Spirituality and Aging
Notes and quotes from book of this title by Kathleen Fischer:
...gifts of love from weakness are winter grace.
"...I'm still learning."
Courage grown larger in the face of diminishment.
The sense of human possibility in the midst of limitations is winter grace.
The capacity to affirm life in the face of death... the new baby.
A new sense of unity with family; letting love in.
Clarity of convictions in old age.
Spirituality: not just one compartment of life, but the deepest dimension of all of life.
Finding purpose for our lives after families have been raised.
Chistian spirituality involves the entire human person in all of his or her relationships.
Our spirituality in the later years is marked by the unique and varied faith journey each of us has taken.
"He was looking for mentors on his life journey, knowing that such guides affect the quality of the journey for all of us. If they show us the later years of life as the fullness and deepening of earlier states of growth, as a time of ever new discoveries of God's word, we will move toward them with confidence and hope, perhaps even with excitement and anticipation. If we see in the old only the destruction and loss of all we have known, then we will cling to our present experiences, stunting their growth by our sense that they hold no future promise."
"We cannot understand any season of life unless we meditate on all of them. Spring, summer, fall, and winter stand in contrast, but in continuity. Through each of them we learn something of what it means to trust God, to love ourselves, and to love other people."
From the perspective of faith, the later years provide the most intense and vivid revelation of the paradox at the heart of the Christian Gospel: that in losing our lives we somehow find them,; that loss can be gain, and weakness, strength; that death is the path to life.
"The Lord's Supper is meant to be an opportunity for Christians to decide what interpretation they wish to give their lives, what values they will choose. In it the everyday experiences of our lives and the experiences of the Gospel converge. The Lord's Supper is a Passover meal that commemorates Israel's journey to freedom in the exodus, and the freedom that comes in Jesus' death and resurrection. In late life it can help us achieve greater distance from the values by which society measures our worth, and new freedom to embrace alternate ones. The Lord's Supper is the deepest expression of winter grace. It re-enacts in symbol the paradox that death somehow leads to new life. It celebrates the unity and freedom of persons of all ages, young and old. And by recalling and making present again the paschal mystery of Christ, it reveals the final hope that grounds this paradox."
A Heart of Wisdom
..capacity to live every aspect of life fully as one of the secrets of aging well. "I think this sttitude you are talking about, paying such attention to life, is what we mean by 'a heart of wisdom.'... In the psalm it says, "So teach us to number our days, tht we may get us a heart of wisdom.' " Learning how to number our days means cultivating a capacity for wonder, for solitude, and for prayer. Deepening our understanding of these dimensions of the spiritual life can enrich our aging immeasurably.
Old age is a time for sorting out the more important from the less important things in life:... children, plants, nature, physical and emotional touching, the textures of color and shape.
Wonder is the prelude to gratitude.
Resting in the real.
No comments:
Post a Comment