Christmas 2003

For the past 23 years, our next-door neighbors, George and Emily, have hosted a Christmas party that we look forward to with much pleasure. One of this party’s features, making it different from most others, is the singing of carols before we sit down to eat.

Children and grown-ups gather around the piano as Emily, a voice teacher, plays and leads us in song. Good singers, along with those of us who can barely carry a tune, join together in festive mood, lifting our voices upwards. This shared experience of music helps form us into a buoyant community for that one evening, at least.

The carols that we sing also introduce us once more to the spirituality expressed by the coming celebration of Christmas. Behind these traditional songs lies frequent mention of the inner gifts associated with the season. The writers and composers knew how to capture the meaning of the Christmas event in ways that can surprise us with their spiritual depth.

“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” for instance, calls the news about the birth of Jesus “tidings of comfort and joy.”  So Christmas, as understood by the composers of this 18th century English carol is a time for receiving the gifts of reassurance and release from unhappiness.

This same carol urges: “Let nothing you affright.” Christmas, in this view, calls on us to cast out fear and live with confidence in the goodness of God. A few lines later, the “blessed angel” of Luke’s Gospel appears bearing the message so often repeated in the Bible: “Fear not.”

In an era when many people feel afraid, this message has new value. Among other people, it might reassure a young girl who recently told me she did not wish to fly in an airplane “for fear of the terrorists.”

“Hark the Herald Angels Sing” boasts the lyrics of Charles Wesley and the music of Felix Mendelssohn, two great 19th century figures. Here the theme of peace takes center stage. “Peace on earth and mercy mild,” we sing, echoing the song of the angels in the Nativity narrative.

This Christmas, like most others, takes place in a world torn by conflict. In addition to the armed struggles that dominate the news, dozens of wars are going on in places to which the communications media give little attention. People are at one another’s throats over large issues and small. God’s mercy and God’s peace seem far distant, but the carol assures us of their availability.

“Good King Wenceslaus” is a beloved carol made up of parts from different eras. The title refers to a 10th century Bohemian king who had a reputation for holiness. Nine centuries later, a British poet formed words to go with a song written in the 16th century.

The last two lines of the carol bring out the moral of this composition. “Ye who now will bless the poor, Shall yourselves find blessing.” Wenceslaus had shown the true spirit of Christmas by providing food and shelter to a poor man on a cold winter’s night.

This note of compassion forms a proper response to the birth of Jesus. Just as God has been generous to the human family by sending his son to earth, the message says, so we must respond in kind by sharing resources with brothers and sisters in need. Without such a response, Christmas would not have its full meaning.

Finally, “Silent Night,” a sweet 19th century Austrian carol that ranks as one of the most beloved, gives expression to the holy tranquility that surrounds the scene at the child’s manger at Bethlehem.

“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright,” words sung slowly and reverently, suggest an inner and outer peace that can refresh the soul. If you want to enter into the spirit of the Christmas event, these sentiments suggest, you must allow yourself to rest in the peaceful atmosphere of the scene.

At the same time, the word “bright” suggests the enlightenment that is the goal of spiritual life. As we contemplate the child sleeping “in heavenly peace,” we can open ourselves to the inner light that illumines the mystery of love.

Many more carols carry messages similar to the ones singled out here. Though usually enjoyed simply for the splendor of their words and music, these traditional songs also speak of the spiritual life. In doing so, they suggest the gifts of the spirit that Christmas richly offers.

Richard Griffin

Kitty Hawk 100

If you stand on the windy strip of land outside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as I did as a tourist one morning four years ago, you feel some of the adventure that must have marked the first flight on December 17, 1903, the achievement of Orville and Wilbur Wright. It was the first time in recorded history that anyone had successfully piloted a motor-driven, heavier-than-air flying machine.

The flight lasted only 12 seconds and covered only 120 feet, but it was enough to amaze a 17-year-old Kitty Hawk resident named Johnny Moore, as he ran to announce the news, shouting: “They done it, they done it, damned if they ain’t flew!” The Wrights also launched a transformation in the human world that continues to shape our lives.

I was surprised to find the site so near the ocean but that helps account for the abundance of wind. Another surprise was discovering how skilled and enterprising the Wright brothers actually were. I had thought of them as a couple of modest bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio; but I found out at Kitty Hawk that they were, in fact, sophisticated engineers.  

Hardly anyone old enough to remember that event is still alive but many readers will recall asking parents and grandparents about it. Some members of those generations will be remembered as expressing amazement at the development of air travel that they had lived to see.

My father-in-law, Roger Keane, was born in 1898, not quite early enough for him to have remembered the first flight as it occurred. Over a long lifetime, however, he did marvel at the progress made in travel above the earth. On the day in July, 1969 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon’s surface, Roger felt awe at how far we had come. His grandchildren were much calmer about it.

One of the many gifts that come with longevity is the long-range view of the history of almost an entire century. About the airplane in particular we can trace an evolution that is astounding in its scope. When you compare the airplane built by the Wrights to the Concorde (now defunct), you have to feel admiration at human inventiveness.

Progress came in surprisingly large pieces. Only two years after his plane rose ten feet into the air at Kitty Hawk, Wilbur Wright covered 29 miles in another plane and stayed aloft for 39 minutes.

Like so many others of my generation, I have taken numerous flights. Not yet have I lost my wonder at what airplanes can do. With old-fashioned taste, I always ask for a window seat because I love to look down on the scene below. The moments of take-off and landing continue to seem especially magical to me, though I often secretly wonder if this is the time something will go wrong.

Nothing has, thus far, in hundreds of flights to various parts of the world. Human ingenuity, at work not only in the engineered perfection of the planes themselves but also in the networks that keep track of all the traffic in the sky, has given most people reasonable promise of safety. Despite the threat of terrorism, by and large most of us who fly do with confidence of getting there and back.

My first flight took place in 1948 when I flew to New York in a DC 3. What I most remember about that adventure was the paper bag given to each passenger in case we had to throw up. Fortunately, I didn’t.

Since that time I look back in memory to other great views from the plane. A low-altitude flight from New York to Albany on a clear day took our plane skipping over the towers of Manhattan. Another from New Orleans to St. Louis traced some of the Mississippi River, a silvery ribbon as it twisted and turned in its unpredictable course. The arrival across the Mediterranean to Beirut, in the days before multiple disasters struck that city, stays with me for its beauty.  

I continue to enjoy my window on the world below. Clouds, rivers, mountains, seas, and cities offer endless material for contemplation. The Wright Brothers and their legions of successors deserve thanks for allowing us to appreciate the beauty of world the way we never could have without flight.

Perspective, physical and psychic, rates as one of the most valuable human possessions and air travel provides a boost toward it. Being able to see things from different angles counts for much in a well-balanced life. A sense of relativity also helps preserve sanity, I discovered long ago, and I keep coming back to this principle.

Airplanes deserve credit for enabling us to lay hold of new perspectives, angles of observation, and deeper appreciation of relativity. Sitting miles above the earth and from there viewing natural and human reality below is good for the soul.

Hurrah for Orville and Wilbur Wright and their great achievement at 100 years of age!

Richard Griffin

Bits and Pieces

This column features bits and pieces from this one writer’s spiritual experiences of last week. They appear here in the hope of inspiring readers to reflect on their own recent encounters that may carry more meaning than first appears.

One encounter came through reading The Way Things Are, a series of interviews with Huston Smith, the world religions scholar who used to teach at MIT. One passage touches on Smith’s upbringing in China where his parents were Methodist missionaries.

Looking back on this experience and contrasting it with that of many other people, Professor Smith says: “What came through to me from my religious upbringing was quite different: we are in good hands, and in gratitude for that fact it would be good if we bore one another’s burdens.”

From a vantage point of some 80 years, this scholar feels thankful about learning from his parents such positive lessons about his place in the world. He still faces that world with basic confidence of being loved by the master of the universe. And he feels a corresponding impulse to reach out toward other people, showing them compassion.

He wishes every child had been endowed with a similarly affirmative religious outlook. Instead, he has often found his students to look like “wounded Christians” or “wounded Jews,” for example, people who took in religion as basically negative, full of do and don’ts without a positive view of themselves and the world.

As happens often, I also took heart from members of my small prayer group this week. Olivia, at whose house we meet, talked about her contact with a spiritual leader from whom she had drawn inspiration. “We are cut off from the holy,” said this man. “We are always taking from the world,” he went on, “but we ought to be giving back.”

Yes, our American culture is terribly secular and materialistic, making spirituality often seem unreachable, but people with vision like this man’s keep calling us back to deeper reality.  

Another source of inspiration came in a talk given at my parish church to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the renewal of the Catholic liturgy. The speaker, a professor of liturgy based in Washington, D. C., emphasized the action of the Holy Spirit in the church’s public prayer.

“The Spirit’s action permeates all of the rites,” he said. “All liturgy is Trinitarian,” he added. The presence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the sacred rituals should be seen as basic to the faith of the church.

The lecturer also stressed the ingredient of paschal mystery in the liturgy. By that he meant the ritual re-enactment of Christ’s death and resurrection that takes place when the church celebrates the sacraments. These latter are not simply outward gestures but contain with them the rhythm of dying and rising again that form the center of Christian faith.

Coming back to the heart of his belief, he repeated at the end his vision of the liturgy as a whole. It goes far beyond details about how it is performed. Instead, he insisted, “The goal is the living God.”

I find inspiration here because of being reminded of the deeper meaning of the worship in which I share each week with a community of my fellow Christians. It all goes deeper than appears on the surface: we take part in a sacred celebration that carries the mystery of who we believe ourselves to be.

On another front, a chronic health condition continues to draw me toward spiritual reflection. There is nothing, after all, that quite concentrates the mind like being less than well. It stirs one’s thinking about what remains most important as you continue to search for solutions.

Instead of a solution, one often finds it necessary to live with it. When the doctors have trouble discovering answes, then that seems the only alternative. It serves as fine material for prayer – putting oneself in the hands of an understanding and compassionate God, hoping for a breakthrough but not counting on it.

So these bits and pieces of an ongoing spiritual quest may suffice for this week’s consideration. Taken together, they represent at least this one person’s odyssey toward insight. Here’s hoping for sympathetic vibrations in the souls of others.

Richard Griffin

AARP and Medicare

“Thirty-three million Americans in love with airline discounts.”  This was former Senator Alan Simpson’s snide quip about AARP, née the American Association of Retired Persons.

Since the time of Simpson’s broadside, the organization has grown to some 35 million, not counting those who have burned their membership cards in the last few weeks.

You cannot count me among the card burners since, for the last quarter century, I have steadfastly refused to join this thinly disguised big business. But, had I ever relapsed, I would definitely have burned my card weeks ago over AARP’s endorsement of the now-passed Medicare bill.

Despite AARP’s dubious record of advocacy for needy older people, I felt shock that this organization would support a piece of legislation that serves elder citizens and the whole nation so poorly. It forms a curious bookend to AARP’s refusal to back Medicare at all, when it was first enacted in 1965.

This time, AARP planned to spend 25 million dollars to spread word of its endorsement. In full-page newspaper ads and radio and television blurbs the association defended putting its weight behind a bill that even they admitted was “not perfect.” Now, after passage, we continue to read further justifications by AARP for its action.

“Not perfect” qualifies as the understatement of the year. In fact, the supposed main reason for the bill, the much ballyhooed prescription drug benefits contained within it, is seriously flawed. Among other problems, the drug coverage has a big hole in it, creating a so-called “doughnut.” If you should have incurred $2,200 of drug costs (not counting a monthly premium of $35 and a deductible of $250), then coverage ceases altogether until you have spent $3500.

But the legislation goes far beyond drugs. As economist Jeff Madrick writes: “What began as a prescription drug plan for the elderly has been turned into a major revision of the entire Medicare program.” Private health care companies will soon compete with Medicare so as to make one of our basic social welfare institutions almost unrecognizable.

The AARP’s action looks, for all the world, like a political ploy, designed to get George W. Bush elected to a second term. It raises the question of what kind of deal AARP has been promised, perhaps a quid pro quo that will result in the organization growing yet fatter on money.

Families USA , formerly the Villers Foundation, sums up the some other serious problems with the legislation. “It will cause deep disappointment for America's seniors and people with disabilities. It provides very limited drug coverage; fails to moderate skyrocketing drug costs; and spends lavishly to push seniors into managed care plans.”

Unfortunately, passage of this legislation has a deeper meaning. As Robert Binstock, professor of political science at Case Western Reserve University, laments, it represents “the dismantling of the old age welfare state.” It brings to a crashing end an era when the federal government provided for the well-being of elders who needed help.

At a recent meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in San Diego, Professor Binstock spoke out boldly about the likely effects of the changes in Medicare. He regards it as a reversal of American history of the last seven decades and foresees damage to the social structure carefully built up over this period.

Binstock, one of the nation’s leading gerontologists, is widely known for his ability to present clearly governmental and political issues as they touch upon the interests of us elders. I took a course from him some 25 years ago when he taught at Brandeis and still value his incisive accounts of dramatic improvements in the economic and social status of America’s elders during most of the twentieth century.

Binstock also foresees baby boomers being left high and dry by the future lack of Social Security funding, as younger Americans have long thought would happen. To him, it forms part of a “starve the beast” strategy designed to make money unavailable for social services. By next year, the federal deficit is slated to reach 500 billion dollars and the federal government will be constrained to stop feeding social services.

Before it becomes too late, he wonders if members of the boomer generation will organize and mount nonviolent confrontational challenges to governmental policies.

Important is that the new Medicare program will not start to take effect until 2006. That presumably will allow social policy experts to publicize little-known parts of this huge bill. Repeal does not seem at all likely in a Republican-controlled Congress, as happened to the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act in 1988, but pressure to fix some parts might develop. Don’t expect AARP to be part of that process any time soon.

Meantime, it’s worth taking note how AARP now shuns words like old, retired, or such language. It will no longer be caught associated with anything that smacks of advanced age. Can it now be that AARP is practicing a subtle ageism that goes against its stated ideals?

Richard Griffin

Disconcerting Discovery

A discovery about another person, a friend of some four years’ standing, has shaken my world view and has provoked in me ongoing spiritual reflection. All during the time of our friendship I never suspected a fact about this woman that inevitably changes my understanding of who she is.

Rachel is the mother of a young adopted son and we have often talked about her experiences in raising him. At other times, I have had occasion to congratulate her on the excellent dishes she cooks and serves to students and graduate members of the organization where she works. I especially love the delicious desserts she concocts, deep dish apple pie above all.

The occasion on which I made the discovery about my friend was a visit to my favorite bookstore. There, on the table of newly published works, was a book with a handsome full-page photo of Rachel and a brief essay written by her about her life. In this account, she reveals a fact that staggered my imagination. That revelation is that she used to be a man.

I had read about other people making the same change but this instance was different. This had happened with a person whom I knew quite well. She has not been among my closest friends but nonetheless we have conversed often, sometimes about serious issues.

Rachel does not allude to her transformation in an indirect way. Rather, in the essay about her experience, she writes openly: “I was going through a transition – from male to female.  .  . I was born male.”

Presumably, many Americans brought up in a religious tradition will find it hard to accept this kind of personal transformation. It may go against the ideas of fixed gender that they learned at home and found confirmed in the Bible, the catechism, or other authoritative teaching. Other people, too, those steeped in the traditions of our culture, may be inclined to look with disdain on those who have changed their gender.

My own religious tradition has great difficulty coping with gender change. With its strict rules about sexuality, the Catholic Church would seem to have little sympathy with what my friend has done. The continuance of the same gender identity, male and female, is such a given in the teachings of the church that it is hard to imagine the institution approving of sex change.

For people raised and schooled as I was, it can require a new flexibility to accept changes that go against the grain of long accepted ideas. Until recent years, it never occurred to me that a person could change genders. Now, however, I am once again confronted with the need to dig deeply into myself and once more change ideas and feelings.

Whatever one’s views of gender change’s legitimacy, Rachel deserves respect and admiration for her courage. It could not have been easy for her to undergo the physical and mental changes necessary for a sex change. Even now, as she understatedly describes it, “I’m in the in-between space. And the in-between space is not always a comfortable thing.”

She has had to overcome misunderstanding and hostility on the part of people associated with her. At least one person, a co-worker, apparently considered it part of his religious duty to oppose what she was doing.

This fact emerges from her reference to problems that forced her to leave her previous job. “I was harassed about all kinds of different things, especially by one man who was a born-again Christian. It was brutal and I was actually frightened.”

Ironically for one who professes belief in Christ, this man’s conduct places him seriously at odds with the example and teaching of Jesus who so often reached out his hands to those people who had been marginalized by others.

For Jesus, human differences were no reason for shunning or looking down upon people pushed to the margins of his society. Though Rachel is not a social outcast, she clearly has suffered from being rejected by some other people.

Besides Jesus, one can take further inspiration from the great-souled people of our lifetime, people like Mother Teresa who accepted others as precious human beings, whatever their circumstances. Hers seems to me a fine model for coping spiritually with unexpected changes that we encounter, especially those that upset the views we have held for much of our lives.

Richard Griffin

Pedestrians in America

“A pedestrian in the U.S. is someone walking to his car.” This wry definition comes from Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway.  Its humor rests on the assumption that hardly any Americans do much walking, an assumption that evidence suggests is solid.

By contrast, a whopping 46 percent of all trips in the Netherlands are non-motorized. That means the Dutch do an awful lot of bike riding. Almost surely, they do a fair amount of walking too. Of course, theirs is a geographically small country without hills with a much more homogeneous citizenry than ours.

Transportation experts hold out no hope for us Americans changing our ways anytime soon. Those who assembled this September at MIT’s AgeLab, from around the country and a dozen other nations, agreed that most of us will remain dependant on the automobile. After all, we are a huge nation in which fully three fourths of us live in suburbs or rural areas, most of which places lack adequate public transportation.

People like me, urban dwellers who can walk to all our public services and do, are anomalies in American society. Planning for elders who live elsewhere cannot, I’m afraid, take us as models. Even if they want to walk, most Americans cannot get where they want to go simply by using their feet. And most often few alternative modes of transportation will get them to their planned destination.

So the question most professionals in the field of transportation ask is: How can we better provide for the safety of older automobile drivers and others? On various fronts they continue to explore ways of ensuring safer driving better adapted to the special needs of many elders. All are agreed that a whole lot can be done.

About the present situation there is widespread consensus on several points. First, drivers over age 65 are involved in fewer accidents, per capita, than are those younger. The instances of horrible events such as this past summer’s catastrophe in Santa Monica where ten people were killed by an elderly Californian who had lost control of his car are comparatively rare. Secondly, when older drivers do get into accidents their chances of being seriously injured or killed are much higher than those of younger drivers.

Contrary to popular impression, when older people experience disability they do not take public transportation even where it is available. Instead, they first give up using public transportation, then they abandon walking. That is because the easiest thing they can do is to drive or be a passenger.

There is also wide agreement that testing older drivers for their competence on the road does not work when it is made mandatory. Better are systems that target applicants for licenses who are considered at higher risk. Perhaps the best way to test such drivers is by giving them a personal guide who can help determine if they are still capable of safe driving.

Besides aiming to improve drivers’ capability behind the wheel, researchers envision changes in the automobiles they drive. Older drivers use seat belts more that those younger but there are different kinds of seat belts that could be introduced. A belt that fits over the torso with an X shape might give greater protection and so could a Y-shaped belt.

The third area that bears improvement is the roadway. Electronic systems that warn of collisions, for example, could prove beneficial although they can be tricky to rely on. Installing traffic calming modifications at sites where major roads cross such as raised and gritty surfaces can slow down traffic.

Much more could be done to protect drivers, improve vehicles, and modify roadways than we have seen up introduced up to now. With the arrival of the Baby Boomers into beginning old age, all drivers will presumably profit from technological enhancements that can be expected.

The changes talked about now should benefit everybody. An Irish geriatrician at the MIT event, Desmond O’Neill of Trinity College, quoted a two-line rule of thumb for planners.

“If you design for the old, you include the young.

If you design for the young, you exclude the old.”

Dr. O’Neill also cautioned against making decisions full of ageist assumptions about elderly people. Most older drivers, after all, perform well on the road. Many take the initiative when they realize the need to modify their driving habits. They deserve respect rather than coercive action to deprive them of the transportation that can severely cramp their lifestyle.

Though I myself do not feel entirely reconciled to the dominance of the automobile and judge alternative forms of transportation as eminently desirable, I also welcome technology being applied to make the driving experience considerably better for those committed to cars than it is now.

If the pros who took part in the AgeLab conference are a reliable sample of planners, it looks as if there is a whole lot that can be done.

Richard Griffin

Liturgy Document Anniversary

December marks an anniversary that is special in my life and in the lives of many others who share my religious tradition. This month, 40 years ago, the Second Vatican Council made major changes in the liturgy of the Mass, intended to have a major impact on the spiritual life of Catholics worldwide.

The document on the liturgy carried the date December 4, 1963 and was the first of 16 major statements published by the council. Its emergence qualified as big news at the time and it was featured in many major newspapers of the world.

Most Catholics of a certain age will remember growing up in the days before the council, when Latin was the language of the liturgy. The Eucharist or Mass, as we called it, and the other sacraments were all performed in that ancient tongue no longer spoken, even by the Italians who had originated it. Latin had long since become a dead language except for its use by the Church.

But language was only one of the liturgical changes made by the Catholic bishops of the world when assembled in Rome for the council. They also restored parts of the liturgy, such as communion under the form of wine as well as bread, and removed other parts that did not belong to the classical structure of the Mass.

In doing so, the bishops wanted to bring this public prayer of the church closer to the people. Translating the ancient texts into the languages used in daily life by the residents of each country made the words of the Mass immediately intelligible. No longer would worshippers have to use prayer books, as was the widespread custom previously. Nor would they be so likely to say the rosary during Mass.

The priest who presided at Mass was now expected to face the people rather than to have his back toward them. This served as another sign of a more active role for the laity in the official worship of the church. Their character as the people of God received new emphasis and they were encouraged to make the responses and to sing hymns with enthusiasm.

The council also highlighted the importance of the Bible in the liturgy and in the lives of Catholics. Up until that time, biblical texts had received less importance than they deserved but Vatican II said “Sacred scripture is of the greatest importance in the celebration of the liturgy.” In his homily during the Mass, the priest was urged to emphasize the teachings of the Bible, and laypeople were exhorted to read the sacred books more often.

It took years for the liturgical changes to be fully implemented in Catholic parishes. Not all the clergy and members of the laity welcomed the abandonment of the old ways. Some felt that the church was caving in to the fashions of the age, and the loss of the Latin language especially was mourned in some quarters.

Other critics regretted the loss of what they regarded as the aura of sacred mystery created by the rites they had grown up with.  The language of the liturgy may not have been so intelligible but there was an atmosphere of reverent silence that, they feared, was disappearing from Catholic churches.

However, with the passage of decades, the liturgical changes have come to seem normal in the lives of most Catholics who come to Mass. They find spiritual nourishment in the rites that have become familiar to them. The experience of Sunday Mass strikes me, for one, as altogether more accessible than it used to be.

Father Joseph Champlin, rector of the Immaculate Conception cathedral, in Syracuse, New York, is a priest who took a lead role in implementing the liturgical changes in his diocese. When I asked him his view of this history, he called it “a wonderful development for the church in the United States.”

He feels enthusiastic about the current Catholic way of worship and thinks that problems with the church cannot be blamed on the liturgy. He points to the tension between the horizontal (people oriented) and vertical (God oriented) aspects of the liturgy and recognizes that people can differ about whether one or the other is receiving too much emphasis.

For the vast majority of church members, the liturgy is proving effective, he believes, thus vindicating the wisdom behind the actions of the Second Vatican Council 40 years ago.

Richard Griffin