Older Stepfamilies

Mr. L., a divorced father,  says: “I love my children. I just don’t understand them. And I really don’t  know  what’s their problem. It really used to bother me an awful lot that I wasn’t closer to them, and I’ve tried. I really did.  .  . But then I had to come to grips with it, that that’s what it’s gonna be.”

This quotation comes from a study entitled “Older Stepfamilies: Views from the Parental Generation,” done by Barbara Vinick, a veteran researcher affiliated with Boston University.

Dr. Vinick recently told me about her findings and shared much fascinating information. “We sat down and talked with husbands and wives who had been remarried an average of twenty years,” she said. “We asked them to look back on the course of their relationships with their children and their stepchildren.”

Almost half of the older divorced fathers described their relationship with their “ex-children” as “not close.” One-third of these alienated fathers had not had any contact with these children. Another third saw them from time to time, while a final third enjoyed routine contact with them.

Vinick says that the alienated fathers found it sad to have lost contact. She was surprised how much pain and regret they expressed. More of them than she expected were ready to blame themselves for this unhappy situation (whereas younger men, it seems, are more likely to blame their former wives.)

This greater readiness to accept responsibility can be seen as a sign of growing liberation in later life, Vinick believes. “The passage of the years has given them a chance to look back and have some perspective on things, to let go of a lot of their anger.”

She goes further: “As men get older, they are willing to give up some of this macho stance and tap into their nurturing, affiliative self.” These men, aged 57 to 84, often found it too late to do anything about the broken relationships but many would have liked to.

Dynamics are very different for the biological mothers. “For the most part,” Vinick reports, “they maintained very close relationships with their kids.” Only four out of the seventeen women interviewed did not fit this pattern.

Surprisingly often, relationships between mothers and sons were so close as to interfere with the bond between the wife and her second husband. Vinick calls these “triangles” and reports that often the husbands felt left out. “The husbands and sons found themselves pitted against one another with the mother in the middle.”

Because stepmothers are so supportive of their husbands getting back in touch with their children, Vinick calls these women “family carpenters.” Three-fourths of them said they had taken action to bring their husbands closer to the kids.

In some stepmothers this provoked anxiety. One woman told of going to her stepdaughter’s wedding but not before smoking, something she had not done in twenty years. “Some of these situations were very complicated,” says Barbara Vinick.

Not surprisingly, it is easier for children to enter into relationships with stepparents when the kids are already grown up. Teenagers in particular often have a hard time.

The researcher was struck by the difference between men and women in their appraisal of change within the extended family. Women often termed changes “positive” whereas men were more likely to see negative elements.

About possible interventions, Vinick judges that efforts to help men realize that their kids need them would be highly desirable. “There are wonderful models out there for male behavior in the family but they are not the majority. When men are engaged in negative interaction with the family, they tend just to withdraw.”

Men should be encouraged to express their feelings of regret. It’s never too late to reestablish relationships. The older a guy is, the more likely he will be able to express feelings.

At Dr. Vinick’s suggestion, I contacted Bob Chellis and Sandy Adams, who took part in the study. This couple, resident in Wellesley, stressed that things were different, and perhaps easier, for them because their biological children from previous marriages were not close in age and thus never lived under the same roof at the same time.

Nor, despite some difficulties in his relationship with his son, was Bob Chellis ever alienated from his own two children, the way so many other fathers in the study were.

However, during a time of crisis between him and his teenage son, Sandy did exercise the role of family carpenter. Says Bob of this experience, “Sandy was able to pull things together, to be a bridge.”

Pressed to say what she did, Sandy answers “I felt Bob’s son really needed someone to take a stand.” She and Bob took that stand when the son demanded his own way and Sandy ultimately succeeded in winning him over. Nowadays, Bob says, “my son asks his stepmother’s advice and shows affection for her.”

No wonder Barbara Vinick concludes that “stepmothers deserve more credit than they generally receive.”

Richard Griffin

Making/Unmaking History

As you read this, Lutherans and Roman Catholics are making history. Or, you might say, unmaking it.

This weekend, official representatives of the two Christian churches, meeting in Augsburg, Germany, will sign a document bringing them closer together than these churches have ever been. The agreement goes far to repair almost five hundred years of sorry history.

During too much of that long era, the two churches hurled insults at one another. Starting with Martin Luther’s nailing of his 95 proposals for reform to the door of a  German church in 1517, and continuing till recent decades, Lutherans and Catholics have hardly acted toward one another with the love that Jesus said would mark his followers.

So this weekend marks the beginning of a new era for two faith communities numbering over 500 million Catholics and some sixty million Lutherans worldwide. Though many issues remain to be resolved and they have not yet progressed to sharing the Eucharist, these huge groups have taken the first step toward unity.

The new agreement centers on the theological issue called justification. This question asks, in the words of Catholic and Lutheran leaders, “how humans are set right with God.”  Until now, the two churches condemned one another’s views about the way this happens. Now, however, these different approaches are agreed not to be “church dividing.”

Here’s how the churches explain the differences: “Roman Catholics hold that good works contribute to growth in grace and that a reward in heaven is promised to these works. Lutherans emphasize that justification is complete in Christ’s saving work and that Christian living is a sign of unmerited justification.”

Most of us non-theologians will wonder what difference this reunion of churches will make to our spirituality. Many Americans have already decided that theological disputes between churches are irrelevant. As Lutheran Pastor Richard Koenig told me, “Some people will say you are kicking down an open door.”

Is there any reason to believe that making peace between two large groups of Christians can affect the spiritual outlook or practice of ordinary people?

I put this question to Krister Stendahl, retired Lutheran bishop of Stockholm. Bishop Stendahl finds spiritual values in “two different ways of speaking about the same thing.”  Lutherans have traditionally stressed the continuing sinfulness of those who have been redeemed, while Catholics tend to emphasize the possibility of the perfect life by recognizing saints.

“There are days when we need to hear one emphasis, and other days when we need to hear the other,” he concludes.

For me and, I suspect, for other people who cherish the spiritual life, peaceful and loving relationships among individual persons and whole communities of people around the world hold great importance. When we hear about disputes being settled, it  buoys up our spirit and give us hope.

After all, the spiritual life is not something purely interior. The spirit finds expression in everything that is human. When brothers and sisters who have been at odds find common ground, then we ought to be glad and celebrate their good fortune and our own.

Wherever it happens – among Palestinians and Israelis, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, Kosovars and Serbs – peace and reconciliation between warring communities can have a profound impact on our heart and soul.

Any agreement like this one, says Pastor Koenig, “has to be hailed as a victory in this hateful world.”  Of Lutherans, he says: “We used to look with fear and loathing at the Catholic Church.” That they no longer do surely does deserve celebration.

My hope is that the events at Augsburg this weekend will be, not the last step, but the first of a series that will eventually bring the two churches into full communion. That result is one that many spiritual people have been praying for during much of this past century.

Then members of these two churches will have removed a great scandal, namely their divisions. The prayer of Jesus, “that all may be one,” will then become a reality and these Christians will come closer to the ideal posed by their Lord. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

If this happens spiritual seekers at large can take on new hope.

Richard Griffin

Dirty Old Man

A weekend visit to Chicago brought me into contact with an old man whose life is marked by disorder. He’s a lush, grossly overweight, broke, and a self-deluded lover of young women. Drinking and carousing seem to be his main activities, as well as scheming how to get money by romancing other men’s wives.

The man’s name is Falstaff, as in Sir John Falstaff, the central figure in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera of the same name. That is the work I was privileged to see last week in the Chicago Lyric Opera’s lively production. The spectacle and, especially, the musical themes bid fair to remain in my head for weeks to come.

Bryn Terfel, the much acclaimed Welsh baritone, scored a smashing success in the role, the first time he has sung it. His paunch-led maneuverings as he walked and rolled around the stage provided us, the audience, with constant amusement. As a Hollywood puff might have put it, Terfel was Falstaff.

Inventor of the original Falstaff was, of course, Shakespeare. The playwright placed him in three works – The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry the Fourth, Part One and Part Two –  creating one of the greatest comic characters in world literature.

This is the character that Verdi chose for the centerpiece of his last opera. The great Italian composer and hero of his country’s risorgimento was approaching eighty years of age when he completed the work. For decades he had been hoping to write a comic opera but did not find an appropriate subject until his librettist, Arrigo Boito, gave him a clever script built around the famous Shakespearean character.

In this last work, Verdi displayed a genius of invention that had developed with the advance of years. Falstaff, the opera, shows a style radically different from that of his earlier works, and even from the famous operas of his middle period – La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Il Trovatore. The music of his last opera flows seamlessly all through the piece, without the set arias so characteristic of the earlier Verdi.

The plot revolves around Sir John’s efforts to seduce Alice Ford and Meg Page, the charming wives resident in Windsor, and the revenge that these merry women take on the hapless knight. Their first revenge comes when they manage to get the fat man hidden in a basket of laundry and then have their servants empty him out of the basket into the River Thames.

The second retaliation comes in the last act when the Windsor wives terrorize Falstaff in a forest that they have peopled with their many friends disguised as evil spirits of the night. Sir John is tricked out his wits and becomes scared for his life.

Falstaff, though constantly presented as old, hardly serves as a all-purpose model for old age. Over and over he succeeds in making a fool of himself. His plans to take advantage of other people for his own advantage blow up in his face. Rollicking always, he manages to amuse us but always at his own expense.

One quality he does have, however, is resilience. He falls down often, both literally and figuratively, but just as often he pulls himself up. Yes, he is a buffoon but ultimately a loveable buffoon. Even when he indulges in that unloveliest of emotions, self-pity, he shows forth a humanity that is endearing. Spirit keeps triumphing even over that great mound of flesh that is old Jack.

Old age, most of us have discovered on entering upon it, is not neat. Like Sir John, we can be tricked more or less easily. Despite our alleged growth in wisdom, we can find ourselves acting like fools. At times, we may even have to live with a nagging sense of things falling apart.

Why are our lives so often untractable? Should they not by this point have become more ordered, harmonious, consistent, and peaceful? Perhaps the young man Shakespeare knew better; almost surely the old man Verdi knew the awful truth.

The older we get, the more we can remain a puzzle to ourselves. Yes, on occasion we seem to achieve growth in self-knowledge, yet our hold on it stays slippery. There remains an element of the tragic in our lives that can get us all down. Inevitably, life in our dark moments sometimes seems not worth the effort.

But the comic side of it all also counts. If we miss seeing this, we miss much of the meaning of being human. At the opera’s end, Falstaff joins his playful tormentors and sings “Tutto nel mondo è burla”  (Everything in the world’s a jest). As one commentator says, “If you picture old Giuseppe Verdi slipping on the costume of Falstaff – belly, red nose, and all – you will comprehend the composer’s view at the end of his years of what life really means.”

Richard Griffin

Two Spiritual Heroes

Two of my spiritual heroes came to town two weeks ago. Much to my chagrin, because of scheduling problems I did not get to see either of them. But, had I been given the privilege of engaging in dialogue with them, I now imagine some questions that I would like to have asked Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dame Cicely Saunders.

Desmond Tutu, the more widely known of these two great-hearted people, served as Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town until his retirement three years ago. He provided leadership to the people of South Africa, of all races and faiths, during the terrible days of apartheid and helped lead the way toward its abolition.

Archbishop Tutu’s great subject is forgiveness. Starting in late 1995, when freedom from the policy of apartheid took hold in South Africa, he served as chair of the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission that has worked to bring about reconciliation in his own society. Members of this commission led the way in exposing past human rights abuses and getting offenders to admit their crimes and ask for forgiveness.

Were I present when he spoke, I would have asked the archbishop about the possibilities of real forgiveness, the spiritual ability that comes from the heart. When terrible evil has been done you, when someone has murdered one of your sons and daughters for example, how can ordinary people find the spiritual strength to forgive?

If we can, where does this strength come from? Must a person be schooled in a religious tradition to discover the courage to reach out to those who have done grievous harm? Must you believe in God or are there forms of religionless spirituality that can provide sufficient support?

Has post-apartheid South African society reached the goals that you, Archbishop Tutu, had dreamed about for so many years? Or does our often ornery human nature force you to fall back on the notion that there is something fundamentally wrong with us?

Do you hope, Archbishop, that the coming generations will put the world in better order than the idealists of the twentieth century have been able to do?

Dame Cicely Saunders deserves to be much better known than she is. After all, this eighty-year-old British doctor founded the hospice movement. She brought first to England, then to the United States and other parts of the world, a new way of helping people to die with dignity and peace of soul.

What I would have liked to ask Dame Cicely in particular concerns her recent statement that, rather than a sudden death, she would prefer a slow death from cancer. She gave as reasons for this astounding choice that a slow death would give her the opportunity to perform five tasks vital for people to finish before the end of life.

According to this wise woman, the things you need to say before your death to your loved ones go as follows: 1) I forgive you;  2) please forgive me;  3) thank you ; 4) I love you 5) Good-bye.

Given the chance to talk with Dame Cicely, I would ask her how she could find  courage to take on the pain and suffering attached to a slow and lingering death. Does not the fear and foreboding felt by people diagnosed with cancer make it impossible to carry out the tasks listed above?

Those tasks themselves do not loom large in most people’s imaginations when they think of their own death. How, Dame Cicely,  did you arrive at this list and what does the accomplishment of these tasks do for one’s spirit?

How, I would like to know further from Dame Cicely, can one overcome the abhorrence of death that has made discussion of it taboo in American society? Is not death a negative subject, contemplation of which is likely to lead toward depression and even despair?

What I imagine is that just being in the presence of Archbishop Tutu and Dame Cicely Saunders, these two heroes of the twentieth century, would itself prove an answer to my questions. Is this not our experience whenever we encounter people of great spirit? Typically, we find that their very person offers assurance to us that goes beyond the spoken responses that they have given. They themselves turn out to be the best answer.

Richard Griffin

Vibrant Living

Ida Davidoff remembers showing up as a college freshman seventy-nine years ago. That was at Simmons College in Boston where President Henry Lefavour gave a talk to the entering students on the subject of sex. The dominant image that stays in Dr, Davidoff’s memory is “the girls that had fainted and were carried out.”

But her focus does not remain fixed on the past, however hilarious. Instead she says “I am the wave of the future.” By this she means to indicate the range of her activities. She sees clients as a therapist, gives talks, receives awards, and works on a book to be entitled Youth – a Gift of Nature, Aging – a Work of Art.

Among other enterprises, Dr. Davidoff works out with her personal trainer, takes singing lessons (recently she serenaded a friend with “Happy Birthday” sung over the telephone), and gives expression to her philosophy of life.

That philosophy features several points that fit nicely with my own. First is an acceptance of change as a condition for vibrant life. Connected with that is an acceptance of losses with a spirit of liberation freeing us to seek substitutes. And, finally, a new balance between dependence and interdependence that allows us to accept help from others while continuing to do what we can do for ourselves.

After two difficult years filled with health problems, Ida Davidoff has grown accustomed to dealing with her physical self as it misfunctions. She has developed a familiarity that allows her to speak both sternly and sympathetically.

Here’s the line she has developed for addressing this issue: “Now, Body, I hate to be so angry at you, but I have to let you know how I feel about this. From now on I forgive you.”

She also shows skill at asking herself vital questions and then answering them. “What do you do when you are feeling anxious?” asked this perceptive 96-year-old. “I try to help someone, I read big-print books to a neighbor.”

Dr. Davidoff was one of many speakers at a recent conference sponsored by the Simmons College Graduate School of Health Studies. Participants were urged in advance by Dean Harriet Tolpin to bring with them someone from a generation older or younger than theirs, as many in the audience in fact did. A show of hands revealed that members of every decade from the twenties through the nineties were present.

Dean Tolpin stated the purpose of  the gathering – to promote dialogue about successful aging. And she assigned everyone this post-conference task: when you go home,  “you must talk about one thing you learned with a family member or friend.”

She also termed appropriate the conference’s sponsorship by a women’s college. After all, she observed, in age-related crises “women are the primary decision-makers . . . not only for themselves but for other family members and even their friends.”

Such decisions, she stated, should be shared decisions. They should also be taken before crises actually occur.

Keynote speaker was Margery Silver, associate director of Harvard Medical School’s study of 100-year-olds. Among her slides was a photo of the oldest American currently alive, surrounded by members of her six-generation family. This Philadelphia-area woman is 118, her daughter 96,  and her granddaughter 50 – perhaps an image of the way more families will be age-shaped in the future.

Dr. Silver pointed out characteristics shared by the centenarians she has studied. She herself was surprised to discover how many of them live in three-deckers, usually on the second floor with relatives on at least one of the other levels.

Many of these oldest people have a lively sense of humor, notably the person who was asked what is the greatest advantage of outliving most of your contemporaries.  The answer always gets a rise from an audience:  “No peer pressure.”

Contrary to popular opinion, these survivors are not isolated and alone. Their personal relationships remain strong. In general, they like to learn new things. On a scale that measures neuroticism, they score low and they deal with stress better than other people. It’s not that they are stress-free, it’s just that they know how to handle it. Their secret weapon may be their ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Others probably did not notice another trait of centenarians that caught my attention: they avoided exposure to the sun. It confirms me in my view of sunbathing as a practice that makes one’s skin age faster.

Late in the conference I interviewed several of the graduate students present. One, Quincy Eagler, when asked what he thinks about old age, answered  “I think it’s great, I think it’s kind of what you make of it. If you just kind of know now and prepare for it and change your life style, I think it’s as fun as any time in your life. It’s not something you look at negatively.”

Richard Griffin

Billy Graham, in His Later Years

“What was the greatest surprise of your life,” a Harvard student asked Billy Graham three weeks ago. His answer took just two words: “Its brevity.”

Not surprisingly, this famous evangelist has found the passage of years swift. When you move around the world as often as he does, and have an appointment calendar as crowded as his, it must be hard to keep track of the years.

He has certainly come a long way from his boyhood, when he worked on his father’s dairy farm in North Carolina. He looks back on those days fondly, with two incidents in particular standing out.

When he was sixteen years old, he recalls, the first of two significant visitors came by. It was Babe Ruth and Billy got to shake hands with him.

Later, however, a second  person arrived who was to have a incomparably more powerful impact on the young man. This visitor was a preacher who “spoke with tremendous conviction and urgency.”

At a meeting of some four thousand people, the preacher asked for anyone who felt moved to step forth and be born again. “I got up out of my seat,” Billy Graham recalls, “and stood in the front.” It was the moment when the direction of his whole life would be set.

“I had gone through a revolution, and become a new person,” he says of the experience. When he woke up the next day everything seemed different.

These are the vibrant recollections of a man now eighty years old. He has entered a new era when many things have become hard. Pain has become a constant companion. Of his Parkinson’s disease, Rev. Graham says, “It doesn’t kill people, it just makes them wish they were dead.”

Three years ago he fell and broke his back. Since then, he has again fallen eighteen or twenty times. To make matters worse, his wife has been hospitalized for several weeks. So Billy Graham knows at first hand the travails frequently associated with old age.

His spirit, however, remains clear and strong. As retired senator Alan Simpson said in introducing him, “He is a man of great passion and wisdom.”

I found it fascinating to watch him perform in a setting, the Kennedy School of Government, not famous for its compelling interest in religion. He delivered his formal speech there with unabashed advocacy for God and conviction that Jesus is the answer to basic human problems.

Speaking to the question “Is God relevant to the 21st Century?,” Rev. Graham dealt with three issues. First, human evil and the self-destructive habits that we cannot break. Graham’s answer?: The Bible says that the problem lies within the human heart and God alone can help us.

Billy Graham told his listeners that each one of them, whether they know it or not, yearns for God. He recalled Raisa Gorbachev  once telling him, “You know I’m an atheist, but I cannot help but feel there is more out there.”

The second issue for Graham is human suffering. “I’ve never met a person in the whole world,” he said, “who didn’t have a problem.” But King David in the Bible suffered more than most people, yet he could ultimately say “The Lord is my shepherd.”

And, finally, comes death. Of his own, this confident evangelist says, “Right now, if I died, I know where I would go.”

Graham recommends this prayer of repentance: “God, I’ve broken your laws, by faith I give myself to you.” In response, he says that “God will come into your life and change it.”

The question period drew from students and others fervent expressions of esteem for the man. A divinity school student told him: “I love you, man of God.” Another person said, “Billy Graham is the most popular person in the eyes of man and God.”

A graduate student asked a challenging question: “Did your ministry avoid the big public issues?” Graham offered a disarming response saying “We cannot judge a man’s life until it’s completed. So many things I now wish I had done differently.”

The same divinity school student mentioned above asked a question that also challenged the Christian evangelist. “How does one make the call for Jesus Christ in an inter-faith environment?” To this Graham did not have much to say beyond “It’s the life you live.”

Pushing the same theme further another student asked, “Will God forget all who do not believe in Jesus Christ?” Graham replied that “God is a God of love and mercy, forgiveness and judgment.” He then added that the question itself can only be answered by God.

The session concluded with further praise for the world-famous evangelist, the friend and counselor to nine United States presidents. Said Alan Simpson: “I’d rather see a sermon any day instead of hearing one.”

Richard Griffin

The Evangelist

“I’m a mountain hillbilly,” Billy Graham said of himself two Sundays ago before beginning his sermon at Harvard University’s Memorial Church. In the course of his skilled delivery, however, he showed how outdated this self-definition really is.

This best-known of the world’s evangelists is clearly a master of the spoken language.  His Bible-based preaching held in rapt attention members of the jam-packed congregation, both old and young.

Burdened by Parkinson’s Disease at eighty years of age, Rev. Graham is no longer steady on his feet. His voice, however, remains strong and his spirit vibrant. He still stands tall and speaks forcefully using only simple gestures.

And he finds personal strength in thinking about the world to come. “I’m looking forward to the future with tremendous anticipation,” he assured his listeners.

He also sprinkles his talks with humor. He told some undergrads who, to make sure they got a seat, stayed overnight on the church’s front porch: “You’re free to go asleep now.”

Of the Country Club in Brookline where the Ryder Cup tournament was recently played, this avid golfer quipped: “I played that course and almost lost my religion.”

People often write to Billy Graham asking if there is any hope. This is a time when people are desperately searching, he says. “They are searching for they know not what. They never really find an answer until they find it in God.”

The question that this famous preacher puts to everyone is simple: “Have you been born again?” Reborn is what happened to him as a teenager back in North Carolina; that’s when his own life was transformed. When the traveling preacher asked this question, young Billy felt moved to step forth and things for him were never the same again.

Preaching now, over sixty years later, Rev. Graham chose as his subject “The Real Meaning of the Cross.” His text came from Galatians: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”

To Rev. Graham’s regret, the cross has become for many people nothing more than an ornament. It is often a design used in costume jewelry and in decorative art.

But this is to ignore the cross’s true meaning. In Rev. Graham’s faith, the cross

1) reveals the depth of human sin; 2) shows us the love of God; and 3) stands as the only way of salvation.

In this evangelist’s eyes, the cross is the sign of the suffering that Jesus endured for the world. His real suffering was not merely physical. God placed on him the sins and evils of all of us. As the Bible says, “he became sin.”

Rev. Graham finds in the Good Thief, the criminal who hung on a cross next to Jesus, the greatest faith in all the Bible. He was the one who turned to Jesus and said, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” This prayer merited the response from Jesus, “This day you will be with me in paradise.”

So sure of the way of the Cross is Rev. Graham that he shares with his listeners this promise: “You’ll find a life you never knew existed.”

To the young people present, Rev. Graham applied the God’s law to sexuality. If you keep this law, he promised, “there is no thrill such as when you come to your marriage bed.”

Billy Graham’s basic message is consistent: Jesus Christ is the solution to human problems. His formula for what a person needs to do to prepare for the future comes in three parts: 1) admit to God that you have sinned; 2) turn away from what is wrong; 3) turn to the cross of Jesus.

Among the many stories he shared with listeners was one about a little boy who got lost in London. A police officer who found the boy asked where he lived. The boy, however, could not remember the names of streets near his home. Finally, the child recalled that there was a church nearby with a cross on top.

The moral of the story according to the evangelist? “Take me to the cross and I can find my way home from there.”

Richard Griffin