Brighton Kids

While waiting for a bus one noontime, a few weeks ago, I was pleasantly accosted by a group of boys and girls who, writing pads and cameras in hand, were seeking answers to a large question – “What will the world look like one hundred years from now?”

The kids, it turned out, were taking part in a summer program sponsored by an organization called “Citizen Schools.” Ranging in age from 10 to 14, these young people were based at the Garfield School in Brighton.  Led by their teacher, 24-year-old Amy Kooyoomjian, they were interviewing adults on the street and collecting the answers for a book.

Invited to meet with them some weeks after they had gathered the information, I had the pleasure of talking with the kids about their interview findings and about aging. They proved to be remarkably perceptive and eager to exchange ideas with me about what they had learned.

In recounting parts of our discussion, I have mixed together what the children report hearing from their interviewees and what they think on their own. Clearly, the two are closely related and flow into one another.

This group of eight kids shows forth the new Boston-area diversity. One speaks Arabic, another Cape Verdean, to cite only two examples of their linguistic range. The variety of family backgrounds in such a small group witnesses to dramatic changes that have taken hold in this metropolitan area in recent decades and adds spice to the views they express.

One theme that kept coming up is the place of technology in the world of the future. Rachel worries that there will be no more human interaction – everything will be done by computer. We are already too dependent on computers and telephones, she thinks. Though nothing dire actually happened, preparations for possible Y2K meltdowns showed how fragile the system is.

Giovanni, age 10, believes that “people might be lazy because they have too much technology.”

Some of the kids feel that older people get left out of technology. But Deema told everyone about the use of the computer in her family: “My grandmother emails me once a week from Saudi Arabia,” she announced. And Keith, age 12, added: “I chat with my grandfather online.”

The boys and girls also express concern about natural resources. It might help that, in the next 100 years, cars will fly and roads will be underground. But Rachel fears that the ozone layer will be depleted, too many trees will be cut down, and water resources will be scarce. After suggesting that “it may be difficult to survive 50 years from now,” she eases that prediction by saying that “maybe in 10 years a new invention will help.”

Frequent mention of city construction projects caught my attention. One fellow whom Athena interviewed told her that in the next hundred years,  construction in Brighton may actually be completed. Deema also mentioned the same issue, suggesting that urban street upheavals and demolition of buildings are getting under people’s skin.

In looking ahead, the kids mixed the predictions they heard from others with their own hopes for a better future. There will be “less poverty, disease, and war.” “People will get along better,” another says, and Amanda adds, “I hope there will be a lot less homeless people.”

“They shouldn’t sell guns,” says Athena.  Deema wants the world “to be cleaner and larger for new populations.” Kelee, age 14, was one of those reporting that “the health care system will be a lot better.”

Joshua, for his part, told me about a time capsule being assembled by the kids and their plans to bury it in the school yard.

Heightened social awareness among these kids emerges as one benefit of this educational project. That comes close to what their teacher Amy sees as the value of the experience: “having them step out of their realm of age, looking toward the future.”

In any event, it is encouraging to see such young people feeling this concern for others less well off than they. It augurs well for the future in which everyone, young and old, has a vital stake.

In response to my question, the children unanimously agreed that they cannot imagine themselves 70 years old. This answer confirmed my suspicion that a benevolent provision of nature makes that impossible for kids.

But the question led to at least one precocious observation. One of the girls said: “Aging has to do with experience.” She went on to explain that how old you feel is determined by what you are going through. If you are on vacation, you might feel ten years younger; if you are feeling stressed out, you are going to feel older than you actually are.

These children show the value of creative education. They even know how to take in stride the views of the fellow who, when interviewed, told them that, in the next 100 years, the world is going to end.

Richard Griffin

Water and Air

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

Face Morphing Toward 65

To stand around the children’s face-morphing booth at the Museum of Science’s “Secrets of Aging” exhibit as I did for a couple of hours last week was to encounter loads of kids anxious to see what they would look like at age 65 (and at various intervening points.)

I had been present when the exhibit opened last April to much hoopla among museum officials and assorted gerontologists. Since then, reports had circulated about the crowds of boys and girls who come to see themselves grow old. I wanted to make a return visit to see for myself what was happening.

Also, the more I thought about face-morphing, the more I felt doubtful about its suitability as a tool for teaching the realities of aging. Might it not be, I wondered, that this gimmick was giving the wrong message and thereby going against the purpose of the whole exhibit?

In fact, face-morphing has turned out to be far and away children’s favorite activity in the ongoing Secrets of Aging exhibit. It looks as if some of them must be tearing themselves away from the Museum’s featured attraction, Sue, the recently discovered Tyrannosaurus Rex, looming up menacingly and boasting some ninety percent of its fifty or sixty- million-year-old bones.

Here are some comments I heard outside the two face-morphing booths from kids like eight-year-old Christian from the western suburbs of Boston. Looking as if he had tasted something bad, he commented on another boy’s experience: “He’s disgusting at 42.” About seeing himself at 65, he said, “Not good; I don’t want to grow up.”

Donna, a mother from North Reading, watching one of her sons morph his way to 65, told him: “The girls say you’re getting ugly.” To another son she said, “That’s when you look the best – as a little boy.”

A kid from Hingham named Madeline called the experience “scary” and said she was “shocked” to see herself old. But, by contrast, her sister Natalie judged that she aged well and her mother thought Natalie looked more like her father as she aged.

A smaller girl had a different idea altogether, “I want to go to the mall,” she fussed as she tried to tug her harried mother in that direction.

Some adult passers-by, though ineligible to morph, also took an interest in what was happening. Bill Fennell, a resident of Abington with a face really 65 years old, commented on the scene: “That’s kind of negative. That would depress me if I were young.”

His sister-in –law, a visitor from Dublin named Marie Fennell, leveled a gerontological criticism at the morph-makers: “They should emphasize that you’re made up of body, mind, and spirit.” For her, showing the changing of one’s face alone was leaving out altogether too much.

That comment comes close to my feelings about the demonstration. To me, having kids morph their faces suggests that aging means changes in outward appearance, largely negative changes at best. This particular experiment ignores what is most important about growing older, namely changes in mind and heart.

Yes, as written materials on the wall advise kids, their faces will grow longer, their skin drier, and they will probably develop wrinkles. They may also show receding hair lines and more flab in their face muscles.

But is that nearly so important as the changes that will take place within? Given that many children are likely to focus on face morphing to the exclusion of other parts of the exhibit that might balance this activity, should not someone emphasize that aging involves much more than looking different? Above all, it means being different.

Jan Crocker, the woman who is the museum’s director of temporary exhibits and manager of the “Secrets of Aging,” acknowledges having had some doubts about face morphing at the beginning. “Is aging merely cosmetic?” – that is the question it posed for her. However, she feels that the exhibit as a whole establishes a healthy balance and answers the question clearly. Aging is indeed much more than seeing a person’s face become transformed.

One mother to whom I spoke, Regina Corraro Clanon of Carlisle, made a point of this with her children. In discussions with them she discovered that they all had a bias against growing old. Part of her reason from bringing them to the exhibit was to counteract that bias. In asking them about older and younger, she received the precocious response from one of them, “When you’re older, you’ve done so many more things.”

And another mother who also happened to be from Carlisle, Nancy Di Romuldo, said something beautiful to her kids about aging: “You become wiser and more knowledgeable and life makes more sense.”

So perhaps face morphing, for all its high-tech dazzle, needs to be supplemented by other educational experiences and to be put in context by savvy parents.

Richard Griffin

Spirituals with Barnwell

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

Brandeis Center

“What advice for the future would you give a woman currently middle- aged?” That’s a question I asked of Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, a researcher at The National Center on Women and Aging.

“Take care of your health,” she answered. “Exercise and adopt a healthy diet. If you are working, save for retirement. The bottom line is you have to make it a priority.”

The Center, located at Brandeis University in Waltham, focuses on three issues: economic security, health, and caregiving. Not surprisingly, the three turn out to be intimately related, as Vanessa’s answer to my question suggests.

Through research, policy analysis, and community education, six staff members, with cooperation from some thirty organizations, work to promote the well-being of women as they age.

Another researcher, Arnaa Alcon, answered questions about building financial security. “If you haven’t started yet, start,” she advised. “Take whatever longevity expectations you have and add ten years. It’s better to overestimate. Get some help, hire a good financial planner.”

Katherine Burnes added, “Attitude is everything.” Explaining this axiom, she said, “So much negativity starts creeping in, it’s important to keep everything in perspective.” That’s how she sees the challenges of later life for women.

As Vanessa summarizes it, older women’s finances are often precarious because their employment history does not provide enough support. Typically, they have worked at lower salaries than men so that, when they retire, Social Security payments are low. Often, too, women have worked only part-time and may have taken years working without pay at home to care for their children.

When you add to these factors the inexperience with money matters that many women acknowledge, then the challenges become even greater. As one woman, quoted in a Center report, says, “I’m not that knowledgeable in financial things, situations. I’m not even good at math.”

Another, looking back, says, “When you are young, you think day to day. You get around forty and you think, ‘Oh my God!’ Women don’t have the skills or don’t think they do.”

The center staff sees long-term care as a vital part of the financial situation, especially for women. According to the director, Phyllis Mutschler: “Long-term care needs hit women twice, first in providing care for parents and other older loved ones, and then later in life when women may need long-term care themselves.”

Valuable testimony about the three issues of finances, health care, and caregiving emerges from a detailed study of some seventy women over fifty who belong to labor unions. Researchers found that “caregiving plays a major role in the lives of older working women – enriching their lives, yet depleting their financial, physical, and emotional resources.”

One woman told surveyors: “I lived a three-and-a-half hour drive from my mother. She refused to move to my home. I went to her place after work and returned at 1:00 am. Often I’d receive a call during the week and I’d have to leave work. This went on for two years or more.”

On the subject of retirement income: “Most women respond that paying for necessities is a major reason that they are unable to save more for retirement.” As one individual said, “I’ve got an 11 year old, and it seems between my 11 year old and my credit cards, I’m just blown away.”

About financial planning another women complained, “I think that the tone of what’s written in the media  .   .   . about financial planning makes it sound as if it belongs to the upper 10 percent and not us lower 90 percent.”

One edition of the Center’s newsletter focuses directly on finding a financial planner. The wrong way to do it emerges clearly, merely relying on  recommendations of relatives or friends without checking the planner’s past performance.

A 64-year old divorced woman named Judith is highlighted as an example of good planning. During the 34 years when she was married, “I had let my husband do the bills and I just signed on the dotted line as needed.” But after starting with an individual retirement account, Judith found her way around several other types of investments. Eventually, she took a seven-week seminar and wrote a financial plan for herself. Sticking to that plan has proven valuable for her and she has actually enjoyed doing it.

She now gives this advice, “I urge young women not to fall into the trap I fell into. I was of the old school. You marry, you stop teaching school, you have babies, and you let your husband take care of all the financial matters – while you manage the household, entertain the guests, and do lots of volunteering.”

Subscriptions to the Center’s “Women and Aging Letter” are available at five dollars for six issues or nine dollars for ten. You can call (800) 929-1995 for information. An informative web site is located at www.brandeis.edu/heller/national/ind.html.

Richard Griffin

Lincoln’s Devotional

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

Elbert Cole Aging

When it became evident that his wife, Virginia, had Alzheimer’s disease, Elbert Cole responded by proposing a pact. “Let’s split things up,” he said.  “What do you think about making your task to enjoy life, mine to manage life?”

That was back at the beginning of a seventeen-year-long siege that ended with Virginia’s death in 1993. During almost all that time she went with her husband on his daily ministerial rounds and accompanied him on his professional travel. When he gave lectures or workshops, she would sit next to him or in the front row.

Thus Elbert was able to continue his work as minister in a large Kansas City Methodist church and Virginia could enjoy the company of other people and feel stimulated from these associations.

Elbert also initiated a pact with his adult children. His daughter, who lived in California, agreed to serve as consultant for her mother’s dressing, grooming, and hygiene. A son, based in Illinois, for his part pledged to keep up with the latest research into the disease and treatments.

From the beginning Rev. Cole, long active in the field of aging, was aware of the institutional options for people with Alzheimer’s. And he does not think badly of those who send family members to nursing homes. But he thought it possible in his circumstances to create a better environment for his beloved wife.

She herself, on first discovering the truth about her condition, briefly considered suicide. But in talking with her husband she realized that this route would not accord with the values they had always believed in.

As time went on and Virginia’s ability to do basic tasks for herself lessened, Elbert learned how to take care of dressing, bathing, toileting, and her other needs. Every night, he would put her in bed, alternate saying the “Our Father” and “The Lord is My Shepherd” psalm, kiss her good night as she fell asleep. By establishing a gentle routine, he was able to allay the anxiety she often felt and to keep her peaceful.

Theirs was a marriage that began in 1939, before Elbert left for service as a Navy chaplain in the South Pacific during World War II. As they grew older together, the original bond grew stronger, preparing them for the difficult times ahead. That they carried it off so well together stirs my admiration. Whenever I see my friend Elbert, I feel inspiration at the creative and courageous role he played in his wife’s last years.

Elbert has written several articles sharing his experience with readers across the country. He shows himself modest about what he did. “No big deal” is his way of characterizing it. But anyone who has tasted the experience knows better.

From it all, Elbert has listed the needs of people with Alzheimer’s, while pointing out that all people have these same needs:

“To know that they are loved. To feel good about themselves. To be respected. To have the approval of others who are important to them. To be stimulated in body, mind, and spirit. To feel secure. To be included, not alienated and maginalized. To celebrate the joy of life. To be needed.”

Spiritual motivation exercised a strong influence in Elbert’s actions and, I suspect, in Virginia’s as well. Their life together had always been oriented to the service of those in their religious communities and beyond. When the time of crisis came, they were enabled to draw upon this experience and turn it to good use.

In recent weeks, reports have emerged about promising new research into ways of blocking Alzheimer’s disease. Experimenting with mice, scientists have found how to stop amyloid plaques from forming in the brains of these animals. And through tests with human subjects they have discovered that no harmful side effects resulted from the vaccines used.

The next step will be to see if the vaccine will stop plaques in the human brain. If so, one can envision a possible breakthrough happening in a few years. What a benefit for the human family that would be!

In the meantime, reliable medications are already available to treat some behaviors and conditions of those who have the disease. And new methods of care have been developed that can help those who have responsibility for seeing to their welfare. These are benefits that everyone concerned should know about.

However, even if a cure for this agonizing disease should be discovered someday, what Elbert Cole did, and Virginia too, will not lose its relevance. Theirs will remain a model of a loving relationship that met the challenge of crisis and remained strong till the end. As he moves through his eighties, Elbert has good reason to look back on Virgina’s last years and to feel blessed that they were able to persevere through such hard times and even to grow in love.

Richard Griffin