Spirituality of Aging

Ron Cebik from Huffington Post

Psychotherapist & Teacher

It happens. Yes, we all come to the moment we realize we are growing old. It just happens differently for each of us. If we picture our life span as a trajectory with an ascendency, peak, and descent, somewhere after the peak, we notice changes and events that indicate loss. Wrinkles appear where there was smoothness. Our energy ?ags or our muscles no longer do what we had demanded of them. Some things are gradual to the point of not being apparent for years while other events are dramatic indices of decline. Whatever it is, what was gained in ascendency is the victim of attrition. When we choose to avoid what is happening, in the words of the Bhagavad Gita, our choice is in vain, for nature will compel us to look into the face of reality. That is why I have chosen to characterize “aging” as a spiritual journey.

The descent from midlife into old age and ?nally a confrontation with mortality has a melancholy tone that is a residual of the grief that accompanies loss. It is the challenge with which life confronts the character we and culture have built to this moment. Now, we are tested for the courage to continue the rest of the journey with integrity or despair our lot as the bearers of what was, dreading what lies ahead with the complaints of the present. That is why aging is a spiritual journey. It is a test of character to understand life, itself. It is a time to leave acquisition behind and learn to be. That is the goal of spirituality. It is not the easy answers that assuage the fears of aging, but asking the hard questions of life?s meaning that comprise the journey that ends with the expiration of our final breath.

For 15 years I have experienced the loss of my mobility and speech. I am, by nature, subject to a melancholy, that by some grace, has the beauty of an underlying religious chant that gives a certain pleasurableness to experiencing the ambiguity of life?s experiences. In my eighth decade, I have reached a modicum of stability. That is not necessarily desirable. In a world of systems subject to the laws of thermodynamics, stability is achieved when forces are in balance (they cancel out one another?s effects) or there is not enough energy to enable the system to change or grow. In the biosphere, this is known as death. Stability is only desirable when it can be punctuated by the input of enough energy to enable a system to achieve a new level of complexity. Otherwise, the system disintegrates, its matter becoming a source of energy and matter for other systems. In biology those systems range from microbes to the sentient beings known as humans. This is just another way of describing aging and death. However, it is also a way of describing what it is to be human without the hubris that envisions all that is as orbiting in the gravitational pull of my being.

Mitch Album, in his book Tuesdays With Morrie, described his conversations with his old professor dealing with his own confrontation with aging and mortality. Morrie, similarly dealing with neurological wasting, viewed life, in my opinion, through the lens of an optimist and had a somewhat saccharine world view. That being said, I have grown patient with the modern American penchant for romanticizing those who “keep a stiff upper lip” or go beyond “coping” to making their adversity into a small stage production. The alternative is avoiding contact with the presence of decay and death. Morrie followed his life-long path of buoyant optimism into his time of wasting. It brought companionship, meaning, and posthumous fame. That path, celebrated as the American spiritual ideal, is only a path amongst many. I do not believe we choose our paths as much as we follow those paths for which we have maps; maps constructed from the myriad experiences and decisions melded into the complexities of what we are.

No one has asked me what it is like to be crippled or unable to communicate as a facile conversationalist. No one has inquired into what it is like to live with the threat that another complicating ailment or accident taking me over the edge to complete disablement. Perhaps that is because people truly want happy endings. I believe in endings, all manner of endings, but a happy ending is only one of an almost endless number of possible endings. Yet, in even the most buoyant personality, there is a haunting awareness that endings do not mean completeness. Life cycles are most often truncated and tragic. Endings happen, but their times and circumstances are, at best, approximate guesses. That is what makes life both an adventure and a terror.

Nature is like that. In order to ?nd the best solution to the problem of both survival and the best route to evolving complexity, she will simultaneously attempt variations on a solution until she comes up with the best answer. Success equals survival and failure amounts to fading and death. Such extravagance strikes the human mind as wasteful and demeaning. No person wants to think that one?s life is simply nature?s throw of the dice. We want to tie our individual history up into a neat little package that is stamped “complete.” It takes courage to look incompleteness in the eye and say “yes” to what is of what we are before that ?nal expiration.

One of the benefits I have found in aging is learning finally to admit what I don’t know and can’t do. When I was young, I used to berate myself for the things I didn’t do well and work hard to learn them; as I age, I stick with what I know well and I hire those who can do what I can’t!

One of the other experiences that we can see as GIFT as we age, is that we can begin to learn to ask for and accept help. When we become more vulnerable and dependent on others, we often don’t like the idea. Most of us fight to not lose our independence.

Actually, when we are younger, we delude ourselves into thinking we’re independent, when in fact, we’re constantly dependent on others. We depend on our parents to feed, clothe and change us when we are born. We depend on our employers for our paychecks, or our customers to buy our goods or services. When we drive, we depend on the people who deliver gas to the station. The only thing that doesn’t change is what’s inside us.

Having faith and cultivating faith is first and foremost about trusting in life and learning to trust in other people.

Our ego desire is still always about autonomy. And our loss of autonomy could produce feelings of frustration, anger, and bitterness or, it could allow us to grow in our awareness of the interdependence of all of life and that indeed we are all ONE. Once again, an important spiritual truth.

It is my belief that all of us are here to grow into truly experiencing ONENESS & God-consciousness. This growth is an evolution of consciousness that when we allow it, occurs quite naturally through the lessons that life provides, especially as we age.

The soul chooses to experience circumstances that will help it cultivate an ever-deepening ability to love unconditionally and consciously embody its true nature which is Divine. When we FULLY learn this, we come to know that we are never alone.

As we age, many of our loved ones leave us, whether through divorce or death, and we may feel increasingly alone and lonely. When we are no longer defined by jobs that gave us meaning and satisfaction, we could in fact, feel like we’ve lost our identity. If we are no longer “productive” in the ways we used to be, what is our role?

These very things can become our greatest catalysts for growth. When we do our life review, we can see the talents we have been given and perhaps haven’t used fully. As we age, we have more freedom to give of ourselves without looking for a monetary award or without needing approval and acceptance. It becomes a time of true generative sharing. There are some spiritual teachings that tell us that until we reach this level of selfless giving, we have not yet achieved our purpose for being.

On the Gifts of Aging – A Meditation on the Inverse Proportionality of Physical Aging and Spiritual Vigor

By: Msgr. Charles Pope

We live in an age where youth is celebrated and aging is lamented. Generations ago, age was the “hoary crown of wisdom,” the elders were reverenced and the young stood when they entered. But in this age of the visual, this age of television, everything is reversed. I remember a line from a song (by The Who) when I was a teenager which said, “Hope I die before I get old.”

The Photo below is me at 5 years old, my dad to the right was 38, my grandfather was 68. All three of us were named “Charles Evans Pope.” Now they’re both gone on, and its just me. The world laments age and death, But as I look at this photo I rejoice for them and myself. They were men of faith, their journey is done, and my is well past noon. And as I journey in their wake, I marvel at what the Lord is doing for me.

Yes, as for me, I must say, I’m glad I’m getting older. I know, you’ll say, “At 50 you’re just a child.” But I am not child, I’m half past dying and celebrating that God has brought me a mighty long way. Yes, I’ve discovered that the gifts of God have come more alive in me as my youthful vigor has dissipated.  I see those old pictures of myself in my twenties, looking young, tan and trim, now I’m old(er), white and fat. But though my body has gone south for the winter of life, now my soul has come alive as never before.

St. Paul says, Therefore, we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day (2 Cor 4:16).

Yes, indeed, I am a witness. I have to admit, my body isn’t exactly wasting away (it actually tends to gain weight), but it surely is not the sound sleek body of my youth.But this I can surely attest, my inmost self is being renewed and strengthened with each passing day. I have become more prayerful, more joyful at what God is doing, more aware of his presence and his ways. I am seeing sins put to death and better things come alive.I am less fearful, more confident, less angry, more serene.

Inverse proportionality – Yes, even though my physical stamina is less, I get winded climbing stairs now, my spiritual strength is better than ever. At age 50, I am more alive than I was at age 20. Glory be to God! I would never want to be 20 again, the Lord has just brought me too far and done too much for me, to ever want to set the clock back again. A few particulars occur to me that suggest an inverse proportion between youthful vigor and spiritual growth.

1. My physical eyesight has become very poor. I am quite crippled without my glasses now. Until forty I did not wear glasses at all. But since forty I have come to place where, without my glasses everything is just a hazy blur. And yet, I spiritually see things I never did before. The word of God jumps off the page in new ways. There are new insights, new enlightenment as to what God is saying. I rejoice in this new inner vision that has come upon me in this second half of my life and I look with great expectation to the even deeper vision He will give me as I age.
2. My hearing has become poorer with the onset of middle age. I have had a certain hearing loss since birth but now it becomes worse. But here too, I have learned to listen more attentively and to look at others while they speak. This connects me more deeply to them.
3. I also have new insights into the people I am privileged to know. I have come to appreciate how wonderfully quirky we all are and how closely related our gifts are to our deficits. Though my physical vision is poor, my insight into the glory and the struggle of those closest to me is a gift I appreciate and hope to see grow even more with the passing years.
4. Even as my physical hearing has diminished, my spiritual hearing has become far more acute. I hear things in God’s word I never did before. I hear God speaking to me on my spiritual walk with greater sensitivity. We have very good lectors and a marvelous choir in my parish and I marvel at what I hear from them each Sunday. Faith comes by hearing, and as I age I am more sensitive to what I hear at Mass and in sacred moments. When I was young, I was tuned out at Mass. The priest was just “some dude” up there talking and the Choir, well they weren’t singing rock, so what did it matter. But God has opened my ears as I have aged to appreciate his voice in newer and wider ways. Thanks be to God. He speaks to me throughout my day and I hear his voice more consistently.
5. As I age, I am less physically able to accomplish things I once did on my own. I now fear heights and can’t climb tall ladders. I have a hard time lifting heavy things without injury. But all this has made me more humble and more appreciative of the help that others can give. Gratitude and an proper sense of interdependence are a gift I have discovered with age.  In the gift of age God has helped me be more grateful and connected to others.
6. As I age and become less physically “glorious,” I appreciate more deeply the beauty and glory of Creation. Indeed, it astounds me in new ways. Each new discovery shouts out the glory of God to me. I am far more appreciative of the present glory of God than I ever was as a youth, when the focus was more on me. Now simple things, like the color purple, the magnificence of Spring, the quiet still after a heavy snow, the wonder and awe created by watching a science channel show on the mysteries of the deep oceans. As I have become more vincible and fragile with age, the world far more astonishes me and makes me cry, Glory to God!
7. As I have aged I have discovered limitations. But this has made more humble and understanding of the struggles of others. When I was young I was impatient. There was little I could not do, or at lost thought I could not do. But, now, experiencing more of my limits I have seen compassion and understanding awaken in me, patience too.
8. As I have aged, I am more easily fatigued. I usually need an afternoon nap and am blessed to be able to take one, living as I do “above the store.” It’s the only way I can get through my evening appointments. Yet, what a gift a nap is. I am mindful of Psalm 127 which says, In vain is your earlier rising, your going later to rest, you who toil for the bread you eat; for the Lord pours gifts on his beloved while they slumber (v. 4). Yes, God does pour his gifts on us even when we slumber. And as I age a I grateful even for the gift of a brief rest.

More could be said. I am glad to be getting just a bit older. I am running to meet God, and every day brings me closer. I can’t wait to see Him. I am like a child in Mid December who can’t wait for Christmas morning. That the days speed by more quickly only increases the longing for me. Each day, each step, closer to God.

And while my body goes south, my soul looks up. The weaker my physical flesh, the stronger my spirit and soul. The weaker my eyes, the deeper my spiritual vision and insight. The duller my physical hearing, the more intent my spiritual ears. God is good, he takes the one gift and returns another and greater gift.

And the best is yet to come! The Gospel today was of the man born blind who came to see, and God said to me at Mass today, in the words of a Gospel song,  “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” Scripture affirms: Beyond these, many things lie hid; only a few of his works have we seen (Sirach 43:34).St. Paul says, When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Cor 13:11-12)

I’m running to meet God. Age is a glorious thing, bring it on