Sharing the experience of his wife’s death two years previously, editor and writer Christopher Bamford speaks of what he has learned. “I have come to understand that life is praise and lamentation, and that these two are very close, perhaps one—and that they are transformative.”

His essay, “In the Presence of Death,” comes first in “The Best Spiritual Writing 2000,” the latest edition in a series begun two years ago. Philip Zaleski, editor of this series, deserves credit for having assembled in this paperback an excellent collection that can nourish the spiritual life of its readers.

Bamford describes the last month of his wife Tadea’s life as a time when everyone else still prayed for her to be healed while she resigned herself to approaching death. Tadea had to show patience with the people who visited because they were not prepared to hear her talk about dying. “So she just sat quietly,” her husband says, “waiting for us to understand that all was as it should be.”

Looking back, what he remembers vividly is the way time and space changed. “Everything slowed down,” he explains, “expanded, became qualititative, rather than quantitative.” Time became like a dream, with every day spread out, and every moment containing other moments, each of them a gift of grace.

Tadea herself did not allow any sad faces among visitors; she wanted them to appreciate the reality of human life, even though hers was coming to an end. As a result, the atmosphere was filled with prayer and devotion, a kind of informal liturgy that brought everyone into a subtle song of praise.

The author summarizes what this environment can produce: “When life is lived in the continuous presence of death, which is the presence of God, it is as if every moment becomes an offering, a communication, received from and given to the spiritual world.”

In Tadea’s last three days, family members and friends could feel a change. She had entered into the final stage of her struggle. At this time, a priest came to baptize and confirm her as she prepared for departure. “There was a heightened sense of being, an exceptional clarity of perception, an interiority to space and silence I had not suspected before,” recalls her husband.

Soon she died, after  opening her eyes wide and leaning forward as if she was entering her new place. Those in the house felt a sense of  “inbetweenness,” as if suspended between heaven and earth. The presence of the spirit was palpable and made people feel themselves in a kind of trance.

In the succeeding days of mourning and burial, Christopher Bamford felt the gift continuing. He reflects: “It is as if only death reveals the meaning of life. As if in death the whole of life—its task, its meaning, its fruit, above all, its mystery—is laid bare.” He also was given new insight into the meaning of life: “Life was not about getting and doing, but about creating virtue’s in one’s soul.”

This bereaved husband felt deep gratitude for having been part of Tadea’s life. Through her love and devotion, along with her reaching for other virtues, she had taught him about spirituality. At the same time, he remained conscious of his need for forgiveness because of the ways in which he had failed her. Later he became convinced that she was forgiving him.

The author had still to struggle in coming to three realizations. First, though the dead have gone, they are still present to the world—they belong to everyone.

Second, heaven became a “powerful reality” for him. He imagined himself there with Tadea as they floated down a river of liquid light.

Thirdly, the author came to realize that from then on he would have to live in three different spheres and yet make them one. He had to find a middle way between heaven and earth whereby the death of his spouse could become “a bridge to new experience.”

This third discovery actually happened. “I found myself loving the world more than I ever had,” concludes Bamford. He has ultimately learned that “nothing of our experience is lost or worthless in the eyes of life.”

Bamford offers much more than can be summarized here. But perhaps this much will serve to stir reflection about spirituality coming from the so often agonizing experience of a loved one’s death.

Richard Griffin

Andre Dubus, the writer whose death last year at age 63 was much  mourned by his many readers, was born in Louisiana but lived in Haverhill, Massachusetts for much  of his life. Many of his short stories found their setting in this latter region and breathed the distinctive atmosphere of the area. Among these stories is one that I keep returning to for its human pathos and, especially, its bold spirituality.

“A Father’s Story” centers on the life of a middle-aged man named Luke Ripley who owns a stable of thirty horses that he rents to riders. Since the time when his wife left, taking his three sons and one daughter with her, the man suffers from loneliness and a sense of continual unease.

At the same time, what he calls “my real life” brings him into daily contact with God. This contact comes through taking part in the Catholic Mass, along with five or six other people at St. John’s, his local parish. Speaking of the Eucharist that he receives, he describes “a feeling that I am thankful not to have lost in the forty-eight years since my first Communion. At its center is excitement; spreading out from it is the peace of certainty.”

To this character, faith is a vital reality, one that he defines by contrast with belief. “Belief is believing in God; faith is believing that God believes in you.”

Yet he feels his own inability to pay constant attention to God. For that reason he appreciates the liturgy in which he takes part. “Ritual,” he says, “allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love.”

Though he cares about his sons, he feels a special love for his twenty-year-old daughter Jennifer. For him, daughters are vulnerable and altogether precious in ways that male children are not. This father worries about her “the way fathers worry about daughters and not sons.”

Luke’s special friend is Father Paul LeBoeuf, his parish priest. The two of them talk together daily and often share meals. Theirs is a spiritual friendship, though it is grounded in manly interests. He can confide his deepest feelings to his priest friend, except the series of event that unfolded when his daughter came to visit.

As she was driving home, returning to her father’s house after a night out with a couple of girlfriends, Jennifer swerved to avoid something in the road. That something turned out to be a human being, though its shape was all a blur to Jennifer as her car hit this person. The car shuddered as she hit him but she continued on her way home, panicked into not stopping.

When she got home and talked with her father through her tears, she told him the horrible details as best she could remember. Later, Luke drove to the place of the accident himself and found the body of a young man in a ditch by the side of the road. He was dead, but it remained unclear whether death had come instantly from the impact.

The discovery plunged the father into a crisis of conscience. Should he, can he call the authorities and report what his daughter has done? After a sleepless night, he takes the keys to his daughter’s car, drives to church, and talks to Father Paul. The priest senses that something is wrong but Luke cannot tell him the secret. “To confess now would be unfair,” he tells himself. “It is a world of secrets, and now I have one from my from my best, in truth my only friend.”

Still, he receives the Eucharist and talks with God as before. However, now he has said good-bye to the peace that used to be his. Knowing that he would do it again, Luke tells himself that he acted as the father of a girl.

When God tells him that He is a father, too, Luke replies that God is not the father of a daughter but of a son. Then his poignant conversation with God ends this way:

“But you never had a daughter, and if You had, You could not have borne her passion.

“‘As you love me,’ I say, and I go with an apple or carrot out to the barn.”

Richard Griffin

This story comes from the Desert Fathers, ascetics of the first centuries of the Christian Church. As retold by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham in their 1992 book, “The Spirituality of Imperfection,” it goes like this:

Abbot Athanasius had a book of very fine parchment which was worth twenty shekels. It contained both the Old and New Testaments in full and Athanasius read from it daily as he meditated.

Once a certain monk came to visit him and, seeing the book, made off with it. The next day, when Athanasius went to his Scripture reading and found that it was missing, he knew at once that the monk had taken it. Yet he did not send after him, for fear that he might add the sin of perjury to that of theft.

After that, the monk dwelt with Athanasius for the rest of his life.

This story has all the charm of a narrative set in a simpler time than our own and in a setting very different from that in which we live. Yet, it carries basic spiritual values that can apply to people who live in modern society.

Athanasius is a great-souled person who has advanced to an enlightenment that allows him to love other people more than his own possessions, no matter how precious. Even though his Bible provides Athanasius with daily reading that nourishes his spiritual life, this holy man shows himself willing to part with it for the welfare of another person.

Athanasius refuses to send after the monk who stole his Bible because he does not want to worsen the monk’s spiritual condition. Putting the monk in a position in which he would almost surely tell a lie would make him commit a second sin. So, at some cost to himself,  the holy father refuses to endanger the monk’s soul.

Even when the potential buyer of the book comes to him for an appraisal of its worth, Athanasius does not reveal that it is stolen property. Similarly when the monk comes to him, stricken in heart and repentant, Athanasius does not demand the return of his Bible.

In a world where people kill other human beings in order to take their jewelry or clothing or a few dollars, Athanasius’ attitude toward material possessions remains a model. The spiritual traditions of the world call his stance toward things “detachment.” He will not allow his possessions to get the better of him but remains willing to give them up for a greater good.

The beauty of Athanasius’ state of soul is that he goes beyond detachment to something greater. His not being attached to his possessions frees him to be compassionate toward his fellow human beings, even when they have offended him. He has the spiritual freedom to love other people and put their interests before his own.

In being compassionate and loving, this spiritual father shows the power of a great-souled person. That is why the monk returns to him and decides to remain there for the rest of his life. The way Athanasius lives is spiritually infectious and attracts others to him because they see in his life a compelling spiritual ideal.

Richard Griffin

On the second last day on which it was open to the general public, I visited the new Boston Massachusetts Temple of the Mormon Church. In doing so, I was one of an estimated eighty thousand people who came from nearby and far away to enter the imposing building that looms up alongside Route 2 in Belmont. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to use the official name, showed pride in its new place of worship and welcomed warmly those of us who came to visit.

My motive in coming was not merely to satisfy curiosity about the architecture of the new structure but to discover more about the spirituality of the people who will use the building from now on. Those people are faithful Mormons, those who can show that they are members in good standing within this community of belief in Christ.

I had the advantage of being guided by a friend, Roger Porter,  who has taken a leading role in this community as a bishop. A Harvard professor and a former White House policy director, my friend offered me much information about the beliefs and practices of his church. Even more important, he shared with me some insight into his own commitment to this tradition.

When I asked him what his church means to him, my friend answered “I find inspiration from my faith in virtually everything I do.” It was impressive to hear a man who has been so successful in his profession, as an expert in the field of government and business, testify to the importance of spirituality in his life.

The other Mormons whom I met on the visit also impressed me with their cheerful commitment to their faith. One of the chief  reasons for the dynamic expansion of the Latter-Day Saints, both in this country and abroad, is that they do not hesitate to make demands of members. The Church has some sixty thousand men and women, both college-aged members and people in retirement, who are currently serving as missionaries all over the world.

The Mormons trace the origins of their community back to 1820 when Joseph Smith, a boy of fourteen living on a farm in New York State, received a divine revelation. As Mormon history records it, “God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to Joseph.” After that, “the Lord worked through Joseph Smith to restore His Church and priesthood.” Smith was killed by a mob in 1844, at which time Brigham Young became president of the church and led members across the United States to the Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah.

The Boston Temple ranks as the one-hundredth to be build by the Mormons, a sign of their world-wide growth. Two facts about this temple and those elsewhere came as a major surprise to me. First, it does not look like a cathedral inside, since it has no single large space. Instead, it is broken up into a series of smaller rooms suitable for individual prayer rather than communal worship. The two exceptions to this rule are for baptisms and weddings, both of them rites that involve a group of people.

Secondly, the temple does not open on Sundays. That is the day on which members go instead to the meetinghouse for group worship, religious instruction, and other social events. In Belmont, the meetinghouse is located on property nearby.

Mormons put great emphasis upon marital fidelity and the care of children. The wedding rite is called a Sealing, by which the partners commit themselves to a union that will last even beyond the present world into the next.

Baptism, too, differs from what is standard in other Christian churches. In Mormon belief, you can be baptized to the benefit of people long dead. Those who did not receive baptism during their life on earth can receive this sacrament by transferring its power to someone who never received it while living down below.

Perhaps the most dramatic of the temple spaces is the Celestial Room. This room rises two and a half stories, has twelve chandeliers, and is light in color and texture. In the words of the church, “The celestial room symbolizes the peace and happiness we can experience as eternal families with our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.”

The temple is now closed to outsiders, but I will not soon forget the hospitality of the members and their readiness to witness to their faith.

Richard Griffin

“Nazism was not a Christian phenomenon.” “Nazism itself was not an inevitable outcome of Christianity.” “We recognize with gratitude those Christians who risked or sacrificed their lives to save Jews during the Nazi regime.”

These quotations come from one section of an extraordinary statement made by a group of Jewish scholars and published earlier this month on a full page of the Sunday New York Times. Entitled “Dabru Emet” (Hebrew for “Speak the Truth”), this path-breaking statement calls for nothing less than a new relationship between Jews and Christians.

Dabru Emet was written by four Jewish scholars based at North American universities and endorsed by more than 150 other scholars and rabbis, most of them from this country. The main purpose of these intellectual and religious leaders is to recognize the efforts in recent decades of official Christian groups, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, to express “remorse about Christian mistreatment of Jews and Judaism.”

The Jewish leaders judge that the changes “merit a thoughtful Jewish response.” The time has come, they declare, for Jews to learn about Christian efforts to honor Judaism and to reflect “on what Judaism may now say about Christianity.”

The authors break their document into eight distinct statements, each of them containing abundant material for reflection and prayer.

1. “Jews and Christians worship the same God.” This gives these Jewish theologians reason to rejoice that through Christianity, “hundreds of millions of people  have entered into relationship with the God of Israel.”
2. “Jews and Christians seek authority from the same Book – the Bible.” Though Jews and Christians interpret it differently in some places, both groups learn from it certain fundamental truths about God and God’s dealings with us.
3. “Christians can respect the claim of the Jewish people upon the land of Israel.” Many Christians have reasons for supporting the State of Israel that go far beyond politics. For their part, the authors honor the Jewish tradition mandating that Israel treat its non-Jewish residents with justice.
4. “Jews and Christians accept the moral principles of Torah.” The first five books of the Hebrew Bible provide a foundation for recognizing the basic dignity of every human being and for motivating efforts to improve the lives of everyone.
5. “Nazism was not a Christian phenomenon.” Had they ever completely exterminated the Jews, the Nazis would have gone further and  turned against Christians. Christians should be encouraged to continue working against the contempt for Jews that so tarnished earlier eras.
6. “The humanly irreconcilable difference between Jews and Christians will not be settled until God redeems the entire world as promised in Scripture.” That means that neither side should claim exclusive correct interpretation nor try to exercise power over the other.
7. “A new relationship between Jews and Christians will not weaken Jewish practice.” The authors see Christianity, despite its origins within Judaism, as distinct. Only if Jews to value their own traditions can they continue their relationship with Christians with integrity.
8. “Jews and Christians  must work together for justice and peace. This is the way to help bring about the kingdom of God on earth.”

Careful reading of the text will discover much that is new in this 8-point statement. It represents a fresh approach to Jewish-Christian relationships that breathes the spirit of peace and reconciliation. The authors resist the temptation to find defects in official Christian statements but instead look to the intention behind them. These Jewish theologians demonstrate an openness of mind that can serve as a model for all who seek a deeper relationship between these two great spiritual traditions.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, one of the signers, has been quoted as saying: “Christians have come extremely far, especially when you juxtapose the past 30 years against the past 2,000 years of fratricide and enmity. Now it behooves us to take another look, to look at the commonalities, and not to have this siege mentality based on the Christians of the past, not the Christians of today.”

This quotation comes from an article written by Kevin Eckstrom and posted on the Internet. This article and the text of Dabru Emet can be found at www.beliefnet.com.

Richard Griffin

At a recent hometown baseball game, played for charity, I happened to sit next to a man whose wife and two daughters were with him. One of his daughters who was moving around the stands animatedly, looked about twenty years old; the other, whom I will call Eleanor, seemed several years younger.

On being introduced to her, I quickly realized that Eleanor could not talk. She tried to, but could only make inarticulate noises. Sometimes she moaned and seemed to be in distress but her parents did not get upset. Throughout the evening, she sat next to her father and would occasionally rest her head on his shoulder.

In conversation with the father, I discovered from him that Eleanor has a rare disease that prevents some children from developing normally. She was born with this affliction and thus has had to live with it her whole life.

So have her parents. Clearly, they have given this daughter devoted attention. Her needs have been a priority for them and they have made her feel loved. I became convinced of this love when the father told me: “I would not trade her for the world.”

This statement struck me as evidence of a deep spirituality that has taken root in this man’s life. His words have stayed with me since that evening, three weeks ago, and have continued to impress me with their beauty. Though I do not know the man’s name and have failed in my efforts to trace him for an interview, I can imagine how Eleanor’s life has shaped his own and that of his wife.

At the beginning it must have come as a shock. For them to realize that this child was born with severe disabilities would have upset their expectations and made them wonder how this could have happened. If they were believers, their faith in God may have been shaken making them doubt, for a time, that God still cared for them. “Why us?” they probably asked. They may even have fantasized about exchanging their child for one that was whole.

They must have felt anxious for their child as they consulted medical specialists, experts in the disease, to discover what could be done. Surely, they must have thought, some new medical technique or wonder drugs might at least alleviate the effects of the ailment.

At a certain point, they would have accepted the inescapable fact that Eleanor would always be severely limited in what she could do. No matter what, this child would never be able to talk or to be independent. She would need her parents to take care of her as long as she, and they, lived.

One can imagine how this realization would have required a recasting of imagination and emotion. These parents would have been forced to think differently about their child’s future and their own. They would find themselves in spiritual crisis, needing to adjust their hopes and dreams to the reality thrust upon them.

From all appearances, they have met this crisis bravely and learned how to become different parents from what they must have expected to be. With courage, patience, and hope, they have apparently learned to face a transformed future as they have come to grips with a situation so different from what they ever thought possible.

Above all, they learned love in a new way. If a strong spirituality has taken root in these parents the way I believe, it is most of all because of their love. And though this love is directed toward their daughter Eleanor, it must have strengthened the bond between them as marriage partners and, indeed, the bonds with their whole family.

Again, the father’s statement reverberates in me: “I would not trade her for the world.” Those simple words carry a love that has been wrested out of severe reality. This line conveys a hard-won spiritual maturity that gives deep meaning to his life and that of his wife.

As a lay theologian writes in this week’s issue of Commonweal, “I am increasingly convinced that my relationship with my wife, and with our children, is the spiritual ‘place’ where I will work out my salvation.” The theologian’s language might strike Eleanor’s father as foreign but it may express something of the same spiritual reality that he, too, is living out.

Richard Griffin

Amos Bailey M.D. took the lead in founding “Balm of Gilead,” the only hospice or comfort care organization in the state of Alabama. Along with Edwina Taylor, a nurse, and other associates, Dr. Bailey primarily serves the working poor of Birmingham and the underinsured. This health care team tries to help terminally ill people to die peacefully, with opportunities to attend to personal and spiritual issues.

These compassionate and creative medical professionals appear in the fourth section of Bill Moyers’ new series “On Our Own Terms.” The first program will be shown starting this month on public television stations across the country. Convinced of the series’ importance, the stations have mounted a major publicity drive and have organized community groups to discuss vital questions raised by the programs.

Dr. Bailey wants to change the culture of dying. His effort is to control the pain of his patients so that they can make good end-of-life choices and also attend to important personal issues. He aims at stabilizing the condition of patients so that, if at all possible, they can go home to die.

As Bill Moyers explains, that’s where most Americans wish to spend their last days. Statistics show, however, that four out or five of us die in hospitals or nursing homes. To change this reality requires reformers to go against many different obstacles, as Dr. Bailey has discovered.

At Balm of Gilead, top priority goes to relief of suffering. That includes four different kinds of suffering: physical, emotional, spiritual, and social. If physical suffering is not controlled, Dr. Bailey emphasizes, then it is impossible for patients to concentrate on anything else. But then, the other kinds of suffering pose challenges, too. As Bill Moyers says, “There are no charts for soul pain.”

Dr. Bailey and his associates like to consider control of pain as a person’s fifth vital sign, the others being blood pressure, body temperature, pulse, and respiration.

The team also is committed to avoiding invasive medical treatment such as oxygen masks that cover the face. And, for these patients, they do not recommend surgery or other drastic means for prolonging life.

These health care providers, instead, spend much of their time talking and listening. As Edwina Taylor says of her patients, “It’s such a powerful thing for them to know that they have someone standing with them, that it’s okay to talk about dying.”

John Reagan, age 85, one of Dr. Bailey’s patients, could not stay at home because he could not handle his own medications. This resulted in his being sent to a nursing home where regulations at first did not allow Dr. Bailey to continue to take care of Mr. Reagan.

Another of his patients, Mrs. James, will have to leave his care if she takes too long to die because Medicare covers only six months. Still another, Portia Boyd, needs to employ a woman to prepare meals but Medicare will not pay for this vital chore. Dr. Joanne Lynn, another pioneer in end-of –life care, is heard to complain, “I can get any patient into the ICU (intensive care unit), but I can’t get a meal delivered on the weekend.”

Another chief obstacle to a shift in priorities does not directly concern insurance coverage. Rather, it is the lack of training of most doctors in pain control and end-of-life issues. Too many of them give their main attention to the illness instead of the person. As Edwina Taylor, a nurse with 29 years’ experience says, “A lot of doctors cannot admit that a patient will die.”

Things are changing, however. One half of Americans who die of cancer now do so with the assistance of a hospice program. This fact suggests that more and more people recognize, among other things, the importance of spiritual issues as one prepares for death.

The Massachusetts Compassionate Care Coalition, a group of 140 people from forty different organizations, aims to improve care of the dying. Founded two years ago, this coalition tries to help people become aware of good end-of-life care and of the decisions that need to be made then.

Carol Wogrin, MCCC’s spokeswoman, says of those involved in this end-of-life care, “People don’t work with the dying just because they need a job; for whatever reason, they feel compelled.”

To judge from the television series, these words aptly describe Dr. Bailey, Ms. Taylor and the other team members at Balm of Gilead in Birmingham.

Richard Griffin