Meister Eckhart and Time

The 14th century German mystic and spiritual teacher known as Meister Eckhart made two statements about time that continue to stir reflection in me.

The first is this: “Time is what keeps the light from reaching us.”

What can that saying possibly mean? Because of my own longstanding problems with time, I can offer some explanation.

During the years of my religious training long ago, I became obsessed with the need to use time efficiently. My spiritual father urged me and my fellow novices not to waste time but instead to place high value on each moment. Yet we were exhorted to stand ready to break off each activity and move on to the next at the sound of a bell.

This discipline had the unwelcome effect of making me focus more on time than on each activity for itself. It was an altogether too rigid scheme that took away spontaneity and pleasure in many of my actions. Eventually it led to an obsessive focus on time that became damaging.

Thus I learned first-hand how time can block the light. My spiritual life suffered from a preoccupation with time instead of attention to God’s voice within. Having lost some of the freedom of soul that was my birthright, I was less available to the light sent my way by God.

For many people in the modern world the light has become blocked by reason of their workaholism. If you hardly ever stop working, then it is difficult to become aware of the spirit within you. The 24/7 ideal, so fashionable in contemporary America, clashes with spirituality. Time thus becomes an obstacle to the enlightenment that can transform human life.

One of the goods that has emerged from the evil of the September 11th attacks on America is a recasting of priorities on the part of not a few people. The dire events of this fall have served as a wakeup call for these men and women.

My former next-door neighbor, a young German computer specialist, used to leave the house for his office early in the morning. Almost invariably as he walked down the street, he would already be talking on his cell phone, presumably on the day’s business.

In the weeks following September 11th, however, he decided to go back home to Germany. The traumatic events of that day convinced him that family members and friends were more important than success in business.

People who must hold more than one job in order to make ends meet are a special case. They cannot, of course, be blamed for lacking leisure. Rather, American society bears some responsibility for them being so burdened by economic need that they have no time off. It harms society that these workers have so little time to spend with family members, friends, and others.

The second statement of Meister Eckhart goes as follows: “There is no greater obstacle to God than time.”

At first sight, these words seem clearly an exaggeration. Is not sin a greater obstacle than time?

But here again the mystic probably alludes to a concentration on time that interferes with the free play of human imagination and emotion. God wants us to be happy, I was taught as a child and still believe. Yet becoming fixated on time can interfere with happiness and cause us to lose all delight in creation.

When we become afraid of time, this too inhibits our spiritual life. We fear that we do not have enough to fulfill our ambitions. Or we become afraid of becoming old. Many Americans cringe at the thought of reaching 30, or 40, 50, 60, 70. This refusal to accept the gift of life as it is given can easily become an obstacle to spiritual growth.

Put positively, these realities can expand our being. If we welcome each day as a gift suitable for enjoying, this will go far to make our spirit sing. If we embrace each birthday as a reminder of the blessings of life, this can lift up our spirit as well.

With this attitude, we can challenge the sayings of Meister Eckhart and turn his negatives into positives. In this way we can allow time to become for us both an opening to the light and a nearer approach to God.

Richard Griffin

Churchill

Winston Churchill first became Prime Minister of Great Britain when he was 65 years old. His accession to the leadership came after a long career filled with adventure. Some of his countrymen were unhappy about his becoming their leader in 1939 but he had become the indispensable man at a time of crisis unprecedented in his nation’s history.

These facts, familiar to many Americans of a certain age, came vividly to mind this holiday season as I read the new biography of Churchill by Roy Jenkins. It is a weighty volume, both literally and in the history it records, written by a now 80-year-old veteran of British public service.  For me, reading it stirred up memories of an era momentous in itself and also important in my personal development.

Looking back to my teenage years, I remember once seeing Winston Churchill. On a visit to the United States, he came to M.I.T. in 1949 and took part that university’s  Mid-Century Convocation. Unfortunately, I have no memory of what this eloquent man said on that occasion but I do vividly recall the difficulty with which he extricated himself from a low-slung chair. His physique by then made it no easy task to stand up from that position.

As a inveterate reader, I have often found much pleasure in history and biography. This particular book is so rich in event and personalities that it held me rapt as I read. Though familiar with much of the story recounted here, I felt a new relish in reliving imaginatively sagas that used to grab my attention each day in the newspapers.

The central character, Winston Churchill, is now regarded by many as the greatest Englishman in history. His accomplishments in staving off defeat in World War II will no doubt continue to stand out for their brilliance. At the same time, he never stopped being human with the faults that entails.

Churchill was also one of the most fascinating characters in his zest for life and the eccentricities that, in a nation famous for them, made him stand out. His love for food and drink and his habit of working in bed still endear him to readers as they did to his countrymen and us Americans during those war years.

It has often been said of the man that, if he had not become Prime Minister, he would have gone down in history as a magnificent failure. His record in several other government posts before the Second World War was marked by serious mistakes. He was a risk taker who often plunged ahead in actions that proved unwise. Notable among these blunders was the invasion of the Dardanelles in 1915 when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he was largely responsible for what turned into a costly fiasco.

But from the moment that Churchill took over the government in 1939, his courage and stubbornness started to make a difference. Those who listened to his speeches then as I did will remember their eloquence. The power of his words was sufficient to rouse a disheartened nation to resistance in the face of an expected German invasion.

He was sometimes lucky, too. The rescue of some 335 thousand British and French troops from Dunkirk could not have happened if the German army had advanced to the coast and subjected those allied forces to attack.

The sneak Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he recognized immediately as a benefit for Britain. He felt confident that this raid, so devastating to the United States, ensured eventual victory because it brought America into the war on the British side. His repeated efforts to convince Roosevelt to support Britain had become no longer necessary.

Churchill’s story becomes poignant as the allies’ war effort becomes more and more successful. By 1944, he realized that the Soviet Union would play a dominant role in Central and Eastern Europe, with Poland and other countries becoming subject to its will. He also became painfully aware that, for all its heroic success in winning the war, Great Britain had lost irretrievably its own empire and much of its economic power in the world.

He would live to be 91 years old. In the postwar years he received widespread recognition for what he had accomplished for his own country and  the western world. However, he also tasted the bitterness of rejection when his party was defeated in the first postwar national election. I remember feeling uncomprehending, in my naiveté, that the British could prefer someone else to this great lion of heroic accomplishment.

The world of 2002 now seems far removed from the World War II era. It has become fashionable to call the heroes of that time “the Greatest Generation.” That term, in my view, tends toward reverse ageism, in unduly favoring the old over the young. But Winston Churchill and those that he and other leaders led into battle then can surely inspire both young and old with what they achieved against great odds.

Richard Griffin

Fasting

On December 14th I fasted. This fact does not count as significant news, but it does raise questions worth exploring. Perhaps this will justify my going against the express command of Jesus. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, he says: “When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret.”

My reason for fasting was a call sent out by Pope John Paul II to the world’s Catholics proposing that we do so. He timed the date for the last day of Ramadan, the month-long period of fasting that Muslims observe each year. The pope’s intention was to synchronize this act of self-denial so as to help build mutual understanding between Christians and Muslims.

Fasting has never been easy for me. Because of a life-long habit of eating between meals, I find it especially difficult to refrain from food for long periods of time. So whenever an occasion for fasting arises, I discover strong reluctance in myself.

However, this time, as always, I felt the benefits of not eating more than a little food during the day. As monks and others who have made fasting a way of life can attest, this practice sharpens a person’s spiritual sensitivity. As that Friday went on, I noticed the presence of the spirit in me more than I ordinarily do.

This change is subtle, easy to miss. But fasting does draw attention to an inner space where the spirit is at work. Though I continued to feel physically deprived, I also felt spiritually enriched and moved to interior dialogue. I also was aware at times of the solidarity I felt with other people – – Muslims, Christians and others – – who had chosen to join in this spiritual exercise.

However, I also confess looking forward with eagerness to the dinner that would come after darkness had set in. Even there, I experienced the spiritual benefit of appreciating more than usual the activity of eating delicious food with enjoyment.

Granted that the good effects of fasting in the life of an individual like me can be recognized, does the practice have any further value? Does it change anything outside the lives of those who take up the practice?

These questions may not be needed by people for whom spirituality is important. Many of us do not require convincing that our fasts have an effect on the world outside. We spontaneously believe that we help, not just ourselves, but other people whom we do not even know.

For people like us, there is a reservoir of good actions done by us and others that has value for the world. This pool of virtue, we believe, can and does benefit our brothers and sisters everywhere in the world. Goodness remains available to others who can draw on it when they need or wish.

This belief can sound utterly unrealistic. Level-headed modern inhabitants of the 21st century may scoff at such imaginations. And yet, I have discovered, some scientists at Princeton University are trying to discover something similar.

They call it “global consciousness.” These scientists say: “We are looking for evidence of a developing global consciousness that might perceive and react to events with deep meaning.”

Specifically, they have focused on the events of September eleventh and believe they have found evidence of a reaction throughout the world. Their network registered “an unmistakable and profound response,” they report.

Instruments based at Princeton registered such a strong response to the catastrophe that the patterns suggest a unity of consciousness widespread in the world. The scientists do not know exactly what to make of this phenomenon but they suppose something like this: “The riveting events drew us from our individual concerns and melded us into an extraordinary coherence. Maybe we became, briefly, a global consciousness.”

I cannot vouch for any validity in this approach but I do find it fascinating. My knowledge of it comes from an article sent me over the Internet by a friend interested in spirituality. My friend, a person of good judgment, says of the Princeton experiment: “What it means to me is that prayer, meditation, thought represent real energy with real effect and impact.”

The article was written by Bernadette Cahill for the Mountain Times of Boone, North Carolina and is entitled “Scientific Proof of Global Consciousness May Be Emerging.” More information is available at the project’s web site: www.noosphere.princeton.edu. [link no longer active]

Richard Griffin

Longevity Bet

Do you think that anyone alive in the world today will live to be 150? Do you know anyone who would lay money on the table as a bet that it will happen?

Until I heard a talk by a reputable scientist last month, I thought that no level-headed professional considered it within the realm of possibility. After all, the longest recorded life span thus far is that of Jeanne Calment, the feisty French woman who reached 122. It seemed to me quite unlikely that any person now alive would beat that mark by 23 years.

But biologist Steven Austad from the University of Idaho thinks otherwise. He believes that someone now alive will live to see 150; he has also bet a colleague $500 on this outcome. You may, of course, look on this as a wager without risk since the bettor does not consider himself to be that record-breaking person.

Scientists like Austad believe that longevity breakthroughs will happen, not because of diseases being eliminated but because science will succeed in slowing down the rate of aging. He himself predicts that in the near future medications will come on the market that will make us age more slowly and thus live longer.

Another scientist of some repute, William Haseltine, goes further and sees a day when human beings can become immortal. Commenting on stem cell research, he has been quoted as saying: “Since we are a self-replacing entity, and do so reasonably well for many decades, there is no reason we can't go on forever.”

Thus some scientists take as goal the extension of human life as far as possible. In laboratories across America they are at work with fruit flies, mice, and other forms of animal life, experimenting to discover how the limits of our species can be lengthened or even eliminated.

For most of us, however, the more important question must be the desirability of life extension. Do we really want to live to 150? Or 500? Or forever, on this earth?

Speaking for myself, I am surprised and happy to have reached this new year of 2002. When you consider all the threats to human life, my arriving at 2002 is no mean feat. My instinct is to thank God, my parents, my country, members of my extended family, friends, and many others for making it possible for me to see the second year of the new millennium.

Those who dream about the fountain of longevity seem ignorant of what later life is like for large numbers of Americans right now. In this country of affluence unsurpassed in history, many lack enough money for their basic needs. Using the official federal poverty rate, the United States Census Bureau counts 5.6 million people over age 65 as poor or near-poor.

Also elders galore receive sub-par care in hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions; various forms of dementia such as Alzheimer’s threaten the brain power of many.

In the conditions of contemporary life, should anyone wish to live to be 100, much less 150? I readily grant the exceptions to my attitudes. One of my family’s old friends recently celebrated her 100th birthday and, I rejoice to say, continues to flourish. She types her own letters and stays in vital touch with family members and friends.

I am aware also of the Centenarian Study at Harvard in which other people over age 100 were shown to be thriving. As a society, however, we are not prepared for large numbers of people to live far beyond the average. We will have to make many changes in both values and societal arrangements before we are ready for a longevity revolution.

Meantime, and for the foreseeable future, I recommend my philosopher  friend Harry Moody’s “culture of finitude.” By this he means the acceptance of limits that are built into the human condition. He dismisses as nonsense the modish view that “we can be anything we want to be.” Life remains fragile, Moody emphasizes, and we must accept vulnerability and resist the dream of lasting forever.

Some scientists have the wisdom to remind us that the human body was not designed for indefinitely extended use. Jay Olshansky says that “we are living beyond our warranty period.” Our bodies are not perfect, he maintains, but “we are an incredible species and the things that go wrong are not our fault.”

I feel grateful to be around for this new year and to be quaffing a cup in celebration of its arrival. You won’t find me buying into longevity inflation any time soon. Nor will you see me swallowing the views of the so-called “anti-aging medicine” crowd. Rather, I rejoice in the gift of life right now and hope for future good years even if they do not come anywhere close to a total of 150.

Richard Griffin

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