Thanksgiving in a Time of Fear

At a national conference in which I took part last week in Chicago, two of my colleagues, professionals in the field of aging, failed to arrive. They had registered and planned to make presentations but, according to report, decided not to risk air travel. Presumably the crash of the airbus in Queens two weeks ago had stirred in them enough fear of flying to make them cancel their travel plans.

I report this news, not in any spirit of superiority or blame, but rather because the feelings of these two people are so widely shared. My own emotions were upset by the latest airline disaster and I felt tempted to stay in the safety of my home rather than trust to what felt like unfriendly skies.

In this Thanksgiving season, perhaps fear itself is our greatest spiritual enemy. If this sentiment echoes the words spoken by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the depth of the Depression, then it shows how important his warning was then and remains now.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” said the president with awareness of how debilitating that fear could be to a whole nation. For the individual also, fear can paralyze the will to act and damage one’s psyche.

Spiritual tradition teaches that fear wars against the soul. It is best resisted by cultivating love. “Perfect love casts out fear,” writes John the Evangelist, giving classical expression to this Christian doctrine. Part of loving God is trusting that we will find ultimate shelter in divine protection.

The love that casts out fear finds confirmation in all the gifts for which we give thanks each Thanksgiving. The crisis atmosphere of this tragic autumn makes recognition of these gifts all the more important. As a friend who is a religious sister writes in an email: “I know we appreciate this family time more than ever in these post 9/11 days.”

I feel blessed in having two Thanksgiving celebrations, one in the midst of my family, the other based in my neighborhood. In both of them, I feel strongly motivated to recognize the gifts we have received and for giving thanks for them.

When my family members gather, we will recognize the long life given to some of us, the good health most of us have enjoyed, and, especially, the warm personal relationships among us all. I count it perhaps the greatest blessing that we all are on the best of terms with one another and enjoy each other’s company.

We have not escaped sorrowful events. Our nephew Gregory died some two years ago in an accident that still saddens us all. Only the memory of his life and the gifts that he brought to us by his presence for nineteen years bring us consolation. Holding our Thanksgiving dinner in his New Hampshire home, we will be moved to give thanks for that time when he lived among us and to feel intense gratitude for Greg’s personality.

We remember others who helped build our family: the parents and grandparents, the aunts and uncles and cousins of us who are now ourselves adults in our middle and later years. It has become a joyful ritual to recall their lives with all the gifts of personality they brought to our clan.

When members of our urban neighborhood assemble to share a turkey dinner at the local public school, relationships of a different kind will move us to celebration. Here we do not have the same intimacy as members of the same family but we do take pleasure in one another’s company. Just as each family group or individual brings food, or prepares turkeys provided by our neighborhood association, we recognize the share that each person makes to our civic community.

Here we find reason to be thankful for our city, for our nation, for the blessings that we enjoy as Americans together. In this gathering, we too will be minus one. A local resident named John was a passenger on the first of the planes to crash into one of the World Trade Center towers.

I like to think that these two gatherings, marked by familial and, to some degree, community love, will help cast out the fear so widespread at this time in history. To the extent that we care about one another, to that extent we will strike a blow against the fear that can damage the soul.

Richard Griffin

LBJ on Tape

Were you eighty years old in 1850, you could not have looked back into history and heard the voice of Thomas Jefferson. Had you been age ninety in 1780, you could never have seen the gestures of the Puritan divine Cotton Mather as he preached a fiery sermon in a Boston church.

One of the many ways in which being old is different now from what it was until the twentieth century is how historical figures of our lifetime can be made present to us.

This is one of my reflections this week on hearing the voice of Lyndon Johnson recorded on secret tapes that he kept during his years in the White House. The contents of these tapes also stirred in me a range of emotions ranging from  admiration to indignation, with many stops in between.

Texts from the tapes have been newly published by presidential historian Michael Beschloss in a book entitled “Reaching for Glory.” Appearing two weeks ago on the National Public Radio program “Fresh Air” hosted by Terry Gross, Beschloss provided background for each excerpt before playing it.

The most shocking single item that emerges from LBJ’s private conversations is an admission about the Vietnam War. Early in 1965, speaking of the opposing forces, Johnson tells his defense secretary Robert McNamara, “I don’t believe they’re ever going to quit. I don’t see any hope of a victory.”

To hear the president concede that the United States military could not win the war still, thirty-six years later, comes as a shock. As Beschloss says, “A president should never send Americans into harm’s way with no chance of winning.”

This admission of Johnson also puts into painful context the speeches he continued to give about that war. In short, he lied to the American public, over and over. Privately, he agreed with much of what the anti-war demonstrators were saying, though he dismissed them as tools of the Communists. But publicly he continued to insist that, with the deployment of greater military resources, the United States would prevail.

Why did Lyndon Johnson not edit out of the tapes statements that would reflect badly on him in the eyes of history? Beschloss believes that he probably intended to; but, when he retired to his ranch in Texas, the last thing he wanted to do was to review material on Vietnam that had caused him so much grief and driven him from the presidency.

The tapes also reveal Johnson as a man obsessed with people he saw as his domestic enemies. Beschloss labels him “the ultimate control freak.” Even after he had scored an unprecedentedly large electoral victory over Goldwater in 1964, LBJ fretted about his opponents. He badmouthed the press for portraying the vote as anti-Goldwater rather then pro-Johnson, and himself as the lesser of two evils. “They want to make a Harding of us,” groused Johnson. He also obsessed about Bobby Kennedy whom he foresaw as his electoral challenger.

The tapes also contain a conversation between LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover about homosexuals in government. It came in the wake of a scandal surrounding Walter Jenkins, one of Johnson’s closest aides. The conversation takes on added interest in the light of later speculation about Hoover’s own sexuality. Beschloss’s comments on this exchange gives reason to welcome the change of attitudes that has taken place since then. “How far we have come,” says the historian, remarking that gay people can now be appointed to governmental positions almost routinely.

Despite all that I have learned about human nature over the course of a long lifetime, it still comes as a shock to hear evidence of how petty a man could be while ensconced at the top of the American power structure. Johnson harbored within himself a sensitivity to personal slights that seems totally incompatible with the call to serve the needs of some two hundred and fifty million of his fellow citizens.

And, of course, he served those needs extraordinarily well in certain areas. Almost surely he will go down in history as the greatest champion of civil rights. One of the tapes records a conversation he had with the then segregationist governor, George Wallace. It features a delicate byplay between the two, with Wallace trying to get Johnson to call out his federal troops while Johnson urges him to rely on the Alabama national guard.

Beschloss calls himself fortunate to have this tape of “one of the great moments in history,” and celebrates Johnson’s caring more about civil rights and poverty than anything else.

The earliest event in history that I have watched on videotape is the funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901. To see various royals from Britain and other countries as they solemnly parade by on horseback and in their carriages still stirs my imagination. The history that we have lived through since then is now so well documented that we have abundant material for our reveries and our reflections about the past.

Richard Griffin

Artists Respond to September Eleventh

Assemble a group of distinguished American artists, most of them based in New York City, and ask them to reflect on the disaster of September eleventh. That is what Harvard University did last week with results that ranged from the insightful all the way down to the banal.

The session went to prove that artists, like the rest of us, find it difficult to understand the spiritual meaning of the terrorist attack. They may be excellent in their own specialty but laying hold of wisdom is hard for them, too.

Playwright John Guare found the most important lesson was to continue his work. “All we can do,” he said, “is to keep doing what we are doing.” So Guare returned to completing a play that he had left unfinished, but now has readied for an opening in the spring. “The fact that I was writing I found sacred.”

Novelist and short-story writer Jamaica Kincaid, born in the island nation of Antigua but now an American citizen, asked herself if she should renounce that citizenship. This was her reaction to the United States’ bombing of Afghanistan. “Lots of people in Afghanistan are as innocent as those in New York City,” she proclaimed.

Singer James Taylor cautioned against drawing conclusions too soon, before we have a chance to develop perspective. “The rush for a consensus reality,” he warned, “ is inappropriate. It takes a while to find out what it is.”

Elizabeth Murray, a visual artist considered one of the most important painters in this country, vividly described the feeling of death in the neighborhood where she lives close to Ground Zero. All the lights were out, the television was not working. The atmosphere produced in this woman a loss of purpose. According to her, “most artists are normally on the edge of feeling that what they do is meaningless,” and this event pushed them further toward out along that edge.

The dire events of that September day also created another realization in Elizabeth Murray. “It took my breath away to realize how privileged we have been,” she told the audience. “In New York City, we have been spoiled,” Murray added.

A star of the musical stage, Mandy Patinkin, said that the catastrophe has made him consider what he does as an entertainer more deeply. And it has raised the question, “What is there in the American lifestyle worth defending?”

Patinkin does not think art in itself will be any different but that it will be seen and heard differently. He finished his remarks by sharing with listeners his new practice of leaving four different boxes in the back of theaters where he performs and ends by asking for donations for his favorite charities that promote world peace.

Trisha Brown, dancer and choreographer, at first felt stunned by the destruction and loss of life but was later vitalized by contact with her students. “An integration came into my life that was very hopeful,” she reported.

Some of the panelists showed themselves very critical of American values. “How shallow American culture has become,” complained Elizabeth Murray. She cited in particular the worship of celebrity and the pervasive use of spin control.

Jamaica Kincaid returned to her earlier themes saying that what has happened is “bigger than us, than our feelings.” She even corrected what others had said about the importance of compassion: “I like compassion but I like justice first.” And that should concern us Americans, she indicated, in our situation whereby ten percent of the world’s people control ninety percent of its resources.

This same outspoken writer also criticized the singing of “God Bless America.” In contrast with the title of the song, she asked the question: “God, can you give some blessings of people in other parts of the world?”

These artists also voice concern about censorship by government and self-censorship by organizations such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra which recently changed a concert program because of concerns about “sensitivity.” Playwright John Guare proposed as a reason for opposing censorship that the role of art may be to oppose what others say.

Like a biblical prophet, that same author moralized thus: “How flimsy our lives are, the things we have to have.” 

 

Richard Griffin

Exercise

Last spring, a friend named Joe asked my counsel on a personal issue that had suddenly taken on more importance for him. The arrival of his sixtieth birthday had stirred him to realize his need for more physical exercise and he wanted suggestions from me about how to start.

Joe’s request caught me unprepared, forcing me to ask for time to learn more about exercise before I could advise him or anyone else. Since then, I have accumulated much information about the subject and have made significant changes in my own schedule of physical activity. Unfortunately, Joe and I have not yet come together for me to share my discoveries with him.

Unlike most people, however, Joe has already done some serious exercise, at least irregularly. Thus he differs from the forty percent of Americans who, research reveals, are completely sedentary. Another forty percent reportedly do not exercise enough to get much benefit for their health and fitness. That leaves only one in five of us who take exercise seriously enough to do something about it.

My friend Joe’s request for help moved me to self-examination on the subject. Though I have gone swimming each day for many years, walked at least a mile, and played softball most Sundays from April through October, I felt the need to add another kind of physical activity, namely resistance exercise. This involves pushing and lifting so as to strengthen muscles.

If you were to walk by the section of the university health center where I go each day, you might now see this septuagenarian sitting on a large blue plastic exercise ball, first squatting and then lifting myself up, several times in order to strengthen the muscles of my legs.

You could also see me sitting on a leg curl machine, leaning back and lifting with my feet a bar almost at the floor level. I also sit on a leg extension machine that has me pressing a similar bar down against resistance.

At first, these activities felt slightly ridiculous. Seeing myself in the mirror, dressed in old clothes and looking disreputable, made me wonder if I was in the right place. The people around me were all much younger than I and clearly taking on more arduous challenges on the machines. Sitting on that big ball felt especially silly, since I felt dubious about its value. Why was I doing things that I had often dismissed as appropriate only for yuppies or Generation X?

Gradually, however, the routine has come to feel more comfortable. What has made a decisive difference is the guidance of a young woman who is an exercise trainer. By being so accepting of me with my physical limitations and my uncertain confidence, Wendy Brown has helped me take on new forms of exercise with growing enthusiasm. Swimming and walking remain my prime exercises but work on the machines and the large ball extends the physical value of my regimen.

Most Americans have probably heard something about the value of exercise. What few people realize, however, is how many varied benefits exercise provides. To quote a summary provided by researchers: “During the past 15 years, several hundred studies have looked at the effects of exercise on depression and found that exercise increases self-esteem, improves mood, reduces anxiety levels, increases the ability to handle stress, and improves sleep patterns.”  

I admire the approach of one of my neighbors, Marie Costello. About to celebrate her 91st birthday this month, she takes part in what she calls “old lady exercises” at our public library each week. She and the other participants in these hour-long sessions move their arms, legs, and torsos in a sequence carefully calculated to increase strength and flexibility. And Marie follows through by repeating some of these exercises at home.

She also walks a lot. “I never ask my sons or anyone to take me shopping,” Marie reports, because the ride would deprive her of a fine walking opportunity. Incidentally, she also believes in another form of physical exercise, that of her brain. A few days after I talked with her, she was going to La Paz, New York, where Will Shortz, the crossword editor of the New York Times, runs what she calls a “word weekend,” days that she finds highly enjoyable.

Almost everyone can do some exercise, if only pushing against the nearest wall. But to get started, most of us need the support of others. If you wish to begin or to improve your exercise plan, you can call the Council on Aging in your city or town hall and ask about group programs already functioning in your community. Or, if you prefer to exercise by yourself, you might ask for advice from a Council on Aging staff member.

You can also find such assistance at your regional ASAP (Aging Services Access Point), what used be called the Home Care Corporation. Ask first for the staff person who handles information and referral. Taking a step like this might soon enrich your life.

Richard Griffin

SSQ and Bill Phillips

Bill Philips is a Methodist who sings in his church choir, says grace with his family before meals, and prays at other times, though less often then he says he should. He considers himself a person of faith who cannot imagine how he would ever stop believing in God.

In his work life, Dr. Phillips is a physicist based at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. For his scientific achievements in the field of quantum mechanics, he won the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics. He had done his graduate studies at M.I.T. where a mentor convinced him that he could do physics “at the frontiers, competing with the best in the world, and do it with openness, humanity and cooperation.”

I had the opportunity to hear Bill Phillips speak late last month at Harvard University. The occasion was a three-day conference organized by Science and the Spiritual Quest. This California-based agency promotes dialogue between scientists and scholars of religion. The Boston-area conference was one in an ongoing series of national and international events intended to stir thinking and discussion between the two cultures of science and religion.

Among the dozen or so scientists I heard speak about their own work and, in some instances, their own religious beliefs and practice, I was particularly impressed by Bill Phillips. His pleasing and witty style, his competence and, at the same time, his humility, all commended him as a model of  the religious man committed to scientific investigation.

He may have been eminent enough in his field to have won the Nobel prize, but he puts himself into perspective as another seeker looking into the mysteries of material creation and also looking for God.

He calls himself “an ordinary scientist and an ordinary Christian” but his deep understanding in both areas of his life suggest that these descriptions do not actually apply to him.

When he turns toward science, Bill Phillips has the unusual ability to explain lucidly how things work in quantum mechanics. At the submicroscopic level, he says, things behave strangely. For example, in the quantum world, an atom can be in two places at the same time and objects may have certain properties only when a person looks at them.

His specific area of research is the trapping and cooling of atoms. At the very low temperatures that he has achieved, these atoms move very slowly indeed and in doing so reveal waves that become large enough to be seen with the naked eye. Among other products, laser-cooled atoms will some day make possible quantum computers far more competent than today’s.

Dr. Phillips finds support for his faith in what he sees in his experiments. “When I examine the orderliness, understandability, and beauty of the universe,” he says, “I am led to the conclusion that a higher intelligence designed what I see. My scientific appreciation of the coherence, the delightful simplicity, of physics strengthens my belief in God.”

Belief, however, is not in itself scientific, though Dr. Phillips makes a point of saying that his scientific understanding supports his faith. In the expanded version of his talk, he goes on to write:  “ I have a feeling .   .   . that we will never find truly convincing scientific evidence about the existence of God.” But, as he takes note, faith would not be faith if you actually had such evidence.

The God of Albert Einstein is not good enough for him. The great theorist Einstein believed in a God who gave creation an order and intelligence but did not care about human beings. For Phillips, God is in personal relationship with us and loves us relentlessly. In his daily life he experiences the presence of the God who is active in the world.

Like many other thoughtful people, he also experiences doubts about God. The classical problems of evil and suffering leave this brilliant man without answers, just like everybody else. For him as a Christian, the question of Jesus’s relation to other faiths also seems perplexing.

Ultimately, however, in Bill Phillips’ view, what is most important about faith in God is how we act toward other human beings. To him, his faith-based mandate to love others as himself counts more than anything else.

Richard Griffin

Walter and Geoffrey

“I wouldn’t take a million dollars to do it again, but I would give a million for the experience.” That is how Walter Sobel of Wilmette, Illinois sums up his service in World War II.

Now 88 years old and still at work, he is happy to talk about the battles in which he was involved as a naval officer aboard the battleship New Mexico in the Pacific. His ship took part in all the invasions of islands in that war theater except for two. The New Mexico served as what he calls “sea-borne artillery,” pounding the shore to soften the defending forces for the landing troops.

Never did his ship take a hit until the Philippines campaign when a Japanese kamakazi warplane dove onto the deck. Both Walter and his captain were wounded in this attack and extensive damage done to the ship.

Asked to sum up his dominant reflections about this wartime experience, Walter lists three:

  1. The way that a group of 2000 people took responsibility and made the battleship function so effectively. He still marvels that such a diverse group of people became melded into a formidable fighting machine.
  2. “The will of the Lord to let me live.” Another of the New Mexico’s captains was killed in action and Walter knows that could easily have happened to him.
  3. “I feel grateful for having had the opportunity.” Already a practicing architect before the war, he did not enter the navy until he was 29. After a few months’ naval training at Princeton and Ohio State, he soon found himself an officer of the deck on a battleship.

Walter expresses surprise at how the world has changed since those days. “When I left the service, I had a great animosity for the Japanese,” he confesses. This feeling was strong enough to make him refuse opportunities to visit Japan in later years.

However, the time came when his wife told him: “Forty years is long enough to hold a grudge,” a sentiment that moved him to visit and develop friendships with former enemies. He now foresees a new world in which relationships will be transformed further.

Another veteran of epic naval encounters in World War II is Geoffrey Brooke, an 81 year old Englishman who is a long-distance friend of Walter Sobel, their friendship based in part on shared memories of shipboard warfare in the Pacific. Reached at his home south of London, Geoffrey spoke freely about his wartime adventures at sea.

Unlike Walter, Geoffrey Brooke was a career officer, serving in the British navy. When only thirteen years old, he went off to the naval college for training and was a midshipman at age nineteen when the war began. So psyched was he for the coming conflict that he says now, “I would have been disappointed if there hadn’t been a war.”

Steeped in this seagoing military tradition, Geoffrey has an encyclopedic knowledge of naval warfare and the lore of the people who made the British navy preeminent.

This fascinating gentleman describes his wartime experiences in two books, both of them published in the 1980s. The first, “Alarm Starboard!,” covers his entire war, with detailed accounts of his service on the battleships Nelson and the Prince of Wales, as well as on aircraft carriers and other ships.

His memory for events is truly remarkable, although he gives credit to his mother for having saved his letters home. His dramatic accounts of battles at sea, for example the encounter in which the Prince of Wales took on the formidable German battleship Bismarck, held this reader entranced.

Asking him the same questions that Walter answered, I received from Geoffrey one general conclusion and two detailed memories of events:

  1. “I was incredibly lucky on about six different occasions to have survived at all.” He then lists the times when those about him were killed and he could have been easily killed himself.
  2. “The cold on the Russian convoys.” When on a destroyer escorting merchant ships to the Soviet Union, he recalls shivering in the frigid temperatures.
  3. “On the Prince of Wales when it was sunk.” Like other desperate crew members, he had to haul himself along a rope attached from the deck of the doomed battleship to a destroyer alongside. He vividly remembers feeling exhausted and tempted to let go and drop into the sea below. But “I looked into the water filled with black oil and I thought that’s not for me.” Shortly after he reached the destroyer’s deck, the destroyer captain had to order the lines cut, thus dooming many other crew members.

The two seasoned veterans I have chosen to write about here in honor of Veterans’ Day carry on a flourishing exchange of letters sharing memories of dramatic days. This correspondence will now, perhaps, take on a new resonance as the two old allies, the United States and Great Britain, take on together the daunting new challenges posed by international terrorism.

Richard Griffin

Kindling Your Inner Fire

“Kindling Your Inner Fire” was the name for a gathering of lay ministers, all alums of Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge. We assembled two weeks ago for a day of sharing stories about working in parish churches, hospitals, schools, nursing homes, and other settings. Some twenty women and men, we welcomed the opportunity to explore with others spirituality relevant to our ministry.

As a way to stir reflection on our spiritual life, the group leader proposed identifying five themes that have helped shape the persons we have become. She herself led the way, listing the following themes in her own life and explaining how each had brought her to a new stage of development.

In turn, her life has been characterized by Helping, Longing for God, Making the World Better, Holiness, and the Global Family. For each of them she supplied detail so that everyone could understand how each stage affected her life. Of course, these stages were not entirely separate from one another but, rather, all of them flowed into and out of the others.

Another woman had become a priest in middle age and now serves in an Episcopal parish church. The five themes that she identified and shared with the group sound like classical expressions of the great spiritual tradition. Starting with her thirties, she first felt Restlessness, then experienced Hurt, Discovery, Desire for God, and the Call.

When it came my turn, I needed to make two lists of five inner experiences. For me, the two groups were necessary because my spiritual life can only be understood in the light of dramatic changes that took place in my middle years.

In the first group I listed the following: Death, Priesthood, Community, Perfection, and Asceticism. These items may sound abstract but, for me, they had deep reality. In fact, they led me to leave home at age twenty-one to join a religious order.

My second group of five includes strikingly different spiritual priorities. Freedom, Ordinariness, Creativity, Fatherhood, and Friendships qualify as leading themes in the latter part of my life.

It is tempting to explain each one of the headings, some of which do not have meaning easily understood. However, I list them here to suggest one way for you, the reader, to reflect on your own spiritual life. You, too, can make a list of the dominant themes that have helped make you into the person you are.

After working in small groups to assemble our lists and explain them to one another, we lay ministers once again all came together for discussion of our findings. Attempting to find common themes, we identified several that, often in different words, ran through the lists made by individuals.

The first such general theme was called “the Hound of Heaven.” The phrase refers to a poem of the same name written by Francis Thompson, a nineteenth century English poet. There the poet envisions God as a stalker of the soul, pursuing human beings until they surrender to him in love. Some members of our group have felt themselves pursued by God.

Another such theme was described as “Churning,” the dissatisfaction that many people have felt with the world, a feeling that has stirred in them the desire to serve God. Breakthroughs, Encounters, and Struggle also came up for discussion.

Further discussion flowed from an attempt to identify those factors that have helped and hindered our “ministerial vitality and sense of God.”

Some of the resources the group found helpful include continued learning, good mentors, humor, prayer groups, annual retreats, and physical exercise. Problem areas identified included what women called “the stained glass ceiling” preventing them from going to higher levels in church jobs, isolation, possessiveness about one’s own work, and workaholism.

This brief description of the “Kindling Your Inner Fire” experience may suggest some of the wealth of spiritual experience shared by members of the group. It may also suggest to you the rich potential of your own interior life and the value to be gained from reflecting on your spiritual history. Undoubtedly you yourself have known many of the themes mentioned here and can profit from continuing to reflect on them and perhaps praying over them as well.

Richard Griffin