“I experienced a kind of grief that I had never known.” This was how Bill Bartholome of Kansas City spoke about discovering that he was going to die from cancer of the esophagus. “The pain was not in the same league as the suffering,” he went on to explain, “but, you move down the road, and it becomes okay.”

This statement comes from the first segment of Bill Moyers’ four-part, six-hour blockbuster television series called “On Our Own Terms.” This series, which carries the subtitle “Moyers on Dying,” will be shown this month on many public television stations across the country.

Boston’s Channel 2 will broadcast it, September 10 through 13, at 9:30 in the evening.  New Hampshire’s Channel 11 will show the first two parts at 9:00 PM on September 16 and the last two on September 23. Both stations have scheduled repeat showings at other times, with Boston’s airing on Channel 44.

For people concerned about end-of-life spiritual issues, as well as the whole range of medical and other subjects connected with death and dying, this series deserves careful watching. Previewing the tapes as I have done enables me to recommend it enthusiastically as a uniquely valuable and moving experience.

It is by no means always easy to watch. Viewers are shown real-life scenes of human suffering and the devastation wrought by disease. At the same time, one also comes close to the beauty of the human spirit, – the courage and devotion of people who undergo the experience of dying and of those who serve them. There were times in the series when I felt tears come to my eyes and when I felt stirred to admiration of my fellow humans.

Bill Bartholme, himself a physician, is among the first persons whose dying is traced in this fine documentary. Though he was himself a full professor in his medical school and attached to its hospital, “his experience as a patient was devastating.” No one among the medical personnel took his pain seriously and, at  a time when he needed attention, he was left to fend for himself on a cot in a hospital corridor.

Vital to his functioning in his last few months of life was the decision of his fiancée, Pam, to marry him. “I could not believe that she would do it,” said Bill. But for Pam it was an expression of a love that could not be damaged by the prospect of Bill’s death but only strengthened.

They decide that, for Bill, treatments aimed at a cure do not make sense. Instead, they instruct their medical team to focus on the relief of pain and on other measures to help him prepare for a good death.

In the meantime, Bill finds that the knowledge of death’s nearness enhances his experience of living. “If you don’t expect to see spring when fall comes and then you are around and get to see spring,” he says, “you don’t experience it as spring. You experience it as a miracle.”

Throughout the running time of six hours, one meets other people who are facing death in the near future. And one gets to know physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals who are trying to change the way in which hospitals and individual caregivers provide services to the dying.

Some of these professionals belong to so-called palliative care teams that make it their business to deal with the pain and discomfort of patients for whom a cure is no longer realistic. I found it inspiring to see such professionals going against the system to defend the rights of their patients to die without undergoing further treatments that cannot help them and may possibly increase their suffering.

Bill Moyers and his collaborators have announced ambitious goals for this series. They want to begin a national conversation about improving the way  Americans die. They hope to spark discussion all across the country about the issues that surround death and dying.

The crucial issues that the series takes on include the following: fear of dying in pain; concern about being a burden on family and loved ones; acute financial stress; fear of dying alone; loss of control and dignity.

A free information packet is available. To get it after the broadcast, you can call 800 962-2973. You can also find material on the web at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/onourownterms/community/index.html

Richard Griffin

A 92-year-old woman told me last week that she wants to die. This she said in a group of fellow elders to whom I have been speak from time to time about spirituality.

Anna (to call her by a name different from her own) made this announcement with clear conviction. She stated her wish in a firm voice that made us all believe that she meant it. Most of the other group members present nodded sympathetic assent and one or two indicated that they also would welcome death.

At first, I felt taken aback and not quite sure how to respond. Such an announcement carries so much emotional power that it can be disconcerting. So, at first, all I did was listen carefully and make some sympathetic noises. Anna is a person easy to love, such is her quiet sincerity and openness to the experience of other people.

When I did form a response, I told her that I understood how she could feel like that. In telling of her desire for death, she indicated that she had been through enough. Without specifying what troubles she had known, she had hinted at a variety of recent health crises. It is obvious that her hearing has become diminished, and she walks with some difficulty.

I responded further by saying that, even though she would welcome death, it would be difficult for me and for others to suffer her loss. We so value her, I said, that her leaving would be a heavy burden for us to bear. To judge by their body language, others in the group identified with this sentiment.

Anna’s death wish reminded me of the prophet Elijah in the Hebrew Bible. The first book of Kings tells how this prophet, threatened by the evil queen Jezebel, felt that he could go on no further. His travails in carrying out the word spoken to him by the Lord had piled up so much that he could no longer take it.

So he went out into the wilderness, and after a day’s journey sat down under a broom tree. There he asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”

The two situations are obviously different – Elijah and my friend Anna  find themselves at diverse stages of life and have different challenges to contend with. It could also be that Elijah has been overcome by depression, a malady that can afflict all of us and one that needs healing.

But both Elijah and Anna feel worn down by the pressures of the world and feel the need for ultimate relief.

“Ich habe genug” (I have had enough) is the way Johann Sebastian Bach puts it at the beginning of a famous cantata known by that title. And it’s a sentiment that almost everyone can feel at times of severe stress. There are moments when it all seems too much.

For old people like Anna, the burden can feel even heavier. And when you add, as she did, the assurance that her life’s work is basically completed, then the desire for death seems even more reasonable. You have to feel deep sympathy for a person who can look back upon ninety years of carrying out life’s tasks and who now experiences more pain than satisfaction.

And yet, for me and many other people, yielding to these feelings must be seen as a temptation rather than an appropriate reason for putting an end to one’s life. We take inspiration from the Elijah story: it does not end with the prophet’s death. Instead, the Lord appeared to him, gave him food and drink, and “he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.”

One can never predict exactly when the most meaningful moments of one’s life will come. As Kathleen Fischer writes: “We do not know what is our ‘hour,’ the time when events of most significance may occur in our lives. It may in fact be the final years, months, or moments of that life.”

If this approach be trusted and taken, one must consider at least possible that spiritual experiences defining for our lives can take place in extreme old age. Perhaps this confidence is worth hoping and praying for.

Richard Griffin

Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic Party’s candidate for Vice-President, has announced that he will not campaign on Saturdays. As an Orthodox Jew, he holds the Sabbath to be an altogether special day on which work is not an option.

“My religion is very important to me,” says Senator Lieberman, a sentiment that no one doubts is sincere. Of course, religion has importance for the other major candidates as well and they presumably make Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, a time for worship and some other activities different from the rest of the week.

For Orthodox Jews, many laws and regulations govern the observance of the Sabbath (Shabbat, as most of them refer to it). These rules are intended to safeguard the meaning of that day and to ensure that the tradition behind it not be lost. Keeping to these prescriptions enhances the value of that special time between sundown on Friday till Saturday evening each week.

The celebrated Jewish leader and scholar, Rabbi Abraham Joseph Heschel who taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, a few decades ago published a beautiful book called The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. First appearing in 1951, this work later went through several editions and has since become a classic.

In this short but profound volume, Rabbi Heschel offers insight into the meaning of the Sabbath that brings out its many-sided significance. To read it is to develop a new appreciation of what the day may mean for Senator Lieberman and the millions of other men and women who share his faith. Words from this book quoted here make eloquent material for meditation.

Rabbi Heschel insists that Judaism is a religion oriented largely to time rather than to space. The Sabbath consecrates time and overturns people’s ordinary values. “There is a realm of time,” he writes, “where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.”

And again: “Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.”

Many people would argue that the value of the Sabbath lies in its giving us a break so that we can return to the week’s work with renewed energy. But Rabbi Heschel rejects this approach. Standing this argument on its head, he insists “The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath.”

Ultimately, the rabbi finds the worth of this special day, not in anything merely human, but rather in what it tells us about God. “The likeness of God can be found in time, which is eternity in disguise,” says this deep thinker. By focusing attention on time rather than space, the Sabbath reminds believers that God is not a thing. Because it is spiritual, this special time suggests that no definition can grasp God, that the divine eludes human grasp.

So a theology lies behind the Sabbath, a doctrine that begins with the Bible’s story of the creation of the world. After having made the world and all that is in it during the first six days, God put the finishing touches on the final day by taking three actions: God rested, he blessed, and he hallowed, says Rabbi Heschel. That means that the Sabbath is a time for abstaining from work, it is a day that has received the divine blessing, and it is a day filled with holiness.

I asked one of my readers, Phyllis Reichart, a 42-year-old single mother, what Shabbat means to her. Her answer seems in beautiful harmony with Rabbi Heschel’s views and, for all we know, with Joseph Lieberman’s as well.

“I think that we need to have time to stop and listen inside,” she answers. “I hear my connection with God, I get a sense of direction in my life’s task, and clarity in my relationships with myself, with my loved ones, and in my work. I remember (a lot of it’s about remembering) to feel from the deepest part of myself.”

Richard Griffin

Maybe it helps to have learned how to swim only in middle age. As a result of coming to this activity so late, I still feel a vivid sense of wonder that the water holds me up. What a miracle that I can make my way on top of mounds of water, no matter how deep they lie below me!

After all, water would seem not to have enough solidity to support the weight of my body. When you scoop it up into your hand, water appears entirely too weak to sustain a single pound, much less hundreds and thousands. How can it possibly support my weight or that of huge ships of one hundred thousand tons?

By now, my sinking seems hardly a possibility. Unless I deliberately swim beneath the surface, there is almost no way in which I will go under. The water appears to have a buoyancy that keeps me on top, prevents my body from slipping beneath the ocean waves or the ripples in a pond or pool.

There is something so elemental about the water that surrounds me as I swim! Considering that so much of my bodily substance is composed of water, I am not only surrounded by it but almost formed by it, inside and out. What is this mysterious stuff – water –  that remains so close to who I am physically?

The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles considered water one of the four basic elements that make up reality. He thought it one of the fundamental materials of nature. Given the importance that modern science gives to water in the universe, it is not hard to see how Empedocles arrived at his view. His was a profound insight, one still worth thinking about.

So, on these summer days I travel to the water, immerse myself in that delicious world, and marvel at being carried along almost effortlessly. I lie on my back with abandon, in confidence that this fluid will serve as my bed for as long as I wish. How refreshing to feel the coolness of the water; how reassuring to feel buoyed by its all-embracing lightness of being!

For a time, at least, my anxieties flow away. Now I can follow the urgings of spiritual writer Elizabeth Lesser “to be at home with your life just as it is; to rest gently on the waters of the mysterious universe.”

These summer days also bring the subtle pleasures of sitting outside on the porch, breathing in the early morning or late evening breezes. The air is so delicious it makes me feel tempted to stay there long enough to let work go undone. The crisp gentle rush of air touches my face and reaches inward to my soul.

Not surprisingly, Empedocles named air as another of the four elements that make up reality. Again, his was the profound insight to recognize how all-encompassing is the air around us. The Greek philosopher would presumably have welcomed the description that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins gave of air, over two thousand years after the time of Empedocles.

These are the images that Hopkins applied to it:

“Wild air, world-mothering air / Nestling me everywhere.”

And later:

“This needful, never spent, / And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink, / My meal at every wink.”

Air seems even closer to spirit than is water. You cannot see it at all, only feel its effects. It circulates over my face, bringing me refreshment and peace, but I fail to grab hold of it. Perhaps because of its physical subtlety the air can reach into me and touch my soul.

When air forms into wind, as it often does these summer evenings at the approach of thunder storms, then it stirs stronger emotions. Then one feels power, the dynamism of the world around us. Air then evokes in me awe, along with awareness that not all the soul’s surroundings can be peace and quiet.

No, days and nights will also be marked by turmoil, at least at times, and I will have to wrestle with the powers and principalities of evil. But always I hold hope of return to those times when the air will blow peacefully once more.

Richard Griffin

The power of spirituals sung in community was brought home to me again last month as I took part in a workshop led by a dynamic African-American musician named Ysaye Barnwell. I will not forget anytime soon the way this charismatic woman conducted some two hundred of us in song.

But before we sang, Dr. Barnwell told the story of two women in the book of Genesis. Sarah was the wife of Abraham who, in her old age, became the mother of Isaac. By contrast, Hagar was a slave woman from Egypt who had borne Abraham a son, Ishmael, when it seemed that his wife Sarah would not be able to conceive a child.

Not surprisingly, bad blood formed between the two women in the household triangle, leading to a demand from Sarah that Abraham send Hagar and her son away.

Dr. Barnwell sees the Sarah/Hagar conflict as a prototype of the present-day conflict between Jews and Arabs in Israel. That view leads her to raise the questions: “Could women play a unique role in resolving the current crisis in the Middle East?” “What if Sarah and Hagar were to meet and talk?”

As she explored these questions with members of the audience, Dr. Barnwell sang blues for Hagar the exile. She pointed out that, though this slave woman was forced to wander in the desert with her son, Hagar was only the second woman in the Bible to whom God spoke directly.

When she prepared us to sing, our director divided the group into four parts: sopranos, tenors, altos, and basses. And she taught us how to come in at the appropriate times as we sang each round.

In the first song, “Wade in the Water,” the refrain repeated over and over goes: “God’s gonna trouble the water.” It presumably leads back to the Book of Exodus when the escaping Israelites walked through the sea and their enemies drowned in their pursuit.

The second spiritual was  “Sometimes I Feel Like a Mourning Dove a Long Way from Home.” It featured the refrain “O Lord, don’t you leave me alone.”

Next came “I Wanna Die Easy When I Die.” Here singers repeat the refrain expressing a longing for ultimate fulfillment: “Soon I’ll be done with the troubles of the world – goin’ home to live with God.”

The final two hymns we sang were “Way Over in Beulah Land” and ‘O Lord, Give Us Power.”

As we moved joyously through each of the spirituals, the words took on greater intensity. Repeating them over and over drew us into a kind of trance. That movement was helped by our clapping of hands in rhythm to the music until we found ourselves in a new spiritual place. The old saying, “The person who sings, prays twice,” seemed to take on new meaning for us all.

The themes struck by these traditional hymns give expression to a classical spirituality. The words suggests a background of slavery – that of the Israelites in Egypt but also that of people brought held in captivity in 18th and 19th century America.

Being away from home is another theme, one closely related to that of slavery. The world is full of trouble, especially for people deprived of freedom. But they have confidence in God and rely on his power to deliver them. Even at the hour of death, believers trust to God’s love. They know themselves to be going home to God in heaven.

At the same time, the faithful expect God to empower them on earth. The prayer for power expresses hope for deliverance from oppression. In a refrain from another spiritual, South African women sing “We are the ones we been waiting for.”

Americans of many different ancestries can find in the great spirituals sentiments and emotions that buoy them up. You can easily find yourself swept up into a feeling for what is most important in the spiritual life. These songs seem inspired, like the biblical psalms, and breathe the same spirit.

Returning to the story of Sarah and Hagar, one can imagine the two women, not merely talking with one another, but joining in songs like these great spirituals. Being enabled to sing together to God could perhaps do more to bring them together in peace than mere words can do.

Richard Griffin

For July 29th, the entry is a verse from the Gospel according to Saint John, chapter 15, verse 11. “These things I have spoken unto you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.”

This quotation is found in “The Believer’s Daily Treasure; or Texts of Scripture arranged for every day in the year.”  This little book was published in 1852 by the Religious Tract Society of London. Later the book came to be known as “Lincoln’s Devotional”  and appeared in print under that title in 1957.

The poet Carl Sandburg,  who also has been the  most popular biographer of Abraham Lincoln, wrote an introduction to the devotional. In it he acknowledges that no one knows the circumstances of Lincoln receiving the book. He speculates that it may have been a gift from his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, to whom Lincoln himself had given a large family Bible.

On the inside cover,”  using his characteristic abbreviation, he signed his name “A. Lincoln.  About this action, Sandburg writes: “From this we can surmise that either the volume itself or the person who presented it to him was held in deep regard, for throughout his life Lincoln was sparing in the number of books in which he wrote his name.”

In addition to verses from the Bible, each day’s entry adds verses from poems or hymns. For July 29th, these lines go as follows:

Art thou not mine, my living Lord?
And can my hope, my comfort die,
Fix’d on thine everlasting word-
The word that built the earth and sky.

Abraham Lincoln’s faith has drawn much discussion from biographers and critics through the years. It is clear that he never formally joined a church. However, he turned to religion for consolation, especially after the death of his two sons. After Eddie’s death in 1850, Sandburg tells us, Lincoln became friendly with the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Springfield, Illinois, and Mrs. Lincoln joined that church.

After 1860, when his son Willie died in the White House, Lincoln used God’s name more frequently. According to David Herbert Donald’s1995 biography, “Before 1860 Lincoln rarely invoked the deity in his letters or speeches, but after he began to feel the burdens of the presidency, he frequently asked for God’s aid.”

Even then he did not join a church, though the Lincolns rented a pew in the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington. About becoming a member he is reported to have said:  “When any church will inscribe over its altars, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior’s condensed statement of both law and gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,” that church will I join with all my heart and soul.’”

Despite being unchurched, Lincoln, as is well known, was a man of deep spirituality. He did not accept doctrine or creed but he had drawn into himself the language of the Bible and this from boyhood on. In his speeches, he often used biblical words and phrases as, for instance, in his famous statement that “a house divided cannot stand.” And he used to say, “Judge not, that ye not be judged.”

In a letter to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, who was thought to have lost five sons (actually only two) in the war between the states, Lincoln memorably expressed both his faith in God and lack of certitude about an afterlife in heaven. “I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement,”  he wrote, “and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.”

Going back to the Devotional then, one can imagine Lincoln reading its verses, contemplating them, and drawing inspiration from them. Discovery of the book that had been lost for many years provides further support for seeing Lincoln as suffused with the biblical culture. Carl Sandburg summarizes the matter: “This daily devotional, unseen for many years, takes us no farther toward placing Lincoln within creed or denomination; but it is new testimony that he was a man of profound faith.”

Richard Griffin

That Saturday had to count as a bad day for me. Though it was  part of a long holiday weekend and seemed to offer much restful leisure, somehow I felt tense all during the morning and much of the afternoon.

Part of it happened because I made a bad decision in the early morning. A friend had called and invited me to come sailing with him in Boston Harbor. His boat was ready but his original companion had dropped out. Clearly, he craved sailing that day and was anxious to have me accompany him.

But I turned him down without adequate discussion of what  the outing would entail. The unexpected offer had frozen me and made me answer too quickly. Right after hanging up, I regretted my decision and wanted to change my mind. But I felt the opportunity gone; I could not bring myself to call back and tell my friend that I would go with him after all.

For  much of the rest of the day, I fantasized about the sailboat excursion. The day was ideal for sailing, warm and bright, and I would have loved to be on the water. Being with my friend would have been enjoyable, I was sure. He is a theologian and we share many interests. Surely, I reflected, the experience would have provided rich material for my weekly column on spirituality.

In an effort to find interior calm, I turned inward in search of consolation. To my astonishment and relief, I became aware of words that form the title of a famous hymn. Those words I had not thought of for years and could not  remember the last time I sang them. Yet, the three words took root in my mind that day and brought me peace of soul that was indeed welcome.

The words are “Lead, Kindly Light,” and they were written by John Henry Newman in 1833. At the time, the future Cardinal and great prose stylist was a young Anglican priest in search of spiritual enlightenment.

He had been away from England for several weeks but was finally heading toward home. While traveling on a boat from Palermo, Sicily to Marseilles, France, he was becalmed for a whole week in the Straits of Bonifacio, between Corsica and Sardinia. This marked the second long delay for one who had been recently sick, felt  ill at ease and aching to get home.

In this frame of mind, he wrote the words which later, set to music, formed the beloved hymn. Much of the language is Victorian and sounds dated to modern ears. However, the first two lines in their simplicity give expression to feelings that anyone who has been through difficult patches might make his own:

Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom, lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!

For me, the first three words form a beautiful prayer that can be repeated many times for their spiritual relish. They are addressed to the Spirit of God by one who feels in need of direction. The poet is asking for the grace of a path through the gloom and darkness that surrounds him. Newman does so with trust in the Spirit who has his well-being at heart.

The word “kindly” carries an altogether special meaning. It describes the Spirit (feminine in Hebrew) as divine lover, the one whose lovingkindness characterizes all her dealings with human beings. The man standing on shipboard in the dark on a boat making no progress turns with confidence to the God who cares so deeply about him.

And that divine being is identified with light. There is no darkness in God because he (or, we might say, she) is pure being and pure love. His (or hers) is a brilliance that outshines the sun.

So these three words, four syllables in all, can serve as a simple prayer worthy of unlimited repetition. In fact, a distinguished New York Times writer of an earlier generation, John Kieran, is reported to have been singing these words on his deathbed. For other spiritual seekers also, this prayer has the power to lift us out of darkness and confusion.

That’s what those three words did for me that day on which I felt myself tense and uncertain. For me, “Lead, Kindly Light” is a legacy of spiritual longing and consolation.

Richard Griffin