“You haven’t changed in thirty years,” a friend whom I had seen only rarely during that time told me last weekend. At first, I felt taken aback by her remark. Did it mean that I was no better than then or, simply, that I was no worse? Was it possible that I had remained the same old fellow without any of the self-improvement toward which I had expended a fair amount of effort?

Probably my friend was just being conventionally kind. She meant to say that I had remained someone for whom she still feels respect and affection. Had she made the remark to anyone but a gerontologist, her statement would no doubt have stayed unexamined for deeper meaning. For someone who sifts the aging experience for significance the way I do, however, my friend’s compliment seemed faintly troubling.

All of us who gathered for that weekend in Poughkeepsie, New York had obviously changed over the years. Some thirty in number, we had come to renew friendships formed back in Cambridge during the mid to late sixties and the early seventies. Those were heady days, full of turmoil as well as hope, and we still had not taken the measure of that history.

Not all who came to spend parts of three days together belonged to the original group of graduate students and others who knew one another in Cambridge. Some had acquired spouses in the interim, and several had brought their children with them. In fact, this situation posed a question for the group: would the new people be able to relate to those who had been friends for so long?

A positive answer to this question was made easier by an initiative taken by Molly, one of our hosts. She had urged us all to write short bios about ourselves and our families and distribute them beforehand  by email to everyone who was invited. This inspired device not only helped dispense us from the conventional questions about where we live and what kind of work we do, but it provoked some moving statements about people’s lives.

Fred, another of our hosts, revealed in his memoir details of a life-threatening disease that he has been struggling with over the past two years. Readers of this statement could not help but feel for him and his family in their courageous attempts to carry on a normal life at work and at home.

Sharon, a former college professor, had indicated  that both she and her husband John had been through some “medical interludes” but their chief focus was establishing a music school for people like their nineteen-year-old son who has Williams syndrome. (Those affected by this disease have serious neurological disabilities, but also unusual sensitivity to music.) Sharon’s work in responding to the needs of her son and others by founding the school stirred the admiration of those who read it.

A Eucharistic liturgy led by one of our number, a Franciscan priest, brought the weekend to a climax. At one point, we sang the Latin hymn “Where charity and love abide, there God is.” These words gave expression to the warm feelings that members of our core group still feel for one another and for those who have joined us in the intervening years. The heartfelt, affectionate embraces that marked the kiss of peace showed forth these feelings of love and affection.

That an informal reunion of this sort, with a core group of people who had known one another well and a fair number of others who had not, could produce such unity came as a welcome surprise. That we had all aged and looked different as a result was obvious; that we would all care that much about one another and have such a rich time together was not predictable.

I attribute this success largely to two factors. First, not a few members of the group are people of extraordinary human vitality and warmth of character. To mention only those who conceived the idea of coming together in the first place and then planned the event, Molly and Fred, Clara and Gabriel are filled with human understanding, expressive emotions, and feeling for other people. Just being in their presence is good for the heart. Their affections clearly influenced the emotional tone of our time together.

The second factor, I believe, is spirituality. Most of us share the same spiritual tradition and it is amazing how much that helps. The liturgy showed that the deep bond established long ago still holds us together. The spiritual experiences that we shared in the past still exert an influence on us now. And, because of the joys and sufferings that we have all tasted over the past thirty years, the spiritual ties that bind us together have become both deeper and broader.

Richard Griffin

Dan Berrigan will be eighty years old next May. When that birthday comes around, he may possibly celebrate it in jail. That’s where his brother Philip is spending his late seventies as he serves his latest sentence – thirty months for damaging two Warthog warplanes of the Air National Guard. The two brothers give no sign of granting themselves a dispensation from this kind of radical anti-war activity on the grounds of age.

In Cambridge to receive an award from PEN New England, the writers’ group, Daniel Berrigan looked like the austere prophet that he is. Gaunt, with dark shadows un-der his eyes, and thinning gray hair, this Jesuit priest-poet came to read some of his work and answer questions from fellow writers and others. Dressed in a nondescript dark shirt with a design of muted colors, along with dark pants and red socks, he showed himself at one and the same time both somber and wry.

I had not seen this former colleague for many years and was at first shocked at his emaciated appearance. When I greeted him, he explained that he had come through diffi-cult spinal surgery in April. Now, however, he was free of the pain that had plagued him for a long time.

The first poem Dan read bore the title,  “My Brother’s Battered Bible, Carried in-to Prison Repeatedly.”  Its first stanza goes like this:

That book
livid with thumb prints,
underscorings, lashes –
I see you carry it
into the cave of storms, past the storms.
I see you underscore
like the score of music
all that travail
that furious unexplained joy.

The other poems are short, and Dan read them with the same kind of prophetic in-tensity that characterizes his spoken discourse.

Predictably enough, the question period began with the rationale for radical anti-war activity in the current era. What is the role, a fellow poet wanted to know, of non-violence and pacifism during this time of ethnic cleansing like the Kosovo event?

In response, Dan Berrigan invoked the wisdom of Dorothy Day. “Every latest war is the good one, the unavoidable one,” he quotes her as saying. In his view, “The bombs are the horrid quick fix. As we relay on bombs, we lose other aspects of our humanity.”

He went on to question our basic values asking “If we still believe in God, which I think is moot, since we have disastrously given the state the right to kill.”

Someone else asked what would have happened if we had not gone to war against Hitler. Dan held  his ground and characterized the air war waged by Roosevelt and Chur-chill as “horrible.” He challenged the questioner: “Did we end up in a better position be-fore God?”

Still another person wanted to know whether it’s still important to go to jail when doing so does not get much attention any more. In responding Dan said “We hear this question all the time. It could not be known at the time when Mandela and others did it what effects it would have.”

Pressing more deeply, my friend Jim Carroll asked, “What does your faith in God mean to you?” Surprisingly, Dan Berrigan said in reply only “The closer the reality is to life, the more difficult it is to speak about.”

My question “How has your aging affected your view of yourself and the world” also evoked only a clipped, gnomic reply. “All the changes I’ve experienced are for the worse,” Dan said, in an ironic, jocular vein.

Thinking afterward about my latest encounter with this now famous Catholic priest radical, I felt a familiar conflict. Should Dan Berrigan’s analysis of American so-ciety be regarded as accurate? Or are his views simplistic and naïve? Should all of us concerned citizens be rising up against the weapons policies of our federal government or rather should we accept them as part of military preparedness against present and future enemies of world peace?

My current approach is to recognize that Daniel Berrigan is a true prophet. He is right to call attention in poetry, prose, and non-violent action to the disordered priorities of our nation. Like the great people of every era, he sees what the rest of us prefer not to acknowledge and he has the courage to suffer for his convictions.

At the same time, however, he oversimplifies the workings of the world. Prophets must do so, I suppose; otherwise they cannot communicate a hard-hitting message to people at large. But, no more than the rest of us do they enjoy an exemption from human fallibility; they can be wrong about details and  even basic principles.

In my dour moments, I wonder if we do people like Dan Berrigan a service by asking them to pronounce on all sorts of questions. Yes, I admire and venerate him for his great qualities of heart. But he, too, has limitations that deserve respect.

Richard Griffin

When young, Joseph Finelli had comparatively little formal schooling. In his na-tive Italy, he went through the early grades, then, after his family moved to New York City, he continued only through the first year of high school.

In high school “I had been told that I had talent,” he now recalls, from his current  vantage point of age 85. Nonetheless, like so many others then,  he had to drop out to support his family. A few years later he left work and joined the army for a four-and-a-half year stint in World War II.

After returning home, he began his first career, that of butcher. He worked at var-ious meat-cutting shops in the Bronx, learning the trade and becoming expert at it. The work was not without stress, however; he had his first heart attack in the late 1950s.

Eventually he left the butcher’s trade and, in his second career, ran a home-cleaning service in Manhattan for ten years. But he yearned for something more creative.

Finally, he wife said to him one day, “Now, it’s time to go back to study.” So, at age 58 he enrolled in the National Academy of Design and, he says, “The rest is history.”

That is where he learned to become a sculptor. This is the goal he set for himself, a purpose that fit nicely with his philosophy of life. He was conscious of himself as an immigrant and his aim, as he puts it, was “to excel in everything.” In becoming an artist, he wanted to give something back to the society that had received him and given him op-portunity.

“My life completely changed,” he told me, in a recent telephone interview. After completing his training, he began work and sculpted many works that he sold to churches, cemeteries, and other agencies. He enjoyed his work and felt at last creative in carving  the pietas and other art that emerged from his studio. And he soon made enough money in his new role to support his wife and himself.

When I spoke with him, Joseph Finelli was feeling in high spirits and not without reason. He had just returned, with his son Anton and several other members of his ex-tended family, from Benevento, the provincial capital of Campania, near where he was born. The Museo del Sannio had bestowed on him the high honor of installing in its halls seventeen of his sculptures. Some were busts; most of them were full-life figures and nudes, he told me.

Asked how he felt about it, this late-blooming artist found it hard to express his pride and sense of fulfillment. That the place where he was born and raised recognized him in this way defied easy words. But clearly his was a “Nunc dimittis” experience, one that recalled Simeon, the eighty-year-old man in St. Luke’s Gospel who, at the moment of his fulfillment, exulted “Now, O Lord, you dismiss your servant in peace.”

The ties with his native land reached back more deeply than one might have thought. His son, Anton, recalls being told that his father, as a young boy, did some work with his uncles in the stone cutting business. How fortuitous that this childhood activity should blossom so many decades later!

I like to connect Joseph Finelli’s life story to the currently fashionable idea of “re-inventing oneself.” As more and more of us Americans retire early with the prospect of decades more of life still before us, we often feel the need and the desire to explore fur-ther our creative potential.

There will be much more time for this kind of experimentation than we ever thought possible. People in the huge baby boom generation, looking toward at least some increases in longevity, will have ample opportunity for further education and for trying new models of life style and professional activity. Some, of course, will need to work for financial as well as psychological reasons.

Joseph Finelli and other members of the older generation who have succeeded in changing course in middle or later life, are clear models of personal re-invention. They have listened to their inner voices spurring them on to excel in fields different from the ones in which they began adult life.

Looking toward the unfolding of this new century, the business/gerontology guru, Ken Dychtwald, writes in his new book Age Power: “In contrast to the 20th century, when most of the interesting innovations in human lifestages occurred with the youthful periods, the expanded middlescent life stage and the new years of vital maturity will pro-vide new opportunities for comebacks, late blooming, and second chances. In the 21st century, adulthood will explode with lifestyle experimentation and personal transformation.”

Allowing for the somewhat inflated language of an age booster, people now mid-dle-aged can perhaps find some inspiration in this vision of the future. I suspect, however, there is greater inspiration in the life of Joseph Finelli and others in the older generation like him who have already led the way.

Richard Griffin

“Your recent attempt at catharsis .  .  . shows your weakness of intellect, character, and judgment – and the apparent lack of improvement of any of these qualities over the past 25 years.” So wrote one reader, a veteran of the Vietnam War, condemning me for my actions against that war, as remembered in a recent column.

A woman called from Lancaster, PA also chiding me for the same actions. “I’ve been enjoying the articles you have written,” she said, but she drew a hard line at the Vietnam War column.

My piece on Ronald Reagan also drew heavy fire from some quarters, though a few readers applauded my appraisal of his presidency. An Arlington reader described himself politically as “a fond friend of Ronald Reagan” and deplored my views of him. But another man told me “I liked it and I agree with it one-hundred percent. I think Ronald Reagan was a bum.”

More recently, the column calling for the resignation of Pope John Paul II drew almost universal disagreement. Many readers replied passionately, defending the pope and his record. “No successor will ever have his brain,” wrote a woman from Framingham.

A man wrote from North Andover saying “It is with great sadness that I read your article.” Striking a note expressed frequently by other readers, he ad-mires the pope for not making decisions on the basis of popularity or the spirit of the times.

Other recent columns have attracted appreciative but less passionate responses. A woman writing from Woburn commented on the article about my 25th anniversary of “returning to the world.” “I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed it and was touched by it,” she says.

An old friend writing from Concord used the occasion to bring me up to date on herself and her family. Recently retired, she is looking for new activities and reminds me that I am four years her senior.

A professional gerontologist, Ken Dychtwald, wrote from California to say that he thoroughly enjoyed my column about his views. “I particularly liked the way you isolated some of the ‘big’ themes in order to get your readers think-ing.” He asked as a favor that I mention his new book “Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old.”

A woman in Florida e-mailed me saying that I should come down to Citrus Hills, where she lives. The place is also known for being the home of Ted Williams, she informs me.

The owner of the Boston coffee exchange in South Station and on Summer Street wrote and expressed interest in getting older people to sell espresso or cappuccino. No work is required on weekends, nights, or holidays, he says.

A man from Arlington, the nephew of the man whose memorial service I wrote about, told me of distributing the column to his cousins. In response to my interest he later sent me a copy of a newsletter about his extended family that he publishes regularly.

A rabbi writing from Newton also enjoyed my 25th anniversary column and told me of his fine teaching experience at a Jesuit college in Kansas City.

And I feel indebted to a woman who wrote from Chelmsford to correct the e-mail address for the Executive Office of Elder Affairs. Inadvertently, I had omitted the word “state” from www.state.ma/us/elder.

Finally, a retired cardiologist from Newton sent me a seven page typewritten letter in response to a column called about the connection between medical practice and spirituality. His was a very thoughtful discussion of the points made in my article. Though the writer took issue with several of my statements, he did so in an understanding and sympathetic way that I much appreciated.

Many other responses have arrived but these should be enough to suggest the range of readers and their opinions. Hearing from them has enriched my experience of column writing and encouraged me to move forward.

I am also struck by the growth in the number of men and women who use email. Rare is the person nowadays who sends me so-called snail mail; the great majority of my readers use electronic messages and to good effect. Contrary to  widespread assumptions, older people in particular seem to be using email regularly.

My practice is to reply whenever possible. Often that leads to further exchanges of messages and, occasionally, new friendships. I take pleasure in getting to know readers who share with me the varied experiences of aging.

When beginning this column three years ago, I promised readers to be provocative. As I wrote then, “It is, after all, part of a columnist’s job description to provoke people and stir them to indignation.” So, if you find yourself in strong disagreement with what I have written, that’s fine with me. If you let me know what you yourself think, that’s even better.

Richard Griffin