Their names were Thomas and Bridget Keane, but to their children and grandchildren they were always Pop and Bird. They lived in Boston in the early years of the 20th Century, and raised four sons and two daughters. They were not rich, except in intelligence, affection and humor. Their faith was their bedrock, and education was valued far beyond any material success it might produce.

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As we enter upon either the last year of the 20th century or the next-to-last (depending on how you count), a new spirit is struggling to break forth among the world’s people. Billions of us are looking for signs of hope wherever they can be found.

One such sign has been suggested to me by a friend who is a Lutheran minister. In a recent conversation he told me of the inspiration which he had drawn from a statement by Pope John Paul II. My friend found the papal document spiritually encouraging and urged me to read it. Thanks to the wonders of the world wide web, I have managed to follow his suggestion.

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On the occasion of my first visit ever to a Mosque, two dominant impressions swept over me. First, the strength of the religious piety which I observed during the community prayer and in the talks afterward. And secondly, the warmth of the hospitality shown to me and other visitors.

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I was driving across a bridge over Narragansett Bay. The road led high up and gave me a view out over the water. Suddenly, however, and without warning, the roadway came to an end and I was confronted with the mortal danger of a sudden drop into the bay below.

This dream, one of many I have saved from long ago, comes from an era in my life when I began to pay close attention to my dreams. They became important to me because I was looking for indications of where my life was heading.  Dreaming, or at least becoming aware of this activity, took on a significance that it never had held previously.

Dreams can play a vital role in the spiritual life, although they can be tricky to interpret. If not approached carefully, our dreams may mislead us. Some researchers who have studied them have concluded that they cannot be interpreted literally and have no precise equivalence to daily life. In any event, it would be a mistake to take them as a entirely trustworthy formula for important decisions or as a guide that can stand alone.

Dreams occur in the Bible and are described as important in the lives of some biblical figures. The passages show the influence of folklore narratives in ancient Near East cultures in which dreams were widely held to be a means of divine communication. I will cite only two famous collections of dream narratives here.

The dramatic story of Joseph in the last chapters of Genesis presents him as a person in whose life dreams loom large. His brothers refer to him contemptuously as “the dreamer” and sell him into captivity in Egypt. Years later, because he has interpreted the Pharaoh’s dreams, he is given authority over all of that country.

In the Gospel of Matthew, another Joseph is told in a dream to take Mary as his wife and later to take her and the child Jesus into Egypt. Thus Jesus escapes being killed by the soldiers of Herod. Another similar warning is given the Magi, directing them to return home by a different route, avoiding the king.

In modern times, psychologists write about the role of dreams in revealing our unconscious. The Swiss psychologist Jung says: “The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul.” And again: “The dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.”

Dreams reflect the oftentimes turbulent rush of images and emotions that characterize our inner life. When written down, these dreams can seem entirely nonsensical unless one connects them imaginatively to the rest of life.  

The most frequent theme in my own dreams, in recent years at least, is being away and feeling frantic about getting back home. Often I am madly packing my bags but unable to get everything together. The plane is about to leave without me because I simply cannot cope with all the things I must collect before leaving. Anxiety abounds in these nighttime adventures, along with the sense of being cut off.

My favorite dreams are the rare ones that make me laugh out loud. Such a one happened three years ago when I shook with laughter in my sleep as I reacted to a weird comedy playing out in fantasy. Another occurred recently: I remember laughing but, as often happens, I let the event escape and cannot describe it now.

However, for me, more important than the content of any single dream is the fact of becoming aware of having dreamed. There was a time in my life when I was too rigid to have this awareness. That I can now gain access to my dream life suggests a more relaxed emotional life than I used to have.

To convey this kind of letting-go, spiritual writer Elizabeth Lesser uses  the image of a horse trotting home: “We can’t follow the horse home unless we slow down every now and then, loosen up on the reins, and sense a deeper direction. As much as it appreciates good food, good medicine, and exercise, the body also loves to rest, sleep, and dream.”

Richard Griffin

Last Monday I attended the wedding of two gay friends. One of these men I have known for several years, the other only slightly. For both of them I feel affection and wish them happiness in their life together.

The ceremony took place at City Hall in the community where I live. The City Clerk presided, reading the marriage vows that each partner repeated. They seemed thoroughly joyful as were the 25 or so guests who were seated in a semi-circle behind them.

For her part, the City Clerk indicated clearly in the emphasis she gave to certain words that she was acting under the authority of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In accepting my friends’ invitation I was conscious of my church’s strong disapproval of gay marriage. As a Catholic I felt myself to be acting contrary to ecclesiastical authority though there has been no explicit ban on attendance.

Had I been still a cleric, I surely could not have gone to the wedding because it could have been construed as expressing church approval. Probably I would have brought the censure of authorities down on my head.

One of the partners, I will call him Rob, is a longtime Catholic himself. Being a member of the church is important to him, though he often feels tempted to leave. That is largely because the Catholic Church in its official statements has expressed such hostility toward gay and lesbian people. He told me recently, “The behavior of the Church has been abusive.”

A Catholic college graduate and a longtime student in theology, Rob takes his faith seriously. That helps explain why he feels such pain at his church’s condemnation of his lifestyle. His partner, Del, grew up a Mormon, so he does not have the approval of his church either.

Despite my own attendance at this wedding, I must confess feeling mixed about the event. On the one side, I feel glad my friends Rob and Del have found happiness in their love for one another. To me, their fidelity, shown over years of living together, is good for them and also good for society. In wishing them spiritual blessings on this occasion, I was sincere and my message heartfelt.

But the tradition of heterosexual marriage remains precious to me, not something I want to see devalued in any way. My own wish would have been for the word “marriage” not to be applied to the union between gay and lesbian partners. For me, words are important, and this particular word has been used for centuries to describe the union between men and women.

Without casting aspersions on the unions between gay and lesbian people, I continue to regard the union of heterosexual people as different. The sexual differences between men and women are not trivial but constitute something basic and give a special character to marriage as it has been understood. Though the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has already applied the word marriage to people of the same gender, I regret that action of the court.

So, as so often on major issues, I find myself interiorly divided and torn. I want both to honor them and to rejoice when my friends of the same gender find lasting love with one another. Yet I want the name marriage to be reserved for couples of different genders. That’s the combination I currently live with but it can be uncomfortable.

For the foreseeable future, the Catholic Church would seem bound to a moral theology and an idea of church both at odds with approval of same-sex marriage. What the church could do, however, on the official level is to find spiritual values in the relationships between gay and lesbian people. That, in fact, is what many lay members of the church, and some clerics too, are currently doing.

One Catholic pastor told me recently of the esteem he has for a gay couple in his parish. “They are admirable in every way,” he said. “They are very spiritual.” This pastor seems to me to point the way toward a different attitude on the part of the official church. At the very least, the church should abandon what my friend Rob calls “the heated rhetoric” it uses on the subject of homosexuality.

Richard Griffin

“We are the beloved sons and daughters of God.” That was the constant message of my favorite guru, Henri Nouwen.

He believed in God’s love for every person and spent his life communicating this truth as far and wide as he could. I count myself fortunate to have seen him up close as one of his10,000 friends. That number suggests the kind of person he was.

A new video tracing his life and work has once more stirred up in me  appreciation of his teaching. Father Nouwen, a Dutch priest who died in 1996, left behind a legacy of love that continues to inspire the many people who knew him, heard him speak, or read any of his 40 books. Two million copies of those books have been sold in North America alone.

The video, “Journey of the Heart,” is so skillfully made that it brings back Henri as if he were still here. He emerges vividly with his amiable personal traits and also the eccentricities that would often amuse friends and associates.

What best distinguishes this portrait of the man perhaps is the revelation of his personal vulnerability. That God loved him did not come easily: through personal trials, he had to struggle to hold fast to his profound belief in this bedrock truth of his life.

As Robert Jonas, one of his close associates, says in the film, Henri had “one foot in the shadow of self-rejection and one foot in God’s love.” He chose to himself a “wounded healer,” expressing at once his doubts about his own lovability and his faith in the ministry that he believed God had called him to.

Though he taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, Father Nouwen considered the normal academic role to be a bad fit for him. He was restless at all of these institutions, ultimately leaving university life to live in Toronto with people who had developmental disabilities.

Among them, he found his final calling, one that taught him more than he could ever learn from books. These people, damaged in their bodily systems, could not read what Henri wrote, but came to value him for himself as a member of their community.

This master of the spiritual life did not isolate himself from the great issues of his time and place. Far from it – in 1965 Henri marched from Selma to Montgomery with the leaders of the civil rights struggle. Then, after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, he walked behind the slain prophet’s coffin in Atlanta.

He believed in personal intimacy, in friendship, and in hospitality. He saw this latter as a core ministry and was accustomed to inviting all of his students at Harvard and Yale to eat with him and to take part in the Eucharist. One of his teaching assistants has said: “They flocked to him like bees to honey.”

For him it was vital to integrate the spiritual life and the life of ministry. That ideal flowed from his core identity as a priest. His family reported that he saw this as his vocation when still only five years old.

All during his adult life, his family remained vital to him. His mother, especially, remained his inspiration. When she died he felt he had lost the one person who had loved him unconditionally.

Henri Nouwen’s spiritual teaching continues to uplift people who are struggling to discover the truth about themselves and God. Some find inspiration in his conviction that the gifts of life are often hidden in the places within us that most hurt. Speaking and writing from knowledge of his own vulnerability made Henri different from other spiritual leaders.

Henri also believed that, ultimately, we cannot find God, we can only be found by Him. Late in his life, he became fascinated with trapeze artists and saw the performer who catches the person who flies through the air as most like God.

The spiritual dictum quoted at the beginning, “We are the beloved sons and daughters of God,” serves as the best memorial to a man who continues to live on in the hearts of many.

The 60 minute video can be purchased for $24.95 at Daybreak Productions in Canada at 905 884-3454, ext. 234.

Richard Griffin

Allyn Bradford, while meditating during a 12-day “vision quest” for deeper spiritual insight, proceeded to talk to a tree. “The tree was quite surprised,” he reports, “that I was saying anything to it. No one had ever spoken to it before.”

If this sounds batty, know that the speaker was seeking, in a group of half a dozen men and women, a better understanding of himself as an older person. In a forested section of Colorado, helped by three guides, they fasted, meditated, ritually danced, and otherwise celebrated their progress toward elderhood.

Allyn Bradford says of the event: “I found it to be a life transforming experience.”

What did the tree say in answer to his questions?  “You are alive, the tree said to me,” a response that gave Bradford the inspiration he was hoping for. This 77-year-old retired Presbyterian minister felt affirmed by his encounter with nature, a step on his way toward a new way of living as an older person.

This spiritual adventurer admits mixed feelings at the beginning. “I went with some trepidation,” he confesses. In traveling from Boston to Colorado, he did not know what to expect and wondered how he would fare.

The tests of inner endurance came soon: for four days the participants ate nothing and drank only water. They also used a “sweat lodge,” an enclosure with heated stones, to purify their bodies. During some of this time, the atmosphere was filled with the sound of drumming and rattling, noises designed to alter their mood.

A basic activity was meditating but they also engaged in a fire dance. All of this stirred interior changes in Allyn Bradford. “It was very much a mystical experience,” he says, “a very profound religious experience. I felt almost on a high.”

Another ritual they performed showed symbolically how members of the group were leaving the way they had lived up to then. They took objects associated with their past lives and threw them into the fire. “They were parts of our lives that are over and we want to leave behind,” explains Bradford.

With that same purpose in mind, they wrote a letter to tell a friend that “I am no longer what I was.” They had become dead to their former way of being with all of its mixed values.

Not surprisingly, some of the mood-altering led to frightening interior encounters. The nighttime was the most scary for Bradford. “I felt terrified,” he says of sleeping in the forest. “I thought I was going to die. It was like pushing my envelope to the ultimate point.”

But surviving the fright brought him into a new inner space where he found about his own strength. If he could look death in the eye, then it would change his experience of life. Moving against the current of American culture, he was now able to face dying and the challenges of old age.

The whole Colorado experience has achieved its purpose: this one man, at least, has a new idea of himself as a person approaching his 80s. In fact, he had come to see himself as commissioned with a new mission: sharing with others his vision of spiritual elderhood. He wants others, especially the Baby Boomers as they approach later life, to appreciate their potentialities for new vitality.

Thus he now sees himself as committed to inner discipline, continual learning, a spiritual orientation toward life, a working through the key events of his life, and service to others. He wants to bring out the wisdom in other older people.

“I'm giving myself a year to figure out how to make the best use of what I have learned,” Allyn Bradford says. He already has a vision for America's future: “Older people could become a critical mass in our culture.” Those who have become spiritual elders could become a strong force for change by sharing their wisdom and other spiritual values, he believes.

The inspiration for the “Spiritual Eldering” movement goes back to Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a Philadelphia-based rabbi who conceived a different way of approaching later life.  In his 1990 book “From Age-ing to Sag-ing” he lays out his vision of what growing older can be. From this pioneering work have come group experiences  such as the one Allyn Bradford experienced.  

Richard Griffin