as a memory lapse that happens at every age, though admittedly it occurs more often in later years.

Memory lapses of this sort I take as signs of our having done a lot of living. As the son of New York Times health columnist Jane Brody told her: “What do you expect? With all you've stuffed into your head all these years, something is bound to fall out.”

And some inability to remember is positively a blessing. Recently I heard tell of a man who could not forget anything; his slightest actions and his every thought engraved itself on his memory. This can only be thought of as a disease, a terrible affliction.

However, not being able to remember facts is undeniably worrisome to most older people. Often it makes us fear something may be radically wrong with us. All too readily we jump to the conclusion that we are “losing it.”

When such instances of memory loss multiply, many older people become convinced they have started on the downward path to Alzheimer’s disease. Such an assumption is often rash and without foundation but causes suffering nonetheless.

Many causes other than dementia can be at work making us lose the ability to come up with the right name or fact. Depression, inadequate nourishment, side effects of medication –  –  these can be hidden thieves of memory. Regrettably, too many people do not get skilled medical treatment directed at finding the reason for memory loss.

Many scientists are studying the human brain intensively and can provide some answers. For a summary of current knowledge on this subject, I recommend a brochure published by the AARP Andrus Foundation and The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives.

Entitled “Memory Loss and Aging,” it is part of a series called “Staying Sharp: Current Advances in Brain Research.” This brochure is available at AARP, (800) 424-3410.

(You can also request three other brochures in the Staying Sharp series. To make sure of their availability free of charge, I have called the number myself.)

“Memory is not a single process,” say the authors of the brochure, and they distinguish two different kinds of memory. The first focuses on daily facts such as the names of friends. The second contains skills and procedures, such as how to kick a soccer ball or cook a chicken.

These two kinds of memory depend on different structures inside the brain so a person, for example, might remember how to drive a car but not how to find the way back to his own neighborhood.

Researchers believe we can keep memory sharp by cultivating certain skills. The brochure mentioned above lists eight pieces of advice: relax, concentrate, focus, slow down, organize, write it down, repeat it, visualize it.

Besides those already mentioned, some other activities may also help keep brains vigorous. Physical exercise surely does; so does good nutrition. I love doing crossword puzzles anyway but I also believe they rev up my brain power.

The brochure also offers helpful information about the current state of research into Alzheimer’s disease. Hopes for delaying, preventing, or reversing this illness depend on future research breakthroughs. But currently three new medications have been “modestly successful” in providing some help to people in the early stages of the disease.

However, researchers freely admit being unable to answer many questions of crucial importance to older people. If, for instance, they could pinpoint the differences between garden variety memory loss and the kind that leads toward devastating illness, we would all breathe easier.

Jane Brody, the columnist mentioned above, recently alerted her readers to some of the rackets connected with this issue that flourish in the land. “Memory pills,” for example, are on the market but no one can attest to their value. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has reviewed the alleged research behind such medication and found the claims worthless, except for those behind one very expensive product “Don’t waste your money,” Brody advises readers, advice that I endorse.

Incidentally, about the last names of my two dear friends: I thought of hers as I woke up at dawn the next day; his came to me halfway through the morning. Something mysterious must be at work in the recesses of my memory dredging up the forgotten, often taking its own sweet time to do it.

Richard Griffin

Hob’s Ashes

“It was beautiful; it was just right,” says my friend Olivia about the ceremony she and her family members devised for the ashes of her beloved husband Hob. He died last Thanksgiving Day at age 78, after a life marked by a sustained search for light and truth.

Olivia and her two adult children wanted to commit Hob’s ashes to the world of nature and spirit as he would have wished. They judged it appropriate to do so near the house in Vermont that Hob loved and called his “soul place.” This beautiful setting was clearly the best place for the remains of his body to be absorbed by the physical world.

Hob’family created a simple yet eloquent ceremony in two parts that gave testimony to the kind of person he was.

The first part was oriented to Hob’s and Olivia’s grandchildren, planned so they could have a role in committing their grandfather’s ashes to the earth. One of them said to Olivia: “Baba Hob (the name the grandchilden called him) has gone to heaven.” In response Olivia said their grandfather’s soul had left his body.

The children first picked flowers from the garden nearby and collected them in tribute to Hob. Then his son dug a hole that the children lined with the flowers. Everyone stood around the hole and joined in song.  Asked to choose music they liked, the children chose to sing two verses of the joyful song, “The Lord Is Good To Me.” At this time they dropped fistfuls of ashes into the hole.

In the second part, the adults carried on the rite themselves. The four of them walked to the edge of a spacious meadow adjoining the house. There a ridge borders the meadow and leads to a steep hill. On that hill at the very top is a great maple tree, 100 years old. As it so happened, that tree died the same day as Hob.

This is the focal point of the surrounding area, so the four adults knew that was the place where they wanted to be. They formed a circle. Then they took the ashes by the handful and named Hob’s people and his the impact he had on them.

“And this is for all of his students,” they said, “and this is for those whose lives he touched.” “And this is for Hob’s sense of humor and the laughter he brought to all of us.”

Of this part of the event Olivia recalls: “It was beautiful,”

Then his son Ethan announced, “I need to throw some ashes and make a big noise.” So he tossed ashes into the wind while crying out loudly in a kind of primal scream.

Olivia noticed how the lighter parts made a cloud that was like spirit.

They let her throw the last fistful. There were no words left so she let the ashes go into the wind. Addressing her companion of so many years, Olivia exulted: “Hobbie, we did it.”

On the way down the hill, Olivia recalls, “we noticed a beautiful large marble rock. We plan to bring it up to the hilltop and install it there as a memorial to Hob.”

Then, after it was all over, they went into the village for tea and croissants, another activity that felt “just right.”

Reflecting afterward, Olivia says: “The overarching point for me was that ceremony and ritual hold the tremendous intensity of times like this.” She added: “Having children take part in it was vital,”

About formulating the ritual, Olivia observes, “The land almost told us what to do.”

Such was the ceremony carried out by one family as they committed the last remains of their loved member to the world of nature and spirit. With this heartfelt rite, they paid loving tribute to a man of soul who had inspired them with love and his striving to find the deepest meaning in life. Theirs is the joy of knowing how Hob will be forever associated with his beloved land as well as with those in whose life he made a difference.

How Olivia and her family members bid final farewell to their beloved Hob was only one way of doing it, of course, but their story can serve as inspiration for the rest of us. In their depth and beauty their simple rituals give eloquent recognition to the dignity of the human spirit.

Richard Griffin

Senior Moment

I hate the term “senior moment” and have taken a private vow never to use it the way others do. Why employ a phrase that fixes on something negative as characteristic of later life? Doing so seems a surefire way of lowering morale by calling attention to a deficit rather than an asset in one’s mature years.

To be sure, the phrase enjoys widespread popularity. Every time a person of a certain age hesitates and gropes in memory for a word or name, then you are likely to hear that person offer the excuse “I’m undergoing a ‘senior moment.’” Often this excuse comes with a nervous laugh, perhaps indicating a mixture of embarrassment and fear.

Instead of taking a merely negative stance toward the expression “senior moment,” however, let me suggest salvaging the term and making another use of it instead. Besides the largely negative experience of forgetting, later life features the positive recalling of people and events from our earlier life that carry rich meaning for us.

I will not soon forget hearing a speech by the prominent American artist Ellsworth Kelly when the new federal courthouse on Boston’s waterfront was dedicated. Then 75, Kelly recalled how he had been a student at the Museum School in Boston back in 1946. He used to bike down to the harborside area where the courthouse now stands. There he bought his canvas and other art supplies.

As he recalled this early experience and contrasted it with where he had eventually arrived as an artist, Kelly choked up and had to pause for a few seconds. Others may not have noticed, but I recognized in this moment an experience that I myself have often felt.  Kelly had suddenly felt the events of his earlier life to have taken on a new stature, meaning, and poignancy that surprised him. Surely this merited the description “senior moment.”

There are times when I feel myself to be acting the way my father did. I recognize in myself traits learned long ago from him and I thus become aware of his presence. It’s uncanny the way I feel myself to be talking like him, though he died almost 50 years ago. That, too, seems to me to merit the name “senior moment” since usually it does not occur until later life.

When I returned last week to my high school for the 55th anniversary of my graduation, memories of my school days flooded over me. As it happened, I was the only member of my class to show up for the celebration. Standing as sole representative of the 21 who graduated in 1947, I felt myself to be what the poet Oliver Wendell Holmes called “the last leaf.” Again, an event worthy of being dubbed a “senior moment.”

On the day when I first wrote these words, I heard a Harvard Square church bell tolling at noontime the ancient prayer called the Angelus. Listening to it, I was swept back to the time when I used to say this prayer every day and my life took its direction from church tradition. Yet another senior moment.

My friend Frederick Buechner has written: “Every person we have ever known, every place we have ever seen, everything that has ever happened to us – it all lives and breathes deep within us somewhere whether we like it or not, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to bring it back to the surface in bits and pieces.”

Senior moments I value flow from memories of the people, places, and events that have figured in my life. My parents, grandmother, aunts and uncles, friends, and associates who have taken leave of this earth play a large part in my psychic life. I think frequently of them, much more so than I did when younger.

So, too, the places where I have lived – Peabody, Cambridge, Belmont, Watertown, Lenox, in Massachusetts; St. Asaph in Wales; Paris, Brussels on the European continent – all of them continue to provide me with senior moments in my sense of the word. The physical features of these places often flood me with memories, some of them downbeat, but most resonant with beauty and depth.

And events – millions of them, it seems – that have enriched my life or, at least, provided reason for reflection. Falling in love, the birth of my daughter, the death of my father, stand out among many that have shaped my life in ways that I still mine for meaning. The imaginative replay of these events truly deserves to be enshrined under senior moments.

So much of growing older is psychic and dramatic in ways that others cannot see. The senior moments in which I recall the richness of my world and my life are what make later life so precious. These moments live on with us and enrich our spirit, turning growing older into an inner adventure.

Richard Griffin

The Lady and the Unicorn

Great works of art touch the human spirit. That truth came home to me once again recently when I revisited one of the most beautiful masterworks of late medieval art.

This series of tapestries, dating from the end of the 15th century, bears the name “The Lady and the Unicorn” and is displayed in the Cluny Museum in Paris. The names of the artists who designed and then wove these six tapestries are unknown but they are thought to be from Flanders and Paris itself.

Rediscovered in 1883, they had to be restored because of serious damage to both figures and colors. Now, thanks to modern scientific methods of repair, they have emerged in something like their original glory.

An overall description of the tapestries comes from the museum: “A Lady, flanked by a lion and a unicorn, is depicted on a dark-blue ‘isle’ set against a contrasting red or pink flower-strewn background; each of the activities she is involved in symbolizes one of the five senses.”

But this prose description does not do justice to the charm and brilliance of each tapestry. The lady is gracious, dressed in long flowing robes and with a different headdress in each of the six pieces. In each, she is flanked by a friendly lion on her left and an attentive unicorn on her right. The latter’s single horn juts up from his head, tall and sharp.

About these scenes, the museum handout comments: “The slender silhouettes of these Ladies emanate a dreamlike grace and an elegance that lead us into an imaginary world inhabited by the beauty of mysterious women and unicorns.”

As noted above, each of five tapestries symbolizes one of the senses. The first, sight, is shown by the unicorn looking at himself in a mirror that the lady holds before his face. Hearing is portrayed by the lady playing a portable organ, much to the delight of her handmaiden and the animals.

The sense of taste is dramatized by the lady reaching out for a sugared almond that is held out to her in a parrot’s beak, and another in a monkey’s mouth. For smell, the lady fashions a necklace of violets while a monkey holds a flower to the lady’s nose. Finally, touch is seen as the lady grasps the horn of the unicorn with her left hand.

The sixth tapestry mysteriously delivers the main message of the work. The lady appears, putting the necklace back into the jewel case. The museum explains this action thus: “With this gesture of renunciation, she asserts her ‘sole desire’ or her refusal to capitulate to the passions aroused by inordinate senses.”

Thus love is revealed as the greatest value in human life. For the woman love is “mon seul desir” (my only wish) according to the words inscribed in the sixth and final tapestry. The life of the senses cannot bring ultimate satisfaction; only love can.

Adding to my pleasure in contemplating these classic tapestries, a group of some 15 French school children entered the display room. At the bidding of their teacher, these six or seven year old urchins sat down on the floor in front of the artworks. As they looked on, a woman instructor directed their attention to various features of the tapestries and carried on a dialogue with them. They asked questions about the animals and listened with interest to information designed to raise their consciousness of the beauty before them. I felt some envy of these boys and girls getting off to such a fast start in appreciation of fine art.

Admittedly, words can never really describe highly creative works of the imagination. Those wishing a more vivid appreciation of what is described here can see for themselves pictures of the tapestries on the Internet or, of course, in many books devoted to French art. Using the search engine Google, I typed in “Lady and the Unicorn” and gained access to pictures of all six tapestries, plus information about them.

It would do violence to this masterwork of centuries past if I overemphasized its moral. Its overall beauty of conception and execution ultimately count for more. However, in stressing human love as a greater value than indulgence of the senses, it does remind viewers of a spiritual truth of supreme importance.

Richard Griffin

Somme Memorial

Near Thiepval, France, visitors see looming up before them the largest British military monument in the world. It is dedicated to “The Missing of the Somme,” those who died in the most disastrous battle of what used to be called The Great War. On a single day, November 16, 1916, some 60 thousand British soldiers were killed or wounded in frontal attacks on entrenched German positions and gained no significant territory from them.

“Their Name Liveth For Evermore” says the inscription on the towering memorial to the lost battalions who went over the top in what quickly became a hopeless assault against defenders using artillery and machine guns to mow them down. However, the names of some were in fact lost, along with their bodies.

Some people continue to commemorate those who lost their lives. A red wreath from Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church in Liverpool, recently laid at the tall monument, says: “The Parish remembers (12 names are listed) who gave their lives for their country in the Great War 1914 – 18, and are commemorated among the missing of Thiepval.”

For me, a tourist born ten years after that war ended, the horror and waste of it all dominates my feelings. Why did the countries of Europe ever allow themselves to enter a conflict of such monumental foolishness? How could they tolerate millions of their young men being cut down in such a dubious cause?

In expressing such sentiments I am, of course, echoing the feelings of the British war poets such as Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke. With bitter irony, Owen titled one of his poems “Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori” (It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country), calling the dictum “that ancient lie.” Visiting the battlefields of northeastern France, one relives the horror of the mass slaughters resulting from decisions by heads of government and their uninspired generals.

Now, almost 100 years later, the fields where savage battles were fought are now beautiful, lush with green. But one still sees the traces of trenches dug into the soil to provide cover for the troops. Of course, they were most often miserable living in them, plunged into mud and sometimes bitter cold and snow. The destruction of the environment accompanied the destruction of human life, as the ground was plundered by heavy artillery and machines.

At the same site, I saw a cemetery with row upon row of stone slabs and crosses. Some of them say “A Soldier of the Great War, Cheshire Regiment, Known Unto God.” Others carry only the single French word “Inconnu” (Unknown).

Michael, a friend who accompanied me on the battlefield visit, said of the experience: “I didn’t lose anybody here, but there’s something about it that stirs me very much.” Along with my own sadness about such waste I also felt stirred by the heroism of the men who gave their lives. Despite abiding cynicism about those who make war, I had to admire others who responded generously to their country’s call.

Often they were naïve young men who had no idea what awaited them after they signed up for military duty. They soon experienced at first hand the horrors of modern warfare. They must have been thoroughly bewildered to find themselves in such miserable conditions and ready to become cannon fodder along with so many others.

Hardly a man is now alive who fought in that war. The ranks of World War I veterans have declined to a precious few. They have to have reached age 100, at the very least, to remember at first hand combat in the fields of Europe in that era. But they are better positioned than we to appreciate the current unity among nations which fought one another so bitterly then.

A stone tablet set in the pavement outside the great medieval cathedral of Rheims remains fixed in my memory from this recent visit to France. It commemorates the day in 1964 when Charles de Gaulle, president of France, came together with Konrad Adenauer, chancellor of West Germany, at a Mass and celebrated lasting peace between their countries. That peace has been ratified by many events in succeeding years – – the European community, free trade, the Euro – – and has in fact brought a spirit of unity unprecedented in history.

The new Europe thus puts World War I into a different context. The Great War stands as a horrifying example of what can happen when peace breaks down. Because it led to the even greater catastrophe of World War II it has affected the lives of all of us who experienced this latter conflict. Seeing the fields where the battle of the Somme was fought has solidified my own hatred of war and made me grateful for the now solid peace among the former warring nations of Europe.

Richard Griffin

Sacred Space

The cathedral of Notre Dame in Rheims is one of the most imposing in all of France, a country with many great churches. When you walk through the city streets, as I did recently, and turn the corner, it looms up before you in all the magnificence of its medieval Gothic architecture. A great façade with three portals leads the eye upward; more than 2300 stone statues adorn the church’s exterior, exhibiting figures and events from sacred history.

Inside, the height of the nave and its beautiful proportions lend a sense of awe to people who enter it. To walk around this interior space is to experience wonder at the artistry of architects and other artists who raised this building some eight centuries ago and have worked on the structure throughout its long history.

For boosting the spiritual life, sacred spaces play a vital role. Almost everyone needs contact with such spaces from time to time if the soul is to flourish. In order to appreciate the mystery of our world you must have the lift that comes from encounters with space that is out of the ordinary.

Three features of Notre Dame Cathedral stirred my soul and continue to provide me with inspiration in succeeding weeks. The first, already implied, is the way the interior space soars toward the heavens. Not only are one’s eyes drawn upward by the building’s sight lines, but one’s spirit too is lifted up toward God.

Of course, modern people do not believe that God lives up beyond the skies. However, we still associate both height and depth with the mystery of divine being. God is sublime, and spectacular movement upward can carry minds and hearts toward divinity. At least it works that way for me, especially when I enter a great high-vaulted church.

The second feature of this cathedral that moved me is surprisingly recent. In 1974, the great artist Marc Chagall designed blue stained-glass windows for the chapel at the east end of the building. Three sets of windows display figures from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, brought together in a surprising unity.

A striking fact is that Chagall was Jewish, and that the traditions of his faith were vividly alive to him. Working on art for a Christian cathedral, he illuminates and renews, in his own characteristic style, the great themes of Christian iconography, making us newly aware of their Jewishness.

Chagall’s medieval predecessors were well aware of the Hebrew Bible, and used its stories to foreshadow New Testament events. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac prefigures the death of Jesus on the cross. The tree of Jesse, the father of King David, shows the forebears of Jesus.

Chagall treats these themes as well, but in a new way. The characters from the Hebrew Bible are not mere prototypes, but shine forth in their own right. At the same time, the artist treats New Testament figures with great sympathy. His tender radiant imaged of Jesus and Mary recall the spirit of medieval sculptors who adorned the portals of Rheims Cathedral with smiling angels and saints. The whole enterprise strikes me as a bold, innovative gesture toward reconciliation between the Jewish and Christian traditions.

Reconciliation is also the theme of the third feature that attracted my attention. Outside the front of the cathedral, a stone plaque is set in the pavement with words of great historical importance. On the plaque are engraved words that give the date and the exact hour and minute when two leaders with vision came together to establish lasting peace.

Konrad Adenauer, then the aged chancellor of West Germany, and Charles de Gaulle, the heroic president of France, celebrated that day in 1962 the coming together of their two nations after almost a century of destructive bitterness. When you recall the three terrible wars fought by the two nations in 1870, 1914, and 1939, the sealing of peace and friendship with a Mass at the Cathedral in Rheims has to be seen as a great moment.

This cathedral is indeed a sacred space, important for the life of the spirit. There three important human works – –  the soaring height of the interior, the brilliant blue windows of Chagall, and the reconciliation of two former enemy nations – – summon us to a more realized inner life.

Richard Griffin