"Aging"

Aging is an experience that is both universal and unique.  As part of the mortal human community, we all take a journey from birth through life until death.  Asks a blogger whose work I follow, “What is Aging but life itself?”  (Jon Katz’s blog entry 3/7/21 on BedlamFarm.com)

As unique individuals, we approach Aging in ways that no one else ever has, or ever will.  We can be anywhere and everywhere along the continuum that has Dylan Thomas’s famous lines of poetry on one end and the prayer of an anonymous Jesuit at the other.  

Here are Dylan Thomas’s words; I’m sure you know them ...

Do not go gentle into that good night ...

Rage, rage against the dying of the light ...

            (“Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas)

Here are the unnamed Jesuit’s words ...

Let my leaving the field of action be simple and natural --

like a glowing cheerful sunset ...

(“Prayer of an Aging Jesuit” included in Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits edited by Michael Harter SJ)

Their words describe the two poles of the continuum.  There is a vast number of places in between.

Along the journey of life, we encounter opportunity and setbacks ... success and failure ... joy and sorrow ... clarity and confusion ... excitement and boredom.  Two sides of many coins.  Doors close, doors open.  Paths unfurl ahead of us and detours and crossroads abound.  In the words of spiritual leader Joe Primo:

Life is full of mystery.  The mystery is our invitation to let go and to embrace uncertainty with the fullness of our being.  (“Word of the Day”, 6/10/24, Grateful.org)

Always -- if we are paying attention -- there are questions about the meaning of life, and how to fulfill it, how to honor what God has freely given us.  Whenever these questions come upon us, regardless of our chronological age, that is the time to begin engaging with them.  After all, as we often hear, “today is the first day of the rest of your life.” 

It is natural and common -- though not always the case -- that questions about Aging come upon us gradually.  They may seem to sneak up on us “like a thief in the night”.  Personally, I recoil from that particular image.  Rather, I prefer to embrace the knowledge that God, who is full of mercy, has gently given me the gift of time and awareness so that I may “be ready”.

What lies ahead are the possibilities involved with becoming elders, no matter what our chronological age.  Even becoming wise elders.  Remember that two of the components of “wisdom” are experience and love.  Perspective, too.  I have the feeling that we all qualify.

Please consider embracing, as I have, what the spiritual writer Esther de Waal has to say about this stage, the future:

I know that I have to let go as I age, for otherwise I shall be clinging to the past, and that will prevent the new, in whatever form that might take, from coming to birth.  Letting go has a hidden freedom in it, for surrendering is really a liberation, allowing me to live fully but differently.  (The White Stone)

And I invite you to consider if it’s time to ask, along with the poet Mary Oliver:

            Tell me, what is it you plan to do

            With your one wild and precious life?  (“The Summer Day”)

It is never too late to ask that question.  It is always the right time to ask.

***

I don’t believe in fortune-telling, or in crystal balls. Though it can be tempting to ask, as Psalm 39:5 does:

            Lord, let me know my end, the number of my days,

            That I may learn how frail I am. 

But note the answer, in the very next verse: 

To be sure, you establish the expanse of my days;

            Indeed, my life is as nothing before you. 

We know that our lives are always in God’s hands.  But this reality should not imply that we’ve got permission to float passively along ... permission to do nothing with the gift of years that God has graced us with. 

Even if this gift comes with diminishment and loss, there is always opportunity for growth.  Life itself is growth and change, sometimes blatant and explosive, and sometimes subtle and barely perceptible ... but always occurring.  Let’s cooperate with that natural impulse.