Encounter with a Famous Ancestor

A new friend, Ian, recently regaled me with the tale of his meeting one of his distant ancestors. At first, I found the story incredible but later discovered it to be, not the product of a fevered imagination, but a narrative solidly based in verifiable fact.

When he was a young boy, Ian took instruction from the vicar of the Anglican parish in the village where he lived. After one of his visits to the recto-ry concluded, the canon asked the boy if he would like to see something un-usual. He then led Ian to another room and brought up from its hiding place a large coffer. Opening this container the vicar lifted out a small box and opened it for the boy to view.

Inside the box was a human head, not merely a skull, but a head with flesh on it. Ian looked quickly at the head and then shrank back in horror. The vicar then explained to him that he had just seen the head of Oliver Cromwell, the famous anti-royalist leader who in mid-17th century England had overthrown King Charles I.

When Ian told his parents about this encounter, they expressed surprise that he did not know his family’s history. They explained that they were directly descended from Cromwell who was Ian’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather.

How Cromwell’s head came into the vicar’s possession is in itself a complicated story. After the restoration of the monarchy later in the 17th cen-tury, the British parliament decreed that Cromwell’s body be removed from its tomb in Westminster Abbey and hanged. It was then drawn and quartered and the head was cut off and placed on a spike on the top of Westminster Hall. Later it was passed around, sold and resold, until somehow the vicar of the village church received it. Now it is reportedly buried in Sidney Sussex College of Cambridge University, at a location known to only a few people.

I have related this admittedly bizarre tale, not to be ghoulish, but to stir reflection on the experience of time. At age 76, Ian now looks back on four centuries of history brought vividly to life by the encounter with his grandfather to the tenth power. For him, time is a living reality that takes him back to the earlier generations of his family.

No one else known to me can rival this personal story for its sweep and its drama but many people can reach rather far back into history. Out of family archives I recently held in my hands a photo of myself with a relative who was born in the year 1832. She was my grandmother’s Aunt Kate who came from St. Louis to visit her niece in Peabody, Massachusetts and ended up staying for forty years. She died after celebrating her hundredth birthday.

When you consider that this woman with whom I talked as a four-year-old, had grandparents who must have been born around the time of the American Revolution, history seems much shorter than we usually imagine it.

These anecdotes and reflections have been prompted by the turn of the centuries and millennia that we have lived through this month. I find it still hard to believe that I have lasted into this new era. Not so long ago, it seemed almost unimaginably far off, yet here we have arrived.

Of course, our marking of time has something arbitrary about it. You don’t have to keep to the method adopted by the western world. Instead, to cite only two alternatives, you can use the Jewish calendar and the year 5760 or reckon from the birth of the Buddha 563 years before Christ.

But however you observe it, time plays a dominant role in our modern life. Its rhythms give our lives meaning and give us reasons to look both forward and backward. Perhaps most important, these rhythms can prompt us to look more closely at the ways in which we have changed.

One of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner explains how the pas-sage of time has affected him: “As I grow older, less inhibited, dottier, I find it increasingly easy to move toward being who I truly am, let the chips fall where they may. I also find it easier to relate to others as they truly are too, which is at its heart, I suspect, rather a good deal like the rest of the human race including me. I find myself addressing people I hardly know as though I have known them always and taking the risk of saying things to them that, before I turned seventy, I wouldn’t have dreamed of saying.”

A group of elders to whom I quoted the first part of Buechner’s statement wholeheartedly agreed with it. They, too, have discovered themselves to have moved toward who they really are. And they welcome this unsuspected benefit of time.

Richard Griffin

Frank’s Death

News has come, suddenly and without my expecting it, that Frank has died. I knew that he had an illness serious in its long-range possibilities, but I never thought it would lead to death so soon. When I talked with him two weeks ago, he seemed on his way to recovery.

Frank and I had been friends for 57 years, ever since we first met as classmates in our small high school. We shared much in values and outlook on the world. We had also shared in many of the weddings, baptisms and other events that marked the life of our families through the years.

Frank’s death marks only the second time in my lifetime that I have lost a close friend. It still comes as a new experience, upsetting because I feel unpre-pared for a world without him. In recent weeks we had talked about the activities we would share together as he moved more fully into retirement. Now that will not happen and I feel deprived.

He was a fine person who spent his life in public education because he believed it the most important work he could do. In his early years, he had given up a career that could have been much more lucrative in favor of teaching and school administration. After retirement five years ago, he devoted himself in large part to caring for his wife who had been afflicted with a crippling disease.

Spirituality always took a central role in Frank’s life. The religious values imparted to him growing up in a large family remained vital for him. When I talked with him during his recent hospital stay, I sensed that he was prepared for whatever might happen to him. With communication born of long friendship, I could tell that he had been thinking about death and the issues it posed.

Though I feel shaken by his departure, Frank’s death does not upset my own convictions about what dying means. Rather, it has strengthened them.

Ever since my own boyhood I have held a deep faith that dying leads to new life. Even aside from the teachings of religion, I have always judged it in-credible to think that death brings an end to everything. Given all the complexity and built-in value of each human life, I could never believe that this life does not continue.

Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite spiritual writers, expresses this faith in a way that accords with my viewpoint. In his most recent book” The Eyes of the Heart,” he explains his conviction that dying brings new life. I identify strongly with the reasons he gives to support his faith.

“If I were God,” Buechner writes, “and loved the people I created and wanted them to become at last the best they had it in them to be, I couldn’t imagine consigning them to oblivion when their time came with the job under the best of circumstances only a fraction done.”

Secondly, “life doesn’t feel like a black comedy. It feels like a mystery. It feels as though, at the innermost heart of it, there is Holiness, and that we expe-rience all the horrors that go on both around us and within us as horrors rather than just as the way the cookie crumbles because, in our own innermost hearts, we belong to Holiness, which they are a tragic departure from.”

Amen to this faith that human life does continue in splendor transformed by our loving God. At least, this has been my conviction since childhood, a con-viction that I regard as a divine gift. In that confidence I join Frank’s family and friends in committing him to God.

Only a few weeks ago, I wrote another column in which Frank played a part. My article dealt with long-lasting friendships and I included him among those closest to me. In the light of his death, a quotation he gave me for that piece has taken on new meaning.

When I asked him what our friendship meant to him, he told me this: “One of the things that we have been able to do is know one another well enough to wish it would go on forever.”

I remain convinced that Frank’s wish for it to go on forever has a solid basis in reality.

Richard Griffin

The Green-Eyed Monster In Retreat

“Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.”  This statement, made by the famously witty and acid-tongued writer Gore Vidal, gives expression to the vice called envy, classically listed among the seven deadly sins.

Vidal’s unlovely sentiment would not draw our attention if it did not carry with it at least some little truth. When we examine our hearts, we can all feel some temptation to begrudge other people their success. That temptation is something that I have felt many times and, frankly, given in to more often than I like to admit.

I remember once feeling very nervous about approaching a colleague, several years younger than I, who had already established a reputation for his writing. His published poems and short stories had won him an acclaim that made me envious. Talking with him made me feel ill at ease because I recognized in him a talent much  superior to my own.

The passage of years has worn away my tendency to feel envious of those who have scored notable successes. Though I still feel the temptation on occasion, by and large I now embrace the achievements of other people and even enjoy sharing in their good fortune.

This change of attitude, I like to think, has happened because of growing appreciation of a spiritual reality. That reality is the vital connection that each of us has with one another. As I grow older, I have turned my back on individualistic achievement and come to treasure the bonds that tie us all together as brothers and sisters, children of the same God.

I feel this way most of all during Sunday worship. There, other members of the community and I are joined together in recognition of God. “We give you thanks for your great glory,” we pray in unison. And we pay attention to our oneness as we exchange the embrace or handshake and say to your neighbor, “Peace be with you.”

So, instead of envying the fellow near me whom I recognize as the author of an article on spirituality that has just appeared in a national magazine, I congratulate him on his success. No matter that I would like to have written that article myself. That he has done so I recognize as an achievement that I share in too because the author is part of my spiritual community.

Each one of us is a gifted person. We have received talents that enable us to make our way in the world. However, those gifts, as I  have come to see more clearly than when I was younger, are also intended by God for us to serve one another. That other people have so much to offer is not a threat to me, but rather an advantage.

With this changed outlook, I can survey the people in my worshipping community and rejoice in their spiritual gifts. I recognize fellow parishioners who have dedicated their lives to serving the poor. Others who spend their time educating disadvantaged children come into my line of vision. And I spot yet other men and women whose artistic creativity brings much value to the larger community.

I also recognize and appreciate the physical beauty and graceful personality of others, younger and older. Some people among us clearly have the gift of making us feel accepted and valued as persons. I admire the resilience of my companions who have shown patience and courage in putting up with the physical insults connected with  old age and the unexpected  illnesses that surprise the young.

All of these gifts have a spiritual dimension and go to make the community a force for good. The diversity of the gifts attests to the prodigal impulse of the creator who has given them for the benefit of all.

As a person prone to relapse, I may well slip back into my old habits of envying the achievements of others. After all, there is something typically American about seeing ourselves as in competition with everyone else. But I now realize more clearly than before how false this approach to life truly is. Instead, we can allow spirituality to teach us how the talents of others in our community do not diminish us but widen our lives.

Richard Griffin

People of the Century

Like Janus, the god with two faces, I find myself at this dramatic turning point in history looking forward to the 2000s and backward over the 1900s.

Surveying the past century, I here identify a few of the public figures who have had a notable impact on my life and times. In doing so, I have arbitrarily chosen three prominent people in each of six categories.

In the political sphere, Franklin D. Roosevelt looms largest. He was the first president I was conscious of. As a boy, I thought he would always be my president, just as for me as a Catholic, Pius XII would always be my pope.

Later Harry Truman emerged to take a place the national consciousness and mine. I remember listening to him the first time he spoke to the nation. He sounded to me like a hick, and I won-dered how he could ever lead us the way his predecessor had done.

And third among American political figures, John F. Kennedy stands out. Though I now realize that historians may not rate him highly, still the new spirit he brought to Washington and the country at large, featuring respect for intellect and culture, buoyed up my morale.

In another sphere, spirituality, the three Americans who have marked my life most are Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and Martin Luther King. All of them people of deep faith, they wrote and acted so as to support and extend that faith in me and my community. All of them had human defects but their concern for justice, peace, and poor people place them high in my temple of spiritual heroes.

As a boy I used to frequent movie theaters and the double features they offered. Looking back, I conjure up three stars who have left strong memories in me: Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney, and Bette Davis.

I loved the hard-bitten gangster films that the first two starred in; the love stories of Bette Davis tended to bore me but left a strong impression of what screen acting could be.

In literature, three writers stand out for me: Thomas Wolfe, author of Look Homeward Angel, Sigrid Undset for her great trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter, and Walker Percy.

Wolfe’s autobiographical novel, published posthumously in 1940, is the kind of book you had to read in adolescence to feel its full impact.

Something similar can be said of Undset’s three volumes. With their stirring stories of religious and sexual passion, they ex-tended the narrow boundaries of my thinking and feeling as a teenager.

Walker Percy, in novels such as Love In the Ruins, brought a sophisticated and somewhat pessimistic Catholic sensibility to the world with which I strongly identified.

As a life-long sports fan, I have rooted for Boston major league teams through times of both glory and slump. Among the many athletic heroes who occupy a prominent place in my psyche are Ted Williams, Bob Cousy, and Bobby Orr.

Though he sometimes made it hard to like him, Ted Williams remains the consummate artist of the perfect swing.

Cousy first showed how entertaining and exciting it could be to perform sleight-of-hand on the basketball court, and Orr revolutionized hockey by becoming a big-time scorer as a dashing defenseman.

Finally, 20th century America will be remembered by social historians for the rise of the elder liberation movement. That leads me to cite three leaders among the many who led the way toward asserting the rights of older Americans.

Senator Claude Pepper in his own old age stood out as a champion of public policy recognizing both the needs and the contributions of elders.

Ethel Percy Andrus founded the now giant advocacy organization AARP (known, as of recent months, by these initials alone) that enrolls Americans middle-aged and older for rights and benefits.

And Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers, an organization never large in numbers or resources, but an influence for change in the way older people are regarded in this country. Maggie, living into her nineties, was a dynamic figure who insisted that Americans, old and young, should advocate together for basic social change.

So this is my list of twentieth century threesomes enshrined in my personal hall of fame. You will quite reasonably argue with my choices and omissions. I have left out whole areas of importance and, even within the categories chosen I have ignored many who helped change America.

Perhaps the best way for you to retaliate is to make your own list. It’s fun doing so and reviewing candidates can stimulate your interior life. I fully expect that your selections will differ from mine dramatically. If you wish to share your memories with me, you will find me an appreciative reader.

And, of course, this exercise raises the question of who will be the people of the new millennium most influential in our lives and in those following us.

Richard Griffin

Millennium Hopes

“Millennium, Schmillennium.” So says a bumper sticker in my neighborhood. The car’s owner apparently does not attach much value to thousand-year periods. Or, perhaps, my neighbor has gone public just to resist all the hoopla that comes with the turn of the ages.

Aside from hoopla, however, one can find important implications for spirituality in the passage from the 1900s to the 2000s. Some of those values can be expressed in the image of doors. Doors open and we enter into another place, a place that may surprise us and offer us new inspiration that could change our lives.

That was the idea behind Pope John Paul II opening the holy doors to St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve. He knelt at the threshold of the great church and pushed back giant bronze ornamental doors that had been bricked up for a year. He also issued a call for people around the world to change, to put behind them enmity and hatred, replacing them with love.

Not just individual people need change, however. Institutions also must turn away from past sins and be renewed in the spirit of justice and charity. This need applies above all to religious institutions. In that spirit the pope declared that his own church needs forgiveness for past transgressions of God’s law and must be renewed in love for all people.

For that to happen, the church and, in fact, all of society will depend upon new leaders who will help shape the beginnings of the new millennium,.men and women who can provide vision and who can inspire others to live by love. Our past century, amid its horrors, has seen the rise of many such people.

Spiritual inspiration coming from such leaders as Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt,  Pope John XXIII, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and the present Dalai Lama, to name only a few, has helped to redeem this century from its bloody hatreds. These individuals have enabled us to take away something valuable from the century despite the awful slaughters of these last hundred years.

One likes to think that the merciful God raised up these men and women so that, amid the carnage, we could salvage vital values. They all looked across barriers of race and ethnic origin and saw brothers and sisters who belong to one another. All met resistance from those who found profit in stirring people up to fight one another.

I will never forget what one such person said of Martin Luther King – “He was always stickin’ his nose in other people’s business.” Fortunately for all Americans, he saw that social justice was everybody’s business and he had the courage to act on this basic spiritual insight.

Like the other leaders mentioned above, Dr. King stood solidly in the tradition of nonviolence. Despite this past century’s unimaginably large expenditures on weapons of mass destruction and the unleashing of these weapons on so many innocent people, these spiritual leaders insisted that only nonviolence could ultimately bring about peace and justice.

Who will be the spiritual leaders in the global society of the next century? No one knows, of course, but we can hazard some predictions about them. Certainly they will meet unrelenting opposition. Like several of those mentioned above, they may face imprisonment for their attempts to change society. But time spent behind bars often turns out to give people time and motivation for spiritual growth. Nelson Mandela transformed his twenty-seven years of imprisonment on Robben Island into a kind of monastery for self-discipline in the arts of forgiveness and love.

Probably, more of these new prophets will be women than was formerly the case. As we move into an age when women take their rightful positions as leaders of nations, we can expect them to exercise widespread influence. Some evidence suggests that women turn to  spirituality more readily than do men. Perhaps the world will see a greater number of women emerge to provide leadership in justice and peace.

Finally, one can expect the new spiritual leaders to reach beyond their own local or even national communities toward the whole global village. New communication technologies whereby information is passed from one end of the world to the other instantaneously will extend the influence of those who show outstanding leadership. In this way women and men in the future will be well positioned to make a spiritual difference in the whole world.

Richard Griffin

Old Pros in Action

Two old pros coming before the United States House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee in order to plead for values which have marked their long careers—for me this was an impressive sight, as their faces loomed large on my television.  

Father Robert Drinan and Professor Samuel Beer each made stirring statements against the course of action proposed by the majority of the House Judiciary Committee. As it turned out, their testimony availed little or nothing against the House’s inexorable drive toward impeachment but they tried nobly.

Father Drinan is himself a former member of the House, having represented the Massachusetts fourth congressional district for ten years. He will go down in history as being the first member of the Judiciary Committee to call for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

His service in the House came to an end two years later when Pope John Paul II required all priests to give up elective office. When ordered to do so, Drinan obediently agreed not to run for a further term.

Throughout his career as priest and public servant, this New England Jesuit has built an outstanding record. As dean of Boston College Law School, and more recently professor at Georgetown Law Center, he has been a strong voice for human rights, using his legal expertise on behalf of oppressed people throughout the world.

My friendship with him began in 1953 when we were Jesuit colleagues, he an already accomplished writer and intellectual leader while I was still a mere apprentice. On a more personal note, he will always be close to my heart as the one who first notified me of my father’s last illness.

To see his bony, austere, aging face on television the day he testified before the committee and the nation, was for me a moving sight. Now 78 years of age, he belongs to a diminishing breed—avowed liberals who continue to profess political ideals now wildly unpopular in Congress.

Drinan testified before the House Judiciary Committee twice. The first time, on November 9th,  Father Drinan spoke as a constitutional expert and said there was no foundation for impeachment.

The second time, on December 8th, he was asked to share his experience of 24 years earlier. “The situation before the House Judiciary Committee today is entirely different from the scene in 1974,” he told members. Last week he told me how he felt about the comparison, “I resented the attempt to make them parallel.”

About his overall impact, he told me, “We didn’t persuade anyone. But you have to keep hoping.”

Samuel Beer, a more recent friend, also has a distinguished record. At age 87, he is Professor Emeritus of Government at Harvard University. After his retirement from Harvard he became the first holder of the Thomas P. O’Neill chair at Boston College. At this stage of his long career, he continues to consult with governmental bodies on vital issues, most recently with members of the British House of Commons.

Beer formerly served as national chairman of the Americans for Democratic Action, a leading advocacy organization on the left. Like Bob Drinan, he is an unabashed political liberal who believes in principles now quite unpopular in the nation’s capital.

Beer’s main message on December 8th was that the House of Representatives in moving toward impeachment was embarked on what is  “primarily a political, not a judicial act.” Since, in the American system, the people are sovereign rather than the legislature, the latter ought to do “what the people at their best would do.”

I am aware, of course, that some readers of this column may feel out of sympathy with the views of Beer and Drinan. They may have applauded the House’s action in impeaching Bill Clinton.

Nonetheless even those readers can find reason to admire these senior statesmen who came forward when they saw their nation in need of wisdom. This kind of public spirit in Americans who could have appealed to age as reason for no longer fighting political battles should stir respect.

These two seasoned veterans of the political wars provide a model of action for people who feel concern for our nation. Both men demonstrate remarkable consistency. They acted on principles firmly held and tested over a long period of time. Rejection of their views did not deter them from  speaking out.  

As this politically turbulent year of 1998 comes to a close, I, for one, will continue to be inspired by the sight of these two elder statesmen taking a principled stand at a time of grave national crisis.

Their distinctive faces will remain engraved in memory as I review the events of the past twelve months. For me they show elderhood at its best—the sharing of wisdom gained over long lifetimes of service and learning.                                    

Richard Griffin

Arsenal Mall

“Christmas is the time of year when you feel for other people. The only time when you have that feeling in your heart that you don’t have the rest of the year. Feelings of love and affection, I guess.”

This was told me one afternoon last week by a man from Newton, aged 73, who did not share his name. He was one of a dozen or so people I approached last week as they shopped at the Arsenal Mall in Watertown.

Peg McKeigue of Cambridge, who expresses enthusiasm for this column, calls this season “a very happy time for everybody.” It means “the coming of our Lord and salvation.” “I don’t usually come into this mall,” she explains, “but I’m looking for strawberries. One of my grandchildren wants them.”

Eva of Watertown told me that she is Jewish. The age she likes to use is “39” but she acknowledged being a lot older than that. She takes an expansive view of Christmas: “It’s a joyous holiday for everybody,” she says. “We get into the swing of things, we’re very flexible.” Though she does not have a tree, she does give presents as she also did at Hanukkah.

A husband and wife from Newton happened by. Ruby has special reason for celebrating: she was born on Christmas Day. She celebrates by making twelve kinds of cookies for her children and five grandchildren. They came the day before to trim the tree and have dinner. Her husband Wilford also associates the day with family and loves to entertain family members.

George, a 63-year-old resident of Cambridge, originally came from Syria. Though enthusiastic about the day, he feels that Christmas has become “so commercialized, the commercial part is overtaking the spiritual part.” Perhaps it has been that way in the United States for a long time, he observes, but back home where he came from, he would receive a new suit and a new pair of shoes and pocket money but there would be no wide- spread exchange of gifts.

When asked about the Syrian/Israeli negotiations, he welcomes them and says that “peace all over” is important to him.  

Virginia Viall, 83 of Newton, worked with her husband in the ministry for 58 years till his recent death. Despite this blow, her spirit remains strong along with her resolve to continue her husband’s work. “I’m carrying on, doing the things I always did for him. I love doing it, I love serving the Lord,” she tells me.

Another gentleman, Jim from Chelsea, who is approaching his 84th birthday, says of Christmas, “You’ve got to enjoy it because it’s what we’re brought up with. You’ve got to believe in something; if not, we’d be running around amok.”

Seventy-seven year old Martin Grealish lives in Brighton, having emigrated from Galway, Ireland when he was still a young man. For him Christmas means peace and happiness. “It’s a peaceful time for me,” he says while taking a break on a mall bench.

A 75-year-old woman from Belmont quickly answered my question about meaning in a single word “prayer.” As explanation, she added: “because that’s the story of Christmas.” She also confessed to being helped by prayer to recover from illness.

Another woman answered: “Just about everything – family, religion.”

Florence Cleary said, “We really and truly should try to be kinder to one another, and I don’t think we are.” She grew up in Cambridge but now lives in Watertown.

Kathryn Ferguson, a middle-aged woman from  Waltham, says “it means the birth of Jesus and celebration with family and children.” Asked about Christmas being a tough time for some, she takes inspiration from a television evangelist who advises seeing the Christmas tree as the wood of the cross as well as a sign of happy times. “And we have little children,” she adds buoyantly.

Encounters with these shoppers left me with several strong impressions. First, how polite people were. Almost uniformly, they stopped to talk with this stranger holding a tape recorder in his hand. Only a few people among them indicated they did not wish to be interviewed.

Their enthusiasm for this holyday/holiday season  also impressed me – for them, Christmas has retained its allure despite the pessimism so often hears about it. Two or three mentioned difficult aspects of this holiday time but these comments were usually set in a positive framework. One man, for instance, said  wistfully: “When you reach our age, you lose people.”

The elders I talked with also seemed to put gift-giving in perspective. Their immediate response usually focused on their religious faith and their love of family. Holiday hoopla did not seem to count for much among them. Though spiritual values are always hard to talk about, these people indicated that they care deeply about such things.

I came away from these encounters feeling more upbeat about the Christmas events and looking forward to holidays with renewed enthusiasm.

Richard Griffin