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New Year 2002

A Wall Street broker named Jamie can stand as one emblem for this New Year, 2002. At age 45, he has decided to give up his profession, move out of the city, and find another line of work. For him, it is time to simplify his life and redirect himself away from the money chase.

The motor for such far-reaching change in his life has been the horrific events of September 11. From the windows of his office, Jamie saw the World Trade Center towers collapse with their catastrophic loss of life and witnessed from a distance the chaos in the streets below. These sights had enough power to reorient his values so that he now wants a lifestyle that brings him closer to what counts most in the long run.

Of course, not everybody will draw the same conclusions from the events of that fateful September day. Some people will change their spiritual orientation without stepping away from their jobs or their current residences. And others of us will simply let the events to wear off in time and go on as we were before.

But Jamie and others like him will take the catastrophes of this autumn as a signal for dramatic transformation of their lives. For them, the year 2002 promises to bring new selves as they break with old patterns of work and living.

New Year, as a rite of passage, has long been seen as an opportunity for change. This passage has the power to make people believe they can transform their behavior. That is why some of us still make resolutions designed to improve our conduct. Even if we have a long record of failure in trying to keep past resolutions, our hopes spring up again and we become convinced that the coming year can be different from the past.

Spiritual traditions support the New Year as a time to start over. God, the compassionate and merciful one, invites his creatures to begin again, to become faithful rather than continue to wander away from the right paths. No matter how far we have betrayed ourselves and others, God will take us back.

The notion of metanoia in Greek, of changing one’s mentality, remains basic to the spiritual life of believers. It is never too late to change, to repent, to set out anew.

For some of us, the invitation to change might mean, not making our behavior more moral and generous, but rather allowing ourselves to enjoy the beauty of the world and the beauty of human life more than we have in years past. A model for this change is the 90 year old poet and writer Czeslaw Milosz, a native of Poland and now an American citizen who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980.

In an essay called “Happiness” written in recent years, he describes what it can be like to find intense happiness in the world of nature. After visiting a valley in Lithuania where his grandparents once lived he wrote:

“I was looking at a meadow. Suddenly the realization came that during my years of wandering I had searched in vain for such a combination of leaves and flowers as was here and that I have always been yearning to return. Or, to be precise, I understood this

after a huge wave of emotion had overwhelmed me, and the only name I can give it now would be – bliss.”

Allowing ourselves to be happy could amount to a breakthrough worth much. Opening ourselves up to the experience of bliss, as the poet did, can be precious. Czeslaw Milosz does so even though in his lifetime he witnessed the horrors that were done to the people of his native Poland. From those fearsome years he has developed a proper pessimism about human beings left to themselves.

But he believes in God as the one who can rescue us from ourselves. Author and critic John Updike calls him “a believer full of reasonable doubts” and admires Milosz’s affirmation of the whole person, heart and soul.

Perhaps, therefore, the Polish poet and the Wall Street stockbroker can serve as inspiration for New Year 2002. They both are acquainted with horror and the coldly irrational instinct to murder one’s fellow human beings on a mass scale. But they are also seekers seizing the new opportunities to find their bliss.

Richard Griffin

Christmas, 1949

The Christmas that stands out most in my memory happened in the year 1949. It was a magical event, and yet one about which I now have mixed feelings. Even with the perspective of more than fifty more Christmases, those feelings remain conflicted and may never find resolution.

At age 21, I was a novice preparing for admission to the ranks of the Jesuits. My life then focused on spiritual perfection and I wanted most to become the model of a life lived in poverty, chastity, and obedience. Cut off from family, friends, and worldly interests, I devoted myself wholeheartedly to a life of austerity in the service of Christ and the Church.

Some 60 other young men were engaged in the same spiritual enterprise with me in those days. We lived and worked at Shadowbrook, a large mansion which sat on the rim of Stockbridge Bowl in Lenox, Massachusetts, and followed together the strict discipline expected of apprentice Jesuits. But we also experienced the joys of a life focused on God, simplified and stripped of the distractions rampant in the world outside.

That was the setting of my Christmas, 1949. On the night before, we novices went to bed early, as usual, in a large dormitory, in cots crowded together. The next thing I knew was, apparently, the voice of angels singing from above the announcement of Jesus’s birth. “Hodie Christus Natus Est,” (“Today Christ is Born”). The music came from a loft that opened out near the ceiling of the dorm. To me, as well as to my fellow first-year novices, the sound was magical as we looked up and saw the choir of senior novices singing with such joy.

Still caught up in the magic of this surprise, we quickly dressed and descended the winding steel stairs to the chapel for midnight Mass. This liturgical celebration , celebrated with unusual solemnity, furthered the joyful feelings stirred by the chorus that had surprised my sleep.

That Christmas belonged to a different universe from the one that I live in now. Though I still deeply value the spiritual life and many of the religious traditions of my youth, the simplicity of my life at Shadowbrook has long since disappeared. It is hard for me to imagine myself given over to the direction of others and to a discipline that demanded uncritical acceptance.

In fact, that Christmas celebration was an event in what I think of as my second childhood. Entrance into the novitiate while still immature for my age induced in me a return to living like someone not grown up. In ceding authority over me to others, I conspired in a loss of my own freedom at a time when it would have been good to explore that freedom.

This is why I still feel somewhat embarrassed about the Christmas of 1949. Many of the good features of the novitiate experience found expression then – – all that intensity of purpose and all that joy  –  – but they came at a price that now seems to me too high.

My daughter is the same age now that I was then. As she comes home for Christmas from living abroad and working in her first job after college, I am struck by how different her life is from what mine was. She is living in the world, while I was living apart in an artificial environment built around rules and traditions. For her, trial and error mark the steps in her advance to maturity but my progress was laid out along carefully prescribed lines. And the particular spirituality that provided all the meaning behind my Jesuit life does not hold nearly the same meaning for her.

Thus the Christmas 2001 that we will be celebrating at home brings together father and daughter of vastly different experience. My world has changed so radically in ways that I could never have dreamed of. No more angelic voices will ring out in the middle of the night for me and no more living by rule will govern my days.

Her world  undoubtedly change, too, and she will be surprised by many of the things that happen within her and take place around her. I am glad for the opportunity she has to find herself further in the real-life conditions of the world as distinguished from the hot-house setting in which I lived at her age. But, even with the embarrassment I feel about my second childhood, I recognize the richness in an experience not available in the so-called real world.

Of course, I have learned to recognize that life is hard in any setting and that every lifestyle has its rewards and its trials. But this year, with its memory of the Christmas of 1949 and the Christmases intervening since, finds me happy with the change I made long ago and the gifts that come with advancing years.

Richard Griffin

CHRISTMAS, 2001

Four years ago, when my daughter was a freshman in college, she helped set one of her instructors straight about Christmas. The teacher, a skilled writer who also knew how to improve the writing of her students, had asserted that Christmas was the most important day of the Christian year. My daughter and some of her classmates tactfully informed the instructor otherwise: they remembered that the Church regards Easter as the more important of the two feasts.

The students, of course, were right. In Christian tradition, Easter, as the feast of the Resurrection, has always loomed largest in the Church year and the most basic of the church’s teachings about Jesus. Without the rising of Jesus from the tomb, Christianity loses its meaning.

However, a case can be made for the instructor’s point of view. That is because the Church has trumped itself. It has collaborated in allowing Christmas to become much more popular than Easter. At least in Western nations, December 25 is a time of exuberant celebration far outdoing the paschal observance in the spring of each year. Only a relatively few people get excited about the approach of Easter, whereas Christmas produces a frenzy of preparation among large populations.

Christmas displays the genius of Christianity as a faith tradition. Ultimately the brilliance of the Bethlehem event comes from everyone loving an infant. Hardly anyone of us can resist the charm and promise of a newborn baby. You do not need a complex theology to feel attraction to the scene of the Nativity: all you need do is look at a Christmas crib with its cast of characters: the infant, his parents, the shepherds, the angels, and, ultimately, the three kings.

But the child Jesus retains the central position. His arrival is the reason for all of these characters, and all who share the Christian faith with them. In that faith, he is not merely a helpless child but also a divine person who has become a human being. And, most important to faith, in doing so Jesus has enabled human beings to take on some of God’s own life.

In making these statements about Christmas, I am aware, of course, of two important facts that must qualify what has been said. First, other faith traditions have compelling events and colorful experiences that stir millions of people who are not Christian. Stories about Moses, Mohammed, the Buddha, and others excite them to admiration and provide inspiration. One of the important religious developments of our time is the growing interest many Christians have taken in spiritual traditions not their own.

And, secondly, the commercialization of Christmas remains deeply troubling to many Christians. That American culture invests so much economic hope in this festival strikes many of us as a perversion of a spiritual event. Ironically, Christmas provokes such a mad rush of shopping that its very purpose, to bring peace of soul and universal love, is too often frustrated.

To appreciate the spiritual value of Christmas requires some break with feverish rounds of activity. If we cannot find time for at least some moments of contemplation, it is doubtful that the meaning of this season will penetrate to our hearts.

That message of “peace on earth, goodwill to women and men” certainly comes to a world in need of it this year. What a contrast that message makes with the hatred contained in Osama Bin Laden’s videotape revealed to the world last week! In that scene he spewed forth feelings of delight in evil that shocked even people hardened to the abundant atrocities of our time.

One can perhaps hope that this Christmas will be different. The signs are all around us that values are changing. A Wall Street stockbroker named Jamie is going to retire at age 45 because he wants to do other things with his life. At a party last week he told of looking out the window of his office and seeing the towers come down. Now he wants work that will give him access to values that are not merely economic.

Thomas, a young German computer specialist who lived next door to me, decided this fall to move back home. The events of September gave him a new appreciation of home, family, and friends.

These and other signs of change have spiritual meaning that can find support in what Christmas celebrates. They come together to support our continuing hope for better times to come.

Richard Griffin

Jesuits in Baghdad

The Jesuits who served in Baghdad are all men of advanced years by now. Almost every one of the surviving priests and brothers has reached at least 70, and many died long ago.

Teachers and administrators in Baghdad College and Al-Hikma University, they were unceremoniously expelled by the Baath Party when it seized power in 1968. That is the party of Saddam Hussein who was only a military officer at that time and would not become dictator till years later.

Of the 146 Jesuit priests, scholastics and brothers who served in Baghdad, about 60 are still alive. You might imagine that events in which they figured decades ago might have become distant memories for these men. On the contrary, their experiences remain vivid, as conversations with them quickly reveal. They still feel grateful for the opportunity to serve their church there and deeply regret the Iraqi government’s decision to expel them.

Looking back, Father Simon Smith says, “It still hurts, but I have stopped bleeding.” He remembers that all the Jesuits based at the university, having been given only 72 hours to prepare, left Baghdad on the same day: against government orders, some 400 people came to say good-bye to their former mentors.

A major reason for the experience remaining fresh in the minds and heart of the Jesuits is the continued loyalty toward them shown by their alumni living in the United States and Canada. Every two years, these alums invite their former teachers to a reunion that features good cheer and reminiscence. The next one will take place in Toronto in the summer of 2,002.

The former students, most of them now American citizens, show much affection for the Jesuits and great generosity as well. It is their custom to contribute money to the New England Jesuit Province, with a view toward supporting their former teachers in their old age. One man has given half a million dollars for the Jesuit infirmary and two others have each given 100,000 dollars, and they are not alone in their generosity.

About one-third of the students at Baghdad College (“B.C. on the Tigris,” the Jesuits sometimes called it) were Muslims; another third Orthodox Christians; and most of the rest Catholics. About ten percent were Jewish. The Jesuits were respectful of traditions different from their own, a respect that the alums still appreciate.

When asked for their views on the current – – and sometimes prejudicial – – treatment of people of Arabic descent in this country, the Jesuits interviewed for this column differ in the strength of their feelings.

They are certainly united in sharing a love for the people of Iraq and especially for their former students. One of them, principal at a Jesuit school in Boston, is reported to pray publicly for the children in Iraq and Iran every day.  And these Jesuits strongly advocate lifting the American-driven embargo on Iraq that they see inflicting grievous harm on the children of that country.

James McDavitt, a 71-year-old Jesuit brother based in Boston, has taken the lead in keeping in touch with the Baghdad alums and their families. He has a file of 300 of them who receive his email messages, and many of them respond to him. Though he never served in Iraq himself, Jim McDavitt says of the alums, “They look on me as a conduit to the Fathers.”

An effective conduit he is, sending out messages filled with spiritual meaning and warm human feeling to the alums, among them Muslims who often respond similarly. “I have come to know these people and love them,” says Brother McDavitt.

Four days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, for instance, he sent out the following message: “We want you to know that you are not far from our thoughts and prayers in these troubled days.  .   . In seeking out the perpetrators of this horrific terrorism, there are those who will find it in themselves to look to anyone from the Middle East as the guilty. Please God, no harm will come to you, physically or verbally. The contempt for human life demonstrated in these wholesale attacks on the innocent is a fundamental violation of all religious traditions, whether it is Islam, Judaism, or Christianity.”

For a personal contact with alumni, a Jesuit friend referred me to an Iraqi-American family living in a Boston suburb. They reported not having experienced any harassment in their workplaces. The middle-aged son in the family did, however, encounter an angry shop owner who called the FBI. Agents came and questioned him but, he says, “they were very nice.”

Some of the Jesuits still worry about prejudicial treatment of their alums and others from the Middle East in an era when anti-terrorist zeal has led to erosion of some civil rights. “I think ethnic profiling is always bad,” one Jesuit professor based at Fairfield University told me. “Blaming the Arabs for what a few have done” is something about which he continues to feel concern.

Richard Griffin

RUMI

“God, You who know all that is hidden,
You who speak with compassion,
don’t hide from us the errors of our wrong pursuits—
nor reveal to us the lack within the good we try to do,
lest we become disgusted and lose the heart
to journey on this Path.”

This prayer comes from the hand of the poet Jalal Ud-din Rumi, who lived in the 13th century. He founded an order in the Sufi tradition of Islam and wrote poetry that is much prized today. In fact, Rumi is known to be one of the most popular poets in contemporary America.

Two days from this date, Rumi enthusiasts will mark the 728th anniversary of his death. Ever since the year 1273, members of his order have kept the day of his death as a festival to celebrate his life and work.

This great Muslim mystic wrote in Persian, a language not accessible to most Americans. But even in translation his words have the power to move readers along in their search for God. In reading the poem quoted above, I felt spiritually uplifted by what the writer chose to pray for.

Two sentiments expressed here strike me with special force. The first is the request for God not to hide from us “the errors of our wrong pursuits.” It is so easy for human beings to be carried headlong by strong desires and by illusions about what is good for us. We should not want to be shielded from our own foolishness but rather to become aware of it and face it.

A second prayerful request is for God not to reveal to us “the lack in the good that we try to do.” This petition impresses me as especially wise since it shows the poet’s desire to be spared knowing how imperfect his efforts to do good really remain.

Rumi clearly knows what Jesus also taught, namely that only one is good and that one is God. All other things, including our attempts to put into practice God’s will, remain flawed and imperfect.

The trouble with becoming aware of the defects in even our best actions, Rumi recognizes, is that this awareness of imperfection can easily ruin our morale. Hardly anyone of us has the inner strength to endure knowing how imperfect our actions really are.

For God to shield us from this realization with regard to our actions is compassionate. It frees us to continue on the spiritual path without being overcome by discouragement. Were we to sense that everything we do, even the best of our actions, are riddled with imperfection, that might make the spiritual life odious to us and incline us to drop out of the spiritual struggle.

This truth applies to our efforts to pray. Placing too much importance on the deficiencies in our prayer – – the distractions and restlessness – – could easily lead us to give it up altogether. What counts most in prayer is our desire to be in contact with God rather than our actually succeeding in staying focused on God.

Similarly, imagining that whenever we reach out to others in need our intentions should be entirely pure is also unrealistic. It is only human to have mixed motives, helping another person sometimes because we see some advantage for ourselves. Good works, after all, often bring us rewards and that is no reason for avoiding them.

In his prayer, Rumi indicates the importance of not becoming disgusted and of not losing heart. The Path and the journey hold most importance, as he sees it. The difficulty of this challenge, what a modern poet, Anne Sexton, has called “the awful rowing toward God,” should not be allowed to turn us aside.

At this time of world tension connected with the perverted use of some religious traditions, it comes as a consolation to find Rumi. He was born in Afghanistan and his mysticism came from the religious lore in which he was steeped from his earliest years. He drew inspiration from the Qur’an and the other sacred traditions of Islam.

As one writer has said of him, “If there is any general idea underlying Rumi’s poetry, it is the absolute love of God.” That love emerges forcibly from the poem discussed here and can inspire spiritual seekers everywhere.

Richard Griffin

Affordable Assisted Living

Over the last several years I have been a frequent visitor to assisted living communities. It has been my privilege to give talks to residents on various subjects including aging, spirituality, and current events. Getting to know at least some of the women and men living there has been an experience that I much value.

The assisted living option has become open to many more people than formerly. And those who have taken up residence in this kind of place usually find it an excellent choice. Being in a place that assures personal safety and services such as meals, housecleaning, cultural and recreational activities pleases most of those who have chosen to enter.

The rub, however, is that many older people cannot afford assisted living. If they do not own their own home or lack a substantial retirement income, most cannot hope to pay the entrance fees and management fees that make entrance possible. If they had the opportunity, presumably many more would choose the benefits of assisted living rather than continue to live on their own.

That’s why it comes as good news indeed to discover that some leaders in the field of housing for older people have been at work devising ways to make assisted living available to those whose incomes and assets fall below the usual threshold for admittance.

Such a leader is Daniel Wuenschel, the veteran executive director of the public housing authority in my home community, Cambridge. In a recent interview he shared with me some of the recent initiatives he and his agency have taken to make assisted living affordable for people formerly excluded for lack of financial resources. I share this information with readers outside my home community because, with Wuenschel, I believe that housing leaders and many citizens in other cities and towns will be interested in hearing about these new programs.

The first initiative that our local housing authority has begun is to convert 25 apartments in one of its public housing developments into assisted living units. Only one other community in Massachusetts – New Bedford – has received  federal funds to do the same, along with three others nationwide

“We are ahead of the curve on this one,” says Dan Wuenschel, “and really want to test and see if assisted living and independent living can coexist within the same building.” His agency has funded this 20 million dollar scheme by putting together funds from a variety of sources, with five million coming from a Housing and Urban Development grant.

Surprisingly, the demand for public housing for elders remains at a low ebb right now, Wuenschel reports. But it is expected to soar some ten years from now when more of the baby boomer population arrives at age 60. He sees this period as “a window of opportunity,” a time for program changes in public housing. Hence the assisted living pilot project.

The second major initiative taken by our local housing authority is the opening of a new assisted living facility on the site of a former nursing home started by our city in 1928. Recently, it had been losing two and a half million dollars a year and needed physical changes. The housing authority took the lead, formed a team, put together financing, and dedicated the new house three weeks ago.

It was not easy to do. “Neville Manor has taken us about as long as it took the allies to win World War II,” Wuenschel says lightheartedly. And the complete project, now called Neville Place, will not be finished until at least 2,003. That is when a new nursing home will have been added to this campus alongside of Fresh Pond.

The assisted living facility offers an experiment in mixed-income residency. Elders who are poor, even very poor, will be able to afford one of 39 units by means of subsidies from Medicaid and the housing assistance program known as Section 8. People of moderate income will have access to 18 other units, while 20 percent will be reserved for people of higher means. Neville Place also offers a special care program for 15 people with memory loss and early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

People from our community will receive preference for assisted living units here. But Wuenschel remains hopeful that, in time, such housing opportunities will be opened elsewhere. An association of public housing authority directors is now trying to interest Congress in making funds available for publicly supported assisted living initiatives in their communities.

To their credit, a little more than half of the 170 assisted living residences in Massachusetts keep at least ten percent of their units available for people of low income. Medicaid makes it possible for some applicants to enter such residences but relatively few. The opening of Neville Place, along with the option  of assisted living in one public housing facility, gives hope to those of us who want more abundant housing choices for all older people, no matter their income.

Richard Griffin

EVIL SYMPOSIUM

How can God allow evil to flourish in the world he has created good? Why do awful things happen to fine people? Is there any way of explaining such monstrous evil as the Holocaust and the other murderous atrocities of our time?

Questions like these assail people of faith now as they have for thousands of years. The issues they raise find classic expression in the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible and reappear whenever evil strikes again.

Last week Boston College and the Atlantic Monthly assembled a panel of writers to discuss the subject “Evil: the Artist’s Response.” Christopher Lydon served as moderator, while three writers – – Kathleen Norris, Joyce Carol Oates, and Nathan Englander –  – shared their thoughts with a large audience in Boston.

I found the symposium disappointing because only one of the writers spoke to the subject with recognizable wisdom, though she, too, did not do so consistently. Even in response to questions, the three failed to meet my expectations of spiritual insight.

On reflection, I consider the subject ill advised. Evil is too abstract a notion for most people to talk about. Successful authors can presumably devise fictional characters who embody evil but that does not mean they can talk about the subject intelligently. And surely the panel needed a philosopher and a theologian to speak to this admittedly difficult topic.

Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk and Amazing Grace, among other books, brought to the discussion an element that I consider indispensable –  – reliance on a spiritual tradition. She has had long association with the Benedictine monks whose monastery is near her home in South Dakota. Extended stays and shorter visits with these men have given her access to a Benedictine spirituality that dates from the sixth century and has proved valuable for her own inner life.

From this tradition, she has learned to value the wisdom in the monks’ daily life and in the Psalms that they recite in common. Each day, the Benedictines also say the “Our Father” together because they are aware of their own need for forgiveness.

Living with other people, each individual monk knows that, almost despite himself, he gives offense to his brothers. As one monk told her, “I have to attend to the evil in my own heart.”

Norris quoted approvingly a dictum that brought the laughter of recognition from audience members: “Living with others is the only asceticism that most people need.”

As to the Psalms, they show human beings as we really are. For example, they often express the desire for revenge, a human emotion laden with evil. These realistic prayers enable us to get away from what Norris calls “the litany of self-justification that pervades our culture.”

Norris also noted with approval a theme in one of Joyce Carol Oates’s novels: “any creative encounter with evil demands that we not distance ourselves from evil.” To anyone who thinks of evil as apart from human beings, Norris recommends Psalm 36, a prayer that does not, however, stay fixed on evil. The theme of the last two verses is expressed in the line: “How precious is your steadfast love, O God.”

Summing up the message of the Psalms, Norris gets to the heart of the matter. “The main thing they offer is that God is still a mystery.” This comes close to the response to evil given by many spiritual seekers. We do not understand but we trust in the God of love.

In my view, evil is too profound to be answered by a single individual. A spiritual tradition must be invoked for help in wrestling with this fact of life. Though many people regard it as excessively negative in its view of human beings, I myself have always found light in the traditional teaching about original sin. No matter how we try to get away from it, there is something terribly askew in human life.

The central Christian tradition sees Christ as freely accepting the evil of an agonizing death on the cross. In this faith, God in the person of his son, is willing to take upon himself the human condition with all of its suffering and the ultimate sacrifice of earthly life.

This, of course, does not explain why evil is at work in the world but it says that even God has been willing to undergo evil for the redemption of the human family.

Richard Griffin