“A hope is not a plan,” economist Ben Stein is fond of repeating. Baby boomers who confuse the two are in for big trouble as they approach retirement, according to this commentator.

And that means a whole lot of people may share in this trouble. Of the total United States population, nearly one-third, or 77.5 million, were born between 1946 and 1964 and thus qualify for the baby boomer title.

Everyone acknowledges that this group is characterized by wide differences in social characteristics. However, experts also see them as holding one trait in common.

Dr. Robert Butler expresses it this way: “Despite its wide-sweeping diversity, it has one striking characteristic─the lack of preparedness for its longevity.”

An important part of the boomers’ unpreparedness is financial. They have saved altogether few dollars for their later life. And “they seem unaware,” writes Butler, “of the reality of rising medical costs and health issues they face.”

Butler’s remarks could have served as introduction to a recent conference held at MIT’s AgeLab. There all of the presenters stressed the need for this huge population wave just now reaching their 60s to start planning.

Joe Coughlin, founding director of the AgeLab, has a name for the situation: he calls it the Longevity Paradox. That paradox is rooted in the startling increase in average life expectancy over the past century. For Americans in 1900, average life expectancy was under 50; now it has risen to the later 70s.

Professor Coughlin sees the issues raised by the extra years of life as far-reaching. “Longevity is now something that is an endless frontier for us on a personal level, on a public level, and on a research level,” he says.

Most people, it turns out, underestimate the number of years they may live after retirement. It can be hard to believe that you will hit 90, but it happens to more and more of us.

The question whether finances will stretch to cover the extra years should ideally form a basic part of planning. But, among family members, “there is little or no communication on financial issues,” says John Diehl of The Hartford. This insurance company, in business almost 200 years, collaborated with the AgeLab in the conference.

“Financial planning tends to be the third rail of marriage,” adds Coughlin. Getting people to talk about realistic expectations of future income and expenses looms large among the goals of retirement planners like those in the audience at MIT.

Other commentators on the panel saw two special hazards for couples looking toward the future. One is favoring their children over themselves in the allocation of available money. That means, for example, parents impoverishing themselves to put their children through college.

Ben Stein quoted a retort made by Ronald Reagan to advocates favoring posterity. “What has posterity ever done for me?” asked the then president, perhaps reverting to show biz style.

More moderately, Coughlin observes that boomers “fawn over their children as never before.”

A second hazard applies specifically to women. Most likely, they will eventually find themselves in a care giving role within their immediate or extended family. In this often difficult situation they may be tempted to quit their job outside the home.

This move would endanger their earning power and chances for advancement, says Maureen Mohyde, a corporate gerontologist on the staff of The Hartford. She strongly advices against it.

A more subtle problem comes from the lifestyle adopted by many boomers. Enjoying better health and more affluence on the whole than people in earlier generations, these Americans often suffer from exaggerated expectations.

Joe Coughlin believes they expect more of everything. As a result, “they are going to find downshifting difficult,” he says. Probably, they should plan for that eventuality earlier than they do.

After all, the retirement prospect has changed notably from what it was a generation ago. Then, American institutions, especially big industries, provided relatively generous benefits to employees who had left the workplace at age 65.

But now, with the gradual disappearance of defined benefit plans and assured health coverage, retirees are left more to their own resources. For many, pensions no longer form the bedrock of their income after they have left the workplace.

Many people now thinking of leaving their jobs face a more complicate future than they might have earlier. They will probably have more choices but the downside will be more uncertainty.

A factor that, left to themselves, many people will ignore is inflation. Relative stability now, Ben Stein warns, should not lull us into thinking that inflation will remain in check. He foresees prices doubling over the next 25 years. Included in those increases will surely be the cost of health care.

As for consumer debt, no one could be found to say a good word for boomers in this bind. “If they have yuppified themselves with their credit cards, boy are they in trouble,” says Stein.

Richard Griffin

A supposedly true story tells of an elderly woman who was found dead in her bed one morning, pencil in hand and a just-finished crossword puzzle open before her.

Now, to longtime addicts like me, that’s the way to go.

Bill Clinton would presumably agree with this sentiment. So might comic Jon Stewart, documentary maker Ken Burns, and Yankee ace pitcher Mike Mussina. These four all appear in the recent film Wordplay, a movie that has delighted those addicted to these puzzles.

The former president uses a pen rather than a pencil. He’s that skilled. And he is fast as well. However, he has never faced the acid test of competing with others in the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Last year’s competition, held in Stamford Connecticut, takes center place in Wordplay. The winner then was a 20-year-old RPI student. He beat out a man who, after making a mistake that may have cost him the prize, threw down his headphones and wept.

The fellow behind this tournament, and the crossword guru at the New York Times and NPR, is Will Shortz. He admits being a “pretty good solver” himself but he is not fast enough to enter the competition he founded.

But he serves as a connoisseur of the form. In the film he says: “A great puzzle is built on an original idea.” At the Times, he receives some 60 to 75 puzzle submissions every week.

Each year 110 different “constructors,” as Shortz calls puzzle creators, make up the crosswords. It’s an art requiring both adherence to a basic structure (one-sixth black spaces, for instance) along with ingenuity.  

In addition to the puzzles, he gets a lot of letters from crossword fans. “The best part of the week for me is reading the mail,” he tells watchers of the film. To my surprise, he acknowledges writing 75 percent of the clues himself.

Doing crossword puzzles has been a weekly, often daily, ritual in my household from the beginning. My wife, Susan, and I used to work on them together but that two-person approach soon proved not challenging enough. Now we do them separately though we much enjoy conferring with one another after finishing.

It comes as no insult to my male ego that my spouse is far better at this sport than I am. In fact, I enjoy seeing her skills at work. The only part of it that sometimes pains me is when she utters a subdued cry of satisfaction at getting the answer to a clue that is still baffling me. However, even then we try to avoid hurling cross words at one another.

One of the tournament winners in the film, Ellen Ripstein, says of doing crosswords: “It’s kind of a nerdy thing.” I don’t agree with this and take it as a personal slur. The two members of my household are not nerds, unless this word indicates well-balanced older adults ready to take on the world.

My spouse and I do not cultivate the crossword habit for therapeutic reasons. We are closer to Bill Clinton’s crossword philosophy: “It’s fun.”   

However, many professionals in the field of aging recommend doing these puzzles for brain health. Paul Nussbaum, a neuropsychologist based in Pittsburgh, says: “In my opinion, provided crossword puzzles are novel and complex and not a rote and passive task to the person's brain, it is likely to result in increased brain reserve. I define that as brain health promoting!”

Frequent puzzle solving provides me with a source of endless fascination about the ways my brain works. Oftentimes, I find myself stuck, absolutely unable to find the answer to a clue. But the next time I pick up the puzzle, the answer appears obvious.

The passage of time, even a few hours, has worked the wonder of changing my mental outlook.

The same process will apply to the central motif behind the whole puzzle. When I first look at it, the puzzle strikes me as unsolvable, too difficult for the state of my knowledge. As I plunge into it, however, intelligibility gradually appears within grasp, much to my satisfaction.

This pleasure will seem minor, even effete, to the non-addict. But, to me, and I suspect to legions of fellow crossworders, it ranks among life’s best satisfactions.

I suppose it can be compared to birding. Those addicted to the latter activity often seem ready to swoon at having spotted a magenta-winged something or other, a discovery that would not elevate me anywhere close to ecstasy, but which serves the birding community as a source of rapture.

My delight in crossword breakthroughs comes against the backdrop of a slowing down in my ability to solve them. I must admit that it now takes me longer to complete puzzles than it used to. This change does not alarm me but it does require an adjustment.

However, a somewhat diminished facility offers its own prize. Achieving the solution often delivers a satisfaction greater than before.

Richard Griffin

A favorite cousin has called to share news of emerging from a depression. Lasting several months, it was a crushing experience for this usually vibrant personality, now in her mid 80s. She reports herself returned back to her old self, ready to resume normal activities.

Two longtime friends, both widows and my juniors by some years, have fallen in love with men who have unexpectedly come into their lives, and one of them has announced plans to marry. It is infectious to see them embracing renewed life with the enthusiasm of youngsters. Along with other friends, I feel buoyed up by their good fortune.

In joining a new community of faith, another woman friend has brought joy to many of her friends, me among them. This development in her spiritual life is the action of a person who continues her search for light and peace.

As Christmas approaches, these are events in my domestic world of family and friends that strike me as manifesting the spirit of the season. These are all people who have found renewed life through these instances of grace.

On a wider stage, the Amish families who, last October, forgave the man who shot down five Amish children and reached out with help for his widow and children. Moved by compassion for those bound by family ties to the murderer, they transformed the unspeakable event into redemptive love.

Stephen J. Morgan, a journalist familiar with Lancaster County, has written of the Amish: “As people who know the Bible, they know well not only the long dark corridors of the human heart, but its capacity for forgiveness.”

If I look for such moments of grace, it is in part a defense against the negative influences of our contemporary world. Nationally, this is the winter of our discontent, in large part because of the war in Iraq, so disastrous for us Americans and incomparably more so for the people of that country.

This year has also brought books from writers who deserve to be numbered among the “cultured despisers of religion.” For them, religion is not only illusion but harmful. One of them, Christopher Hitchens, says it all on the cover of a book to be published next spring. He entitles it: “god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

I find this latter assertion both offensive and ignorant. It surprises me that people whose thoughts about religion seem mired in the 19th century are given such a wide hearing. In their own way they are almost as dogmatic in their atheism and scorn of religion as are fanatic religionists.

Critics like Hitchens show themselves tone deaf to the mystical dimensions of life, the poetry contained in religious teaching, and the hope that religion offers.

For me, Christmas contains all these three in abundance ─ mysticism, poetry, and hope. Among other things, it can be seen as a celebration of our own birth and that of every other person. In the light of this event, the indignity done to human beings throughout the world─assault, torture, slavery ─seems even more repugnant.  

The birth of Jesus, prayerfully contemplated, causes many spiritual seekers to wonder at the mystery of it all. And yet it carries this mystery in the midst of ordinariness

The scene at Christmas is also a kind of poetry. The cast of characters shown at the crib ─ the infant, his parents, the shepherds, the angels, and, ultimately, the three kings ─ give fanciful expression to emotions provoked by the birth of a child .

This latter set of emotions holds center place in this year’s Christmas letter from my friend Frank in Kalamazoo. “Awesome” is the word he chooses to express his feeling at the birth of his granddaughter Sofia Marie. “I don’t know of anything more awesome than the birth of a child─nothing,” writes my theologian friend.

In his letter of 2004, Frank had one complaint about Christmas: it doesn’t tell him much about being old. Of the beginnings of life, this event speaks eloquently. It celebrates important things, he says, like poverty and smallness. And it lifts up important people, not CEOs, but shepherds and the Magi from the East.

But the gospels say precious little about old age. “There are times,” Frank writes, “when I think one of the limitations of the gospels is that there is lots of good news for people up to about thirty, but not much for the geezers.” (This latter term is his, not mine.)

For me, however, inspiration remains in Christmas, the sense of a moment that transcends chronology. From childhood celebrations of this day I received a palpable sense of God’s goodness. The gifts received then, and other rites of the day, taught me feelings of awe, reverence, and love.

And the time felt holy, filled with the presence of something different. For me, this was and remains more than human time.

Richard Griffin

What if Thucydides, the great Greek historian of the 5th century B.C., had lived into his 90th year, and, before he died, was called upon to share with a large crowd of his fellow Athenians his thoughts on history?

How about imaging a similar scene, in the early second century A.D., featuring the wisdom of Tacitus, one of the greatest Roman historians? In this vision, he would be brought into one of the Roman amphitheaters to talk with interested citizens about the art of history and his appraisal of the condition of the empire.

These fantasies came to my mind as I listened to the historian Arthur Schlesinger, who was born in 1917, the same year as John F. Kennedy whom he served as an advisor and speechwriter in the White House. My imagined parallels with the greatest historians of classical times admittedly do not fit exactly, but this recent scene was certainly dramatic and moving for some of us Americans now, as the two others scenarios would surely have been for citizens of Greece and Rome.

Sitting in a wheelchair in the auditorium at the Kennedy Library, Schlesinger had listened to a panel discussion in which three of his younger colleagues praised him as an eminent model of the historian. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Sean Wilenz, and Alan Brinkley all had acknowledged their debt to him as an inspiration in their own careers.

Then the guest of honor was handed the microphone and, from his wheelchair, he delivered his reflections about both the art of history and the importance that a knowledge of history holds for our nation. He spoke in occasionally halting but nonetheless resolute voice, and his remarks were greeted by loud applause from a large and enthusiastic audience.

This is the man who inherited the vocation of his father, also a historian bearing the same name. Like his father, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. taught at Harvard. After serving in the Kennedy administration, he returned to scholarship. In the course of his career, he  wrote some highly significant books about major figures in American life, notably a 1957-1960 three-volume work on Franklin Roosevelt. Much earlier, in 1945, he had crafted a book about Andrew Jackson and portrayed him as one of the greatest agents of change in the presidency.

Speaking about his area of study, Schlesinger said: “History is to the nation as memory is to the individual.”  Amplifying this conviction, he added: “As persons deprived of memory become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going, so a nation, denied a conception of the past, will be disabled and delinked with its present.”

He quoted Winston Churchill: “The longer you look back, the further you can look forward.” Nonetheless, historians suffer from limitations like those of other people, unable “to seize on absolute truth” but always needing to revise the conceptions of the past.

For Americans, history is even more important because of our dominance in the world. “I believe history is a moral necessity,” said Schlesinger, “for a nation possessed of overweening power. It is the best antidote to the delusions of power.”

History can lead to self-knowledge and “self knowledge is the indispensable prelude to self-control, for the nation as well as for the individual. It should strengthen us to resist pressure to convert momentary impulses into moral absolutes.”

Turning to our country’s current situation, Schlesinger recalled a previous example of foolish action. “Vietnam was hopeless enough,” he said, “and to repeat the same arrogant folly 30 years later is a gross instance of national stupidity.”

Still, this man of experience remains hopeful. Maybe we Americans can learn from the past how to use our power. “Let’s not bully our way through life,” he advises, “but let a growing sense of history temper our use of that power.”

As for the study of history: “This is the excitement of historical writing,” Schlesinger concludes, “the search to reconstruct what went before, the quest to be illuminated by those ever changing prisms that continually place old questions in a new light.”

Wisdom, many of us have discovered, does not automatically come with late life. By itself, age cannot make us any wiser than we were as young adults. Experience alone does not suffice; as Catherine Bateson reminds us, if you wish to grasp wisdom you must combine experience with reflection.

That’s what makes me appreciate Arthur Schlesinger. He draws lessons from history. Admittedly, this practice is not fashionable; in fact, some historians will tell you it is invalid. But, as a non-scholar generalist, I value applying historical experience to current problems.

Yes, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War differ. But there are resemblances that count for something. A lack of good judgment on the part of our political leaders characterizes both. In alerting us to these parallels Arthur Schlesinger is a prophetic voice.

Richard Griffin

“After the age of 30, it is unseemly to blame one’s parents for one’s life.” This is one of the rules laid down by Roger Rosenblatt in a new book called “Rules for Aging.” In smaller print, just below the head, the author lowers the age:  “Make that 25,” he adds adjusting the age of maturity.

At a time in history when badmouthing one’s parents after age 30 or more, has become epidemic, a lot of people need  this rule. Especially do they need it if they happen to be clever with the written word. Among others, the daughter of J. D. Sallenger, who published a book about her father this year, could have spared us all the bashing of the famously reclusive author.

There was a time when I felt tempted to violate the rule. From the vantage point of an adolescence that stretched altogether too long, I became too critical of my parents, as my brothers and sisters recognized before I did. For a time I yielded to the temptation to judge my father and mother adversely by reason of their decisions about me and the rest of the family.

Such rash judgments now seem to me in large part a failure of imagination, a failure understandable in a very young adult but not in someone older than that.  I was unable to see my parents as human beings like myself, trying to achieve good things for themselves and their family in a world that they found difficult as everybody else does. It took me too long to sympathize with their struggles the way I would like others to sympathize with mine.

What does this have to do with the holyday/holiday season upon which we have entered? To me Christmas, a day that my spiritual tradition celebrates with intense feeling, always brings me back to childhood. For me, this day is forever connected with parents, family, and times altogether special in forming the values by which I live.

My main association with Christmas has always been abundance. In memory, I recall the earliest days when we gathered in a living room strewn with toys and other gifts. Even the small presents that dropped out of upturned stockings contributed to the general profusion of good things.

This abundance was connected to the goodness of God who, in the faith that my family received as a legacy, had given us the gifts that made Christmas so special. The gifts always turned out to be more numerous than I expected, a sign of profligacy that impressed me from the time that I could first register such impressions. Yes, God loved us – so did my father and mother.

Mind you, the gifts were not lavish or wasteful. They were not intended to outdo what other families gave their kids on this day. And we were made conscious by our socially aware parents that plenty of children around the world had parents altogether too poor to give them what we received.  And, of course, we went to church to thank God, the source of it all.

Christmas, celebrated this way, should have stood as proof that my parents’ love for me was large. The arrangements they made each year to surprise me and their other children testified to they way they felt about us. They were parents who put our well being before their own as they coped with the challenges of each day.

Looking back now, I see them as successful in child raising far beyond that of many other people. They raised six of us and gave us the good physical and mental health, education, and the skills to cope with the challenges of our own lives. The adults that we have become give credit to what our parents gave us.

Of course, I am conscious of their faults too. Looking back at them from early old age, I can easily see how they failed at certain aims. But that makes them like me and like everyone else. If they found life hard, at least sometimes, they experienced what we all encounter. And maturity for me ultimately made me recognize this and put it in context.

So, if someone were to ask What does Christmas mean for you?, I would have to bring my parents into the answer. They taught me to recognize abundance as a sign of human and divine love. The outpourings of gifts that they stealthily arranged for us each Christmas showed forth the meaning of their lives.

This recognition does not sentimentalize my parents. It simply sets them off in the tradition of Christmas celebration when they showed best what they were all about.

Richard Griffin

People, some well known, others not, and bringing  many different life experiences, inspire  my spiritual reflections in this Christmas season. Having had the privilege of seeing and hearing all but one of them in recent weeks, I take pleasure in sharing their insights.

The movie and stage actress Glenn Close, speaking to students and others, confesses: “I get bored talking about myself.”  And, when she talks about acting, she says: “You have to stay vulnerable.”

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, discussing the likely war on Iraq, warns: “War is always a violation of human rights.”  He worries about the effects of war not only on those who are killed and injured but on those who do the killing. “When we dream of hate, we destroy who we are – the image of God.”

Like the prophet he is, Bishop Gumbleton calls on Americans to make a “major shift in our thinking and then in our public policy.” Only then can we move away from destroying our environment and impoverishing further the poor of the world.

Billy Collins, poet laureate of the United States, after reading his poems with great charm to a packed auditorium of students and others, is asked about war on Iraq. He replies: “Poetry is anti-terrorist, pro-life, and poetry is a home for ambiguity and uncertainty.”

Columnist Alex Beam, at a morning prayer service, speaks of this moment as “a time of great darkness and pessimism.” Nonetheless he believes that, when they can, “people will choose generosity of spirit.”

Retired editor John Bethell quotes approvingly the words, written in both Gaelic and English, on a tombstone he has discovered in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia: “We look to the future, but we do not forget the past.”

Becca Levy, a young researcher at Yale, has discovered how thinking positively about growing old has an impact on the experience. “The effects were much greater than I anticipated,” she told me about the results of her questionnaires. Having positive attitudes toward life enhances the aging experience significantly, she finds.

Management guru, Warren Bennis, speaking at MIT,  his alma mater, quotes the Hollywood entertainer George Burns when he was 100 years old: “I can’t die, I’m booked.” For his own part, Bennis, at 77, speaks of “the pleasure of finding things out.”

Cultural historian and fellow gerontologist Tom Cole, writing out of the Jewish tradition, shares with me something of his own spiritual journey: “I came to see aging as a path that leads to the light.” He draws inspiration from Rabbi Abraham Heschel who argued that “authentic existence requires work and celebration, ritual and prayer, and an appreciation of the nature of time.”

My friend Tom quotes another piece of the rabbi’s wisdom : “Time is the presence of God in the world of space.”

Another old friend, Frank Gross, writes of volunteering in a small house in Kalamazoo where terminally ill people come to be cared for free of charge. “I have learned to sit quietly by the bedsides of our people, not speaking, just sitting there, perhaps quietly holding a hand. I have learned that our people often want the comfort of a hand in their hand or an arm around their shoulders.”

A three-hour performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio ,gives awesome expression to the beauty of the events commemorated in this season. Bach’s language set to glorious music displays an impressive mystical approach to Christmas.

The conductor of the concert, Craig Smith, calls this Christmas music “the profoundest thoughts on the matter ever uttered.”  He must be referring to such passages as the chorale that says (in a translation that limps): “Here is born a God and also a human being.”  And later, the alto sings of where the new born is to be found: “He lives here (in my heart), to His and my delight.”

The words of all the people quoted here can serve as motive for probing the meaning of Christmas and other religious feasts of this season. These sentiments of thoughtful people prod us to go beyond shopping and busyness  to what lies beyond. At root, Christmas celebrates human life raised to a new level. Yes, we remain fragile, capable of betrayal of ourselves and others, and our peace is threatened by war and rumors of war. But the human heart is capable of unselfish love that redeems the world.

This is a time for being thankful for everything that makes our lives precious. It is a season for rising above the infighting with family members and others that so often deprives everyone involved of peace and happiness. Christmas at its best is a summons to recognizing the divine in us and in others.

It is also time for compassion toward those who, for whatever reason, are barred from the feast. The poor, among them those who are employed in one or more jobs for inadequate pay, need active concern for their well-being. So do those who have been reduced to isolation.  The values behind the Christmas celebration belong to the whole human family.

Richard Griffin