My friend George died last year, at age 73, from Parkinson’s Disease. He had had this diagnosis for 13 years and, at the end, spent his days in a wheelchair and composed emails with voice recognition software, being unable to manipulate a keyboard.
We grew up together in the same tidy suburban community, peopled by young World War II veteran dads, stay-at-home moms, and flocks of widely-roaming children. While I was always involved in sports, George was not especially athletic, or at least not athletically inclined, and we spent our time together talking, laughing, and joking.
Our social circles diverged as high school moved along, but we stayed in touch. George went to Carleton College, which seemed just right for him, married soon after graduation, and settled in Minnesota for the rest of his life.
My wife and I stopped to visit George and his wife on their farm in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, on our way back east after my first two years of graduate school in Salt Lake City. We were both engaged in our separate and different lives, and we fell out of contact after that, and I never saw him in person again.
Fast forward forty-five years. A cryptic comment appeared on a blog post on my website; “If you grew up in northern New Jersey, we have some catching up to do. George.” It could only have been him. We exchanged email addresses and indeed, began catching up.
George commented, right off, that he was moved to reconnect with me as he read on my website about my work with spirituality and health. Spirituality, he said, had been at the center of his life since college. My wife reminded me, recalling our 1973 visit to Fergus Falls, that he had then been a Jehovah’s Witness.
True. George, I learned, had been deeply involved in his local Witness community and had done consulting and speaking with the Witness community nationwide, spanning all the years when we had been out of touch. Even as the scope of his life was largely limited to his home, he remained actively involved with Jehovah’s Witnesses remotely.
My commitment, as I hope you know, is to honor and respect other people’s spiritual traditions and practices. I think it’s fair to say, though, that Jehovah’s Witnesses occupy a particular niche in American religious life, with their distinctive approach to door-to-door and street corner evangelism and their preference to be a separate religious community, rather than engaging in inter-faith dialogue or incorporating ideas from other spiritual traditions.
I wasn’t sure what to expect.
What I found was a rekindled, dear friendship.
We exchanged more emails. We Zoomed. We brought in a mutual friend who had grown up with us both.
We acknowledged, early on, that we had differences in our spiritual lives and practices, but that they really didn’t matter. We eagerly joined together in conversations about our shared values… kindness, compassion, respect, equality, justice.
George sent me links to Jehovah’s Witnesses conference keynotes and articles from JW.org. “Jehovah’s Powerful Acts Inspire Faith!” “Why Did God Create the Earth?” “Why Did the Holocaust Happen?” “Why didn’t God Stop the Holocaust?” I sent him reflections from British theologian John A. T. Robinson and American theologian (founder of the Koinonia Community in south Georgia) Clarence Jordan. We spun off at one point to a dialogue about mentors and protégés, with stories from our own lives. We talked about the ways that expressions of goodness and care for other people can have reverberating effects across many generations.
We shared insights from our professional lives, respecting people’s values but inviting them to a broader and deeper spiritual journey.
And there was more, the kind of conversations about day-to-day matters that can help to cement friendships. Why baseball would be profoundly different if the baselines were 89 feet or 91 feet, instead of 90 feet. What it had been like for both of us to move to new homes. How much we both cherished the loving relationships with our wives.
I asked him (psychologists ask questions like this) how he kept going with 13 years of Parkinson’s Disease. He sent me a long list of tips. Low salt diet. Qi Gong. Electrical muscle stimulation. Regular massage. Daily reading of the bible, jw.org, and “compassionate, empathetic literature.” Thirty minutes daily with a light box. And, yes, Zooming with friends.
I congratulated George and sent him and his wife flowers on their 50th anniversary. George didn’t live to see ours. My last email looking for a time to Zoom brought a response from George’s wife that he had passed away peacefully.
George signed his emails, “love, George.” In my family and cultural experience men don’t say this to other men, but I was touched by his genuineness and forthrightness, and it has brought me to be freer in giving voice to my own values of love.
Maybe that’s the central theme as I think about my friend George. Love that transcends unimportant small differences like religious affiliation. Love that shares in matters large and small. Love that reaches out across decades of distance.
Thanks, George.
Love, Fred
We grew up together in the same tidy suburban community, peopled by young World War II veteran dads, stay-at-home moms, and flocks of widely-roaming children. While I was always involved in sports, George was not especially athletic, or at least not athletically inclined, and we spent our time together talking, laughing, and joking.
Our social circles diverged as high school moved along, but we stayed in touch. George went to Carleton College, which seemed just right for him, married soon after graduation, and settled in Minnesota for the rest of his life.
My wife and I stopped to visit George and his wife on their farm in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, on our way back east after my first two years of graduate school in Salt Lake City. We were both engaged in our separate and different lives, and we fell out of contact after that, and I never saw him in person again.
Fast forward forty-five years. A cryptic comment appeared on a blog post on my website; “If you grew up in northern New Jersey, we have some catching up to do. George.” It could only have been him. We exchanged email addresses and indeed, began catching up.
George commented, right off, that he was moved to reconnect with me as he read on my website about my work with spirituality and health. Spirituality, he said, had been at the center of his life since college. My wife reminded me, recalling our 1973 visit to Fergus Falls, that he had then been a Jehovah’s Witness.
True. George, I learned, had been deeply involved in his local Witness community and had done consulting and speaking with the Witness community nationwide, spanning all the years when we had been out of touch. Even as the scope of his life was largely limited to his home, he remained actively involved with Jehovah’s Witnesses remotely.
My commitment, as I hope you know, is to honor and respect other people’s spiritual traditions and practices. I think it’s fair to say, though, that Jehovah’s Witnesses occupy a particular niche in American religious life, with their distinctive approach to door-to-door and street corner evangelism and their preference to be a separate religious community, rather than engaging in inter-faith dialogue or incorporating ideas from other spiritual traditions.
I wasn’t sure what to expect.
What I found was a rekindled, dear friendship.
We exchanged more emails. We Zoomed. We brought in a mutual friend who had grown up with us both.
We acknowledged, early on, that we had differences in our spiritual lives and practices, but that they really didn’t matter. We eagerly joined together in conversations about our shared values… kindness, compassion, respect, equality, justice.
George sent me links to Jehovah’s Witnesses conference keynotes and articles from JW.org. “Jehovah’s Powerful Acts Inspire Faith!” “Why Did God Create the Earth?” “Why Did the Holocaust Happen?” “Why didn’t God Stop the Holocaust?” I sent him reflections from British theologian John A. T. Robinson and American theologian (founder of the Koinonia Community in south Georgia) Clarence Jordan. We spun off at one point to a dialogue about mentors and protégés, with stories from our own lives. We talked about the ways that expressions of goodness and care for other people can have reverberating effects across many generations.
We shared insights from our professional lives, respecting people’s values but inviting them to a broader and deeper spiritual journey.
And there was more, the kind of conversations about day-to-day matters that can help to cement friendships. Why baseball would be profoundly different if the baselines were 89 feet or 91 feet, instead of 90 feet. What it had been like for both of us to move to new homes. How much we both cherished the loving relationships with our wives.
I asked him (psychologists ask questions like this) how he kept going with 13 years of Parkinson’s Disease. He sent me a long list of tips. Low salt diet. Qi Gong. Electrical muscle stimulation. Regular massage. Daily reading of the bible, jw.org, and “compassionate, empathetic literature.” Thirty minutes daily with a light box. And, yes, Zooming with friends.
I congratulated George and sent him and his wife flowers on their 50th anniversary. George didn’t live to see ours. My last email looking for a time to Zoom brought a response from George’s wife that he had passed away peacefully.
George signed his emails, “love, George.” In my family and cultural experience men don’t say this to other men, but I was touched by his genuineness and forthrightness, and it has brought me to be freer in giving voice to my own values of love.
Maybe that’s the central theme as I think about my friend George. Love that transcends unimportant small differences like religious affiliation. Love that shares in matters large and small. Love that reaches out across decades of distance.
Thanks, George.
Love, Fred