Boykin’s Bigger God

“I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

These words, spoken to a church group by Lieutenant General William Boykin, at first sound like the boastings of a schoolboy. In reality, they are the sentiments of the Pentagon’s top intelligence officer, a deputy undersecretary of defense, talking about Osman Atto, a terrorist he was trying to catch in Somalia.

Along with other statements made by the general, the two above reveal a man dangerously ignorant about religion and yet using it to degrade his enemies. In particular, his views about Islam threaten to solidify the impression held by many Muslims around the world that America is fighting against their religion.

President Bush has said otherwise, insisting that ours is not a war against Islam but rather against terrorism.  General Boykin seems not to have got the message.

This supposed specialist in intelligence displays an astounding ignorance of the facts. By contrasting the God of Islam with that of Christianity, he shows himself unaware of a huge fact: both religions worship the same God.

That recognition of the one God has always served as a common bond between Islam and Christianity, though admittedly Christians and Muslims have often ignored it in practice. Mohammed himself, when he launched Islam in the 7th century, openly recognized that Judaism and Christianity worshiped the same God as he. That recognition is clear in the Qur’an, the sacred book of Muslim religion.

For the general to call his God bigger, as if there are two, is fatuous. Similarly, for him to brand the God of the Muslims an idol is both ignorant and insulting. To people who profess Islam this charge comes as a deeply offensive remark.

The true God can always be made into an idol by people who worship money or prestige or power as their supreme reality. But to imagine that because people’s faith differs from Christian belief it is the worship of idols is seriously mistaken.  In this age of ecumenical understanding among those of varying faiths, this accusation smacks of old-fashioned prejudice.

General Boykin also believes that we are a Christian nation. It is true, of course, that Christian tradition influenced the founding of our country.  The founders were people schooled in the ways of this religion, though some did not practice it themselves and they did not legislate its establishment as in England.

Currently, a large number of religions flourish in America. Every large metropolitan area is home to many different communities of faith. More than ever before, the United States is a multi-religious country, filled with non-Christian as well as Christian residents.

So America is not a Christian nation in the way the General would have us think. When he says “Our spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus,” he may express his own belief but he excludes many Americans for whom Jesus is not the inspiration for spiritual struggle.

When Boykin says “We are hated because we are a nation of believers,” he again makes it look as if we only and not others hold faith important. Indonesia, Pakistan, Iraq, and many other countries of the world are nations of believers, the difference being that Islam is the religion of the majority there.

The general believes that the enemy is “a guy called Satan.” Again, if that view is important in his religion, he has a right to profess it. But for a public official to present this identification as part of public policy is of dubious value because it has so often proven harmful to demonize enemies.

Boykin seems to imagine that America is waging a holy war, a campaign undertaken with God’s blessing, over against the irreligiousness of others. Even more dangerously, he claims a direct pipeline to God.  Speaking of Mogadishu he said, “It is a demonic presence in that city that God has revealed to me as the enemy.”

If, as the old proverb says, a little ignorance is a dangerous thing, then the large ignorance of General Boykin would seem to make even more hazardous our nation’s continuing struggle against terror.

Richard Griffin

Bateson on Death and Life

“I think that our denial of death is almost comparable to the denial of sexuality under the Victorians. And I think that maintaining that level of denial, in and of itself, distorts the capacity to understand the world, to think straight.”

These words come from Mary Catherine Bateson, who engaged in a public dialogue with me last week. A cultural anthropologist of note, she dares to talk openly about subjects that American society likes to keep hidden in the closet.

Asked her feelings about the prospect of her own death, Catherine Bateson replies forthrightly. In the face of this event she feels peaceful but she adds one caveat: “I feel concerned that, if I were very ill, I might not have the clarity of my own convictions about being willing to die.”

It’s important to leave models for the next generation. Just as we have received stories of our forebears’ death  –  – “That’s how granddad was, he said he was ready to die and he was” –  – so we can provide our descendants with our stories. Ms. Bateson believes that of all the things we learn in the course of a lifetime, dealing with mortality may be the most important.

Her mother, Margaret Mead, was one of the first people to write a living will. In it, she stipulated that she did not want anything done to extend her life if she had suffered any mental impairment or lost her mobility. This statement made Catherine, then a teenager, angry because her mother “was saying that it was not worth her while to be alive when she was no longer the famous Margaret Mead.” Catherine’s sharp response was: “But you’d still be my mother.”

Ms. Bateson believes in not being surprised when serious disabilities come along. She sees them as precursors to death and reason for doing what you can to cope. When reading in their memoirs how other people adapt to aging, she has formulated two rules of thumb.

The first is “to keep on learning, observing and thinking about what’s happened.”

The second concerns the need to change self-definition, “not to be caught in a self-definition that says, if I’m not what I was at age 50, then I’m nothing.” Even if her mother had been unable to do scholarship any more, she would have remained an important person – her mother.

On the subject of care for the sick, Bateson is eloquent insisting that being attended goes far beyond high technology and lots of tubes. She sees it as giving care in a personal way, such as sitting by a person’s bed and holding her hand.

“Caring for someone you love, whether it’s an infant or a sick person does have built-in rewards, even though it’s a huge burden.” Bateson considers it a “profound experience that, over a period of time, a great many people have missed out on, the privilege of giving care to a human being you love.”

Professor Bateson has lived and worked in several other countries, experience that has brought her important cross-cultural insights. Drawing on her observations of Iranian society, she poses the question of why women there are not more rebellious about their status.

Contrasting American and Iranian women, she identifies the most important man in the life of women who live in that patriarchal society. He is not her father, nor her husband, but rather her son. “When she has an adult son, she is courted, she’s listened to, she’s treated with veneration.”

One of the things we fail to understand about patriarchy, Professor Bateson says, is how “it’s not just about male versus female, but it’s about elder versus younger.” The women she really feels sorry for are those whose sons marry emancipated women.

In American society with its negative view of advancing age, people cannot look forward to anything good. That makes them feel rebellious because the future does not promise enough rewards.

Catherine Bateson loves being a grandmother, a fairly new and thoroughly welcome role for her. With increased longevity, she points out, the generations are no longer in synch the way they used to be because so many of us now have great-grandchildren and have become part of four-generation families.

Professor Bateson thinks all of us adults need children in our lives. To make that possible we have to build bridges to them. One way of doing that is to be open to them teaching us.

She is fond of asking students what they have taught their parents. One girl told her, “I taught my dad not to interrupt me,” an experience that conveyed to him her sense of personhood.

“There are areas where public understanding has changed in our lifetime and our children are often more sensitive to issues than we are and can usefully teach us,” Ms. Bateson adds.

Many more of Professor Bateson’s insights can be found in her books, notably the paperback “Full Circles, Overlapping Lives,” published in 2000.   

Richard Griffin

Granny D

“A mission is what does it for you; you must have a mission.” Thus Doris Haddock, a.k.a. Granny D, explains her motivation as a 93-year old, five-foot-tall woman out to change the world.

She strikes the same theme in the subtitle of her 2003 paperback memoir: “You’re never too old to raise a little hell.”

Granny D is the woman who, when she was 89, walked across the whole of the USA. Starting in Pasadena, she ended up 3200 miles later in Washington, D.C. where she climaxed the effort to get campaign finance reform made law.

After initial opposition from her son, she managed to get his approval for the great walk. This she did by engaging in a training program of walks, near her Dublin, New Hampshire home, for most of a year previous to the big trek. She took her son’s interference with a measure of irritation and tolerance, telling me about adult children: “They become our parents when we get to be 80.”

An unexpected personal benefit from this great escapade came in an improvement in both of her main ailments: high blood pressure and emphysema.

On her arrival at the nation’s capital, she was met by 2200 people, with several dozen members of Congress walking the final miles with her. During the final three days of debate on senate floor, she walked around the Capitol building 24 hours a day, some of it in subzero winds and rain, stopping only to rest and to eat.  

On the 14-month hike, she adopted as her guide the motto: “walking till given shelter, fasting till given food.” Presumably she brought extra shoes with her because she wore out four pairs.

In a conversation with Granny D last week, I was surprised to discover how late in life she has turned to political action. Most of her working years she spent in a Manchester, New Hampshire shoe factory until her retirement in 1972. Earlier she had studied at Emerson College in Boston, an institution that gave her an honorary degree in 2000.

I found it a pleasure to converse with this dynamic woman. With the help of two hearing aids she responded articulately to everything I asked. Like so many other people in her age bracket, she expresses amazement at having arrived there. “I can’t believe I’m that old,” she says. At the same time, age has brought her a sense of vulnerability: “I may die tomorrow,” she tells me.

But her mission drives her ahead. Now she is campaigning for public financing of elections on a trip that will take her on a 15,000 mile trek across some of America. This time, however, she is not going to walk the whole route but instead only in cities where she stops.  

“The only thing that will save our democracy is public financing,” she believes. Her message aims especially at working women in the effort to make sure they vote. She says that this group is underrepresented among voters because they are overworked and stressed for time.

To begin her new voter registration campaign, she spoke at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. There she made a ringing condemnation of what big money has done to this country. Referring to the people she met on her walk, Granny D spoke of those “who came to actual tears when they described their frustration at the loss of their America.”

She made a reference to “senior moments” that especially pleased me because of my one-man campaign to get people to use it positively. For Granny D, “it is when I talk to the senior class in high schools along my way, for they are our newest voters and I am going to sign them up, four million of them if I can.”

Getting people to vote is her current passion. “On the road, I will not suggest how people should vote,” she says, “only that they should vote. They should study the issues and the candidates for themselves, and we will be all right if they get enough good information.”

In not a few ways, Granny D reminds me of another woman I knew whose political consciousness drove her on to strenuous action in later life. That was Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers (whom Granny D seems never to have heard of.) Both physically small, the two women were to display a personal dynamism that made them different from most other people. Like Maggie, Granny D cares passionately about the larger community and resists the temptation felt by most of their age peers to focus in upon herself.

Like Maggie, Granny D wants to share this spirit with others. In the words she inscribed for me on the title page of her memoir, she wrote: “One step in front of the next will get you Anywhere!”

Richard Griffin

Journal Entry, November 1953

“During morning meditation God spoke to me, I think, by giving me the realization that peace is fully to be found in Him. I discovered this while waiting upon Him in reflection. Previously, I was forced by fatigue to pace the floor, a practice which has helped me of late to overcome weariness. So I experienced that, when God speaks, it is like the voice of no other.”

These words come from an entry in the journal I kept in the fall of 1953. Written so long ago, they open a window enabling me to look into my soul at that early stage of spiritual development. They unveil my personal history as nothing else could, even the photos that come from that era.

This journal passage now speaks to me of a time in my life when I was caught up each day in the search for a deeper knowledge of God. Through my morning and evening meditations and other spiritual exercises, I tried to sustain a dialogue with the source of my being. On this particular day, November 11th, I judged myself to have received personal attention from Him.

However, the words “I think” suggest that I was not entirely sure.  I was clearly hesitant to say that the voice of God and a feeling of inner peace were one and the same. I did not want to say that that I was definitely hearing a divine message. Reading these words now, I am glad to find in my younger self this lack of certitude.

And yet, the last sentence would seem to claim that I had heard the distinctive voice of God, since it is “like no other.” There is no point in trying to resolve this ambiguity now. I feel glad that I was not so sure about having located the divine who, in the great spiritual tradition, is above all human grasp.

My uncertainty may have shown some considerable degree of maturity in me even then. And yet, it was a difficult time in my life, as the reference to fatigue suggests. I was experiencing tension that would eventually lead to a long-lasting crisis. Many a time would I walk the floor during my meditations as I sought to grow toward God.

I also take consolation by seeing that I did not, fifty years ago, think I heard God speaking to me the way another human being would speak.  Even in my youthful fervor I recognized that the divine voice would not arrive in human words but rather in the interior movements of the heart and soul. To have located that speech in the presence of inner peace seems to me altogether appropriate.

Much of what I wrote in the 1950s makes me blush with embarrassment. My journal entries of those days are full of naïve sentiments and bad prose. It is penitential for me to reread them now.

The spiritual content of the passage under discussion here, however, pleases me. It expresses a mentality that I can identify with even now. Were I to enter a similar experience in a current journal, the words might be much the same.

This kind of continuity seems to me valuable. I take satisfaction in finding in the “spiritual me” of fifty years ago much of the same self that I know myself to be now. In a life otherwise marked by much discontinuity, this connectedness of younger and older selves comes as a consolation.

In particular I identify with inner peace being a sign of God’s presence. This peace I regard as one of God’s gifts so that I still give thanks for its presence. A deep assurance of all being well is a precious quality of soul and it does not seem to me exaggerated to call it the voice of God.

I also like the passage’s assumption that, in meditative prayer, we do not do all the talking. Rather, at best such prayer leads to a dialogue between God and ourselves with the initiative in the conversation being taken by God. My words of fifty years ago strongly imply that my prayer then was such a dialogue.

Similarly, the words “while waiting on Him” reinforce the idea that the initiative is God’s. Apparently, I was willing to be patient until He first spoke, as I try to be now.

Richard Griffin

Mustard Seed

When he was an infant, a young child named Dennis lost both his parents to AIDS. At age 15 months he himself tested positive for the disease but he is now free of it. Rescued from the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, he currently receives loving care in a group home.

Another Jamaican child, Gregory, was found trying to give water to his mother who had been dead for four days. Ultimately this child did not survive but died after being tenderly cared for by his rescuers.

A third boy, Ramon, was found in a pigsty when he was five years old. He is now a bright child and progressing nicely.

These children and hundreds of others have been saved from the streets by Mustard Seed Communities, a charitable organization now celebrating its 25th anniversary. Working in Jamaica and four other impoverished countries, –  – Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe –  – Mustard Seed is dedicated to care of the world’s most helpless children.

Besides caring for these children, the organization in Jamaica sponsors schools and small business enterprises designed to relieve the poverty of the communities where it works. Caring, sharing, and training serve as three watchwords that indicate the top priorities of Mustard Seed.

AIDS poses a special challenge in Jamaica, a society that attaches a stigma to people who have it. In some regions of the island, neighbors will burn down your house if they discover you are infected with this disease .The Kingston facility is the only one in Jamaica that handles pediatric AIDS.

Mustard Seed follows the philosophy of its founder, Father Gregory Ramkissoon, a native of Trinidad. Seeing children with disabilities abandoned on the sidewalks, empty lots, and even trash cans, he was moved to reach out to them. “You have to care for somebody else,” he explains, “that is the way we are wired.”

“We make each child the cornerstone, instead of the rejected stone,” he says, using the biblical language that forms so much of his inner world. The name Mustard Seed itself comes from a parable spoken by Jesus who compared the Kingdom of God to the smallest plant that ultimately grows into one of the biggest.

At this time of crisis in their church, Father Gregory is convinced, American Catholics are looking for opportunities to serve others in need. Such people help to make it possible for Mustard Seed to rescue abandoned children. By giving money, providing needed goods, offering prayers, or perhaps coming to volunteer on site, not only Catholics but all others who wish to respond will be welcome.

Mustard Seed makes available a retreat house next to the main facility in Kingston for those who wish to see up close how the communities work. The organization runs weekend sessions for business leaders and others who wish to experience at first hand the work on behalf of destitute children.

Father Gregory sees the goal of these visits as twofold: to show Americans and others that the work of Christ is service to our brothers and sisters; and to enable the visitors to go back home and spread the word about Mustard Seed.

This priest is himself the best advertisement for Mustard Seed and its dedication to children in desperate need of help.  Short in stature physically, Father Gregory stands tall interiorly, with a spirituality entirely devoted to service of Christ and the children. He reminds me of Mother Theresa who committed herself to dying people who had no one else to serve them in their hour of greatest need. Like her, Father Gregory attends to the souls of those he serves as well as their bodily needs.

Father Gregory knows how important are the lay people associated with him in Mustard Seed. The 300 people employed by the organization to care for children add great strength to his community.

In this country Mustard Seed has associates who help support the work. Among them is Mary Alice Fontaine, Director of Development, at 10 Bridge Street, Suite 203 in Lowell who can provide further information at (978) 446-0505.  

I also recommend the web site at http://www.mustardseed.com, especially the brief video that shows the children with those who take care of them. To me, it is moving to see the loving way in which adults and children enter into contact with one another.

Richard Griffin

Segway

One afternoon two weeks ago, I went for a brief ride on the Segway. My trip on this new invention lasted only two or three minutes but it was long enough to teach me how to operate this unique new contraption.

I felt privileged in having the inventor, Dean Kamen, serve as my instructor but I quickly discovered that you need no special talent to manage this ingenious form of individual transportation. It responds to simple controls that almost anyone can wield.

To go forward, all you have to do is bend your upper body slightly forward. That means, not a deep bow, but only a shallow inclination.  The machine responds as if to your inner desire to move ahead, little more than a whim.

The same kind of slight motion moves you backward. Again, you simply start to incline your upper body ever so slightly and the Segway slowly retreats. The gyroscopes and tilt sensors embedded in the machine make it immediately responsive to these bodily motions.

To turn, you revolve a steering grip on the left handlebar and the Segway starts to move in a circle. To stop – well that’s another story. You may remember hearing about President Bush falling off the thing.

What sometimes makes people fall is a low power level in the battery. This can happen if, for instance, the rider speeds up abruptly. While I was drafting this column, word came from the Consumer Product Safety Commission announcing a voluntary product recall to install software warning of low battery levels.

My opportunity to get acquainted with both the Segway and its inventor opened up during a conference at MIT’s AgeLab. Professionals interested in improving transportation for older people came from 12 countries and 16 universities to report on their research and to talk about new technology designed to help mobility. The Segway presentation was only one of many made during the two day series of meetings but easily the most dramatic.

Dean Kamen, a short, thin dark-eyed middle-ager, arrived flamboyantly, driving into the room on his invention. All during his talk, the speaker stood on the scooter, moving it forward and back and often turning around in circles.

Kamen turns out to be an impassioned evangelist for his human transporter, as it is also called. He takes pride in having developed, along with his engineers, a device that he considers “a unique and lasting contribution to society.”

Like many others at the conference, I was swept away by the ingenuity of the contraption and felt tempted to credit every claim Kamen made for it. Afterward, some of us crowded around him and vied for the chance to try it out. For the moment, at least, $5,000 did not seem too much to pay for such a valuable device.

Since then, however, I have consulted Astrid Dodds, a friend and neighbor, who has been following the Segway saga in Massachusetts. A woman with deep concern for the public interest, she has raised my consciousness about the drawbacks of this new invention.

At least 40 states have already approved the Segway for use on sidewalks, though most have left the final decision to cities and towns. Astrid Dodds attributes this quick response to “legislators lining up because of the interesting gee-whiz technology.” They did not stop long enough to consider some of the negatives likely to result for both older citizens and the public in general.  

A Segway-related proposal, H. 1150, currently faces reworking in the Joint Committee on Public Safety of the Massachusetts legislature. So much protest about sidewalk use for the Segway has emerged that the bill is likely to impose serious restrictions.  Also the legislation will likely allow cities and towns to make their own decisions regarding usage.

As a devout daily pedestrian myself, I envision problems galore arising from adding Segways to our sidewalks. Already, I have trouble enough coping with bicycle riders, too many of whom use sidewalks illegally and operate by their own rules, not the public’s. They often menace me and other walkers, making us wary of getting knocked down or otherwise injured.

What has happened in places where the Segway has been approved for sidewalk use, no one seems to know. As Astrid Dodds points out, statistics are not available for accidents that do not result in the police being called. Of course, there may be little or nothing to report from those states that have precious few sidewalks to begin with.

It surprises me that among the professionals at the MIT conference not a single person raised doubts about the Segway’s suitability for use in our communities. Perhaps that means these academics do not use sidewalks very much. As noted above, I do, so I feel conflicted. That’s because I love both urban walking and also new technology with its promise of further improving the life of us elders.

Richard Griffin