“Clocks have shaped my life,” confesses Andrew Achenbaum, a distin-guished historian of aging in America. “I spend much of the day wondering how much I can pack in,” he adds ruefully.

But Achenbaum tries to break this pattern so typical of modern culture: “Occasionally, I give time to focus in on life’s exquisite mysteries.” That’s when time becomes liberating for him as he attends to its possibilities.

This historian was a keynote speaker at last week’s meeting in San Diego of the American Society on Aging. There, people involved in a wide range of stu-dies about older people and services to them came together around the ambitious subject “Aging and the Meaning of Time.”

With heartfelt approval Professor Achenbaum quotes the late spiritual writer Henri Nouwen: “People must ripen.” These words suggest the purpose of aging – allowing ourselves to continue growing.

All faith traditions share the insight that long life allows for growth in spi-rit. They see time as a gift that makes spiritual development possible. As another speaker, Mel Kimble, wryly says, “God invented time to keep everything from happening at once.”

Kimble, teacher at a Lutheran seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, now sees time very differently from earlier in his life. Recovery from two life-threatening diseases, cancer and stroke, has led him to speak of “my post-mortem life.” From his survivor’s vantage point, these are his “bonus years.” For him, everything – family, friendships, the world of nature – has new meaning, enriching his expe-rience of time.

“How time and aging intersect depends on what we bring to the expe-rience,” says Robert Atchley, now a professor at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, a young university that operates according to Buddhist principles. Na-ropa tries to bring together the inner journey of students and teachers with the subject matter being studied.

Moments of silence, Atchley points out, change one’s feelings about time. That’s why Quakers begin business meetings by an interval of quiet. Ideally, this practice introduces soul into the discussion from the start and lays a foundation for consensus.

In private conversation, I asked Robert Atchley whether he has sets aside a special time for prayer and meditation each day. His answer pleased me because it gives hope to those of us who find it difficult to schedule spiritual practice. Rather than a set schedule, Atchley chooses to meditate during moments of respite during the day, waiting in line at the supermarket, for example.

Of course, this practice of “finding God in all things” does not itself come easily but demands a high level of spiritual maturity. When seized upon, such moments enrich time by infusing it with meaning that reaches beyond.

The Jewish challenge, according to Rabbi Samuel Seicol of Boston, is to look forward. This tradition says that “you don’t have to finish the task, but you must start it.” The patriarch Abraham was told by God to get up and go. He went toward the future without a map but with hope.

Rabbi Seicol, chaplain at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale, challenges residents there “to see what they already know,” a seeing that the rabbi calls hard to do. Maybe that involves some responsibility for imposing our own meaning on time.

The sabbath and other holy days change the nature of time. They remind Jews that there is a point when time ends. But until that point, Rabbi Seicol says, time moves forward and challenges us to grow, no matter how learned we already are.

Another speaker, Susan McFadden, who teaches at the University of Wis-consin at Oshkosh, loves to distinguish between chronos and kairos. The first Greek word refers to ordinary time that can be measured by clocks. By contrast, the second word points toward those times that are filled with meaning. The New Testament is full of this distinction and moments of kairos loom large throughout its pages.

“What if no moment had any more importance than any other?,” Professor McFadden asked. In doing so, she alluded to the burden of chronos in those nurs-ing homes where one day is much like another.

Even for older people living in their own homes, however, building enough kairos into our lives can be a challenge. I will never forget the molasses- like pace of a year in my life when I lived in northern Wales. Almost nothing happened during the average day and I thought that this ten-month period would never come to an end.

McFadden terms the culture in which we live a chronos society. “Many people have trouble finding any meaning in society,” she says. Yet the beginning of the year 2000 seemed to be a kairos moment across the entire world. Maybe that moment of grace gives hope to us who are searching for the values hidden in the time of our lives.

Richard Griffin

What does a fellow like me do when everybody else thinks a talk is fabul-ous but he himself judges it shoddy? That was my situation last week at the end of an address by the celebrated writer Tom Wolfe.

Even I was taken with Wolfe’s costume, however. Wearing his trademark brilliant white suit complete with a vest featuring white buttons, along with shoes striped in white and black and socks interwoven with white, this 69-year-old lite-rary lion evoked applause on sight. When, in the course of his speech, he first pulled out white half-glasses, the audience laughed appreciation.

Like others, I had come filled with expectation. My experience had been like that of the fellow sitting next to me, Kevin Honan, State Representative from Allston-Brighton. “I’ve heard rave reviews about him,” said my neighbor. And his wife, Mary Honan, added: “This man is a giant in literature.”

A friend in the row behind had a more personal reason for being there. “He was an old beau of mine at Yale,” she confided.

Wolfe’s announced title was “Manliness,” an unlikely topic for the Ken-nedy School of Government to host. But it was given something of a political context in the introduction by Harvey Mansfield, a Harvard government profes-sor. Mansfield described the current era in American history as “a time of victim-hood, a soft squishy time.”

To my disappointment, Wolfe himself spoke in a rambling, disordered style. His speech was often labored, halting and, to my mind, dull. Even he admit-ted going on too long, something like an hour and a quarter. Had the talk ap-proached the brilliance of his writing, I would not have minded. To judge from the brief interviews I did afterward, other people did not care about its length.

Here, in absurdly abbreviated form, is a summary of Wolfe’s message:

By reasons of their genetic inheritance, males are inherently aggressive. Their natural instinct is to be combative and the worst thing you can do is to “diss” them, that is insult their dignity. That will inevitably lead them to fight and fighting is what comes natural.

At this stage in history, however, American males are becoming decadent because society is suppressing their combativeness. After World War II, American intellectuals fell under the sway of European intellectuals. It’s the spirit of irony and contempt, characteristic of these thinkers, that has broken the spirit of boys and men here.

Why, it has gotten so bad that a lot of young men in colleges and universi-ties are not keen on going off to get killed. A survey has shown that eighty per-cent of Harvard students would not serve in the wartime military unless they ap-proved of the particular war. How many of them have ever met anybody who has served in the military?

The armed forces themselves have been weakened by the inclusion of women. It is ridiculous to see the unequal ranks of cadets marching at West Point, big guys and small women.

Still, “the male spirit does not die.” It finds expression, among other plac-es, in high-profile team sports. And the sports craze felt by so many Americans gives evidence of the old spirit of fight.

Most people, I suppose, do not take all of this very seriously. Rather, they regard Tom Wolfe as a performer, a witty manipulator of words out to amuse people, not instruct them.

However, I found in this material a lot of political implications that I do not much like. For me, it’s a welcome sign of progress in human relations that American males have taken on more of the qualities and values normally asso-ciated with women. And I am glad that women have moved into the mainstream of more and more American institutions.

I especially welcome the readiness of young men to be discerning about whether or not to enter the armed forces. That they have become cautious about the wars which they will fight seems to me a sign of social maturity rather than effeteness.

I agree that political correctness may distort our views about important areas of our common life. We do in fact need sharp-eyed people to warn us about the distorting effects of an artificially imposed set of beliefs. But these prophets must be truly discerning.

Perhaps it’s a sign of my advanced years that I regard the great American celebrity system with growing skepticism. Yes, I can be entertained by the grandstanding of Donald Trump of and even some of Dennis Rodham’s antics. But when Tom Wolfe, a man of some literary reputation, gives a speech that is riddled with weak generalizations and dubious historical analysis, then I must stand against the consensus of fellow audience members.

The advance of years has freed me to dissent from the crowd. I now feel entitled to take a contrarian view, even if I may be wrong. For this, as for so much else in advanced age, I feel grateful.

Richard Griffin

Standing in line under the stands at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida last week, I felt hungry for a hot dog. While waiting my turn at the counter, I turned around to talk with the woman behind me who turned out to be a native of Woburn, Massachusetts, Dottie Craft. She is both a reader of this column and , like me, an  old-time baseball fan.

When Dottie was a girl, she told me, her mother used to put her on the train for Boston and her father would pick her up at North Station. Then father and daughter would go to Braves Field on ladies’ day.  It’s one of the sweet memories of her early life that a baseball game in Florida’s Grapefruit League brings back.

Also in line were the Smiths from Connecticut, Gene and Ellen. “She’s the fan,” Gene said of his wife. As his cap indicated, he is a navy veteran of World War II, having served on the USS Rochester.

Somehow the name of John Rocker came up in our conversation. He’s the mou-thy Atlanta Braves relief pitcher whose punishment for outrageous remarks about New Yorkers had just been reduced. Ellen Smith told me: “I guess he should be banned. We’re telling our kids you can’t do drugs, then they let him go. That’s not right.”

After getting the hot dog, I returned to the stands for the start of the game between the host St. Louis Cardinals and the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers. Of course, both teams are visiting Florida as they prepare for the official season to start back home. The games in March don’t count in the official standings but they give the veterans a chance to get ready and the rookies an opportunity to show their stuff.

For me, this game was filled with beauty and atmosphere. It was the baseball of my dreams: temperatures around 75, a warm sun shielded at times by friendly clouds, fans amiable and ready to chat, and players wearing classic uniforms. The Cardinals, in particular, looked handsome in their pressed clean white jerseys and pants, featuring red letters along with hats and shoes of the same color.

Even before he came to bat, Mark McGwire, greater than Babe Ruth in a single season, was the center of fans’ attention. When at the plate, however, the slugger did not deliver on this day. Three times, he failed to put his bat on the ball solidly. Clearly, his timing has not yet approached mid-season form. Still, to see the mighty Mac take his swings excited awe, as always.

As the game proceeds I make it my business to engage nearby fans in conversation. Meyer Foss, 86 years old, recalls his boyhood when he used to pass the hat for his double A hometown team, the Wilkes-Barre Barons in Pennsylvania.

Another fan, a New Yorker sitting in the row in front of me, is much distracted by a disastrous day on Wall Street. “The Dow is down 300 points,” he breezily informs us all.

The left fielder is not having a much of a day either. We have just heard him call “I got it” for a fly ball that misses his glove and bounces off his chest.

Another fan is overheard to report: “I called his grandfather and told him that his grandson was a Republican – he didn’t handle it very well.”

Between innings, I amble over to the next section of the boxes where the professional scouts are sitting. Among them is Tommy Lasorda, Mr. Los Angeles Dodgers, since 1997, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was Dodger manager for twenty years and steered the team to two World Series victories. Now he brings his experience to evaluating talent.

In a brief interview, I ask Tommy Lasorda how he feels about the game as he gets older. “You keep on loving it more and more every day,” says the man who clearly seems to be enjoying himself that afternoon. “But I miss managing very much,” he adds rueful-ly.

Meanwhile play continues much like a regular season game except that substitutions of players are frequent. The starters are removed after a few innings to give unproven players a chance. I relish the lack of a designated hitter in this game between National League teams since I have always felt that the DH spoils the purity of the game.

Nothing very exciting happens in this game; even a clutch hit by a Cardinal rookie to drive in the winning hit in the last of the eighth inning stirs only scattered applause. But the afternoon continues balmy and the conversation goes on and we fans find quiet enjoyment in the proceedings.

Six thousand fans exit at game’s end having spent the kind of afternoon worth remembering.

Richard Griffin

When I was a boy, my favorite artist was Norman Rockwell. His “Satur-day Evening Post” covers used to amuse and move me. I remember one in partic-ular that showed a barber cutting a boy’s hair. He had got so distracted by the magazine the boy was reading that he cut a swathe right up his head, like a ski run clearing up a forested mountain.

Rockwell’s images of small-town America seemed to me charming and I admired the artist’s skill at depicting real people. To me, he got the citizens of this nation right, along with the places where they worked and the things they used. The warm colors that this artist preferred added to his allure for me.

Later, I discovered that I should not have liked Rockwell all that much. He was merely sentimental, critics said, hardly a serious artist. Instead, he was a populist, someone who did the easy stuff rather than the work of a real artist. Yes, he had a certain technique and surface gloss, but he should never be classed among the real painters of our time.

This past autumn, however, I discovered that Norman Rockwell was being celebrated as a serious artist after all. Suddenly, it seemed, the critical judgment of the past was overturned and he was now being recognized as an imposing fig-ure with talent, worthy of being taken seriously.

Museums across America were now taking part in a national tour of his works that would end at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. In a lead article featured in the New York Times, critic Michael Kimmelman even called him “a good artist,” and praised him because “Rockwell gave us a people’s history of America during the first half of the century.”

Something of the same turn-around in critical opinion took place much earlier with one of my favorite artists in another sphere – classical music. Sir Ed-ward Elgar loomed large for me way back in my teenage years. He had won my affection especially with his “Dream of Gerontius,” a grand-scale oratorio that used to thrill me from adolescence on.

Elgar, however, I later discovered, did not rate with critics. In the middle decades of the century now past, the Boston Symphony and other leading musical ensembles would not perform his major works. Everyone who ever attended a high school graduation, of course, knew his “Pomp and Circumstance” march but music lovers were unlikely to hear his symphonies, concertos, or songs.

Some three decades ago, however, critics discovered that Elgar was not so bad after all. Since that recognition, he has come to enjoy great popularity. No-wadays his compositions are performed regularly to great acclaim by orchestras, soloists, and singers. Not only is it allowed to like Elgar now, but you can claim him as a favorite composer as I still do.

I cite Rockwell and Elgar simply to indicate how much, as we age, re-ceived opinion changes. If you live long enough, you come to see, not only huge changes in inventions, such as the arrival of computers, but also more subtle transformations of thought and opinion. Nothing stands still, not even the way we approach works of art.

Relativity marks our lives much more than we ever imagined it would. As the ancient Greek philosopher saw it, the stream moves on and you can never dip your toe into the same water twice. Critical opinion is always fickle. The spirit of the time, what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, determines outlook much more widely than we would have thought possible.

Some people among us manage to hold on to cherished tastes their whole lives. Others of us tack our sails to winds prevailing at the moment. Most people, I suspect, do both. We hang on to some of our tastes while exchanging other favo-rites, swapping the old for the new.

This ebb and flow helps to make the world more interesting. It gives us material to reflect on and to talk about with friends. New enthusiasms feed our souls as do changed appraisals of figures we have known for a long time.

We can also take pleasure when others swing around to recognize our good taste and uphold what we judge excellent. I feel glad about critics having arrived at the point of sharing my own sound judgements. Whatever took them so long?

My prejudices in the area of culture have also held up and withstood much pressure to change. Sinatra, for example, I have never much liked. Nor do I have any feeling for Barbra Streisand. In so-called higher culture, I still do not like De-bussy, no matter his greatness in musical history.

Given time, however, these dislikes may break down. Meantime, I cherish both likes and dislikes and wait for changes inevitably to arrive.

Richard Griffin

What a pleasure it was, in the week straddling February and March, to re-visit two favorite pieces of music! Both recall the second decade of the twentieth century.

Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” which builds on a poetic text by James Agee, never fails to move me with its bittersweet memory of child-hood. As sung by soprano Jayne West and played by the Boston Philharmonic under Benjamin Zander’s direction, this work stirred up the vision of a different America, yet one where the familiar deepest questions about life arise.

An autobiographical fragment from Agee, the text, as set to music by Barber, conveys the feeling of a summer evening and the varied noises of a neighborhood. People sit on their porches rocking back and forth; both people and things go by. This peaceful atmosphere is interrupted by a streetcar “raising its iron moan.”

The child, his parents, uncle, and aunt lie on quilts spread in the back yard. They talk quietly while under the stars that seem very near. Among the voices the child hears are those of his mother “who is good to me” and his father of whom the child uses the same words.

And, yet, “who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth,” the narra-tor asks himself. Thinking of his parents, he asks God to “remember them kindly in their time of trouble and in their hour of taking away.”

Finally, he is put to bed and “soft, smiling sleep” approaches. But he wonders about those who love and care for him “but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.”

The life-long quest for self-identity is a theme many of us older people re-flect upon. We think back to our childhood and evoke scenes like that drawn by James Agee. The sounds of our early years form part of this recollection, those noises characteristic of the places where we grew up.

Though Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” recalls the same historical era, it differs sharply from “Knoxville.” Britten chooses texts from the Latin Requiem Mass and from the anti-war poet Wilfred Owen. He weaves the two in and out, using the poet’s words as a commentary (often ironic) on the liturgical text.

The oratorio was written to mark the consecration in 1962 of St. Michael’s Cathedral in Coventry, England. The original building had been largely demolished by German bombers in1940.

As performed by the Boston Symphony with outstanding soloists Chris-tine Goerke, Ian Bostridge, and Thomas Quasthoff, and both adult and children’s choruses, the work received a fervently appreciative response from audience members. Its skillful mix of so many musical and linguistic forces stirred us listeners to admiration.

For critic Michael Steinberg, the collision between innocence and corruption runs through all of Britten’s work including the “War Requiem.” In the Of-fertory of the requiem, for instance, after the chorus sings of God’s promise to “Abraham and his seed,” the words of Wilfred Owen come as a shock. In Owen’s text, as in the Bible, Abraham is told to sacrifice a ram in place of his son Isaac: “But the old man would not do so, but slew his son / And half the seed of Europe, one by one.”

In the liturgical poem Dies Irae, the sinner asks Jesus for mercy and ap-peals to his forgiveness of Mary Magdalen and the Good Thief. In response Wil-fred Owens pessimistically prays for deliverance from the arrogance that causes war: “Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm / Great gun towering toward Hea-ven, about to curse; / Reach at that arrogance which needs thy harm, / And beat it down before its sins grow worse; / But when thy spell be cast complete and whole, / May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!”

The bitter catastrophe that was the first world war polluted the first part of the century just finished. The memory of how it destroyed a civilization and prepared for the horrors of the second world war only thirty years later must have impressed itself deeply on the parents and grandparents of today’s old people.

If, as a Swedish scholar has observed, it is a mark of later life to experience an “increasing sense of connection to earlier generations,” artistic works like the two cited here enhance that connection. They remind us both of a different world that existed before America’s entrance into the Great War and of the loss of innocence brought on by that war.

The musical artists, Britten and Barber, and the poetic artists, Owen and Agee, enable us to enter into both experiences. The one set of events, taking place on a world stage, was epic in its effects. The other, a domestic scene that focuses on the microcosm of one man’s life, raises deep questions about who each one of us is.

Richard Griffin