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- Artistic Creativity as Renewal in Eldering by Richard Matzkin
Honoring Our Elders | Reb Zalman: Living from the Light by Robert C. Atchley
Many of our ideas about aging with consciousness have their origins in the life and thought of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, called “Reb Zalman” by the many thousands whose lives have been deeply affected by his ideas and presence. Reb Zalman’s writings, especially From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older, and his workshops on “Spiritual Eldering” have provided a stimulating conceptual overview of how we might think about spiritual growth in later life — how we might think, in particular, about our potential for spiritual connection and our capacity to manifest wisdom, and their importance at all levels of social life. But as useful as his ideas have been, Reb Zalman’s way of being and its ongoing evolution is perhaps his greatest lesson for us.
In my own spiritual journey, I have met many people who are so in touch with the sacred that a holy light radiates from them. Reb Zalman is one of these. He makes no claim to have answers to life’s churning conveyor belt of perplexing questions. Instead, he contemplates the deeper questions and affords them the largest possible space in which to reveal their lessons. This contemplative space within his consciousness allows Reb Zalman to balance a keen, creative, and active mind with an extraordinarily open heart and deep knowledge of the history of human wisdom. He is continuously learning from deeply contemplated life experience.
Living proof that if we encourage people to be wise they can be, he has honed his “wisdom process” over decades of listening deeply to people who come seeking wisdom from him. “I am not wise until someone asks me to be,” he has said. Wisdom is not something to have, it is something to be in a given moment. Of course, the more often people practice being wise, the more likely they are to be able to find that place within themselves from which wisdom comes. And Reb Zalman has had lots of practice.
I attend a discussion group with Reb Zalman that has been meeting weekly for more than a decade. We explore such issues as the frontiers of spiritual experience and spiritual development, and examine whether spirituality can influence the world, and if so how, in discussions that range far and wide. Reb Zalman knows how to listen with compassion, to be open to both the joy and the pain underlying whatever is said. He also knows that singing and humor are vital glue that helps groups stick together. He is a repository of wisdom stories from many spiritual traditions and a master of using them to help us see an important side of the issue under discussion. His stories remind us that spiritually grounded wisdom has been a part of human life for a very long time. They press us to think through the implications of our spiritual insights for action on many levels — family, community, nation, and planet.
Reb Zalman’s own life is structured around the demands of his own religious devotion, and he is always a Rabbi. But he is a Rabbi who understands his role as one that is consciously re-created in the moment rather than dictated from an unchanging script. Although a devout Jew, he honors all religious traditions, holding that all were initially inspired by the same Light.
Reb Zalman is an exemplar of someone who lives from the Light, someone who is never far from direct contact with the Light of being. Even when he feels lost, he trusts that he will return to the Light. It is an irresistible magnet for him. His life is an uncommonly well-documented struggle to remain true to the Light, while still leading an ordinary human life. Like all of us, he has to deal with the ups and downs that come with living in an aging body, being part of a family, living in a community, and so on. For Reb Zalman, keeping in touch with the sacred Light is a source of optimism with which to resist the powers of darkness that often seem to be overtaking our world.
In honoring our elders, we not only honor who they are for us, we honor the potential for spiritual connection and wisdom within ourselves. Our elders point the way, but we each have to find our own inner path. Thanks to Reb Zalman for continuing to point the way for so many of us.
Click here to watch an interview with Reb Zalman on Jeffrey Mishlove’s Thinking Allowed (YouTube).
The Inner Work of Eldering by Ron Pevny
Ron Pevny, M.A., has for forty years been dedicated to assisting people in negotiating life transitions as they create lives of purpose and passion. He is Founding Director of the Center for Conscious Eldering, based in Durango, Colorado. He is also a Certified Sage-ing® Leader, was the creator and administrator of the twelve-organization Conscious Aging Alliance, and has served as the host/interviewer for the 2015, 2016 and 2017 Transforming Aging Summits presented by The Shift Network. He is author of Conscious Living, Conscious Aging: embrace and savor your next chapter, published in 2014 by Beyond Words/Atria Books. Ron has presented many conscious eldering programs at Ghost Ranch and other retreat centers around North America over the past fifteen years.
On one of the conscious eldering retreats that I lead, a participant in her early sixties shared something that had a powerful impact on all present. In reflecting on her intentions for her retreat, she spoke of two significant older people in her life. One, who was in relatively good physical health, was difficult to be around because of her seemingly constant anger, bitterness, and negativity. She was old and miserable. People avoided her because she was a drain on their energy and joy. The other was a woman who, while not physically healthy, attracted people like a magnet. In her presence they felt joy, serenity, optimism, peace. People saw her as an elder whose radiance and wisdom lifted their spirits. Our retreat participant affirmed her intention, on this retreat and on her journey ahead, to grow into a radiant elder rather than a joyless old person; and she shared her questions and concerns about how to accomplish this.
The aging process seems to bring out either the worst or the best in people — magnifying and emphasizing the flaws and shadow elements of some of us; amplifying the wisdom, radiance, and compassion in others. The question carried by those of us committed to becoming peaceful, fulfilled elders is, “How can my aging bring out the best in me?” The inner work known by rubrics such as “conscious eldering,” “conscious aging,” “spiritual eldering,” and “Sage-ing” holds important answers to this question. That INNER WORK OF ELDERING is the theme of this issue of Itineraries.
The journey from late middle-age into fulfilled elderhood is facilitated by inner work that is focused and fueled by conscious intention. This journey can lead to the pinnacle of one’s emotional and spiritual development. Undertaking this journey is in fact what our lives to that point have prepared us for. And as conscious elders, our service to our communities and to the community of all beings can be profound. Carl Jung succinctly expressed this potential: “A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own…” (1)
The word conscious is key to understanding the wide range of ways that the inner work of eldering may be done. It is also key to the distinction between being “old” and being an “elder.” Conscious means aware. Aware of who we really are, of our authentic emotions, talents, aspirations, strengths, and weaknesses. Aware of a growth process unfolding in our lives through all of our experiences, positive and painful. Aware of that within us which is conditioned by the myriad of disempowering messages that surround us, as well as that which is authentic, natural, and life supporting. Aware of those shadow elements in us — our dark sides — which can block our radiance and sabotage our potential.
Life Review
If the essence of conscious eldering is increasing awareness, then its core practice is Life Review. “Wisdom does not come from having experiences,” as Rosalie Muschal-Reinhardt states in her article in this issue. “Wisdom comes from reflecting on one’s life experiences.” There are many ways of doing Life Review. Some entail structured exercises to focus on challenges, learning, and growth during the stages of one’s life; and they use pen, computer, or art materials as tools. Oral history work with a knowledgeable friend or guide can be a powerful catalyst for remembering life experiences and discovering their significance. Creating a “family quilt” is the creative way that contributor Steve Harsh’s grandmother memorialized key events in the life of her family. Whichever method most resonates with us, what is critical is doing it. The awareness we gain is what makes virtually all the other inner work possible and effective. The elder wisdom we arrive at is a precious gift to the descendants who will remember us.
Healing the Past
Much of the inner work of eldering focuses on healing and letting go of old baggage. Actualizing our unique potential as elders requires that our energy be free and clear, that our psyches be capable of embracing the possibilities and opportunities of each present moment rather than stuck in the experiences of the past. We can’t shine as radiant elders if our energy is continually sapped by old wounds, grudges, angers, hurts, and feelings of victimhood. We can’t move lightly and serenely through our days when we have not forgiven others or ourselves for the slights and hurts we have experienced and perpetrated through unconscious behavior. We cannot display our wholeness when unprocessed grief keeps open wounds that sap our energy. This critical inner work is the particular focus of Julia Riley’s article in this issue on forgiveness.
When we review our lives, we become aware of the immense power of story. We become aware of the myths we have constructed for our lives as the result of our experiences — the stories we tell ourselves (and oftentimes others) about our lives that shape who we become as the years pass. We see how disempowering these stories can be when they contain strong motifs of victimhood, inadequacy, unworthiness, and regret. It is liberating to know that the stories can be changed and that doing so is perhaps the most powerful inner work we can do as we age. This process is often called “recontextualizing” or “reframing.”
Recontextualizing
The essence of recontextualizing is viewing painful or difficult life experiences with the intention of finding what in those experiences has contributed — or has the potential now to contribute, as we reappropriate it with conscious awareness — to our growth and learning. Taking a longer view of our lives, the job we lost may have pushed us into a difficult search that led to a fuller expression of our gifts. The wounding inflicted on us by another may have taught us compassion or empathy for the suffering of others. The hurt we inflicted on another may have been a teacher for us about our shadow side — a critical awareness if we are to grow as human beings. A career decision we made that we regret may have been a crucial step toward our becoming who we are today, even if the mechanics of this are not obvious.
Recontextualizing experiences that do not hold a strong emotional charge can be relatively easy. But if this practice is to truly impact our lives at the level of deep feeling and allow us to reshape the stories we live by, then we must grapple with emotionally charged experiences, allow ourselves to deeply feel suppressed emotion, and do the inner work of forgiving or grieving. At its core, recontextualizing is profoundly spiritual work. It requires a deep trust that the divine intelligence present in us has a purpose for our lives and is working through our experiences to achieve that purpose. We may not understand its workings, and they may not be what we would choose. But this wise inner guidance possesses the eagle’s eye view of our lives that eludes the narrower view of our ego selves.
Deepening Spiritual Connection
Our ability to trust in a divine intelligence with a purpose for our lives depends greatly upon the strength of our connection to a Higher Power — to Spirit, Soul, God, the Great Mystery. The inner work of eldering requires us to find spiritual practices that nurture that connection. The goal of all true spiritual practice is, of course, to help us experience ourselves and our lives in a wider context, framed in a truer story than the stories our ego selves tend to create about our lives. When we trust — with a trust grounded in the deep inner knowing that flows from spiritual connection — that our lives have prepared us to become wise elders, our unfolding stories become gifts to our communities.
Our deepening spiritual connection is intrinsically related to the shift from a life grounded in “doing” to one grounded in “being” — a shift that is a key dynamic in conscious eldering. When we make this shift we move from living and acting with the primary goal of meeting the needs of our ego selves, to living and acting so that Spirit (or however we may name it) shines through us as fully as possible. Gary Carlson, in his article “The Heart’s Path,” reminds us of the joy of courageously following a path with heart, one step at a time, with deep commitment to having our “doing” grounded in “being.”
Accepting Mortality
The world’s great spiritual traditions consistently teach us that accepting our mortality is perhaps our biggest ally in helping us to truly embrace life and the wonder of each moment. Yet we live amid pervasive denial of mortality. In this issue, physician Louden Kiracofe, reflecting on his work with the terminally ill, celebrates the power of illness and physical loss — realities for most of us as we age — to transform denial into an acceptance that gives zest to each of our limited number of days.
Creating Legacy
We all leave a legacy — positive, negative, or mixed — to the generations that follow us. Aging consciously requires that we become aware of the legacy we have created up to this point in our lives and intentional about the legacy we want to create in our elderhood. Life review and the work of bringing healing to the past help us acknowledge and build on the positives of this evolving legacy and free up the energy needed to identify and move forward in building the legacy that is our gift to the future. Here again, a growing spiritual connection that allows us to see clearly our unique calling and gifts as an elder is key. This experience of a calling, or vocation, helps us become aware of the legacy we truly want to leave and of the path that will help us realize this goal. It opens our heart, strengthens our intention, focuses our action, and taps our spiritual depths so that we bring our whole selves to the creation of legacy.
Letting Go
We cannot move fully from who we have been into the elder we can become without letting go of that which will not support us on this journey. We all have culturally instilled attitudes and beliefs about life and aging that are disempowering. Our inner work is to become conscious (aware) of these and then to let them go. We all have attachments to people, places, things, activities, ideologies, attitudes, old stories, and self-identifications that may (or may not) have served us in the past but which will definitely not serve us in the future. Here again, our work is awareness and surrender. Life review is a valuable tool in becoming aware of what must be surrendered.
Rituals of letting go, whether conducted alone or with the support and witness of a group, can be powerful tools for transforming that awareness into willingness to let go of who we have been. Eldering rites of passage, which are powerful examples of rituals that allow us to let go of outworn identifications, will be the focus of the Fall 2011 issue of Itineraries. True, effective surrender requires a deep trust that by letting go of the familiar and what has come to feel “safe,” albeit constricting, we are supported by the wisdom and life force which is calling us into a new identity and positive new beginnings.
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We doubt that you would be reading this issue of Itineraries if you were not somehow feeling a call to continual growth as you age. We sincerely hope that the contributions of our authors help to increase your understanding of the wide spectrum of inner work that will help you respond to this call. While this inner work is “work” — at times quite difficult work — it is also dynamic and enlivening. It can be the most important work we ever do. It may well be accompanied by tears of both sadness and joy, as bound-up energies are freed to reflect a growing consciousness of who we are and what is possible. Its fruits can be the radiance, passion, and service so needed by a world in need of conscious elders. We wish you well on your journey.
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Notes
1 Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Abingdon, UK: Routledge Classics, 2001), p. 112.
Crones of the Flathead by Ina Albert
Ina Albert, author, Life Transitions coach, certified Age-ing to Sage-ing seminar leader, and communications professional, shares 76 years of life experience with clients, workshop participants, and readers of her monthly column in Montana Woman Magazine. She has published articles in Second Journey, Belief Net, and other Internet and print publications. Ina co-authored Write Your Self Well… Journal Your Self to Health, an instructive journal based on the clinical research supporting the value of expressive writing in the healing process. Ina lives in Whitefish, Montana.
For the past few years, four native American women in their seventies have been meeting to share their life stories, their tragedies and joys, their concerns about aging, about children, about death, and the goals they want to accomplish in this last part of life. Two of the members are leaving, and the group is now disbanding. The author dedicated this poem to the intimacy and comfort the women found together.
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We sit as council on our lives, searching backward to find the roots of our being; looking deep into the core of what brought us to this time.
Together, we stare at old photos, trusting we will find threads that, strung together, will answer the questions that remain.
Splinters need pulling to expose raw truths.
We tell our stories to each other, harvesting their meaning one by one to make sense of our seventies, the weavings of substance to create a tapestry of each life.
It is a secret confessional.
A sharing beyond sharing. Beyond shame or guilt. Not a place for cowards, this place where souls are bared and tears are the currency of trade.
We are healthy and handsome and humbled by this time together.
A time to harvest our lives — to peer through the lens of coming old age, to choose our most valued possessions as keepsakes for our heritage chest of memorabilia.
Only our most sacred memories and nubs of wisdom will dwell there.
We are strong now. Full of energy honed with years of caring for our bodies. Yet we see creasing skin sagging over muscles, hair turning ashen.
We chart each sign of aging, of memory loss, of fatigue, the wear and tear that scrolls its record in the furrows on our faces.
We are more careful now. Careful of our bodies, our money, our relationships. Careful with our children.
Too soon we will be their children, trusting that they will be careful mothers and fathers.
Then it will be time to open our chests and offer their inheritance, hoping the gold of our lives will be their treasure.
Honoring the Cycles of Our Inner Seasons by Deborah Windrum
Deborah Windrum wrote Harvest the Bounty of Your Career in response to an aversion to aging that struck in her early fifties. Her book is about appreciating the natural cycles of life’s seasons, distilling the gifts of work, and cultivating a new season of life. Now she is reaping aging’s bounty and transitioning gradually to a new career as independent author/presenter. As a librarian specializing in instruction and then outreach at the University of Colorado at Boulder for more than 30 years, her resumé includes publications on learning and instructional design. Visit her website at http://harvestthebounty.com/.
Do you remember being asked as a child: What do you want to be when you grow up?What image did this question generate? Dressing in a white coat and stethoscope to provide care? Writing on a chalkboard to teach? Performing athletic feats? Protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty? Making music or art? Nurturing your own children? Your response probably stimulated your imagination and planted seeds of possibilities. Many of us find that one or more of those seeds do take root, and over time we embrace the qualities of the roles we imagined as children.
As youthful adults, we busily till, plant, and cultivate the landscape of our lives. We are the architect of our dreams, goals, education, work, family, and material needs and wants. We choose what to do, and we are asked: How are you doing? Over time, we notice how we feel in the doing.
And then how quickly the landscape of life reaches full bloom, and the weather begins to change, suggesting the onset of a new season, new priorities. Interest in retiring from employment may arise when our preoccupation with the outer landscape gives way to a desire to create greater balance in our lives. “The actual task is to integrate the two threads of one’s life,” the French philosopher and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote, “the within and the without.” The inner landscape and the relationship between the inner and the outer become as compelling as being busy in the world.
The usual question at this transition point is “What do you want to do when you retire?” And the most frequent response, according to Tammy Erickson, expert on workforce and demographic trends, is “Take a cruise.” After decades of employment, most of us would benefit from a break and a significant transitional event. However, the most important question is not What will you DO? in retirement or your second half of life or your third age. The question is not even: What do you want to be when you retire? The question is: How will you be? And then: How are you being?
Doing and being, of course, are not polarities and cannot be separated. Doing is about activities, and quantity counts. Being is the degree of awareness manifested, whether the activity is bicycling, computing, or meditating. We all know the difference between being hyperfocused, distracted, or fully present. When we attend to the quality of our being, the what and how of doing simply flow. This is the developmental possibility of life’s autumn season.
Each season or stage of life offers opportunities to cultivate personal growth. For the infant, growth must be supported by caretakers. Throughout youth, developmental markers that bring us to independence are celebrated. Despite the coincident doubts, confusion, and heartbreak, many grownups never stop yearning for youth’s aliveness, beauty, and promise. But obsession with youth has created an “ever-summer” culture, in which they forever explore the adolescent fascination with sex and violence — bastions of Hollywood and network television.
A never-ending summer requires the denial of winter and diminishes the developmental benefits of appropriately timed spring and autumn seasons. The sweetness and slowness of childhood’s spring are sacrificed in the rush to summer; preadolescent girls dress for sex appeal earlier and earlier, while boys experiment with danger at younger and younger ages. The gradual process of development that extends the magic of childhood into the teens is arrested.
No less important than an appropriate springtime of life, an autumn season is the developmental stage that brings us to true maturity. It need not be the staid, boring, narrow maturity which we once repudiated in those over 30. We can choose a ripeness of being that is expansive, creative, embracing, accepting. Baby Boomers are now learning that an extended transitional period is important to make a shift from working for a living to living a next life stage. Most of us who have been actively employed for decades are not likely to be suddenly comfortable with a ”restful” leisure that does not include meaningful social interaction and activities.
Fulfillment of each adult life stage is more likely when it is preceded by a period of conscious transition. And our extended life span offers the opportunity to transition effectively into our autumn and winter seasons. Winter, especially, is more likely to provide fulfillment when it follows a developmentally healthy and satisfying autumn. The fact that winter’s life-giving importance lies beneath the surface makes it no less vital and purposeful; winter is the final stage of growth that allows us to become fully who we are. As James Hillman says, in The Force of Character and the Lasting Life: “Aging is no accident. It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose: the fulfillment and confirmation of one’s character.”
Aging is, in fact, very attractive to me about now. At 61, I’m one year into my seventh decade. I’m also a full-time librarian in an understaffed, underfunded, and nevertheless striving and thriving academic library. As a professional, I remain busy beyond a newly developing comfort zone. Although, given the fact that U.S. productivity grew by over 60 per cent between 1989 to 2010, it may be that my stamina is challenged due to not only my increasing age, but also expanding expectations of increasing performance with diminishing monetary compensation.
Whatever the complex of conditions, I find myself in the autumn of my life as overloaded as my younger colleagues and filled, not with their befitting ambition to achieve, but with longing for some of the enticements of age — more time for contemplation, more expansiveness, more space for evolving priorities. Despite the media’s offerings of lasting youth, I am not interested in staying young or getting younger.
I am, however, interested in “youthfulness,” as well as “agefulness.” Both youthful and ageful are qualities of being. And one of the pleasures of aging is that, while we continue to enjoy qualities that serve us, we also are positioned to consciously choose and develop qualities that may have eluded our younger selves, including those inherent in vocations that appealed to us as youngsters.
The autumn season offers an opportunity to create a deliberate blueprint for living — to notice how we want to be in order to choose what we want to do. With the advantages of youth and adulthood — experiences, skills, knowledge, and acquired wisdom — we are positioned to become the considered architects of our beings. With qualities of agefulness, we have the opportunity to mindfully, consciously fulfill life’s cycles — to embrace the heart of aging.
As I find myself feeling urged from within to enter into a more “age-appropriate” period in my life, it occurs to me that aging can be viewed as a “practice.” There are at least two reasons to practice. When we practice to get better at something — a musical instrument, sport, or skill — we do so to acquire mastery of something. There is also practice that one integrates into life, such as yoga or meditation, not just to do, but also in order to be masterful in life.
A Practice of Aging
So, how do we make a practice of aging? How do we integrate such practice into our autumn season, which often seems to hold as much busy-ness as ever? How do we build a practice that does not require lengthy or consistent chunks of time or even a foreseeable conclusion?
Here is an exercise that can be embraced without adding any weight or pressure to your life. In fact, you may find that it lightens stress and energizes your sense of purpose:
Consider what qualities of youth and age you most appreciate. What traits do you admire in others? Which of your own attributes represent your best? What do you consider indicators of fulfillment? Allow the qualities you value to coalesce into an image or a sensation. A personified image may be based on a projection of yourself, an idealization of a real-life person, or someone completely imagined. A felt sensation may be represented with an abstract image, such as a symbol, graphic, shape, or color.
You may wish to collect pictures, or, even better, draw, color, paint, collage, sculpt, or otherwise manifest your image. Whenever you desire to soothe, reassure, or inspire yourself, experience the feelings evoked by your image. Notice and embrace each sign of aging as movement towards that image, and celebrate your progress. Claim and cultivate those feelings — they are the self-fulfilling blueprint of your ageful inner landscape.
A favorite colleague of mine, 42-year-old Andrew Violet, has long held an endearing image of himself as a wise, old man practicing yoga. Andrew finds it grounding to return to his yoga mat daily, and he believes the sense of groundedness will become amplified as he sustains the practice throughout his future. He calls it “simultaneity of timeline” as he joins his ageful self on the mat now. His image of the future yoga practitioner is his blueprint for aging.
My blueprint for agefulness derives from my maternal grandmother. Although she died when I was a young teen, I remember vividly the look and feel of her sweet, calm presence and her unconditional love for every family member. A revered matriarch, bonding the family together with her wisdom and warmth, clarity and strength, she was the steward of family traditions and provider of holiday feasts. (And, it doesn’t matter at all for my practice whether my memories are based on accurate perceptions or childish idealism.)
My heart’s depiction of my grandmother is my blueprint for agefulness. Every time I appreciate her qualities, I strengthen those same qualities within myself. Every time I savor the sweetness of her image, I embrace my own progress towards that future landscape. The traits she personifies are my vows to self, as I repeat the mantra that “I am the seed of her seed; she is a seed in me.”
Are you ready and willing to transition from summer without artificially prolonging the season? Will you embrace life’s autumn to experience it fully? Will you hold an image of agefulness now, practicing so that you will “become of age” in the wisdom of your winter season? That is aging in practice.
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Deborah Windrum’s book, Harvest the Bounty of Your Career, is an inspiring guide for exploring what has been gained from work in the first half of life in order to deliberately create a fulfilling second half of life.
The book’s central metaphor — the tree — has been exquisitely translated into its design by fine artist/graphic designer Michele Renée Ledoux. The book’s size and cover art are an invitation to pick up and hold the book, and perhaps savor it beneath a tree. The inspirational original full-color art plates and quotations woven throughout the text are not only integral to the content and experience of the book, but they also transform the physical artifact into a keepsake to be personally enjoyed and appreciated and shared with friends.
Harvest is not formulaic, prescriptive, or a set of ordered steps, and it is much more than text for passive reading. Harvest offers options for personalized engagement through a variety of intrapersonal experiences. The questions and experiences stimulate reflection, remembering, dreaming, and imagining in order to discover your own answers from within.
Interpersonal activities are also suggested, as well as detailed outlines for experiencing Harvest in small group settings. The text, activities, and artwork can each stand alone, thus appealing equally to those who prefer to just read, those who prefer active engagement without extensive reading, as well as to those who prefer to be visually stimulated by the artwork.
“An inspirational, reflective, and practical resource, reminding us in tangible ways that at any stage or season of our life, we can harvest and integrate our experience.”
— Angeles Arrien, author of The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom.
Artistic Creativity as Renewal in Eldering by Richard Matzkin
Richard Matzkin, M.A., is a sculptor, jazz musician, author, and retired psychotherapist. Richard has had numerous one-man shows, and his sculptures are in collections throughout the United States. He and his wife, Alice, are authors of the much-honored book, The Art of Aging: Celebrating the Authentic Aging Self. They live in Ojai, California. Contact Richard through the website: www.matzkinstudio.com/.
Creative expression is an essential aspect of the human spirit. In every place on the globe, in every era from prehistoric times to the present, humans have engaged in the creative arts.
The active aspects of artistic creativity involve an individual taking that which is free to be molded — be it art materials, musical notes, written words, vocalization, or body movement — and manipulating it in a way that becomes a personal expression. Its counterpart is passive appreciation, which also demands creativity. Just as creating art can evoke thought and feeling in the one creating it, experiencing that art — listening to or watching a performance, or viewing an art piece — can also evoke thought and feeling in the participant.
Much has been written about the power of the arts to heal. More recently, with the graying of our population, there has been a shift of focus onto elders. Research has shown that while certain aspects of brain function decline with age, such as short-term memory, speed of recall, and reaction time, creativity can remain relatively untouched and flourish throughout the life cycle.
In a landmark study by the late Gene Cohen, M.D., elders who engaged in group participatory visual art programs (average age 80) exhibited general improvement in physical and mental health, including reduced medication and fewer doctor visits. A study by the Medical School of New York University found that Alzheimer’s patients exhibited fewer problems, increased self-esteem, elevated mood, and improved social interaction following visits to art museums.
My own experience as a sculptor and jazz musician provides a hint as to what might be occurring during the creative act that would account for these healing effects. As I engage in sculpting or playing music, I enter an altered state of consciousness akin to meditation. My discursive mind turns off or fades into the background; I am not aware of my body; time ceases to exit; there is no past, no future, only the present moment. All that exists is fingers moving clay or the flow of the music.
One doesn’t have to be a professional artist, musical genius, or Zen master to enter this flow. My wife, Alice, a painter, and I have conducted beginner’s art workshops for adults at community colleges, taught art to children, and worked using art therapy in psychiatric hospitals. Almost invariably, as a roomful of people become absorbed in their work, the silence and the sense of peace in the room are palpable.
The act of creation is a living, breathing process. You are giving birth to something from deep inside yourself — your unique expression. Creating a piece of art presents you with the opportunity to proclaim, “This may not be a masterpiece, but this is who I am … This is what I have created!” This can be especially satisfying and empowering for elders, who see their sense of control and authority gradually slip away as they age and become less “productive.”
Another factor that makes creative work so engrossing is the element of surprise, of improvisation. As the composer composes, the artist paints, the poet writes, each note, each brush stroke, each word is an exploration that carries the artist along into the unknown. I watched a film, shot over a period of several days, of Picasso painting a portrait. In that time the painting went through numerous transformations before Picasso finally brought it to completion. This element of exploration, of stepping into the unknown, is the very essence of creativity, and it is the antithesis of stagnation. Stagnation — being bored, listless, uninvolved — can be a plague of the elder years, when the weight of disability or a “been there, done that” attitude can dampen one’s vitality. Stagnation is as deadly as any disease.
Artistic creation has played an important role in my renewal and also that of my wife Alice. Both of us possessed artistic gifts as we were growing up — skills which lay fallow as we were raising children and pursuing careers. In our 40s, our creative fires were rekindled and we returned to painting and sculpting. As we entered our 50s and felt the physical effects of aging, we began to use our art as a way to explore our issues about growing old and dying. Thus began a series of projects related to aging that brought our fears and anxieties to the surface where they could be consciously experienced, worked through, and transformed into understanding. Those projects — portraits of inspiring elder women; sculptures of old men in dissolution; paintings of elder nude women; sculptures of old couples in tender embrace; and sequential portraits of an aunt ages 89–97, showing the progressive effects of age on the body — helped us come to a deeper acceptance of and understanding about our own process of aging, and led us to value the preciousness of each present moment.
In time, we were able to add another medium to our creative arsenal, writing. Inspired by the focus that our artwork brought, we authored an award-winning book, The Art of Aging: Celebrating the Authentic Aging Self. With speaking engagements and additional projects, we find ourselves today, at ages 68 and 71, busier, more creative, and more engaged than at any other period in our lives.
Age is no barrier to creativity. Examples abound of elder artists whose creative production extends into late old age. Our neighbor, the potter Beatrice Wood, continued drawing and throwing pots until she was 105 years old. The autumn and winter of life is an optimum time for engaging in creative activity. Retirement and liberation from child rearing allows leisure time for exploration into creative resources. Elders have more life experience to draw upon to fuel artistic endeavors. Wisdom, wider perspective, and maturity of years lived can allow creativity to blossom with greater depth and richness. And that creative juice can invigorate the body, vitalize the mind, and renew the spirit in our elder years.
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Click here to view a video about The Art of Aging: Celebrating the Authentic Aging Self on YouTube.
In this beautiful book, painter and sculptor Alice and Richard Matzkin explore the experience of aging through their art, finding inspiration rather than despair. The Matzkins — now in their late 60s and early 70s — use their paintings, sculptures. and personal narrative to examine aspects of growing older: the progression of physical changes, sensuality and relationships, aging parents, spirituality, and death. They feature well-known people such as feminist Betty Friedan and potter Beatrice Wood, as well as friends, neighbors, relatives, and themselves. They both explore the older nude body in some of their work. Drawing on their own experiences and the wisdom of older mentors, they demonstrate that the elder years can be a time of growth and wisdom rather than stagnation and loss. This wonderfully illustrated book is a feast for the eyes as well as nurturing to the spirit, and it leads to a greater appreciation of the miracle and blessing of life.
The Hidden Work of Eldering by John G. Sullivan
We are not human beings on a spiritual journey.
We are spiritual beings on a human journey.(1)
In the dark days of World War II, in the concentration camps, Victor Frankl rediscovered what lies at the heart of spiritual practice. He named it the distinction between liberty and freedom. In the camps, he had no liberty to come and go as he wished. His life was bounded by forces over which he had no control. Yet he discovered he still had what he called freedom — perhaps “the last of the human freedoms” — the ability to choose how he would respond to the events before him and around him.(2)
Victor Frankl’s distinction is essentially between WHAT is happening and HOW I am relating to what is happening.(3) I would put it this way in a wisdom chant:
There are at least TWO ways to relate to anything —
a large-minded way and a small-minded way.
Choose Large Mind!
- At least two ways — more likely five or ten ways — to relate to anything.
- Some are larger — in the sense of producing less unnecessary suffering and more creative possibilities for all.
- Others are smaller — in the sense of increasing unnecessary suffering and decreasing creative possibilities for all.
- Realizing this, why would we not choose Large Mind?
Spiritual practice, by this account, means (1) being aware that we have a choice in how we relate to anything; (2) recognizing that some ways are larger, freer, and healthier for everyone, and some are smaller, more constrictive, and less healthy for everyone; and (3) choosing larger mind.(4) To come to this realization over and over — moment by moment — we must follow the advice at the railroad crossings: Stop, look, and listen!
First, when we stop, we can notice the situation and how we are labeling and interpreting it. This is the language aspect. Second, we can notice how we are relating emotionally to the situation (moving toward or away from it; liking or disliking it; valuing or disvaluing it) and then usually projecting our emotions on others! This is the emotional aspect.
Next, we can shift our response in two ways:
- by shifting our language (shifting inner and outer conversations) — letting go of one way of speaking and adopting another way of speaking.
- by shifting the emotional charge (like, dislike; good, bad, etc.) — letting go of projecting certain emotions, and, in effect, neutralizing the emotional charge.
All of this is occurring constantly. One way to characterize the dynamic is through what I call the Four Beginnings:
- We are partial; we seek to be whole.
- We are asleep; we seek to be awake.
- We are enslaved; we seek to be free.
- We are reactive; we seek to be response-able,
i.e., able to choose our responses.
Every day we are moving back and forth across the threshold where these two worlds touch — the smaller-minded world of meaning and value and the larger-minded world of meaning and value. As the poet Rumi says: “People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds meet. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.”(5)
Spiritual Practice and the Lifetime
Suppose we think of life as a circle — with an Arc of Ascent, i.e., Spring to Summer, and an Arc of Descent, i.e., Autumn to Winter.
In the first half of life, we strive to become somebody — to take our place in the world, to achieve maturity, to develop the capacities to love and to work. Love asks that we learn how to engage in relationships of intimacy. Work asks that we learn to persist in tasks so as to see them through. These are skills that bring us from Spring Student to Summer Householder.
In the first half of life, we focus on the three R’s: Reading, ’Riting, and ’Rithmetic. All are part of our striving toward mastery in the world. Or we might think of another three R’s: Rules, Roles, and Religions. In the first half of life we are inducted into following Rules, assuming Roles, and imbibing the “Religions” of the culture. By “religions” I mean more than those traditions that claim the name; I include under this heading the “religions” of materialism, capitalism, and nationalism, together with other assorted cultural certainties.(6)
In the second half of life, we release into the depth, becoming in a certain sense nobody and everyone — an empty mirror for all that is. In the downward arc, we are invited to release from attachments to what we have constructed and to rest in the Great Mystery — in the silence, in the stillness, in the simplicity, in union with the Source and all things. In essence, we release from those stories and sentiments that no longer serve. We let go, return to our true nature, and experience it as vast, mysterious, loving, compassionate, joyful, and peaceful.
In the second half, we also focus on the three R’s of later life: Receiving, Releasing, and Remembering. Receiving life as sufficient, and responding in gratitude and joy. Releasing from being defined by roles and rules and ideologies. Remembering who we are in our widest and deepest natures. At our core we already have all we need to live a life of quality.
Our deep Self reflects more and more our Source and reflects more and more how deeply intertwined we are with one another in the great Circle of Life — people, other animals, plants, and minerals. Here is a way of marking the difference between the two halves:
First Half Tasks | Second Half Tasks |
To compete | To contribute by resting in the Mystery |
To compare | To let go of comparing and rest in the Mystery |
To control | To let go of controlling and rest in the Mystery |
To have certainty | To let go of certainty and be open to each Moment |
To fix things | To allow things to be as they are, amplifying movement |
To be right or justified | To give up being right and be open to other ways |
To be rewarded | To act for the well-being of all, regardless of benefit |
To be praised | To focus on people and situations in and for themselves |
To avoid blame | To be free of both praise and blame |
The paradox is that we must construct a healthy ego before we can release from that ego. Some young people once told the great student of mythology, Joseph Campbell, that they were lucky. With their guru, they could go from youth to sage without having to pass through the messiness of finding their way in the world — to which Campbell responded: “Yes, and the only thing you lose is your life.”
Overture to the Hidden Work of Elders: Grandparents
I have written elsewhere that a first sketch of elder is grandparents at their best.(7) I envisioned grandparents as having three tasks:
- To keep the big things big and the little things little
Grandparents at their best see us in a much longer view, knowing the wisdom of “This too shall pass.”; the young and many adults often stay stuck in the limited drama of the moment. First love and first loss of love. First betrayal or experience of injustice. The world has ended. How can we go on? Yet the grandparent sees further. - To encourage creativity
Grandparents at their best can be allies of the young by encouraging them to be daring, take risks, follow their dreams. The young and many adults often are locked into worrying about what their peers will say or whether this or that is “practical” in the so-called “real world.” - To bless the young
Grandparents at their best see us in our unique core beauty. They see us as deeper than our actions; and, hence in their presence, we often become our better selves. Sometimes this is as close as we come to being loved unconditionally, loved no matter what. Those who are young or even adults often do not see one another’s core beauty. In our limited first half of life, we often freeze one another in stories from the past.
Now, let us think of the grandparenting years and also of the tasks of autumn and winter that take place in the post-retirement years — years which the British call “The Third Age.” In this context, the arc of life is divided into unequal thirds — say, 20 years as students, 40 years as householder, and another 20 years in retirement. I wish to focus on these last 20 years. In the language of ancient India, I want to revisit the stages of Forest Dweller and Sage. The responsibilities of rearing children have, for the most part, ended. The tasks of full-time employment are over. Surely, we grieve the passing of this stage of life. Surely, we feel in our bones the signs of growing older. Still, the autumn and winter are rich in inner possibilities, not the least of which are keeping the little things little and the big things big, encouraging creativity, and blessing the young.
Autumn Releasing: a New Vision of Forest Dweller
I saw you standing with the wind
and the rain in your face
And you were thinking ’bout
the wisdom of the leaves and their grace
When the leaves come falling down
In September when the leaves come falling down.(8)
What is the wisdom of the leaves and their grace? In part, it is the wisdom that Mary Oliver points to at the end of her poem, “In Blackwater Woods”:
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.(9)
This is a wisdom that bring with it grace and graciousness. For the leaf is part of more than itself, it is part of the tree in its cycles and the forest and all of nature. Somehow, nothing is lost. And much is gained when we release from smaller identities and rest in the Great Mystery.
In the retirement years, we are already on the way to releasing and returning to the wider natural community. The first-half-of-life tasks of child rearing and of the ladder of career have fallen away, and we have a chance to confront again the perennial question: “Who am I now?” An embodied subject in a world of other subjects. Awake to awe and wonder. Aware of being influenced by others and influencing others. Relational through and through. Capable of learning from all things.
Becoming a Forest Dweller begins as I open my senses and come to dwell more fully in the here and in the now. I practice being present to the humans I meet this day. I practice being present to all the earth creatures that comprise my extended family (people, other animals, plants, and minerals). All are involved in making of the earth a habitat fit for life. May we pay attention to the ground we walk on, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the sun that lights our way and warms us, the moon that adorns the night whose voice we hear in the tides. So one doorway to Forest Dweller is to open our senses and pay attention with loving eyes, grateful eyes, compassionate eyes, welcoming eyes. And to bring this gentleness to all the other senses as well.
Opening our senses re-roots us in place and re-educates us to the holy particularity of each being. “Love,” as James Edwin Loder suggests so beautifully, “is the non-possessive delight in the particularity of the other.”(10) Such delight makes joy and wonder primary in the autumn of our life. As Forest Dweller, we learn to bow to all beings exactly as they are — in their surface disturbances and in their core wholeness. To bow to others in such fashion means we release in order to acknowledge more fully; we acknowledge in order to release more fully.
Winter Remembering: a New Vision of Sage
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.(11)
Saints and sages come in an almost infinite variety — some sober and well-grounded, some ecstatic and wild. All with various blends of earth and sky.
We come to embody the sage-in-us more fully when we truly realize that we already have everything we seek. Releasing from hindrances lets the gravity of falling leaves bring us home. Remembering the whole is remembering where the three circles overlap: The Source, the Circle of all Life, and our deep Self. And here we need to overcome a persistent distortion: Our notions of saint and sage are usually too tied up with the quest for perfection — a project appropriate to the first half. So, in rethinking sage, we must turn to the perfection of imperfection.
In the Hasidic tradition, we find the story of the compassionate Rabbi Zusya, who shortly before his death, said: “In the coming world, they will not ask me: Why were you not Moses? They will ask me: Why were you not Zusya?”(12)
This is a question for all of us. In the coming life and even in this life, you and I will not be asked: “Why were you not Moses or Jesus or Mohammad? Why were you not Buddha or Lao Tzu or Confucius or any of the great-souled exemplars of a fully-lived life?” We shall be asked why we are not ourselves. This turns everything on its head! No place to go, nothing to do. Simply to be oneself as deeply and authentically and generously as we can. To be oneself with all the gifts and wounds that have come to us. With all the gifts we have given and the wounds we have inflicted. With the hurts done to us acknowledged and forgiven. With the hurts done by us acknowledged and with forgiveness sought. How difficult to believe we are loved exactly as we are, forgiven exactly as we are. And all we are asked is to share the love, to share the forgiveness with all our kin.
When I empty, when I become no-thing, then all fills me. Looking up at the autumn leaves, a friend asks: “What is the color of your mind?” I say it is the blue of sky and the white of clouds and the rich colors of the leaves.
Here are three paradoxes of the sage:
The sage is both empty and full, exemplifying sunyata-tathata. Sunyata is emptiness, a kind of openness to all that is. The sage is transparent, allowing the light to shine through. Tathata is the suchness of things — their particularity. Suppose, after a near-death experience, you awaken to see the face of your beloved, as if for the first time. Given a glass of orange juice, you taste the juice of oranges as if for the first time.
The sage’s life shows that “Nowhere” is also “Now Here.” Shows that we are in time and out of time at each moment.
The sage is of the earth, earthy, and of the sky, airborne with longing for more and ever more.
How do such sages look? They come and go — “not stinking of holiness,” as the Zen masters say. No wonder then that the sage-in-us is like a lover, like a poet, like a fool.(13) In the end, there is no way to tell sages by physical appearance. They seem irreverent, yet their compassion is deep. They come and go in the affairs of life, making no effort to follow in the footsteps of earlier sages. Mysterious and transparent, they do not draw attention to themselves. Nor do they evade what comes. They enter the marketplace. They return home. They are virtually unnoticed. “Muddied and dust-covered how broadly they grin. Without recourse to mystic powers, in their presence, withered trees come to bloom.”(14)
In the last phase of life, we release from imitation, release from a pernicious perfectionism, and rest in the grace of what is. Accepting how simple it is, how can we not smile?
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Notes
1 This is a well-known variant of a quote attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
2 See Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), p. 104.
3 How I am relating involves a meaning component (how I label or language things) and a value component (how I project my likes and dislikes onto things). Noticing what is occurring and how I am labeling or speaking of that is one thing. Noticing any emotional charge {= any liking or disliking {= is a second. For more on this, see my Living Large: Transformative Work at the Intersection of Ethics and Spirituality (Laurel, MD: Tai Sophia Press, 2004).
4 In a lesson from language, I see the “how” as pointing to adverbs {= the quality that accompanies our actions, especially that we do all we do lovingly, compassionately, joyfully, and peacefully. For more, see my The Fourfold Path to Wholeness: A Compass for the Heart (Chapel Hill, NC: Second Journey Publications, 2010).
5 See Coleman Barks (with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry, and Reynold Nicholson),The Essential Rumi (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), p. 36.
6 I think of a set of supposed superiorities which are supported and reinforced by the institutions of the culture, such as patriarchy and sexism, racism and ageism, even speciesism {= the notion that humans are superior to all other life forms and can do with them what they will.
7 For more, see my The Spiral of the Seasons: Welcoming the Gifts of Later Life (Chapel Hill, NC: Second Journey Publications, 2009).
8 Van Morrison, “When the Leaves Come Falling Down,” track 5 on the CD Back on Top© 1998, Exile Publishing Ltd.
9 See Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods,” in New and Selected Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), pp. 177–178.
10 See James Edwin Loder, The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in a Theological Perspective (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1998).
11 “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen, from his album The Future, Columbia Records, 1992.
12 See Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: Early Masters (New York: Schocken Books, 1947/1970), p. 251.
13 I am echoing Shakespeare’s “The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact.” See A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act Five, Scene 1.
14 Here I am paraphrasing the tenth Oxherding Picture from the Zen series picturing the journey to enlightenment and service. I am also shifting from speaking of the sage in the singular to speaking of sages in the plural. See Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen (Boston: Beacon Press, 2nd printing with revisions, 1967), p. 311.
Books of Interest: Aging Through Disparate Lenses by Barbara Kammerlohr
How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist
by Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Robert Waldman
Ballantine Books, 2009
The Elder
by Dr. Marc B. Cooper and
James C. Selman
Sahalie Press, 2011
Topics such as elderhood and spirituality intrigue many of the followers of Itineraries and Second Journey. In this issue, we explore two books full of information and practices about both subjects. The authors of the two books approach their material from very different perspectives. One book is a summary of neurological studies about the effect spiritual practices and experiences have on the brain. The other book is is a parable (or fable). Attending to the information and suggested practices of either book can lead to a more creative and satisfying life.
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In How God Changes Your Brain, a neuroscientist and a consultant/coach/researcher from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Spirituality and the Mind analyze scientific studies about how spiritual practices and experiences affect brain functioning. Their analysis included brain scan studies on memory patients and meditators, a Web-based survey of people’s religious and spiritual experiences, and an analysis of adult drawings of God. Subjects of the studies included practitioners from a wide variety of belief systems: Catholic nuns, Buddhist meditators, Pentecostal practitioners, Sikhs, Sufis, Yogis, and advanced meditators from a number of belief systems.
The second half of the book explores the implications of these research findings and suggests practical exercises for enhancing physical and mental health through improved brain functioning. There is also a section devoted to the “aging brain.”
The book’s title is somewhat misleading. The authors focus on spiritual practices and experience, not on God. In fact, they state emphatically that neuroscience has yet to answer such questions as: “Is there a God?” or “Is there a spiritual reality, or is it merely a fabrication of the mind?”
The authors’ conclusions are provocative and fascinating; they will probably cause intense debate as the work becomes more widely known. Those who understand research design will wonder if a different design in some of the studies might have yielded different conclusions. Below is a sample of the authors’ conclusions:
- Spiritual practices, especially meditation, even when stripped of religious belief, enhance the neural functioning of the brain in ways that improve physical and emotional health.
- Intense, long-term contemplation of God and other spiritual values appears to permanently change the structure of those parts of the brain that control our moods, give rise to our conscious notions of self, and shape our sensory perceptions of the world. The most influential factor here is time. The longer and more frequently you meditate, the more changes you will notice in your brain.
- Spiritual practices can be used to enhance mental functioning, communication, and creativity.
- Not only do prayer and spiritual practice reduce stress and anxiety, but just 12 minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process.
- Contemplating a loving God rather than a punitive God reduces anxiety, depression, and stress and increases feelings of security, compassion, and love.
- Fundamentalism, in and of itself, is benign and can be personally beneficial, but the anger and prejudice generated by extreme beliefs can permanently damage your brain.
How God Changes Your Brain is very readable in spite of the complexity of the subject matter. Readers will find the suggested exercises practical and easy to do. Especially fascinating is the information that new brain scan technology makes available to scientists trying to understand brain functioning.
The Authors
Andrew Newberg, M.D., is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also Director of Research at the Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Medical College. Dr. Newberg is Board certified in Internal Medicine, Nuclear Medicine, and Nuclear Cardiology. His research focuses on how brain function is associated with various mental states. He is particularly interested in the relationship between brain function and mystical or religious experiences. The results and implications of this research are delineated in his best-selling books: Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief; The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (with Eugene G. d’Aquili); and Principles of Neurotheology.
Mark Robert Waldman, consultant, coach, researcher, and lecturer is an Associate Fellow at the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania. In collaboration with Andrew Newberg, he conducts research on the neurological correlates of consciousness, beliefs, morality, compassion, meditation, religion, spiritual practices, and conflict resolution. Waldman has written 12 other books including: Why We Believe What We Believe and Born to Believe (both with Andrew Newberg); and The Way of Real Wealth: 365 Ways to Create a Life of Value.
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The Elder by Marc Cooper and James C. Selman of the Eldering Institute in Bainbridge, Washington, brings together practical information, skills, and attitudes one needs to live life as an “elder.” Written as a parable (a short, fictitious story that illustrates a lesson), The Elder is the story of Samuel Block whose struggles represent the challenges of all who embark on their “second journey” determined to find a creative way to age in 21st-century western culture.
On the eve of his 65th birthday, Samuel learns that his best friend and hiking partner (Thad) has died suddenly and unexpectedly. The news comes in the midst of a negative self assessment during which our hero focuses on the unpleasant aspects of his life: divorced, overweight and out of shape, missing friends who have moved away, wishing for a better relationship with his son, dissatisfied with life’s achievements, and feeling out of tune with his career goals. The negativity of Samuel’s musings almost turns the reader away in the first chapter. The news of Thad’s death seems to be the final straw.
Fortunately, the adage “Every cloud has a silver lining” is true. At Thad’s funeral, Samuel meets Ben, one of Thad’s friends from his eldering group, and begins his quest for a way to live as an elder. The conversations between the two men and a woman elder named Fawn give Samuel and the reader information and insight about how to live life as an elder.
The quotes below are samples of the dialog:
- “Eldering is not some kind of secret society. It’s more a view point, a way of approaching life — especially the last decades of our lives. Eldering is a way to view your life experience.”
- “There is a tremendous spirituality to aging that can turn losses into gains, weaknesses into strengths.”
- “Finding what really matters and making that the focus of your life. That’s where the path to becoming an elder starts, discovering the passion and purpose that strengthens you.”
- “Getting old does not have to be full of regret or bitterness. The physical challenges are always there, but it’s one’s spirit, one’s sense of purpose, that counts.”
- “People are complicated and aging is complex. But it stands to reason that the longer you’re on this planet, the more you know about how things work and what’s important. You should be accruing capital that creates wisdom.”
- “Eldering is about finding purpose through giving back to others. In that sense, it can be spiritually uplifting.”
The Elder is a short and stimulating book —well worth the struggle to persevere beyond the depressing first pages. Not only can the information be life changing, but the story itself becomes more engaging as Samuel practices becoming an elder. One closes the book knowing our hero’s life has truly evolved into a “second journey.”
The Authors
Marc Cooper is the driving force behind of The Eldering Institute in Bainbridge, Washington. His professional career includes experience as a private practice periodontist, academician, researcher, teacher, consultant, coach, trainer, seminar director, board director, author, entrepreneur, and inventor. His five books include Mastering the Business of Practice; Running on Empty; and Source and Valuocity: A Fable for Dentists.
James Selman, founder and chair of the Eldering Institute, is CEO of Paracomm Partners International, a member of the Transformational Leadership Council, a Huffington Post blogger, and principal contributor to the Serene Ambition blog. Selman is a former member of the California Commission on Aging, a past director of the Breakthrough Foundation, a founder of Growing Older, and a founding member of the Legacy XXI Institute.
Honoring Our Elders: The Sprite of Elder Spirit by Drew Leder
My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.
— Florida Scott-Maxwell
These words aptly describe Dene Peterson, not in their particulars — she was passionate in her 70s! — but in their spirit. I remember seeing Moulin Rouge with her when she was but a spry 72. The movie about a poet in love with a cabaret actress/courtesan was sexual, rocking, flamboyant, and outrageous in its rapid-fire cinematography and cutting. It left me in the dust, but not Dene, who enjoyed it thoroughly. I couldn’t have had a more fun date than with this ex-nun and distinguished elder.
In the Bible, Sarah is unexpectedly and repeatedly challenged by God. Uprooted from their home, she and Abraham must in their old age travel at God’s whim to a new promised land. She, like Abraham, is given a new name (Sarai is changed to Sarah) and — at the ripe old age of 90 — informed that she is to have a child. Her reaction? She laughs. And when the prediction is miraculously fulfilled. she names her child “Isaac” — which means, in Hebrew, “to laugh.”
Dene is Sarah, Sarah is Dene. How many times has she heeded God’s call and moved to new places, assumed new identities, given birth to new projects and new versions of the self? Born in Kentucky, one of 11 children in an energetically Catholic family, at age 18 she became a Glenmary Sister. Dedicated to serving the poor and marginalized, she worked in Chicago… and Ohio… and Michigan — ever birthing new projects. Called to be a nun, she then experienced herself called out — along with the majority of Glenmary Sisters — to pursue their service work independent of the institutional hierarchy. When the age of “retirement” came, it became the moment for new birthing — her grandbaby being the ElderSpirit Community.
Though ElderSpirit upholds the traditional association of elderhood with wisdom and spirituality, overstating the radical nature of this experiment in communal living — and its importance — is difficult. ElderSpirit was the first senior cohousing community founded in the United States. It is also the first model of a residential setting where elders of all faith traditions (or none) can use their later years to support one another, serve social justice and the planet Earth, deepen their contemplative practice, and grow closer to God/Spirit.
In a land where aging can mean isolation — or self-centeredness — or institutionalization — Dene has shown us a different model. Dwelling just off the beautiful Virginia Creeper Trail, in Abingdon, Virginia, ElderSpirit residents own or rent their own homes — the community is resolutely mixed income — yet share common spaces to eat, meet, meditate, and worship. They are engaged in outward service and inward contemplation. They live together, age together, and maintain that support through illness, disability, and death.
Dene may be the Dean of ElderSpirit, but her gift has been to bring so many together — members of FOCIS (Federation of Communities in Service), co-leaders of the community, the Retirement Research Foundation, government agencies, prospective residents, and supporters — to make this “promised land” a reality.
Elderspirit Community now houses 40 residents. It has become a national model, and a site for training communities around the country who wish to birth similar late-life experiments. She well deserves the Lifetime Achievement Award granted her at the 2011 National Cohousing Conference.
But what is her “lifetime achievement”? Herself? I know her as a person whose well-earned self-esteem is tempered with humility. “I am the first one to receive this award with but one project under their belt,” she said at the Conference, “and I made lots of mistakes doing it.” Mostly I think of Dene’s delightful sense of humor. “At 50,” wrote George Orwell, “everyone has the face he deserves.” Dene has such a face, filled with “wrinkles” which are really smile-lines. She made me laugh that evening when, visiting ElderSpirit, I found myself spirited away to Moulin Rouge, an outrageous film made more enjoyable by the outrageous person by my side.
In the Bible, when Sarah named her child “Isaac” (to laugh), she explained “God has brought me laughter; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” Let us laugh with Dene at a lifetime of joy and service. Let us laugh at her “retirement,” which was really a rebirth. Let us laugh at ElderSpirit Community, an impossible dream that now boasts some 29 completed homes.
If Dene’s 70s and 80s are this passionate — who knows what’s coming next?
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Drew Leder, MD, PhD, is a professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland, and the author of numerous articles and some five books, including one on how to age creatively and spiritually, Spiritual Passages: Embracing Life’s Sacred Journey (Tarcher, 1997). Having proposed, in the American Society on Aging Journal, Generations, the model of an ElderSpirit center, he served as a consultant during the design of the Abingdon community. He now gives talks and workshops on creative aging around the country. Reach him by email or visit his website at http://evergreen.loyola.edu/dleder/www/.
Serving From Spirit by Claudia Moore
Claudia Moore has three decade’s experience as a journalist and holds an MSW in community practice. Her graduate project — Invest in Kids Initiative, 2001 — organized New Hampshire early childhood education professionals to strike for better pay and benefits in order to insure lower turnover rates in the state’s childcare centers. She has experience in hospice and bereavement counseling and has been a student in the Academy for Evolutionaries, which explores concepts and practices of evolutionary spirituality. Claudia facilitates courses at the Duke chapter of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on the subject of spirituality.
The idea of service beyond self — what sometimes is more narrowly termed altruism — traces its roots in the human psyche as far back in time as what Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, the period between 800–200 BCE when the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid. Service to the greater good — service to Spirit — was a core value in the seminal philosophies that appeared simultaneously and independently during this period in China, India, Persia, Palestine, and Greece.
Over the past half century, the voices urging that we recommit to this higher service have come from many quarters. To note just one example — as relevant today as when they were penned back in 1964 by the hippie troubadour/prophet who turned 70 on May 24, 2011:
Your old road is rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
if you can’t lend your hand.
For the times they are a-changin’.(1)
The baby boomers, a massive vanguard of elders-in-waiting — “the best educated, most widely traveled, most innovative generation we have ever seen” — stand ready to serve humanity. Will they choose to do so? Some observers, like historian Theodore Roszak, are hopeful:
What boomers left undone in their youth, they will return to take up in their maturity, if for no other reason than because they will want to make old age interesting. Just as the Dutch have won land back from the sea, we have won years back from death. That gives us the grand project of using those extra years to build a culture that is morally remarkable.(2)
Another observer — philosopher Ken Wilber — offers a more tempered diagnosis. Members of the generation that fought for civil, women’s, and gay rights, staged war protests, and pioneered concern about the environment appear now to be gripped in a collective paralysis. They suffer from boomeritis, Wilber argues, a malaise caused by “the belief that reality is flat, that there are no levels of consciousness. We basically live in Flatland.”(3)
The problem, as Wilber sees it, is that baby boomers took a first step into a higher awareness — a further step in the evolution of consciousness — only to then find themselves stuck in self-absorption and narcissism. Like those stuck in the belief that the Earth was flat or was the center of the universe, intrepid boomers — however much they may have “stormed heaven” in places like Woodstock or Haight-Ashbury — are frozen in their beliefs about the nature of their reality and what to do with what they know. If we have the capacity to pioneer new states and levels of consciousness (as Wilber and others believe) — if we “are not human beings having a spiritual experience, [but] spiritual beings having a human experience” (as Teilhard de Chardin observes) — then what we do about this fact has implications for and responsibilities to generations that follow us.
Recent discoveries in physics — particularly in the field of quantum mechanics, along with trends in philosophy and psychology — provide evidence for an “instinct” for service beyond self and this “evolutionary impulse.” Don Beck, creator of Spiral Dynamics Integral and a leading global authority on value systems, societal change, and stratified democracy tells us:
Einstein said that the problems we have created couldn’t be solved with the same thinking that created them. And this is the hope that we have: that in the very dangerous and precarious global situations that we are in today, we could prepare the breeding ground and the fertile soil and the habitats to generate what the next models of existence will be. We have reached that stage where our successes and our failures have produced problems that we simply cannot solve, in the old Einsteinian sense, at the same level that they were created.(4)
The magnitude of the responsibility we as elders must assume may seem overwhelming. Roger Walsh, who has spent nearly a quarter century researching and practicing in the world’s great spiritual traditions (see his article in this issue), offers four down-to-Earth and reassuring insights to inform our service to Spirit:
- The discovery of our spiritual service is a process. Thinking we should know what to do is a trap of the mind. It takes time, he reminds us, to discover and then make our own specific contribution.
- We each have a unique answer to the question — “What can I do?” — because we each have unique skills, life experiences, and different spheres of influence.
- Moreover, we are human. We can only do so much and must acknowledge our existential limits. Serving from spirit is best thought of as a long-distance marathon.
- Finally, Walsh suggests we ask, “What’s the most strategic contribution I can make?” To think about this he gives us a splendid metaphor: the tiny trim tab found on the three-story-tall rudder of any 747 jet airliner. Rather than change the course of the plane by shifting the big rudder, the pilot employs the little trim tab. The “trim tab” questions for those seeking to serve from Spirit might be, “Where can I stand, what can I do to have the most influence?”(5)
We stand at a turning point in history. We have access to the wisdom of the ages and an unprecedented capacity to connect with one another. We are the leading edge of a massive demographic whose collective life experience has given us some inkling of what it might mean to be agents of social, economic, and political change and pioneers on the frontier of human consciousness.
So, what are we doing? What are we waiting for?
Among the articles in this issue of Itineraries you will find how some elders are responding to this challenge and see the shape their lives are taking as they try to live ever more fully in service to Spirit. May the articles in this issue encourage and inspire you to undertake similar choices and actions.
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Notes
1 Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” from the album The Times They Are A-Changin’, Columbia Records, 1964.
2 Theodore Roszak, The Making of an Elder Culture: Reflections on the Future of America’s Most Audacious Generation (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. 2009), p. 7.
3 Ken Wilber, Boomeritis (Boston & London, Shambhala, 2002), pp. 54–55.
4 Seehttp://www.spiraldynamics.net/dr-don-beck.html.
5 Roger Walsh, “Becoming An Optimal Instrument of Service: What Does It Really Take?,” a dialogue recorded on April 3, 2001, as part of the Beyond Awakening Community Blog. Access the audio recording at https://www.box.net/shared/static/gl42xyzk3e.mp3.
Remembering Christopher by Bolton Anthony
We lived in Fayetteville, NC, during the mid-1970s, my oldest son, Edward, was friends with a boy who lived a block away and was a year and a half younger than he was. They were inseparable companions — “best buddies” — for six years. Then, when Edward was 12, we moved to Greensboro; and though we made the 90-mile journey back to Fayetteville once or twice a year, absent the vital, almost daily contact that sustains childhood camaraderie, their friendship languished.
Over the years, my wife stayed in contact with Christopher’s mother; and we were aware how, as both our sons matured, a similar passion for photography — nascent during their childhood years — shaped and determined their later career choices.
Christopher was a stringer for the local newspaper, The Fayetteville Observer, while he was still in high school. At North Carolina State University, he worked on the campus newspaper, The Technician; then, after a master’s degree from Ohio University, he returned home to work again for The Observer, this time as a staff photographer.
Then, in 1998, some strange attractor deflected the trajectory of his life away from what had, until then, been a predictable course. He moved to New York City and from that base honed his photojournalistic skills in all the major conflict zones of the past dozen years: Kosovo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the West Bank, Iraq, and Liberia. Following September 11, he took photos at Ground Zero, then later covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti.
His photographs appeared on the covers of Newsweek and The Economist, and on the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. His work was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and honored with numerous other awards.(1)
On April 20, 2011, Chris Hondros was killed — along with fellow photojournalist Tim Hetherington — by a rocket-propelled grenade in Misrata, Libya, where he was covering the Libyan civil war. He was 41.
His friend, Greg Campbell, shared this on hearing of his death:
We talked about this special breed of journalism he was drawn to and how important it was to bear witness to atrocities that take place far from most of the world’s eyes. He believed entirely in the power of photojournalism to change the world, to enlighten hearts and minds, and to bring justice and possibly comfort to those who are suffering the most. His deepest commitment, from the very beginning, was to honor those he photographed and bear witness to their struggles.(2)
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Chris Hondros was the product of the great American melting pot. His mother, Inge, had been born in 1936 in that part of eastern Germany which Poland annexed in 1946. His father, after whom he was named, had been born in Greece. His parents, child refugees after World War II, had met and married in New York. They moved to Fayetteville shortly after he was born, and he grew up in a large house and extended family that included his father’s Greek parents and his younger brother Denos.
Everyone’s life traces back to the mysterious, always improbable, intersection of two other lives. This is true whether your parents first met on the playground in pre-school or — like Chris’s — were war-weary refugees washed ashore from the chaos of distant lands and forced to negotiate the intimate commerce of their shared daily life in a language that was alien to both. The embryo bursts forth from this fusion of two lives. To put the metaphor to further use: Perhaps, like its nuclear counterpart, the fusion creates a cache of latent energy.
When viewed from outside, Chris’s life for its first 28 years seems to move within a predictable orbit. Then, at the point of inflection, a firewall is breached and the latent energy is unleashed. In the 13 years that follow, the distance he travels away from the immigrant Greek community of restaurateurs and shopkeepers of his childhood in Fayetteville rivals the distance his mother and father traveled in the journey to his conception.
How does one explain this? How does one account for those uncommon few among us who — in dramatic and undramatic ways — seeing wrong, are stirred to try to right it; seeing suffering, try to heal it; seeing war, try to stop it?(3) How does one account for the young civil rights activists who — a generation earlier — rode interstate buses into the segregated South, for the leavening of college graduates who gave two years of their lives to Peace Corps service, for the conscientious objectors who protested the violence of the Vietnam War? How does one account for those who cannot do what most of us usually manage well enough: just see facts flat on, without some horrible moral squint?(4)
Those were the questions I pondered at Chris’s funeral, where I joined my son Edward and my daughter Shannon. The trajectory of his life had come full circle, ending here in a packed Greek Orthodox Church located not two blocks from his childhood home. The Greek community that filled the church to overflowing was the familiar community of his childhood and youth. My daughter, who in recent years had reconnected with Chris and visited him in New York, had an answer for my questions: “It was Inge,” she told me; and she sent me something Chris had written:
I grew up hearing tales of war from my mother… the sounds of American bombers flying over her village; the feelings of hunger when food ran short; the sight of her older brother Herbert in uniform and sent off to fight the Russians, [a cipher in the] columns of German troops marching east in tight formations, and returning west bedraggled and doomed after months on the front. [Then, during] the summer of 1946… all the ethnic Germans like my mother [who was 10] were forcibly expelled from the eastern fringe of Germany by revenge-minded Polish troops, who then annexed the lands…
So when I started covering war as a journalist, she understood what was driving me better than many mothers might. When I showed her pictures of Kosovo refugees packed onto rusty trains, she nodded knowingly and related her own similar experiences. Tales of barbarity from Iraq elicited from her not empty platitudes, but informed observations of how easily stable societies can come unglued, and how quickly the horrific can become commonplace. My mother, like me, sees war as an abomination, but not an aberration; she has no expectations that humanity can ever fully escape the call to arms. We will probably always fight wars, but if we do we should know what war means. Fulfilling that mandate is my main mission as a war photographer.(5)
Probably, there are no universal answers to the questions that gnawed at me. What kindles our compassion and spurs us — often against our own narrow self-interest — to act for the sake of another is always a part of our own unique story. Why this movement of grace happens in some lives and not others is shrouded in mystery.
But some lives do shine, some lives do sparkle. More than others. And Chris Hondros lived such a life. In his autobiography, Report to Greco, the great Greek writer, Nikos Kazantzakis, explains his motive for writing. As you read the words, substitute photography for writing and perhaps you will have a small window into Chris’s soul:
The more I wrote the more deeply I felt that in writing I was struggling, not for beauty, but for deliverance. Unlike a true writer, I could not gain pleasure from turning an ornate phrase or matching a sonorous rhyme; I was a man struggling and in pain, a man seeking deliverance. I wanted to be delivered from my own inner darkness and to turn it into light, from the terrible bellowing ancestors in me and to turn them into human beings.(6)
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These ruminations have been informed in part by the news I received in early July, a month after Chris’s funeral: Theodore Roszak — a social critic and cultural historian of the first rank, whose seminal book, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society, helped define the generation that came of age during the tumultuous 60s — had died at his home in Berkeley, California, at age 77.
Though Ted went on to write some 20 books — including notably The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology (a field of inquiry he pioneered) and seven novels — most of the tributes published after his death focus on his early book which:
… offered a rationale for the so-called Summer of Love in 1967 and the eruption of student dissent a year later. He warned middle Americans that their greatest enemy lay not in Red China or Moscow but “sat facing them across the breakfast table.” Roszak’s thesis held that technology and the pursuit of science… had alienated the young. Consequently they sought comfort and “meaning” in psychedelic drugs, exotic religions and alternative ways of living.
His “counterculture” neologism defined this “alternative society.” Its members, he said, were long-haired young people, many smoking dope or dropping acid, listening to psychedelic rock or protest songs by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. When they gathered at pop festivals, “love-ins,” or student demonstrations, their concerns ranged from racial discrimination to global poverty and included what are now called “green issues.”(7)
The book argued that science-dominated modern society was ugly, repressive and soulless; that youthful dissent was coherent enough to be termed a culture; and that this anti-rationalist “counterculture”… might offer the foundation of a new visionary civilization.(8)
Few of the tributes mention the book that was the occasion for my working with Ted. He had called me during the summer of 2007 with a novel proposal. He had completed the manuscript of a book and then been frustrated by a long and futile search for a publisher. He thought of the new book, The Making of an Elder Culture, as a kind of sequel to the earlier book. “Boomers don’t read,” he had been told by would-be publishers, “and even if they did, they wouldn’t read books about aging.” He asked if Second Journey wished to publish the book online.
After a 40-year hiatus, Ted had returned to the boomers because he believed there was for “America’s most audacious generation” a second act: In the “elder insurgency” Ted imagined, what the “boomers left undone in their youth, they will return to take up in their maturity.”(9) In its youth, the boomer generation had discovered “the politics of consciousness transformation. ‘You say you want a revolution… Well, you know, we all want to change your head.’” In its elder years Roszak believed it would perceive that:
Aging changes consciousness more surely than any narcotic; it does so gradually and organically. It digests the experience of a lifetime and makes us different people — sometimes so different that we are amazed, embarrassed, or even ashamed at the person we once were. Pious people often claim that religion offered them the chance to be born again. But, curiously enough, growing old can also lead to rebirth, a chance to leave old values, old obsessions, old fears, and old loves behind. Aging grants permission. It allows us to get beyond the assumptions and ambitions that imprisoned us in youth and middle age. That can be a liberating realization. Perhaps there is a biological impulse behind that possibility, a driving desire to find meaning in our existence that grows stronger as we approach death. It may even lead to rebellion, if one has the time and energy to undertake the act.(10)
Think of the gift of “all those extra years of life,” he urged us — the nearly 30 years of extended life expectancy that medical science and improvements in public health have over the past century created — think of them as a resource:
…a cultural and spiritual resource reclaimed from death in the same way the Dutch reclaim fertile land from the waste of the sea. During any one of those years, somebody who no longer has to worry about raising a family, pleasing a boss, or earning more money will have the chance to join with others in building a compassionate society where people can think deep thoughts, create beauty, study nature, teach the young, worship what they hold sacred, and care for one another.(11)
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The untimely passing of Chris Hondros — like that of Robert Kennedy who was only a year older when he died — has reminded me that a whole generation, in its youth, once dreamed of things that never were and asked why not: Why not a world without racism? Why not a world without hunger? Why not a world without war? It is reassuring to find that that ancient dream still moves some among our children and reassuring to hope their example will help rekindle the arrested efforts of their elders to “build a compassionate society.” R.I.P.
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In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field; our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.
— Annie Dillard, from “Total Eclipse,”
inTeaching a Stone to Talk, 1982
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Notes
1 Reference Chris Hondros’s website for examples of his work — chrishondros.com/index.html.
2 “Chris Hondros, RIP: How my best friend died in a combat zone.” Greg Campbell is the author of Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stones and other books.
3 A paraphrase ofEdward Kennedy’s tributeto his slain brother, Robert, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City on June 8, 1968:
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.
As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:
Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not.
4 Spoken by Cardinal Wolsey to Thomas More in the play A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt (New York: Vintage, 1962), p. 19.
5 See popphoto.com/how-to/2008/12/happy-mothers-day-nine-top-photographers?page=0,0.
6 Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965), p. 451.
7 “Theodore Roszak,” The Telegraph, Sunday, August 14, 2011. telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/8650652/Theodore-Roszak.html
8 Douglas Martin, “Theodore Roszak, ‘60s Expert, Dies at 77,” New York Times, July 12, 2011.
9 Theodore Roszak, The Making of an Elder Culture: Reflections on the Future of America’s Most Audacious Generation (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. 2009), p. 7.
The Web-based version of The Making of an Elder Culture was published by Second Journey in four installments between October 2007 and March 2008. A special limited hardback edition of the book, whose copies were signed by the author, was also produced. In March of 2008, the rights to produce a trade paperback edition were purchased by New Society Publishers
10 Elder Culture, p. 176.
11 Theodore Roszak, America the Wise: The Longevity Revolution and the True Wealth of Nations (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), p. 8.
The Making of an Elder Culture by Theodore Roszak
Forward
The news of the day — and for that matter the history of the twentieth century — gives every good reason to despair for the future of our society. And yet, as bleak as things may seem, there are other forces in play — subtle, long-term undercurrents that are shaping our lives for the better even if we cannot always see them at work. One of these, and I believe it is the most consequential but least appreciated force of all, is the demographic transition usually called the longevity revolution. That more people are living longer is common knowledge, the subject of all the television snippets about pension plans, health care, and fitness that fill in the last five minutes of the network news. What is less recognized is how deeply rooted our lengthening life expectancy is in the history of modern times, that it is indeed so inevitable a development that it deserves to be seen as the biological and spiritual destiny of our species.
The longevity revolution is a cultural sea change that does not depend on the brilliant insights of a few gifted minds, less still on organized movements or the charisma of a great leader. It is more like an environmental than a political transformation. Indeed, I believe it may be the planetary ecology finding a way to protect its cargo of life from a runaway industrial system.
As a history teacher, I have often pondered the fact that, throughout the past, the people I have been studying were born to a life span of some 50 years. By the time they reached 45, they were old. Some lived to be very old, but not many. When old age pensions were first established in Europe and the United States, the retirement age was arbitrarily set at 65 by political leaders who knew that most people would never live to collect the money. That in itself — the sense of how much time one has left to work out one’s salvation — changes everything about the way one makes choices, about one’s hopes and ambitions.
In its youth, the boomer generation discovered the politics of consciousness transformation. “You say you want a revolution… Well, you know, we all want to change your head.” I had students during the sixties and seventies who were dosing on anything that was rumored to be psychedelic, every herb, plant, and industrial chemical they could lay their hands on that might allow them to explore some purportedly higher level of awareness. But the greatest consciousness-transforming agent of all, in fact, comes to us from within our own experience and as naturally as breathing. It is the experience of aging, which brings with it new values and visions, none of them grounded in competition and careerism, none of them beholden to the marketplace.
It may be that the old have always realized that you can’t take it with you, but their numbers were never great enough, their voice never strong enough, to make them a decisive factor in society; nor did they expect to live long enough to lend their insight any social importance. Now, in ever greater numbers, we are aging beyond the values that created the urban–industrial world. That fact begins with the boomers, but it will roll forward into generations to come as the now-young become the then-old — and live longer and longer. Which means that every institution in our society will be transformed as its population drifts further and further from competitive individualism, military–industrial bravado, and the careerist rat race. It is as if the freeways of the world will one day soon begin to close down, starting with the fast lane and finally turning into pastures and meadows.
And with that change in personal life we can begin to see a subtle wave of ecological change that will help us rein in the worst excesses of commercialism, consumerism, and environmental damage. Life in “Eldertown” will be nothing like the worldwide urban ethos of freeways, sprawling suburbs, shopping malls, and gas-guzzling cars. The elder culture will find little reason to uproot forests, pollute the seas, and strip mine the Earth. To be sure, on its own, the ecology of aging will not take effect rapidly, surely not soon enough to save many environmental treasures. But that is not what I expect. Rather I believe there will come a time within this century, perhaps before the boomer generation leaves the scene, when we begin to recognize that, by working along the grain of the longevity revolution and the changes it brings about in our everyday values, we can achieve an environmentally enlightened social order.
What will our world be like when there are more people above the age of 50 (or 60 or 70) than below, people whose highest needs are for compassion, companionship, philosophical insight, and a modestly sustainable way of life? If the aging of the modern world is experienced consciously and creatively with an awareness of how promising this transition is, it can be the path to the sort of countercultural utopian social order that became so popular among the countercultural young during the sixties and seventies.
Others will disagree. They see the rise of the wrinklies as a disaster, a fiscal train wreck, a death blow to the prospects for progress. They see a world dominated by grandparent power as backward, stagnant, and unaffordable, a society burdened to the point of bankruptcy by nursing homes and demented millions. Meanwhile, there are those in the biotech community who are doing all they can to extend our life expectancy by decades, if not centuries — seemingly with no regard for the larger consequences of what they do.
Perhaps the doomsayers will be correct. Perhaps it will turn out that way — though not because it has to. My own hope is that the boomers — the best educated, most widely traveled, most innovative generation we have ever seen — are not too frivolous to face the dilemmas of longevity. On the contrary. I believe they will, in growing numbers as the years unfold, recognize that the making of an elder culture is the great task of our time, a project that can touch life’s later years with nobility and intellectual excitement.
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Theodore Roszak was the author of 15 works of nonfiction, including The Making of a Counter Culture, Person/Planet, and The Voice of the Earth, and of six novels, including the critically acclaimed The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein. The Making of an Elder Culture: Reflections on the Future of America’s Most Audacious Generation was initially published by Second Journey in four online installments between October 2008 and March 2009 before the rights to the book were acquired by New Society Publishers. Ted Roszak was educated at UCLA and Princeton and taught at Stanford University, the University of British Columbia, San Francisco State University, and the State University of California – East Bay. He died at his home in Berkeley, CA, on July 5, 2011.
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Notes
1 This essay is the Foreword to an edition of the book, The Making of an Elder Culture: Reflections on the Future of America’s Most Audacious Generation, originally published by Second Journey, first, in a Web-based version, released in four installments between October 2007 and March 2008 and then in a special limited hardback edition whose copies were signed by the author. In March of 2008, the rights to the book were purchased by New Society Publishers. The paperback edition published by NSP does not include this Foreword.
Service as Spiritual Practice by Roger Walsh
Roger Walsh M.D., Ph.D., is professor of psychiatry, philosophy, and anthropology, and adjunct professor of religious studies at the University of California at Irvine. He is a student and researcher of contemplative practices, and his publications include the books Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices, Paths Beyond Ego, The World of Shamanism, and Gifts from A Course in Miracles.(1)
If there’s one thing on which the world’s great religions agree, it’s the importance of generosity and service. “Make it your guiding principle to do your best for others,” urged Confucius. Mohammad never said no when asked for anything, while Jesus encouraged us to “Give to everyone who begs from you and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” When Mohammad was asked, “What actions are most excellent?” he replied, “To gladden the heart of a human being, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and to remove the wrongs of the injured.”
But the great religions regard helping one another as more than mere obligation. Rather, they see service as both a central human motive and as a source of profound satisfaction and well-being. In the monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, love and service of others are often given equal status with love and service of God. In Buddhism, compassion is seen as an inherent aspect of our nature, while Confucianism regards benevolence as “the most important moral quality.”
So esteemed are generosity and service that some traditions regard them as the culmination of spiritual life, the practice upon which all other practices converge. From this perspective, a central goal of spiritual life is to equip oneself to serve effectively. Even the supreme goal of satori, salvation, or awakening is sought not just for oneself alone, but also so as to better serve and awaken others.
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The Joy of Service
For a long time psychologists held a rather dim view of altruism and argued that people helped merely to feel good about themselves or to look good to others. However, recent experiments paint a far more pleasant picture. Human beings seem to be genuinely altruistic; we all have a desire to help.
Mother Teresa’s nuns offer dramatic examples of generosity and the joy it can produce. Theirs is an austere lifestyle. They leave the comforts of home and live like the poorest of the poor people whom they serve. At their central house in Calcutta, they are packed three or four to a room, and their only possessions are two dresses and a bucket for washing. They eat much the same food as the poor, and despite the suffocating Indian heat they have no air conditioning. They rise before dawn and spend their days working in the slums. It’s an existence that most of us would regard as difficult, if not downright depressing.
[Yet] when a television interviewer visited Mother Teresa, he told her, “The thing I notice about you and the hundreds of sisters who now form your team is that you all look so happy. Is it a put-on?” She replied, “Oh no. Not at all. Nothing makes you happier than when you really reach out in mercy to someone who is badly hurt.” “I swear,” wrote the interviewer afterwards, “I have never experienced so sharp a sense of joy.”(2)
The Nobel Prize winning Indian poet, Tagore, summarized the practice in two exquisite lines.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.
Another Nobel Prize winner, Albert Schweitzer, who devoted his life to treating the poor and sick of Africa, agreed and warned: “The only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
Of course we don’ t have to be nuns or Nobel Prize winners to serve and to reap the rewards of service. When people are asked to recall acts of generosity they feel good about, they are often surprised by how simple and apparently small acts — even small gifts or simple acts of kindness — can produce an enduring glow which psychologists call “helper’s high.”
Psychologists have found striking evidence that support religious claims for the benefits of generosity. Generous people tend to be happier, healthier (both physically and psychologically), and even to live longer. For older people it is their contributions to the world and future generations that usually give meaning and satisfaction to their lives. Paradoxically, taking time to make others happy makes us feel better than devoting all our efforts to our own pleasures. Psychologists call this “the paradox of pleasure,” and there are three major reasons for it:
- First, generosity weakens negative motives and emotions. For example, when we share our possessions, time, or energy, we loosen the heavy chains of egocentric greed, jealousy, and fear of loss that keep us contracted and defensive.
- Generosity also strengthens positive emotions and motives. For example, when emotions such as love and happiness are expressed as kindness, they thereby grow stronger.
- We ourselves experience what we intend for others. If we boil with rage, it is our minds that are convulsed by the anger, even before we vent it on someone else. On the other hand, when we desire happiness for others, feelings of happiness first fill our own minds and then overflow into caring action. What you intend for another, you tend to experience yourself.
But in order for service to be a source of joy for everyone, including us, it’s important to find out how you would like to help.
There is a little-known secret about service: It’s okay to have a good time! In fact it’s more than okay; it’s a gift to everyone. It is a gift to you because service is then a pleasure rather than a chore. It is a gift to others because then you not only share your time but also your happiness. After all, who wants to be assisted by someone who’s grumpy and resentful about giving?
The first step is to get in touch with your feelings and find out how you would like to help. For this it is crucial to set aside any tyrannical thoughts about what you should do, any limiting beliefs about what you cannot do, and to simply recognize what you would like to do. Often what you would really like to do is also what makes best use of your unique talents. Of course it may take time and perhaps experimenting with different types of service to find out what most appeals to you.
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Awakening Service: Service As Spiritual Practice
Spiritual life therefore has two central goals: to awaken to our true nature and to help heal and awaken others. Obviously, it would be wonderful if there was a way of doing both simultaneously. Fortunately there is. It’s the practice of what we might call “awakening service.” This is a variant of a venerable practice that is particularly well described in the Indian yogi tradition where it is called “karma yoga.” Karma yoga is the yoga that uses our daily activities as the focus and opportunity for spiritual practice. Karma yoga classically has two aspects, both aimed at changing and purifying motivation.
The first aspect is to do our service and work in the world, not for ourselves alone, but for a higher purpose. This purpose might be the good of one’s community or the welfare of the world. However, the traditional goal is to express and fulfill the Divine Will by offering one’s actions to God. Thus, one of Hinduism’s central scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita, declares:
Work is holy
When the heart of the worker
Is fixed on the Highest….
Action rightly performed brings freedom.
Of course this idea is not unique to Hinduism. St. Paul, for example, urged, “Do everything for the glory of God.”
The second element of classical karma yoga and of awakening service is to release attachments to the results of our contributions. Often when we contribute something, we have definite ideas about the outcome we want and the rewards we deserve and get very attached to getting them. Yet this is a recipe for disaster. For if things work out differently than we expect or if we are not lavished with praise, then our attachments go unfulfilled and we suffer accordingly. This is one reason why Confucius recommended so strongly, “Put service before the reward you get for it.”
How much we suffer depends on whether we are run by, or learn from, our attachments. On one hand, if we mindlessly cling to our attachments and they aren’ t fulfilled, then we may boil with anger or slide into a funk. On the other hand, we can recognize these painful emotions as a wake-up call. They are the screams of our frustrated ego letting us know that we are attached to a particular outcome, and reminding us that we can stay attached and continue to suffer, or let go and come to peace.
One way to reduce attachment to recognition is to do good works quietly, without the fanfare and trumpet blowing that would draw attention, swell our egos, and puff up pride. “So whenever you give alms (charity),” urged Jesus, “do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do.” In fact both Jesus and Mohammed used almost identical words when they recommended, “When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be done in secret.”
Awakening service is a delicate balancing act. We work and contribute wholeheartedly, yet at the same time try to relinquish attachment to how things turn out and to receiving recognition. The Bhagavad Gita summarizes the challenge as follows:
Do your duty, always; but without attachment.
That is how [one] reaches the ultimate Truth;
By working without anxiety about results.
In fact… many others reached enlightenment
simply because they did their duty in this spirit.
Adding a third component makes awakening service still more potent. By learning as much as we can from serving, we simultaneously grow in wisdom and effectiveness.
To do this means bringing a desire to learn and grow to all that we do. Each act of service and every result of that service then becomes a source of learning. With this attitude, each success or failure and each emotional reaction becomes a kind of feedback. If the project we are working on turns out well, we try to learn why. If we make a mistake (which of course we will, many times), we explore this also. Mistakes can prove just as valuable as triumphs, sometimes even more so. With this perspective there is no need for guilt or self-blame; these are merely sorry substitutes for learning. Sufis call one who has learned to accept and learn from any outcome a “contented self.” A person at this advanced stage is a living example of Confucius’ claim that “The person of benevolence never worries.”
These three elements — dedicating efforts to a higher goal, relinquishing attachments to specific outcomes, and learning from experience — are the keys to effective awakening service. By combining them we create a spiritual practice of enormous power. Through awakening service we simultaneously purify motivation, weaken cravings, serve as best we can, and learn how to serve and awaken more effectively in the future.
One enormous advantage of awakening service is that it transforms daily activities into spiritual practices. With its help we need not change what we are doing so much as how and why we are doing it. Awakening service is therefore a superb practice for those busily engaged with work and families. With this approach, work and family — far from being distractions from spiritual life — now become central to spiritual life, and each project or family activity can be transformed into a sacred act.
A beautiful example comes from Sri Anandamaya Ma, a 20th-century Indian saint who mastered multiple spiritual paths. Although she had only two years of schooling and referred to herself as “a little unlettered child,” she spoke beautifully and profoundly, and her students included renowned scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. She described her relationship with her family as follows:
This body has lived with father, mother, husband and all. This body has served the husband, so you may call it a wife. It has prepared dishes for all, so you may call it a cook. It has done all sorts of scrubbing and menial work, so you may call it a servant. But if you look at the thing from another standpoint you will realize that this body has served none but God. For when I served my father, mother, husband and others, I simply considered them as different manifestations of the Almighty and served them as such. When I sat down to prepare food I did so as if it were a ritual, for the food cooked was after all meant for God. Whatever I did, I did in a spirit of divine service. Hence I was not quite worldly though always engaged in household affairs. I had but one ideal, viz. To serve all as God, to do everything for the sake of God.(3)
As with all practices, awakening service initially requires effort. But over time the effort becomes spontaneous and service becomes joy. Gradually awakening service extends to encompass our lives and each activity within its healing, awakening embrace. As it does so, we begin to recognize who we really are, and the words of an ancient Hindu saying ring increasingly true:
When I forget who I am I serve you.
Through serving I remember who I am
And know I am you.
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Notes
1 This article is based on parts of the book Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices by Roger Walsh (Wiley, 2000). The author would like to acknowledge the excellent assistance of Marisol Palomera and Bonnie L’ Allier in the preparation of this article.
2 Andrew Vidich, Light Upon Light: Five Master Paths to Awakening the Mindful Self (Houston, TX: Elite Books, 2008), p. 139.
3 Atmananda, Atmananda, Matri Darshan (Westerkappeln, Germany: Mangalam-Verlag S. Schang, 1988).
Healing the World by Judith Helburn
Since 1994, Judith Helburn has worked closely with elders in a number of ways. She is a Certified Sage-ing Leader, active in the Sage-ing Guild at different times as Chair of the Coordinating Circle and Training Coordinator, and currently Editor of the quarterly newsletter. This past October, she shared the first SG Reb Zalman Leadership Award, She has facilitated the senior programming at her congregation for 12 years and has worked twice a month with an Alzheimer’s respite program since its inception. She has also been President of the international Story Circle Network and leads a monthly writing circle.
I came to introspection late in life. The whirlwind of life was too exciting, too invigorating for me to slow down enough to look within. For me, it was about action. I was a doer. I didn’t know that to be a whole being, I also needed stillness and quiet. I didn’t know that I needed to listen to inner voices as well as those out there. Yet, through the first seasons of my years, I was seeking I knew not what. It was in the autumn of my life — in what my teacher and mentor, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, calls “harvest time” — that I realized that one could both do and be. I discovered the Kabbalah and the story of the shards of Divine Light which gave me focus. The story explained my own desire to balance doing and being.
Isaac Luria, a sixteenth-century Kabbalist, used the phrase “Tikkun Olam” (which is usually translated as “repairing the world”) to encapsulate the true role of humanity in the ongoing evolution and spiritualization of the cosmos. Luria taught that God created the world and formed vessels to hold the Divine Light with which to finalize the work. But as God poured Light into the vessels, they shattered, tumbling down and carrying Light sparks toward our newly formed world. By doing good deeds and helping to mend the world, we are able to discover the shards and the sparks and grow closer to that which is holy.
…[O]ur personal inner work makes a difference. If we can raise ourselves to the station where the Divine can see and act through us, then we complete the momentous work of restoring at least one part to the Whole. . .(1)
Based on the premise that by healing ourselves, we heal the world and vice versa, what is the next step? First, we are only expected to do our part.
It is not incumbent on thee to finish the work,
but neither art thou permitted to desist from it altogether. — Pirkei Avot
Where do we begin? I’m not certain that it matters. However, if we are content and happy, we are more likely to reach out to others. According to a study by the British Office for National Statistics, happiness is made up of knowing oneself and contributing to society. Other studies show that helping others helps us to live longer. Helping others moves us beyond ego, puts our own lives in perspective. Positive attitudes help our immune systems. Sharing our stories with other generations connects us to the future. Our stories help others to find precedents for dealing with the Unknown. It is one way of giving back.
David Brooks states in an interview by Charlie Rose about his recent book, The Social Anima, that we have a desire to merge with the other, be it another person or even God. There is happiness in connecting. He elaborated further in an Op Ed column in the New York Times (March 2011):
We are social animals, deeply interpenetrated with one another, who emerge out of relationships…. [Our] unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God.
Grace is what happens when we let go of our egos and open ourselves. In the “harvest time” of later life, we have access to wisdom from the heart, not just the head. The demands of daily life ease a bit, and we as elders have more time to do our inner work. Even when what we work towards doesn’t happen, something else does, opening up new possibilities.
Martin Luther King put it this way: “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
Reb Zalman put it this way: “If my outer world is degraded, then my inner world is degraded.” The moral imperative for me is that I must reach out. I must give back. Eric Erikson believed that Generativity, the act of contributing to society and helping to guide future generations, was the single most important function of old age.(2)
I do so by helping people be the best they can be in the second half of life. I lead a monthly “learn and lunch” for the Second Sixty of my Jewish community. I have facilitated a women’s memoir writing circle for 14 years. I introduce Sage-ing or vital aging anywhere and everywhere I can. More importantly, I try to live Sage-ing as who I am.
One can be of service even unconsciously. I have volunteered to work (and play) in an Alzheimer’s Respite Care group meeting once a week. Of course, that is a service needed and appreciated, but what a great gift it has given me! I have discovered that my unacknowledged fear of dementia has diminished considerably. The people with whom I work are, for the most part, charming, fun, and able to carrying on interesting conversations. It is their memories which they are losing at this point, not their personalities and their intelligence. They are not conscious of their gift to me, but I am. I have learned to listen. Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot, a Harvard professor, recounts this lesson learned from Mary Catherine Bateson: “You must listen to your daughter — she is from another planet, and she has a great deal to teach you.” We must not only listen. We must continue to learn from others, old and young.
I am concerned for our planet. I do what I can — recycling, conserving energy, creating a small haven for animals and birds in my own yard, living mindfully. As I have aged, I have found that my needs and desires have lessened. I look beyond what it is that I want to what is best for the greater community. I have a cartoon from Sally Forth in which the family is planting a tree. Sally explains to a neighborhood child that the tree will bear fruit in the future — for others.
The buzz of my earlier life is no more. My energy and enthusiasm continue, but I am a quieter presence now. Making a difference makes me feel good. And when I feel good, I feel connected to all that is.
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Notes
1 Joseph Naft, “Tikkun Olam: The Spiritual Purpose of Life.”
See innerfrontier.org/Practices/TikkunOlam.htm.
2 This seventh in Erikson’s “Psychosocial Stages of Development” which is generally navigated in later midlife, pits Generativity and Stagnation: “If you have a strong sense of creativity, success, and of having “made a mark” you develop generativity, and are concerned with the next generation; the virtue is called care, and represents connection to generations to come, and a love given without expectations of a specific return. Adults that do not feel this develop a sense of stagnation, are self-absorbed, feel little connection to others, and generally offer little to society; too much stagnation can lead to rejectivity and a failure to feel any sense of meaning (the unresolved mid-life crises), and too much generativity leads to overextension (someone who has no time for themselves because they are so busy)” —psychpage.com/learning/library/person/erikson.html.
How Can YOU Help? by Robert C. Atchley
Robert C. Atchley is a distinguished professor of gerontology emeritus at Miami University, OH, where he also served as the director of the Scripps Gerontology Center. Atchley was previously a professor and chair of the Department of Gerontology at the Naropa University, in Boulder, CO. He is the author of 28 books, including Social Forces and Aging, Continuity and Adaptation in Aging, and Spirituality and Aging.
For many people, service — voluntarily giving aid or comfort to others — is a spiritual experience. The motive and action of service connects them with their deeper, transpersonal spiritual nature. The capacity to perceive the spiritual aspects of everyday experience develops throughout life and usually reaches its highest levels in later life. So it is no surprise that the spiritual side of service assumes more importance as people age.
Much attention has been given to the assertion that aging baby boomers constitute an enormous reserve of experienced people who might have a profound effect on the quality of humanitarian work being done in our communities. My thesis is that such service is primarily motivated by the fact that for many people service is a spiritual experience. There is a fundamental link between spiritual development (a growing capacity to perceive the spiritual elements of experience), years of life experience that has been well reflected upon, and capacity for spiritually centered community service.
In their book, How Can I Help?, Ram Dass and Paul Gorman (1985) assert that service stems from the human impulse to care. We can see this especially clearly in how communities respond to disasters such as floods or tornadoes. At such times, the impulse to care for one another is overwhelming. The impulse to care is a noble inclination, but it tells us little about how to care or what will be effective. Service over the long run requires that we build on the impulse to care.
A model of spiritually enlightened service begins with the need to be spiritually grounded as we serve. This means that each of us must attend to our inner spirituality. The spiritual journey involves finding and exploring our particular spiritual path and seeking experiences that open us to the vastness of inner space. As we grow spiritually, we develop levels of consciousness and awareness that alert us to the obstacles thrown in our path by self-centeredness. Ego-based service is first and foremost about the ego’s needs. Enlightened service rises above the ego to more clearly see what is needed. Moving toward enlightened service requires developing the skill needed to remain spiritually centered as we go about our work.
Many well-intentioned people find their service less satisfying than they would like it to be because they do not have essential information about the structure and operation of the field in which they wish to serve. Most areas of service have their own unique concepts and language about what they do and how they do it. “Paying your dues” involves getting the experience needed to ensure being sufficiently informed to serve effectively. This does not mean passively accepting other people’s definitions of what is good, true, or beautiful; it means thoroughly understanding the situation before weighing in with suggestions for change.
A person who is accomplished at serving from spirit is able to stay spiritually centered amid the ups and downs of working in an organizational environment, often in situations involving people who are in desperate need. It is essential to be very knowledgeable about how to work within the organizational context and with the types of people who are to be served.
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Listen to Your Entire Being
People find their way to spiritual paths and to community service in a large variety of ways. The mind, the ego, the heart, the body, and the soul can each lead us. But if we are only listening to one part of being, then we are not taking advantage of all our resources for being clear about what we are doing, or thinking about doing. Listening to your entire being means cultivating sensitivity to each dimension of being. This possibility is greatly enhanced by contemplative practice — meditation, rumination, and inner stillness and quietude. In this sense, contemplative practice is an important companion on both the inner spiritual journey and the outer journey of service. Contemplative practice can put us in touch with higher levels of consciousness, from which it is possible to see clearly the workings of the mind and the ego, our true compassion, actions that would truly be of service, and a pace that is healthy for the body.
Mindfulness and Transcendence
Mindfulness and transcendence are important qualities to bring to the spiritual journey and to bring to service. Mindfulness is being right here, right now. It is an intense awareness of the present moment. With mindfulness we are able to see more clearly what is before us. We are more likely to see what will actually be helpful in serving another human being or serving an organization. In this framework, it is not so much a matter of doing for others as you would like to be done for, but doing for others as they would like. It is a matter of doing service that is not self-centered.
To employ mindful service, we also need a vantage point that transcends our ordinary consciousness of self. Ordinary consciousness is ego-centered. We are the main character in the drama. But as soon as we begin to witness our ordinary self, we have transcended that self and can see it more clearly than we possibly could from the middle of our ego-agendas of desire or fear. To the witness, we are only one of the characters in the drama and not necessarily the most important one at a given moment.
Becoming Wisdom and Compassion in Action
Being wise and having compassion are not all-or-nothing. They are qualities that exist in degrees. They are not something we have, they are capacities we can develop. They are qualities that we might be able to bring into being to a given situation. If we have cultivated wisdom and compassion, then we have a greater capacity to manifest those qualities, but this happens in the present moment. Whether we can manifest wisdom and compassion depends on how centered we can remain. When we are in a situation of service, we are usually called to be wise and to be compassionate. How well we can do this depends a great deal on how long we have been practicing wisdom and compassion.
Often we think of service as something that involves volunteering or working within an organizational context. However, service is really an intention that we can take with us into a wide variety of situations we find ourselves in. What would happen if we went joyfully about our daily lives seeing every person as someone we could potentially serve, in however small a way? What would happen if we took every opportunity to tend our planet and our environment? Many times these are not big programs or long-term tasks but instead are things we can do moment, by moment, by moment. It only takes a few minutes to deeply listen to someone who needs a receptive ear; it only takes a few seconds to pick up a piece of trash. The feeling of service is something that happens in the present moment, whether you are doing it in an organizational context or purely on your own.
Paying Dues
Each new service environment we enter has its own language and customs, and we need to give ourselves time to assimilate these elements. Otherwise we risk behaving in ways that seem arrogant, naïve, or clueless to those already working in the environment. Curiosity and humility provide a useful stance from which to pay one’s dues and earn the respect of others in the environment. Be careful about assuming that knowledge from another field can be readily adapted to a new situation. Ask lots of questions and ask for help learning the ropes.
Much of our service occurs in an organizational context. What are the mission and vision of the organization? What values serve to anchor the operation of the organization? What are the major goals of the organization? What outcomes does the organization seek? To what extent are the clients involved in setting goals? Who are the major stakeholders in the success of the organization? These and many other questions create a big picture within which your work will take place. It’s important to know how your work fits into the whole.
Take Care of Yourself
Effective service is based in a balance between caring for others and caring for oneself. We all need rest, nourishment, and perspective if we are to be able to serve over the long run. Rest is not just sleep, although sleep is very important. Rest also occurs when we pace ourselves so we are not living in a perpetually rushed state. Nourishment of the body is equally important, but so is nourishment of the mind and spirit. Contemplative reading of sacred texts or books and articles on spiritual themes is an example of a practice that nourishes the mind. Meditation is an example of a restful practice that nourishes the spirit. Leading a contemplative life aimed at nurturing the whole person provides a perspective that allows us to bring enough love to our acts of service that we can endure the pain of compassion.
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Does Life Stage Matter?
If we think about stages of adulthood in terms of issues and challenges of young adulthood, middle age, later adulthood, and old age, then there are major differences in (1) competition from interests other than community service, (2) effects of the amount and type of life experience, and (3) interest in an intentional spiritual journey.
In young adulthood, people often focus on finding a livelihood that is right for them and making decisions about mate selection and family formation. By the time people reach middle age, their job and family responsibilities often become routine, perhaps still demanding but well within their capacity, and opportunities for community involvement often increase. In later adulthood, having launched children into adulthood and having retired from the workforce can bring increased freedom to choose a life of community service. In old age, many people maintain their involvement in community organizations, especially religious organizations, and some find themselves serving as sages and spiritual elders.
In terms of the intersection of spirituality and community service, young adults often experience strong pressures to concentrate on employment and family, both of which can mobilize the impulse to care. For many young adults, issues concerning the meaning of life have not yet stimulated them to think about a conscious spiritual journey. By the end of young adulthood, most people have had enough experience living with the results of their own actions to have deep respect for the difficulties of deciding a right course of action.
By middle age, many adults have begun to question our materialistic culture’s definitions of the good life. Many have followed society’s prescription for life satisfaction, only to find the results less than satisfying. They may then embark on a search for meaning, and the world’s wisdom traditions offer many spiritual paths for finding it. At the same time, increased opportunities for community involvement and service can provide an experience of meaning through service. The spiritual journey and the journey of service usually complement one another.
Later adulthood can also bring a need for new direction. Those who did not develop an orientation to serving from spirit in midlife may find themselves drawn to it later, as child launching and retirement create opportunities to rethink one’s lifestyle. After a period of resting up from the demands of middle age, many people at the beginning of later adulthood begin a period of experimenting with various ways to lead a satisfying life. Eventually, some settle into a life focused around community service.
In old age, there are adults who are uniquely qualified to serve as sages and/or spiritual elders — individuals who combine a deep spiritual connection, insights based in their considerable life experience, and concern for nurturing the upcoming generations of adults. As parents, many spiritual elders help ease the transition of their offspring into later adulthood. They serve as role models and mentors for middle-aged and older adults as well as for young people. Spiritual elders continue to participate in the life of the community, but they often have moved beyond the need to take an operational leadership role.
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Bon Voyage
I’ve covered a lot of ground in this essay, but I hope it gives you food for thought as you think about your own journey of spiritual development and how it ties into your impulse to care for others and our planet. If you want further reading on spiritually grounded service, How Can I Help?, by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), is an excellent place to start.
Answering Our Call From the Future by Paul J. Severance
Paul J. Severance founded United Senior Action of Indiana in 1979 and served as executive director until his retirement in 2004. He has also served on both the board and executive committee of the National Coalition of Consumer Organizations on Aging (a unit of the National Council on Aging) and as a member of the Consumer Action Board of the Medicare Rights Center. Currently, Severance is board chair for the Sage-ing Guild, a national organization devoted to conscious aging and the teachings of Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and he is developing his own conscious aging educational organization, The Center for the New Elder.
There is a principle which anthropologists tell us has operated in our societies for over 99 percent of human history. This principle has been central to human societies scattered throughout the world — from the Kalahari Desert of Africa to the pueblos of the American Southwest, from the rain forests of South America to the Arctic North.
The principle:Elders have a special responsibility for the young people of the tribe and generations as yet unborn. For eons, elders have served as mentors and initiators. Elders have carried special responsibility to speak for future generations. In the tribal councils of the Iroquois Confederation, elders call attention to the provision of the Great Law that says “In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation…”
As elders, when we connect with spirit, we are drawn to serve those coming behind us. That is the essence of legacy. If we listen, we will hear a call from the future.
In the 300 or so years since the beginning of the industrial revolution (that’s about four-fifths of 1 percent of human history) the traditional role of elders in society has greatly diminished. Our youth-oriented cultures are more and more dominated by short-term thinking and immediate gratification. As a result, in this relative blink of an eye, we have managed to gravely threaten the future of life as we know it on our planet.
Richard Leider eloquently underlines the urgency: “We cannot wait for the wise ones to come. We must become the new elders.”
Many of us fulfill the role of elders in our families — at least to the extent that is possible given how so many families are dispersed around the country. But the power of cultural messages makes it difficult for us even to hear our call to serve future generations beyond our family.
The barriers to fulfilling our role as the wise elders of our tribe — and our tribe is all humanity: we are all in this together — are both internal and external. The external barrier is that society does not look to us to play that role. It fact, it tends to ignore us if we try — unless we enter that role with great stature, like, for instance, Jimmy Carter.
The internal barrier flows from the messages we receive from our culture: First, we do not develop our wise elder qualities, because our culture does not recognize or encourage that. Second, we do not see ourselves as capable of making a significant difference in the world. Internalizing the cultural message that we are over the hill, we don’t look for opportunities to make a difference for future generations.
We CAN, however, break free of this cultural conditioning. In our lifetimes we have seen African Americans and women reject the cultural limitations placed on them. For the sake of our grandchildren and their grandchildren, we need to reject the culture’s view of elders and accept the call of Spirit to take responsibility for future generations.
How do we do that?
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Developing Our Elder Qualities
It came naturally to elders in earlier societies to become the wise elders of the tribe: The wise elders that preceded them were their role models; their societies expected them to be wise elders in their older years.
We, on the other hand, must consciously develop the qualities of the wise elder. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi puts it this way: “People don’t automatically become sages simply by living to a great age. They become wise by undertaking the inner work that leads in stages to expanded consciousness.” In his seminal book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New View Of Growing Older, Reb Zalman provides a roadmap for that conscious development whose elements include:
- Life review. We certainly learn from the experience of our living, but gaining the full wisdom contained in those years of experience requires reflection.
- Healing the resentments, bitterness, and anger which we may have accumulated through our lives. These truly wall us off from the wisdom we are capable of.
- Forgiving others and forgiving ourselves are particularly potent forms of healing.
- Coming to terms with our mortality. Fear of death and being in denial of our own death are important barriers to wisdom.
- Clarifying our values and beliefs. A process of stating and examining our values and beliefs will clarify and deepen them — which not only adds to our wisdom, but enables us to communicate it to others.
- Developing/deepening our spiritual practice (however we pursue this) helps us get in touch with our deepest wisdom.
As we become wise elders and live our day-to-day lives from that place of awareness, wisdom, and compassion, we affect all of those we come in contact with. Those ripples extend into the future in ways we cannot know about, but we can be confident we are making a contribution every day.
Beyond this essentially inner work is a further obligation, which is to discern and fulfill our own unique responsibility to future generations.
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Discerning Our Call from the Future
How does each of us discern our special call from the future? A good place to start is noticing what concerns us deeply and what we passionately hope for. Think about the generation of your grandchildren’s grandchildren — in your community, your nation, the world. What are your greatest hopes for them? What concerns or fears do you have about the world they will be born into?
These are questions that call for an emotional response, not a logical response. Never mind at this stage whether you think there is anything you can do about it. Just notice what really touches you deeply. Really spend time with these questions, and listen. If the answers are not immediately clear, stay with them.
When you have some clarity about your hopes and concerns for future generations, it’s time to switch gears and think about yourself. Spend some time with two questions:
- What are your best talents? What are you particularly good at? What comes easily to you that may be difficult for others?
- What do you love to do? (Another window into your special gifts.)
Now it’s time to bring your creativity into play. You now have the ingredients to create a purpose for your third age. I don’t have a logical formula for this. It is truly a creative process. It will be your unique concoction that combines your hopes and concerns for future generations with your own talents and what you love to do. Again, let this percolate. This is a spiritual process — not to be rushed. Sitting quietly with the question is essential for most of us.
The biggest barrier to identifying your purpose will be an inner critic that says “I could never make a difference on that. The challenge is too big, and my talents are too small.” Ignore that voice at this stage. The place for realism will come at the stage of developing your specific mission (more on that later). For now, it’s just a matter of developing a sense of purpose. You don’t have to single-handedly solve the problem you’re concerned about or bring the dream you have into reality. We’re not talking about you becoming the Lone Ranger for the world. We’re talking about developing a sense of purpose which will guide you in defining a mission which will make a difference.
Your call from the future is the sense of purpose you have developed. The future needs you to put your strengths to work on behalf of generations to come.
I suggest developing a two-part statement of purpose: In the first part you name the problem you are deeply concerned about; in the second part you identify the talent(s) you want to utilize. So your purpose statement doesn’t talk about what you’re going to do, it simply identifies the problem or dream you want to address and what you are going to bring to the table, so to speak — the knowledge, skills, and assets that you will use. Here is an example:
My purpose is to attack the problem of climate change which threatens the well-being of future generations by dedicating my problem-solving skills and my motivational skills to making a difference.
A word about purpose before we move on to talking about what you can do to fulfill your sense of purpose. Some thinkers urge us to identify a single life purpose for our-selves. I am simply urging you to develop a purpose for your third age that addresses your responsibility for future generations. If this occurs to you in the context of a single life purpose, that’s great. If not, that’s also great. It’s having purpose as a central factor in your life that is important.
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Answering Your Call from the Future
Lastly we turn to the issue of how to put your purpose into action. I believe that to have power, we must translate our purpose into mission. I use “mission” here in the sense of Mission: Impossible. In other words, a mission is a project to achieve a specific goal.
While purpose is at least relatively constant, your mission exists until it is accomplished — or abandoned in those instances (rare, we hope) that you become convinced that it cannot be accomplished. Then it is done and you create a new mission.
Here’s where realism comes in. You want a mission that has a reasonable chance of being achieved. An achievable goal is a powerful motivator — it will keep you going when things get tough.
A caution here: I know from my experience of 35 years in working with people to solve problems in their communities that people always underestimate their ability to make a difference. So push yourself to adopt a mission that is more challenging than you might initially think is achievable. There is an art to this, and you’ll get better as you go.
A critical decision in adopting a mission is whether to make it a personal mission or to come together with a few others who resonate with your purpose and come up with a group mission. A group multiplies the power of the individual members. As anthropologist Margaret Meade observed, “Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”
It often requires research to decide on a mission, and more research to develop your strategy and tactics for accomplishing your mission.
Given the sample purpose stated above, here are some possible missions in line with that purpose:
- My mission is to reduce my carbon footprint by 50% by using my planning skills and my dedication.
- My mission is to submit at least one letter to the editor to publications in my community discussing what elders can do to help stabilize the environment.
- My mission is to organize a committee in my church to create a recycling program.
- My mission is to get a curbside recycling program adopted by the City Council by organizing a group to carry out a letter writing and publicity campaign.
- My mission is to work with my Sierra Club to pass state legislation supporting mass transportation.
Obviously, the number of possible missions is huge. Come up with one that utilizes your special skills, knowledge, and talents, and will involve doing something you love that not only will make a difference, but will inspire others to undertake their missions.
By now, you might guess my mission: To use my writing and presenting skills to inspire 1,000 elders to adopt a mission to make a difference for future generations.
I would love to hear about your mission for future generations, or just what you are thinking about that. And we can create ways to support each other, such as a MasterMind group, where we provide each other with ideas, encouragement, and accountability. Let me know if you are interested in that or have other ideas to suggest.
Let us become the new elders who create a powerful movement to make a difference for our seventh generation.
Pentecost with Andrew Harvey: Thoughts on Sacred Activism by Claudia Moore
Claudia Moore has three decade’s experience as a journalist and holds an MSW in community practice. Her graduate project — Invest in Kids Initiative, 2001 — organized New Hampshire early childhood education professionals to strike for better pay and benefits in order to insure lower turnover rates in the state’s childcare centers. She has experience in hospice and bereavement counseling and has been a student in the Academy for Evolutionaries, which explores concepts and practices of evolutionary spirituality. Claudia facilitates courses at the Duke chapter of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on the subject of spirituality.
Everyone whose eyes are open knows the world is in a terrifying crisis. As many of us as possible need to undergo a massive transformation of consciousness and to find the sacred passion to act from this consciousness in every arena and on every level of reality.
— Andrew Harvey
Over a lifetime, certain events blaze forth like beacons that mark turns on our path. For me, one such event took place on the Feast of the Pentecost, May 15, 2005. In search of the spark to rekindle the dry tinder of rote weekly religious worship, this particular morning I’d driven to a neighboring town where an alternative faith group met in a strip mall storefront “chapel” that had recently undergone its own conversion experience.
Unhappy about the status quo of my spiritual life, I knew that the heart of my discomfort was that I desired to serve Spirit, though I didn’t know what that might mean. I had no clue of how exactly my request for clarity was about to be answered as I made my way into the building and found a seat. The roar of the enthusiastic welcome that greeted Andrew Harvey, the guest speaker that morning, suggested that something unusual was about to unfold.
For those unfamiliar with his life and work, Andrew Harvey is an internationally acclaimed poet, novelist, translator, mystical scholar, and spiritual teacher. Harvey has published over 20 books including The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism and Heart Yoga: The Sacred Marriage of Yoga and Mysticism. In addition to exploration and explication of Rumi and Sufi mysticism, he collaborated with Sogyal Rinpoche and Patrick Gaffney in the writing of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Harvey was a Fellow of All Souls College Oxford from 1972–1986 and has taught at Oxford University, Cornell University, The California Institute of Integral Studies, and the University of Creation Spirituality, as well as various spiritual centers throughout the United States. He was the subject of the 1993 BBC film documentary The Making of a Modern Mystic. He is the Founder of the Institute for Sacred Activism in Oak Park, Illinois, where he lives.
On that drear New England Sunday, Harvey began softly but quickly turned up the heat:(1)
I’d like to share a practical vision with you of what being a mystical activist in a time like this really means. I beg you to listen — from my heart to your heart — because if you don’t listen now, the crises that are coming will make it even harder to listen. It is extremely important to realize that we are not going to get out of this crisis… We will not avoid the bill for our monstrous shadow. We are going into storms that will shake humanity in unparalleled ways. Unless you and I are strong now, those storms will threaten us with madness and despair.
The divine work I’m offering to you is not luxury. It’s not something you can decide to do or not. It is something that if you hear what I’m trying to say to you on this day of Pentecost, you will realize it is something you have got to do to stay clear yourself and to be useful to others in any serious way at this moment. True prophets bring warnings and empowerments. And the Mother herself brings warnings and empowerments.
There is no authentic spirituality in a time like this without a commitment to do something. You are the most privileged race that’s ever been on the Earth. You belong to the most powerful nation on this Earth, which is responsible for a quarter of the emissions that are causing global warming and for a foreign policy that is hurtling the world towards Armageddon. It is time that we of the West wake up and claim our divinity, not just inwardly but in a conscious act of self-donation to making ourselves radioactive nuisances at a time when we have to turn up as real people or be guilty of the matricide of the planet.
Harvey closed the morning service with these words: “What is being asked of us by the Mother, by the flames, is that we stand in the middle of this apocalypse to see it for what it is, to see the birth and to know the birth in ourselves, to give ourselves over to the birth, and then, to stand in great passion and great joy, with great energy and give and give and give and serve and serve and serve and become, at last, truly authentic and truly divine.”
Thunderous applause signaled the close of the service. Whoever this guy was, I knew without doubt he spoke in tongues of fire. No longer a dusty Bible story, Pentecost had just become live in Technicolor for me. Reeling, I made my way to the table in the lobby where I bought a ticket for the afternoon workshop, which would delve more deeply and more practically into Harvey’s concept of “Sacred Activism.” As I sat in my car in the parking lot waiting for the doors to open once more, I remembered the adage, “Be careful what you wish for…” The irony that my prayer for a spirit-igniting spark was answered on that Pentecost in the form of a sacred activist wielding a blowtorch wasn’t lost on me.
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Over the course of the afternoon, Harvey outlined what we each must do to become sacred activists. As I listened, I thought about what had seemed to be a mysterious impetus that led me to return to college at age 50 to complete two degrees in social work. For an also unknown reason, I chose to specialize in community organization. Courses that focused on how to help people come to consensus, to strategize for empowerment, and to come to victory for the greater good somehow resonated deeply. Though unable to see an exact way I could use the education I’d acquired in combination with what might be described as eclectic life experience, after hearing Harvey’s message, I sensed that soon enough, I’d find a way to live my service to Spirit as some sort of elder sacred activist.
However, along with this revelation, some significant questions took form. What does it mean to be an elder in a culture rife with ageism? What does it mean to be part of a demographic of people turning 65 at the rate of 8,000 per day? While I have no definitive answers to these questions, I have observations to offer based upon my experience working with elders and my experience of my own aging.
Not so long ago, I worked in an assisted living facility. Make that to read “warehouse-for-elders-who-don’t-yet-require-full-nursing-care-but-their-families-for-some-reason-don’t-want-them-at-home.” The most difficult aspect of my job was to witness the effects of isolation and the sense of utter purposelessness so many of the residents voiced. These were men who had headed some of the biggest corporations in the country. These were women who ran hugely successful volunteer organizations. These were men and women who knew how to balance budgets, among other significant skills, people who knew how to “make things happen.” Their primary activities in this facility were tea parties, crafts, bingo games or, the very worst, sitting by the window where they stared at nothing. I hated to see this waste of their life experience, wisdom, and willingness to return to the marketplace, as the Zen ox-herding tale describes, with help-bestowing hands, if not in active duty at least as consultants — wise elders.
I found and continue to find comfort that there are no signs that say “Need Not Apply” on the door marked “Sacred Activism” for those of us over 65. In fact, and as a proponent of the adage “Old age and treachery trumps youth and beauty,” I believe that though any and all may engage in sacred activism, only the seasoned metal that has endured the most intense flame is destined to become the vehicle for healing and transformation so desperately required in our world today.
In addition, the sheer bulk of the numbers suggests that elders are a next vast “natural resource” to be tapped and utilized for great good. This demographic of elders around the globe is ripe and ready to undergo “the massive transformation in consciousness” to which Harvey calls us — a shift away from the limits of materialism in which we seem ensnared to a consciousness open to the infinity of Spirit.
The down-to-earth words of Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers, point the way for those willing to become pioneers in this shift in consciousness:
Older people are not just card-carrying members of Leisure World and mid-afternoon nap-takers. We are tribal elders, with an ongoing responsibility for safe-guarding the tribe’s survival and protecting the health of the planet. To do this, we must become society’s futurists, testing out new instruments, technologies, ideas, and styles of living. We have the freedom to do so, and we have nothing to lose.
Harvey urges us to find our sacred passion. To do this, he warns us not to follow our bliss but, rather, to follow our heartbreak. What prevents us from doing this? Why do we find ourselves paralyzed, contracted with fear as we survey the rapidly escalating chaos before us?
In answer to the matter of fear, I suggest — and not glibly — that fear is a four-letter word like many others — good, hope, love, to name a few. A popular definition of “F.E.A.R.” suggests this unpleasant emotion is nothing more than false evidence appearing real. One of the great gifts of elderhood lies in the fact that we would not have arrived at this point in life had we not stood nose to nose with fear in about all of the forms it can take, not the least of which is that of death. Remember Maggie Kuhn: We’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain as we step into our role as tribal elders, sacred activists.
Yes, the crises we face are many — the insanity of political discourse, the fragility of global economies, the collapse of institutional structures that dispense such “goods” as medicine, education, and law. In combination with staggering unemployment and environmental devastation, the choice of “Leisure World and afternoon naps” may well appear attractive. However, as Joe Lewis reminds us, we can run but we can’t hide. Elder sacred activists understand that to hide in the face of global crisis is not an option. How many times have we heard the saying, “We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for”?
The authentic spirituality to which Harvey is calling us demands a commitment to do something: to follow our heartbreak, not our bliss. If crisis and opportunity are two sides of the same coin, what is the one opportunity that masquerades as a crisis — the opportunity that breaks our hearts — here, now? Why stand on the sidelines, overwhelmed by the number and immensity of the challenges our culture faces? Identifying a commitment to one particular issue is unlikely to require that we think long or hard. In fact, each person who has achieved elder status has likely devoted considerable time, energy, and treasure to at least one source of heartbreak over the course of their lifetime, either through their professional or personal experience.
Wisdom gleaned in the trenches is invaluable, especially if elder sacred activists align their efforts as a global collective. Could this not spark the massive transformation in consciousness that Harvey is urging? Chaos theory tells us that any small, localized disturbance in one part of a complex system creates widespread effects throughout the whole system — the “butterfly effect.” As I write these words, I wonder about the effect if, tomorrow morning, all over the globe, elders awoke to the power of their sacred activism and flapped their wings. What if each one of us engaged in one action followed by another and another to heal the issue that breaks our hearts? What magnitude of tsunami would such a wave of action create on behalf of the greater good?
While certainly tinted by the urgency Harvey voices, the vision I hold as an elder sacred activist reaches across time to embrace an inevitable infinity. The collective consciousness of our species has been evolving for a long time. Read the opening verses of the third book of The Mahabharata(2), written in the 4th century BCE, and you will find its description of the chaos threatening to engulf the Earth eerily contemporary. Harvey’s dire warning that our species is both out of time and out of grace is meant to prod us to action. However, against his dire prediction, I wish to suggest that the notion that “the end is near” works on one level only, that of the material world.
Not being much of a “Material Girl,” my elder eyes see through the terrifying and chaotic illusion in the reality around me and find the shape a deeper truth. “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience,” Teilhard de Chardin observed. Thus, what does or doesn’t happen to human inhabitants and the planet becomes irrelevant. The variable that does have eternal relevance here though, along with the invitation Andrew Harvey issued in his Pentecost workshop, is quite simply that of our dedication to live in service of Spirit.
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Notes
1 I include the somewhat lengthy direct quotations, transcribed from tapes and CDs of Harvey’s presentation, to capture the palpable urgency of his message.
2 The Mahabharata, Book 3 Vana Parva, Section CLXXXIX, Kisari-Mohan Ganguli (tr.) (1885–1896). http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m03/m03189.htm#fr_46
Everyday Mysticism by Carol Cober
After 30 years managing mental health and rehabilitation programs, Carol Cober now combines her work as a researcher at Westat Inc. with her private practice as a body-centered therapist at a wellness center. Her work at AARP on wellness, widowed persons programs, and long-term care led to her current research evaluating aging in community and preventing elder abuse. She co-leads mindful watercolor painting retreats, incorporating Rosen Method bodywork, at Blueberry Gardens, a Wellness Center located on an organic blueberry farm in Ashton, Maryland.
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
— Franz Kafka
It inspires me to witness what can happen if we are still enough and open enough to the inward process. Connecting with what is deep within us opens up possibilities. Into the expanded awareness that Silence creates, there arises something new. Although we may not approach a time of inner exploration with any outcome in mind, this often is the result. I believe ordinary or everyday mystics learn how tending this inner process leads to outer connection, outer service.
Centuries ago the Desert Fathers urged people to learn from Silence, because it can lead us back to our true selves. My Quaker contemporary J. Brent Brill has similar advice: “Holy Silence calls us to lives of justice, kindness and humility, walking with God. Holy silence is a way towards sacramental living.”
Some find a gateway to deep knowing in childhood, perhaps from their experience of nature or from music or art. For others, the pull toward discernment arrives after times of difficulty and great struggle. For others still, it is an outgrowth of community. It seems that both inspiration and desperation will get us there.
Spiritual development is a process. We are most familiar with its personal component. But the communal component is equally important. Our longing to know, our curiosity to seek information, grows out of connection, Parker Palmer argues: “Knowing of any sort is relational, animated by a desire to come into deeper community with what we know.” He urges us to look beyond knowledge inspired by pure curiosity or a desire to control. Another kind of knowledge is open to us, “one that begins in a different passion and is drawn to other ends.” This knowledge originates in compassion or love. The compassion or love that Parker alludes to includes not just the mind, but embraces the body, the heart, and the community connections in our environment.
For those whose inner work is prompted by challenges or sufferings, community can offer profound comfort and support. I found a dear spiritual home at the Quaker Meeting; resting within Silence among others salved the raw and tender losses deep within. Community can be formal or informal. It might also include a group of individual supporters we invite to accompany us on our journey, similar to the many helpers I found along the way: a Rosen Method practitioner who introduced me to focused bodywork, a Jungian Analyst, an acupuncturist, and various teachers of yoga and tai chi.
As my meditation time increased and more mystical experiences surfaced, the process became more difficult for me to understand — a common dilemma for the everyday mystic who lacks the support of a monastic community and the daily guidance of a teacher. I turned to books and devoured advice both ancient and modern: Theresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, Thomas Keating, and Anthony De Mello, and the words of Quakers like Thomas Kelly, Douglas Steere, Elton Trueblood, Richard Foster, and Rufus Jones.
I also ventured beyond my own faith community, seeking out writers on mysticism immersed in Buddhism and Hinduism. Reading Ramana Maharshi, Gangagi, Aurobindo, Almaas, Kornfield, and Chodron felt like having conversations with wise friends. These explorations into other traditions convinced me that the spiritual unfolding was a well-travelled and fluid process that was shared across traditions. I was not alone.
The work of American philosopher Ken Wilber also proved enormously helpful in my quest to understand intellectually the process that at times seemed almost to overwhelm me. Wilber explored the contemplative state of non-dual awareness (where subject and object are one), transrational experiences beyond words, and the “suchness” of reality. He offered a clear description and synthesis of mystical states and spiritual development from many traditions where God is a direct experience.
But to affirm the authenticity of my intuitions, I needed more than intellectual clarity. I needed a kind of “direct experience” that my avocation as a painter, my training as a bodyworker and massage therapist, and my skill as a sign language interpreter all inclined me to prefer. I needed not just an intellectual understanding, but a body-based recognition of the truth. During this period of searching I moved more deeply into body-centered spiritual practices, such as tai chi, qi gong, yoga, and the walking meditation of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. I joined with friends in African American-style ecumenical praise services full of singing and dancing, moved by the vibrant expressions of Praise. I could feel what I knew on some deep inner level through the body wisdom in my feet, in my hands, in my voice, in every part of me.
In my process of seeking I eventually found several “leadings” towards change. Most surprising was the vocational shift I was led to pursue through retraining in a form of somatic work. I had spent 20 years as a mental health practitioner and program administrator. The programs I had tended dealt with the losses people face. I’d worked with the parents of deaf and blind children, counseled young adults with spinal cord injury, and worked with widows and others grieving. Even though I had incorporated the body in some way by training in American Sign Language and felt comfortable with using my body as a communication tool, to add on the idea of working with clients through touch was a radical new idea for me.
Another insight that changed in me was living more fully. What I feared most after surviving all my losses was the concept of an unlived life. As I sunk more deeply in the Silence and stillness of God’s presence, I was at the same time being drawn out. What a wonderful process! As we enjoy this great Silence, we are also being led to dig up our buried talent and set it free! We carry within us all of the unwritten poems, the unpainted pictures, the unmade calls of loving friendship, the unheeded love of the nature around us — carry all this within our creative hearts. It is my hope and the affirmation of other mystical seekers that tending the inward life will help us avoid the unlived life, the unused light.
Through the seeking process I felt a greater ease emerge. It was like finding my voice again, or emerging with a newness in the creative expression I had carried with me for decades. This leading came with a push, a spiritual nudge, to share that inner voice with others. My first attempts to do so felt like being naked in public, but I knew deep within it was what spirit invited me to do. So I painted more, I wrote more poems — and sometimes I shared these with others, despite my natural bent toward shyness. Changes emerged and opportunities arrived. I met a watercolor teacher who was also a meditator, and we found ways to join together and lead mindful Creative Renewal retreats. We merged her teaching background with my therapist and bodyworker background; and we offered a space and resources for others to find rest, encouragement, and nourishment for their own expression.
With time I returned to being a more active member of my own community. I felt like I had new eyes, a softer heart, a different way of being with others. My capacity to listen was somehow expanded. During my explorations, I had taken a long break from the committee work that is part of a Quaker Meeting community. But with time and strengthening I felt a genuine leading to resume being more fully in my community. I found a way that my recovered gifts could be of use even within traditional committee work. By bringing my full self, my reclaimed passion for creative expression, into my work on a committee I was able to invite others in my Meeting to create a regular gathering opportunity on Creativity and Spirituality. We formed a group who find spiritual sustenance from creative practices, and we meet to explore new opportunities for our community to experience the journey of creative exploration and encouragement.
There is a natural and non-linear process of seeking within that leads to changes in how we are connected to others. Many people — ordinary everyday seekers — who long for the sense of peace and clarity and support can achieve it through a faithful practice of inner seeking. I have witnessed a greater sense of strength arise from seeking what lies within as part of a community. May we learn to trust that which we know deeply within on all levels — body, mind, spirit. May we find a way to participate in supportive community and enjoy the journey!
Jock Brandis: Championing Stone Age Technology by Pat and Steve Taylor
Pat and Steve Taylor are great admirers of their brother-in-law Jock Brandis and ardent supporters of the work and mission of the Full Belly Project. Pat is a retired university lecturer and administrator; Steve is a retired attorney and magistrate. They now live in Philadelphia and Walnut Creek, California.
In the face of a possible nuclear holocaust and the rape of the earth and the obscene poverty of whole peoples… it is time to reconsider what life is really all about.
— Joan Chittister
Joost (Jock) Brender a Brandis, a Dutch native who grew up in Canada and now resides in Wilmington, North Carolina, has created a Universal Nut Sheller, a device called “the holy grail of sustainable agriculture.” With this invention, and the several others that followed, he is considered one of the world’s leading authorities in the emerging field of appropriate technology.
Jock has been interested in technological innovation since his undergraduate service as a cadet in the Canadian Naval ROTC. That fascination continued in his first career as an electrical technician and lighting director for dozens of major motion pictures. One of his oft-repeated stories involves his on-the-set creation of a carnivorous bed from air mattresses, food coloring, and Mr. Bubble foam. His encore career — to which he promises to devote as much time and energy as he did to his work on movie crews — began after the death of his wife from cancer in 1995 and his decision to remain close to home to care for his young children, then 9 and 14.
When asked by a friend for advice in fashioning a solar-powered irrigation system for a village in Mali, he gathered various components and flew to Africa to oversee the installation.
While there, he noticed that the women of the village had bloody fingers from hours spent shelling their main cash crop, peanuts. He promised that he would send them an inexpensive peanut sheller, but when he returned home, he discovered that everything on the market required some sort of electrical power source. The nearest electric service was many miles away from these village women, so Jock invented a device that can be operated by simply turning a crank on the top.
To most Americans, shelling a peanut may seem neither difficult nor meaningful, but in Sub-Saharan Africa, some half a billion people in dozens of countries depend on the peanut as a primary source of protein, livelihood, soil restoration, and rural economies. And the variety of peanut that grows there is so difficult to remove from its shell that the women who spend half of their lives at such labor become progressively crippled.
His creation, which he modestly refers to as “Stone Age technology,” uses $28 worth of materials and can be manufactured on site from a kit assembled by volunteers in his Wilmington, North Carolina, workshop. He quickly interested a group of Peace Corps veterans in forming a nonprofit called Full Belly Project which would distribute the shellers. Meanwhile, he was tweaking the invention so that it would operate not only on peanuts, but also on coffee beans, pistachios, and, perhaps most significantly, jatropha seeds, which can now be used to produce diesel fuel, fertilizer, and a natural insecticide.
As Jock realized the tremendous effect his invention had on people’s lives, he moved on to other simple and inexpensive machines. His gentle manner, old-world charm, and humility won over philanthropic people from many countries and allowed him to attract volunteers and grant money to Full Belly Project. He also has earned the trust of native peoples around the world whom he has trained in the manufacture and operation of his machines. They have become social entrepreneurs and manufacturers in 17 countries.
Mali, Haiti, and the Philippines are among the beneficiaries of his ingenuity, but not the only ones. His latest device was invented to solve a problem he found closer to home. In Rutherford County, North Carolina, small farmers needed a simple way to get water to their farm for irrigation and livestock consumption. These farms are bordered by small creeks — themselves tributaries of larger rivers that feed reservoirs of the larger cities in Central North and South Carolina. The streams, however, are fenced, both to control erosion and to prevent the livestock from fouling the water. To solve the farmers’ problem, Jock ran pipe beneath the fencing and created a gravity-powered water pump to siphon the water from the stream. Again, he used only readily available materials: PVC pipe and rubber gaskets made from used truck tire inner tubes.
The sandy-haired, greying 6-footer with blue eyes that twinkle when he talks about his projects likes to work quickly. He admits that he hears “time’s winged chariot,” and he feels he has much left to do in adapting wind, solar, water, and human power to the problems of the developing world. He also recognized early on the importance of replicability, and so he has created what he calls the “factory in a box.” He and his volunteers ship the designs and instructions for assembly, along with the basic components, to dozens of villages each month to make problem-solving entrepreneurs of the local people.
Allen Armstrong, an engineering professor at M.I.T., notes that Jock’s Universal Nut Sheller is entirely new — new shape, new materials, and a new method of manufacturing. Moreover, his work is beginning to change the way international development is done — away from large corporate centers often far removed from its beneficiaries, and toward smaller, local groups with simple products. These simpler devices use low-cost, locally available materials, and can be operated and maintained with a minimum of training by local people. Jock is currently working with the National Geographic Society and a Philippines philanthropist to come up with a school building that can be made from plastic bottles.
Jock is one of those people who has thought deeply about the purpose of life, so deeply and yet so emotionally that, in 2008, he was the recipient of a $100,000 cash award. Bestowed annually to those who are “taking matters into their own hands and fashioning a new vision of the second half of life,” the Purpose Prize arrived just in time for him to keep his home from foreclosure. For most of his life, he has possessed few material goods. In our family, he is often called a modern St. Francis, because, like Francis of Assisi, he trusts that the universe will provide. Once, when he was several months in arrears on his house payment and was literally days from foreclosure, an unknown woman appeared at his door, told him she had seen a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation video about his work, and handed him a check that more than covered his delinquent payments.
Jock is the quintessential optimist, which helps him develop new ideas. Studies have shown that hopefulness and optimism lengthen life. Those who are dynamically engaged, full of plans, working toward meaningful accomplishment are almost guaranteed a longer life span. Jock is also a good listener. Each day, in his workshop, he is surrounded by volunteers from high school students to senior citizens, eager to learn practical things — how to weld steel, mix concrete, and assemble PVC — but also to expose their ideas to Jock’s problem-solving analysis and technological know-how.
His work has touched the lives of a diverse group of people, from African village elders using machines adapted from old bicycles, to Indian farmers using foot-powered water pumps, to M.I.T. graduate students eager to learn how to think outside the box, to former President Jimmy Carter (a man who knows a thing or two about peanuts himself). Several short documentary films have been produced about his work.
He has inspired many to imitate him. Ming Leong, an M.I.T. engineer who spent a summer as a Full Belly Project intern, says, “Just being around Jock has made me feel like, yeah, I have a chance to make a difference too.”
Service Through Life’s Season by John G. Sullivan
Lord, help me . . .
Because my boat is so small,
And your sea is so immense.(1)
Once upon a time, in a far kingdom, a certain king said to himself: “If only I knew the answer to three questions I would never go astray.” The questions were these:
- What is the best time to do each thing?
- Who is the most important person to work with?
- What is the most important thing to do?
The king’s counselors had many answers. Yet none satisfied the king. So he decided to consult a hermit, widely renowned for his wisdom.
The hermit lived on a mountain and received none but common folk. So the king put on simple clothes, left his bodyguards at the foot of the mountain, dismounted, and climbed to the hermit’s hut alone.
When the king approached, the hermit was digging in his garden preparing to plant seeds. Seeing his visitor, the hermit greeted him and went on digging. The hermit was frail and weak. He breathed heavily as he worked.
The king went up to him and asked his three questions — about the best time to act, the best person to work with, and the best thing to do. The hermit listened but said nothing and continued digging.
“You are tired,” said the king, “let me take the spade and work awhile for you.”
“Thanks!” said the hermit, and, giving the spade to the king, he sat down on the ground.
As the king continued to work, the sun began to sink behind the trees. Finally the king was ready to leave, but the hermit said: “Here comes someone running; let us see who it is.”
The king turned to see a bearded man running out of the wood, holding his hands pressed against his stomach. Blood was flowing from under his tunic. When the man reached the king, he fell fainting on the ground, moaning feebly. The king and the hermit unfastened the man’s clothing to reveal a large wound in his stomach. The king washed the man’s wound and bandaged it carefully. When at last the blood ceased flowing, the man revived and asked for something to drink. The king brought fresh water and gave it to him. Meanwhile the sun had set, and it had become cool. So the king, with the hermit’s help, carried the wounded man into the hut and laid him on the bed. Lying on the bed the man closed his eyes and was quiet; but the king was so tired with his walk and work that he crouched down on the threshold and he too fell asleep — so soundly that he slept all through the short summer night.
When the king awoke in the morning, he struggled to remember where he was and who was the strange bearded man lying on the bed, gazing intently at him with shining eyes.
“Forgive me!” said the bearded man in a weak voice, when he saw that the King was awake and looking at him.
“I do not know you, and have nothing to forgive you for,” said the king.
“You do not know me, but I know you. I am that enemy of yours who swore to revenge himself on you, because you executed my brother and seized his property. I knew you had gone alone to see the hermit, and I resolved to kill you on your way back. But the day passed and you did not return. So I came out from my ambush to find you, and encountered your bodyguards. They recognized me and wounded me. I escaped but should have bled to death had you not dressed my wound. I wished to kill you, and you have saved my life. Now, if I live, and if you wish it, I will serve you as your most faithful servant, and will bid my sons do the same. Forgive me!”
The king, very glad to have made peace with his enemy so easily, not only forgave him but said he would send his servants and his own physician to attend him. Furthermore, the king promised to restore the man’s property.
Having taken leave of the wounded man, the king went out into the porch and looked around for the hermit. Before going away he wished once more to beg an answer to the three questions. The hermit was outside, on his knees, sowing seeds in the beds dug the day before. The King approached him, and said:
“For the last time, I pray you to answer my questions, wise man.”
“You have already been answered!” said the hermit. “Do you not see, if you had not pitied my weakness yesterday, and had not dug those beds for me, but had gone your way, that man would have attacked you. So the most important time was when you were digging the beds; I was the most important person; and to do me good was your most important task. Afterwards when that man ran to us, the most important time was when you were attending to him, for if you had not bound up his wounds he would have died without having made peace with you. So he was the most important person, and what you did for him was your most important business. Remember then: there is only one time that is important — Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary person is the one you are with, for no one knows whether he will ever have dealings with anyone else, and the most important affair is to do the other person good. For that purpose alone were we humans sent into this life!”(2)
This parable recovered and retold by Leo Tolstoy is a teaching story that sees life as service. We learn that “now” is the most important moment, the other whom we encounter is the most important person to work with, and doing good to the other is the best thing to do. Adding to service the phrase “in the spirit” reminds us that not only what we do but how we do it makes all the difference. How do we dwell in the moment — peacefully or anxiously? How do we receive each person — lovingly or resentfully? How do we proceed in seeking the other’s good — wisely or foolishly?
Four gifts of the spirit can be found in the wisdom traditions of east and west. They are love, compassion, joy, and peace. From this perspective, we are serving in the spirit when we are dwelling and acting ever more lovingly, compassionately, joyfully, and peacefully.(3)
Yet more can be said. Suppose we think of life in four seasons and correlate each season with a stage of life as understood in ancient India.(4) Then we can distinguish four kinds of service, each appropriate to a stage of life:
Summer: Householder
(ascending arc)
Autumn: Forest Dweller
(ascending arc)
Winter: Sage
(descending arc)
Spring: Student
(descending arc, returns to Summer)
On the arc of ascent
- the service of the Spring Student and
- the service of the Summer Householder.
On the arc of descent,
- the service of the Autumn Forest Dweller and
- the service of the Winter Sage.
The seeds of all the stages are present from the beginning so that we can, in certain moments, touch future stages as if for a preview taste and we can also return to earlier capacities from a new place on the spiral of our lives.
Life in Two Halves
To understand the four kinds of service, it will be helpful to look at life in two halves: the first half of life ascending and the second half of life descending.(5)
In the first half of life, we strive to become somebody — to take our place in the world, to achieve maturity, to develop the capacities to love and to work.
In the first half of life, we focus on the three R’s: Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic, as part of our striving toward mastery in the world. Or, even more powerfully, we are inducted into another three R’s: the Rules, Roles, and “Religions” of the Culture, where “religion” can include worldviews such as nationalism, rugged individualism, capitalism, and other ideologies.
In the second half of life, we release into the depth, becoming in a certain sense nobody and everyone — an empty mirror for all that is. In the downward arc, we are invited to release from attachments to what we have constructed and to rest in the Great Mystery — in the silence, in the stillness, in the simplicity, in union with the Source and all things. In essence, we release from those stories and sentiments that no longer serve. We let go, return first to our place in the natural world and then to our true nature in and out of time. We experience life as vast, mysterious, loving, compassionate, joyful, and peaceful.
In the second half, we focus on the three R’s of later life: Receiving, Releasing, and Remembering. Receiving life as sufficient and responding in gratitude and joy. Releasing from being defined by roles and rules and ideologies. Remembering who we are in our widest and deepest natures. At our core we already have all we need to live a life of quality.
Our deep Self reflects more and more our Source and reflects more and more how deeply intertwined we are with one another in the great Circle of Life — people, other animals, plants, and minerals.
With this context in place, it is time to explore briefly the four kinds of service from each of the four standpoints.
Service of the Student-in-Us
Here we serve by learning. The deeper the learning, the better the service. The best learning stays with us, becomes more and more a part of who we are and what we do. There is a form of detachment, of cultivating an observing, listening self able to see what is happening and how we are commenting on and emotionally intertwined with what is happening. The time of the lifetime is opening before us.
Zen practitioners celebrate “beginner’s mind” throughout all the circumstances of our lives. Zen master Shunryu Suzuki tells us:
In Japan we have the phrase shoshin,
which means “beginner’s mind.”
The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind. . .
Our “original mind” includes everything with itself.
It is always rich and sufficient within itself. . . .
If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything;
it is open to everything.
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities;
in the expert’s mind there are few.(6)
So at any stage of life we can be of service by remaining a learner. By emptying mind of preconceptions and engaging life anew. Thus, we stay open to possibilities and encourage creativity.
Service of the Householder-in-Us
This is service as we usually think of it. Concrete visible works. Building up the community through good deeds. Seeking social betterment. Freud has characterized maturity as gaining the capacities to love and work, that is, the capacity to engage in long-term relationships of intimacy and the capacity to take on tasks and see them through, whether one feels like it or not! The capacities to love and to work are very much Summer Householder skills.
The Householder takes on responsibility for units larger than him or herself alone. Care for one’s relationship, one’s family, one’s organization broadens the horizon in space. As families welcome children, a sense of ancestors dawns as well. Householders begin to understand — in their bones — that they stand in the midst of seven generations, called to honor the ancestors (one’s parents and their parents and their parents) and to serve the children (this generation of children and their children and their children). Intergenerational time expands before us. And, in space, we are invited to expand our sense of the human to include all humans as our brothers and sisters.
From the standpoint of Householder various kinds of service become permanent possibilities. We can mentor youth, aiding them to find their paths in work and in intimacy, aiding them to learn how to join with integrity and effectiveness in the world work they are given. For those of us in retirement, encore careers become possible, where people place their householder skills in service of new profit-making enterprises or in service of non-profits, devoted to causes one supports.
Service of the Forest Dweller-in-Us
Here we arrive at a reversal of sorts. We begin the arc of descent. On the circle, we move from Summer into Autumn and Winter. We move from expressing ourselves in the “doing” mode to dwelling more in a “being mode.” In Eastern terms, the transition is from Yang (active upward and outer movement) to Yin (receptive downward and inward movement). We also tip into the side of the circle where paradox reigns. We are both this and that. We are neither this nor that.
In space, we widen the circle from “humans only” to all creatures great and small in the interconnected community of the natural world. In time, we move to cosmic time — the time of billions of years.
At this period of human history, the Forest Dweller takes on ecological significance. As post-retirement Forest Dwellers, we come to love the natural world, to learn from it, to see ourselves as intimately interwoven in it. We come to simplify and care for elemental realities. We come to situate ourselves within “the Great Family,” in poet Gary Snyder’s phrase. And we tend to align ourselves with deeper rhythms.
Poet Wendell Berry expresses it in this way:
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.(7)
Service of the Sage-in-Us
When we contact the sage-in-us, we return, in a new way, to what is — to the present moment, yet in a new way. We return to a present moment in time and out of time. As we grow into the Sage-in-Us we live more in mystery, in a kind of wondrous unknowing. Resting in peace, we are in contact with the eternal. We sense the spacious and special everywhere. Released from control, we rest in openness to what is emerging. Retired from responsibility to change the world, we can love more fully, holding true to that which matters. We can encourage creativity and bless the young.
In the language of the East, the meditative and mindfulness disciplines now bear fruit. In the language of the West, a new sense of prayer emerges — less for petition, more for simple gratefulness and joy. In fact, life becomes prayer. More and more, we rest in the silence, in the stillness, in contact with the mysterious Source, ever present, ever new. Having developed a taste for silence and stillness, we keep returning to a present moment that excludes nothing. Our presence is our service. What we do is less important than who we are becoming.
Service here is subtle. It is a service of being ourselves more fully. And finding that our deepest being is intertwined with everything. It is a mode of presence that opens us, as a channel, for the Great Mystery to manifest through us.
//
It is said, in Jewish tradition, that there are 36 just humans. They do not even know who they are. Yet for their sake the world is not destroyed. Here, one can think of a punishing God who withholds punishment. Yet I believe this teaching points far beyond reward and punishment. The service of the 36 derives from how they are present in the world. They are relatively sane in the midst of collective insanity. They understand what is real, what is true, what is good, what is beautiful. Because they hold to the real, the leaven is there for all, the lamp in the darkness does not go out. A smile remains. Love remains. Compassion remains. Joy resurfaces. Peace returns. And we see again and again the answer to the three questions:
- What is the best time to do each thing?
- Who is the most important person to work with?
- What is the most important thing to do?
Releasing from attachments to unnecessary things, we enjoy all our kin in the natural world.
Remembering the saints and sages, we rest in contemplative mind. As the East would have it:
When the ten thousand things
are viewed in their one-ness,
we return to the Origin
and remain where we have always been.(8)
Is this not a beautiful service to all our kin?
//
Notes
1 French Medieval prayer. See Robert Bly, The Soul is Here for its Own Joy (Harper Collins Publishers, 1999), p. 112.
2 I take the story with minor edits from Tolstoy’s telling. See “The Three Questions” in Leo Tolstoy, Fables and Fairy Tales, trans. Ann Dunnigan (New York: New American Library, 1980), pp. 82–88. The story was first published in 1903.
3 See my book, The Fourfold Path to Wholeness: A Compass for the Heart (Chapel Hill, NC: Second Journey Publications, 2010). In the Buddhist tradition these four are called the Four Divine Dwellings or Brahmaviharas. In the west, they could well be a shorthand for the gifts of the spirit or even four of the names of God.
4 See my book, The Spiral of the Seasons: Welcoming the Gifts of Later Life (Chapel Hill, NC: Second Journey Publications, 2009) for an extended discussion of the four stages of life as understood in the wisdom tradition of India overlaid on the four seasons.
5 Life in halves has a certain simplicity. However, while holding this perspective, it is also useful to hold a second perspective wherein we see life in thirds: say, 20 years as student, 40 years as householder and 20 years — what the British call the Third Age — as the post-retirement years. The life stages of Autumn Forest Dweller and Winter Sage belong most properly to the post-retirement years. For more, see my book The Spiral of the Seasons: Welcoming the Gifts of Later Life.
6 See Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1970), p. 21.
7 From the poem “Wild Geese” by Wendell Berry. See Wendell Berry, Collected Poems 1957–1982 (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985), pp.155–156.
8 Seng-Ts’an. Quoted in Nancy Wilson Ross, The World of Zen: An East-West Anthology (New York: Vintage Books Division of Random House, 1960), p.271. Also see Frederick Franck, Echoes from a Bottomless Well (New York: Random House Vintage, 1985), p. 91.
Books of Interest: Metaphor and the Aging Process by Barbara Kammerlohr
The Spiral of the Seasons: Welcoming the Gifts of Later Life
by John G. Sullivan
Second Journey Publications, 2009
Harvest the Bounty of Your Career
by Deborah F. Windrum
(with art work by Michele Renee Ledoux)
Axiom Action, 2009
//
For those willing to sit with her and do the work, Metaphor is one of the world’s greatest teachers. She facilitates understanding at an intuitive level where facts, feelings, ethics, and consciousness come together to form meaning. Sitting with Metaphor until the Aha! moment leads to a special kind of learning — the realization of something deep within that may be so profound no words can express it adequately. Harvest the Bounty of Your Career and The Spiral of the Seasons are two books that use metaphor to communicate such messages. Authors John Sullivan and Deborah Windrum, having plumbed the depths of metaphorical understanding, organize their thoughts around metaphor and call on the reader to understand those thoughts at their own level.
//
The seasons of life provide the metaphor of The Spiral of the Seasons, a small book of four essays about our human journey into later life by John Sullivan, Second Journey’s Philosopher in Residence and Board Member Emeritus. Excerpts of these essays are on Second Journey’s Web site and in earlier editions of Itineraries. However, the hard-cover book edition, with its poetry, full-color photographs, and more complete text gives the reader a deeper and more complete understanding of how Sullivan views later life than the excerpts on the Web site.
As others have done, Sullivan overlays the four stages of life on the four seasons — spring, summer, fall, and winter. However, his understanding of those four seasons has a clearer focus when he talks of how the ancient sages of India understood life’s journey:
In Spring, we are in the stage of Student.
In Summer, we move to the stage of Householder.
In Autumn, we enter the stage of Forest Dweller.
In Winter, we drop into the world of the Sage. (p. 2)
A full-page color graphic helps explain: It is a picture of two arcs placed together, an arc of ascent and an arc of descent. From student to householder, we are in the arc of ascent, looking for fame and fortune. In autumn, we approach the arc of descent — downward and inward returning to what is central in life. It is in this descent that we can acquire the consciousness of the sage, that we can become what others have called “an elder.”
The book’s four chapters are actually four essays that expand on Sullivan’s understanding of the metaphor: “Spring’s Stirrings,” “Summer’s Fullness,” “Autumn’s Way,” and “Winter’s Gifts.” Physically, it is one of those “little books” that inspires the reader to buy several copies to share with like-minded friends.
//
Harvest the Bounty of Your Career by Deborah F. Windrum speaks to the unique circumstances of women. She invites the reader to an exploration of life’s meanings and lessons using metaphors of harvest and trees. While not excluding men who might like to try the process, Windrum believes that the spirals of women’s careers are different from those of men and that women will embrace the inner work she advocates more readily than men. Indeed, the book does contain many insightful ideas about the changing life cycles of women and well-articulated specifics about how those cycles differ from the cycles of men.
Windrum’s fundamental premise is: “Every transition in life can be supported and enriched by the bounty of all that precedes it — the experiences, learnings, gains, releases, relationships, and emotions. (Hence the metaphor of harvest.) The process of engaging with the book’s metaphorical elements can help conclude or shift a career and experience what comes next.
Windrum refers to her book as both a conversation and a workbook. However, it is not the typical dry workbook. The art work, her own deeply personal reflections, and ample quotes from thoughtful authors engage the reader in ways a workbook could not. For those who do well with workbooks, there are questions and activities at the end of each chapter that can be used for further reflection.
For the most part, each chapter is an extension of a metaphorical element addressing life’s changing conditions. Engaging with the chapter’s metaphor deepens understanding of how what has gone before can influence what comes next. Some of her metaphorical elements include: roots that anchor us; branches that show where we have reached out; fruits to be harvested; seeds that continue the process in another season or time; and the season of harvest. Chapter by chapter, Windrum introduces each element, shares her own reflection on that metaphor, and suggests questions (acorns) and other reflections to help engage the reader more deeply. This is not a workbook format, but an extended conversation between the author and reader.
One chapter does stand out as different from the others — ”The Four-part Harmony of A Woman’s Life Cycle: Maiden, Maker, Maven and Muse.” This is Windrum’s reflection on the life cycle of modern woman, the counterpart to Sullivan’s four stages of student, householder, forest dweller, and sage. Their understanding is similar, but Windrum’s is more specific to the life cycle of women.
//
Authors
John G. Sullivan is Powell Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Elon University in North Carolina where he taught for 36 years. He is principal designer and faculty member in an innovative master’s program in transformative leadership at Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel, MD. His abiding interest is the place where philosophy, psychology, and spirituality — East, West, and beyond — intersect and mutually enhance one another. His two previous books are To Come to Life More Fully (1991) and Living Large: Transformative Work at the Intersection of Ethics and Spirituality (2004).
Deborah F. Windrum was, for more than 30 years, an academic librarian specializing in instruction and outreach, primarily at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her inner trajectory has taken her life work into parallel ventures as a writer, presenter, workshop developer, and facilitator dedicated to the transformational possibilities of learning. Her first book, Process and Politics in Library Research, was a pioneering effort in the application of critical thinking, active learning, and feminist principles to the college research course. Windrum has also contributed articles to Itineraries.
Writings as a Spiritual Practice by Ellen B. Ryan
Ellen B. Ryan is Professor Emeritus at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Her psychological research demonstrates how empowering communication fosters personhood and successful aging. She has created the Writing Down Our Years Series of publications to highlight the many ways in which writing life stories can benefit older adults and those with whom they share their stories and poems. She is co-editor of the anthology Celebrating Poets Over 70 and website www.writingdownouryears.ca.
the word sits
poised to move
this word will tell you
what I need you to know
it is my word
i will speak it to you
wait with me until it comes
— Dorthi Dunsmore
Aging is a time for visiting the temple of our memory, integrating our life, and coming home to ourselves. Writing is a spiritual practice through which we can contemplate and abide and be drawn to a sense of purpose.
The experiences of aging call us to personal growth in wisdom and compassion. Changes in body, mind, daily responsibilities, and social contexts lead us to reflect on who we are now, who we have been, and who we are becoming.
Writing regularly in a journal can help us find our inner voice. This practice enhances many spiritual practices: paying attention, finding beauty, seeking truth, showing compassion, saying thanks, cultivating silence, reviewing life, and identifying purpose. The very act of writing is a creative expression which affirms our human spirit, connecting us with ourselves, those around us, the world around us, and with our God. Writing about the highs and lows of our lives — past, present, and possible futures — gives us perspective, offers strategies to solve problems, reveals feelings we might not otherwise have recognized, and helps us move from “Why me?” to “Why not me?” Journaling usually combines reflection and decisions for action — in the domain of writing and beyond.
In addition to writing on one’s own, many people join or create a writing group to write and share together. Participating in a group can enhance creativity, support regular writing, challenge assumptions, stimulate further ideas — in general, support growth in writing and spirituality.
Once the inner voice is developed, an individual might wish to express her or his social voice. Personal experiences with illness, caregiving, grief, discrimination, political turmoil, and other stresses and losses often serve as the impetus for the social voice. Such writing can start with more thoughtful letters to family and friends, might extend to letters to the editor or newsletter/website contributions. Journal writers often progress to sharing memoirs or family stories, poetry, or essays. Some writers move into publication of nonfiction, fiction, or poetry.
Marianne Vespry and I recently put out a call for poetry written after the age of 70 to showcase the best of poetic reflections by older adults. The resulting anthology and website, Celebrating Poets over 70, present the writing of lifelong and post-retirement poets reflecting on the major themes of human life. Reasons for writing given by the poets have much to say about spirituality:
I write poetry to stay alive! . . . Writing is my passion . . . I am 83 and write every day . . . poetry: the power to fly . . . avenue to celebrations of life . . . writing poetry comes naturally . . . explore the colors and shapes of words . . . mysteries of the written word in verse . . . capturing strong emotional moments . . . Writing a poem helps me to live gratefully . . . still writing in [my] 104th year.
Marianne Vespry’s article in this special issue elaborates on the poets’ contributions. Moreover, poems from the collection are presented throughout this special issue. Here, excerpts give elders’ voices to issues of writing as a spiritual practice.
Three poems address the social pressure the poets feel from ageism, pushing them toward invisibility and diminished expectations. Refusing to lose their voices, the poets strike back with eloquence.
My grandchildren think I am old.
My children think I am older.
I think I am ageless!
— Barbara White, “My Gracious Lady”
Where was it written
That old women are mute.
Silent and wrinkled, invisible.
Gave away their voices long ago
Out of fear that no one listened
And silence had, at least, a bit of dignity.
— Frieda Feldman, “Old Women”
i don’t do old
i do global warming
with Suzuki, Schindler
and Al Gore’s concern
with climates
in crisis.
— Sterling Haynes,
“ I Don’t Do Old”
Other poets use imagery to share their musings on the meaning of their lives in old age.
I am in the winter of my life
but I continue to revel
in the autumn of my being,
vibrant, colorful leaves
reflecting my spirit . . .
or I the leaves . . .
— Lois Batchelor Howard,
“A Page Turner”
I am sitting in a hot bath,
when, from nowhere, I say to him
“One of us will die first.”
“Yes,” he replied, “I was
thinking just that as I read
of the death of Darwin’s daughter.”
— Naomi Beth Wakan, “Pretending”
Oh could I crack the rigid shell of age
And softly swell in each unfettered limb,
Disperse the adamantine cast of thought
And burst apart restriction’s boundaries.
— Adrian M Ostfeld, “The Shell of Age”
This special issue of Itineraries highlights the many ways in which writing fosters spiritual understanding of meanings in long lives and late life development of strong personal voices capable of healing our world.
Elder Wisdom: Walking the Path of Poetry by Rhoda Neshama Waller
Rhoda Neshama Waller, a Certified Seminar Leader of the Sage-ing Guild, is founding president of TimeLines Community, a nonprofit organization celebrating the wisdom and creativity of elders. She holds a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature and has taught creative writing in schools, universities, libraries, and senior centers. She publishes Traces, a journal of elderwriting, and is completing a manuscript, Your Life Is a Poem, about writing your memoirs in poetry. Rhoda Neshama also conducts seminars and workshops.
The reading and writing of poetry is always a gift to be treasured, and this is true in a very particular way for elders. As our consciousness continues to evolve, working with time, experience, and the tools of intention and awareness, we access deeply intuitive levels of mind. Poetry invites us to enter completely into the openness of this altered state.
As we pass through the gateway of poetry, we set out on a journey of infinite wonder where we harvest unexpected stores of wisdom and beauty within us. Fully present, with concentrated attention, we reap new understandings from the rich memories of a long life. Then, when we turn this same focused awareness to the present moment, fully alive to our senses, we find ourselves living more intensely and experiencing more fully.
Wisdom
In my years of conducting poetry workshops for elders, I have found the poetic experience to be a magic elixir. Poetry provides a place for the healing expression of grief, a field for the sharing of joys. In a poetry-induced state of heightened awareness, we make a stunning discovery: What we did not know, we knew.
Here are some lines by the nineteenth-century Indian poet, Ghalib:
For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river
Unbearable pain becomes its own cure.
Travel far enough into sorrow, tears turn into sighing;
In this way we learn how water can turn into air.
When, after heavy rain, the storm clouds disperse,
Is it not that they’ve wept themselves clear through to the end?
If you want to know the miracle, how wind can polish a mirror,
Look: the shining glass grows green in spring.
It’s the roses unfolding, Ghalib, that creates the desire to see. In every color and circumstance, may the eyes be open for what comes.
Communication
Poetry offers a path of deep communication with family and friends. One poet in my workshop presented a poem written to her daughter as a birthday gift. Her daughter responded with a poem of her own, and this exchange of poetry has become a ritual between them, a means of expressing their love for one another.
Another poet was saddened because she felt that after almost 50 years of marriage her husband had become indifferent to her. When she was regularly asked to read her poetry at church events, her husband heard her work and reawakened to the truth of her being. Their relationship was transformed.
Here is a poem by Alice Paul, a workshop participant:
Is This A Table?
The wind blew the door shut
The screen door slammed.
He had to dance quickly into the house
before the door closed on him.
He put his cap on the table.
His cap was an African print worn at a jaunty angle.
He bought it at Black Expo in New York
on one exciting afternoon shared with Black Yankee Baseball Stars of Yesteryear.
He put the cap and its memories on the table.
He put the junk mail on the table:
magazines offering exotic travel and glamorous clothes.
He put thoughts of visiting his daughter on the table . . .
looking forward to seeing those he loves and those they love.
He put the events of his life and his mind on the table
the ribbon stretches on unraveling as life unfolds
recording the days endlessly while telling the story . . .
The table is available near the door allowing him to put everything on it
no matter what it weighs
because it stands strong
unbending
while the putting continues.
Community
Poetry acts as a balm for loneliness. Particularly as we reach our late eighties and nineties, we may have outlived spouses and many close friends. The deep personal connections that we value may no longer be available. The reading and writing of poetry together provides opportunity to create new bonds of heart, mind, and spirit, transforming a sense of isolation into a feeling of connection in warm, supportive community.
Mental Stimulation
While poetry keeps all the senses intensely alive to the present moment, it also provides stimulating exercise for the mind. Studies have shown that the intellectual challenges of lifelong learning can create new neurological connections for the brain. As the poet struggles with form, seeking the precise word, the desired tone, the intellect is nourished and sharpened; as the poet and/or reader of poetry delves into meaning, searching for insight into what it is to be truly human, extra neurons and connections between neurons are created, strengthening and revitalizing the brain.
Here is a Shakespearean sonnet, created by workshop participant Muriel Brooks:
I Write
I write this sonnet, not by choice
But by assignment given
To express my poetic inner voice
So secretly within me hidden.
Hours so tirelessly spent
Creating mental images to express
My deepest thoughts so eloquent
Hidden images, within possessed.
Genius I’m not, but continue to try
With limited level of my mind
To make an effort to comply
No vile obscenity you might find.
So be critical, but discreet
Where my sense and dullness meet.
You might want to continue these explorations by looking into Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, a book of essays by Jane Hirshfield. I’d like to close with a poem by an anonymous Navaho poet:
I ask all blessings,
I ask them with reverence,
of my mother the earth,
of the sky, moon, and sun my father.
I am old age: the essence of life,
I am the source of all happiness,
All is peaceful, all in beauty,
all in harmony, all in joy.
NOTE: This article was first published in Inner Tapestry, February-March 2008. Inner Tapestry was a holistic journal that is distributed widely in Maine and throughout the New England states.
Writing in Groups by Paula Papky
Paula Papky is an educator, former pastor, writer, and painter. She has four grandchildren whom she is teaching to write poems and paint pictures. She lives in Dundas, Ontario, with her husband, Bruce. In 2006 she edited The Berries are Sweeter Here: Women Writing Together; the book may be viewed as a PDF with this link.
What a strange happiness.
Sixty poets have gone off drunken, weeping into the hills,
I among them.
There is no one of us who is not a fool.
What is to be found there?
What is the point in this?
Someone scrawls six lines and says them.
What a strange happiness.
— “Iowa” by Robert Sward*
For me, writing in a group has always been about discovery: who I am, where I fit in the world, what to go on with and what to leave behind. I want to discover what guides I have in this stage of life, old age.
I have been writing with a group of women, every other Thursday, since 2001. An amazing community has come into being through our writing together, one of deep trust and consolation and support but also one of creativity and risk-taking and confidence. We have experienced together times of sorrow for loss and many moments of hilarity. All of this has come about because, when we get together, we practice fast writing for a set period of time, followed by reading aloud by those who choose to do so. There’s nothing like unedited writing, thoughts hot off the page, to inspire a sense of gratitude, and sometimes awe.
Any writing can be fast writing
The idea of writing in a group occurred to me nearly twenty years ago when I read Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones. (1) I was captivated by the process of fast writing that she described. Remembering one’s life story was a big part of fast writing. Soon I was using it for the many writing projects that my work in pastoral ministry required, particularly sermon preparation and the creation of liturgy and prayers for Sunday services as well as homilies for funerals and weddings. I used it for writing newspaper articles and newsletters in the church and in the wider community, and for drafts of essays in courses I took. I found myself keeping a journal and writing poetry and even turning to fiction writing. There was something unfathomable, bottomless, about the process. It helped me make the critical decision to leave pastoral ministry for a time, and eventually, to return to teaching high school English, where, of course, I gave my students daily opportunities for self-discovery through fast writing. The key to such writing was always having good springboards, of which Natalie Goldberg supplied many in Writing Down The Bones and her subsequent books.
None of this was writing in groups, though. That came about when a friend, who knew I was writing, recommended Journal To The Selfby Kathleen Adams (2). It contained more springboards and intriguing exercises for self-discovery. I was so excited by the two practices, fast writing and keeping a journal, that I wanted to teach their use to others. I offered a Saturday morning course, titled “Writing For Spiritual Discovery,” in a church I had joined. Only women turned up — 12 women, aged from mid-thirties to late seventies.
Writing builds community
The process we followed was fast writing followed by immediate reading aloud. For 12 weeks we built trust, increased confidence, laughed and cried, and put into words our deepest thoughts, our prayers, our lyric poems. These weeks were so engaging that when we finished the course, half of us wanted to do it again. And we did, for years, on Saturday mornings. Muffins and coffee, the quiet scratching of pens on the page, the reading — we learned a lot about ourselves and each other and our relationship with the Divine. Women who had, as they described, written only grocery lists and dates on calendars, were writing poems as well as journal entries. The fear of having nothing to say disappeared, and a small community took shape. That’s what writing in groups does: it builds community. It helps discover community where before there was mere acquaintance among people. Age barriers disappear. The shy discover a voice. The extrovert learns to listen. The non-writers become committed writers/explorers.
Now, 15 years later, I have practiced writing in groups with teachers, poets, high school students, fiction writers, and for a few weeks, the elderly (some with dementia) living in a care residence. Most recently I have used fast writing in Bible Study groups, as ways of entering into a story from Scripture, almost as if we are writing ourselves into the narratives.
In the Bible Study, we use fast writing to have a dialogue with Jesus or Zacchaeus or the Syro-Phoenician woman. Or we take the voice of a bystander in the crowd and retell the story. These group writing practices have engaged both men and women. Certainly they have drawn our church community closer together. The commitment to confidentiality frees us up to enter deep waters, to take risks and to express feelings — an experience some of the men found unnerving but always enlightening.
Starting a fast-writing group
The group I write with now most often is a dozen women aged 50-something to nearly 100. It began with a few members of a book club that read together Ellen Jaffe’s book, Writing Your Way: Creating A Personal Journal (3). When they decided they wanted to try some of her ideas, they invited her to lead them through a session. Little did she or they know that their writing in a group would become a way of life. A couple of members invited me to come along because they knew I had experience in writing with a group and fast writing. And here we all are, a decade later. We spend two hours fast writing and reading aloud. We share the leadership in an informal way, taking turns bringing a springboard poem or suggesting a topic. Recent topics from these sessions have been: homesickness; mountains; what I carry with me; arrivals and departures; the color green; my outdoor childhood. Nothing is too trivial. What one person writes and reads aloud may spark a memory or an image for someone else to explore in the next 10-minute plunge into the page.
We have found out a great deal about ourselves, our community of 12, our creativity, and our wisdom. Over and over we have experienced wonder, which some would call the sacred and others a sense of belonging to something larger. Our discovery has often led to discussion that is deeply spiritual and honors our various faith traditions — Christian, Jewish, as well as those with no particular religious affiliation but with a keen sense of the presence of the sacred in the moments of our lives.
There are a few important guidelines for a writing group like ours to begin and flourish, but only a few. After that, the discoveries are endless.
Most important is to build trust. Some of us knew each other in the group from the start, while others were strangers. We left nothing to chance where building trust was concerned. At our first session we promised each other confidentiality. Nothing that anyone wrote and read aloud was to be repeated outside the group. If you are starting this kind of writing group, it can take time to go around the circle and have each one, in turn, commit to this promise, but do it anyway, even if you are all friends to begin with. And remind each other regularly about that debt to confidentiality. One way to raise the issue occasionally is for people to express thanks for that gift, for the freedom to be honest or to explore a difficult issue without worrying about their story being told by someone else. My experience with this initial covenant is that trust develops quickly and deeply. Each member is able to discover and express a full range of feelings in a confidential setting.
Well, by now you may be wondering if this writing in a group is actually psychoanalysis. It is not. That’s a second boundary we put in place as the group formed. When someone reads aloud a piece of fast writing, or talks about what they were writing, our response is to say, “Thank you.” We don’t try to correct or fix anyone. No one says, “Well you should just…” or “Why don’t you…” We just say, “Thank you.” I think gratitude is one of the great gifts of our writing together. No one has to shape up or settle down or all those parental-sounding responses to self-discovery. The writing is what it is. And we’re grateful for it.
And what, exactly, is it, this writing we do in a group? It’s fast and unedited, stream-of-consciousness writing. We have Natalie Goldberg to thank for this process. Don’t cross out or correct spelling or steer your thoughts, she tells us. Feel free to produce the worst writing in the universe! It’s just writing practice, isn’t it? So, she advises, practice making your hand move across the page, right across the margins, if you like. Set a timer for 10 minutes and write like crazy. When the time is up, stop. Then read aloud if you want to. Then go for another 10 minutes, and another 10.
Begin with remembering
We find, even now, there’s no better place to begin than Natalie Goldberg’s, “I remember.” Whenever your pen stops, just repeat “I remember” and keep going. Remember as much as you can: the sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and touches of your life. Be specific. Name the cities, streets, beaches, stores. And sometimes, when your pen stops, try “I don’t remember” and keep going. It can be like turning over a rock and discovering what was hidden or half-buried.
Recently we began by making a list of a dozen “seasons of my life” and chose one to follow up in fast writing that began, “I remember.” Lists are great prompters of memories. Remember skipping through recess in grade five, playing marbles in the spring, playing softball in the field, skating on the pond, building forts? And lately, we have discovered that taking a particular year and a season of childhood or adolescence yields lots of memories. As we age, we cherish these memories and can be guided by them to be more playful, more open to new experiences. And we can consider our lives’ turning points and how they changed us.
It is in Kathleen Adams’ book Journal To The Self that these starting places for writing are called, “springboards.” She provides dozens of places to begin in using writing for personal growth, including lists, dialogues, and stepping stones. Her exercises aren’t intended for fast writing particularly, but that’s how we worked through them, and it was very rich.
After all these years of writing together, our group’s favorite springboards come from lyric poems. Someone in the group brings a poem by a published poet and reads it aloud (sometimes more than once, sometimes more than one reader) and we each grab a line we like and run with it. The line may get repeated several times as a way to keep the writing going and to give it a lovely unity and coherence. Many a piece of fast writing has turned into a poem through the repeated line or image from someone else’s poem: Lucille Clifton’s “I am running into a new year”(4); and Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day“ (5), for instance, we have used several times.
Companionship for self-discovery
Sometimes in a piece of fast writing, a member of the group gets into deep water, into hidden depths they didn’t set out to explore. This is where writing in a group is so liberating. If we find ourselves writing and reading aloud about loss, others are listening, withholding judgment. The writing group is a listening ear, with the possibility for consolation and compassion. If someone discovers in writing a new path to take, the possibility for healing, the writing group rejoices. These responses help to build self-esteem. In our group, we are learning how not to apologize before we read aloud, how not to preface our reading with a disclaimer like, “This isn’t very good” or “I have no idea where this is going.” We keep an informal list of some of our earlier disclaimers. We joke that we’re going to number them and put the list on a t-shirt someday, so we only have to point to one of them before reading. We can grieve in this group. We can laugh. We don’t need to apologize.
As we age, what more can be discovered about oneself by writing in a group than by writing alone? It may be that we push ourselves a little harder when others in our group are encouraging us. That woman who came to my first writing workshop, having written only cards and notes on calendars, is still writing poems. She is in her 99th year, nearly blind, and living in a retirement home, but she’s still writing poems. Because of her limited vision, she has to wait until someone comes into her room who can write the poems down, but she’s still writing. For all of us in this writing group, she has been an important mentor. Her poems about aging reveal her authentic voice, her unflinching gaze at her past and present. She’s not afraid to write about loss, aging, sex, sisterhood, moving house, God and her faith. She inspires and encourages our group, even now that she lives an hour away and can no longer write with us. And she continues to inspire the many others who have read the poems she has published, including her self-published book, Light All Around Me (edited by Ellen B. Ryan, whose article appears elsewhere in this newsletter).
There is a deep well of wisdom available to those who gather in a group to write. We all want to know, especially as we age, what really matters in life; what to carry forward and what to leave behind. And here, month after month, year after year, we hear from a dozen writers, our trusted friends, what makes life precious and how each one has discovered those treasures of the heart.
In our group, some are retired teachers, a couple are counselors, some are published writers, and all are voracious readers and love words. We trust one another’s wisdom, distilled from years of reading widely and from our lives’ experiences. Our writing sessions, between 10-minute writing practices, include conversations about ideas. Of course, given our ages (fifties to nineties) we are learning about aging but also, because it pops up in our writing, about childhood and play and creativity and a hundred other subjects. Always, through our poem springboards, we are in touch with that wider community of writers, treating Emily Dickinson, May Sarton, Mary Oliver, and many other poets, male and female, as our mentors and guides in life.
Sometimes, writing in a group, we experience that relatively rare feeling of awe. Perhaps it comes as goose bumps when one of our oldest members writes about aging with devastating honesty. It may happen when someone writes and shares what an experience in the world of nature was like, what a particular place was like. Some in our group would describe these moments of rare insight as experiences of the sacred, of meeting the Holy One, of being touched by God. Others would shy away from God-language and might describe feeling very small in the face of something large and mysterious. Because all of us in the group are exploring our lives and what meaning they have, these moments happen more often than in daily life. Our responses in such break-through moments are common responses to awe: tenderness, sympathy, gratitude. We encourage each other, console each other, hope for each other, trust each other. We spark off each others’ words and images. We are patient with slow growth, compassionate with setbacks, eager for news of the inner life. We cheer each other on for the apt word here, the resonant image there, and the courage to move that hand across the page without stopping in order to discover something undreamed of, unarticulated until this very moment.
A Letter to Old Poets (Inspired by Rilke’sLetter to a Young Poet) | |
You are never too old to write poems within you is a lifetime of feelings share the long journey you have made As elder, you can get away with anything what can they do to you at your age | or mock the sacred and silly which now in these years of your earned wisdom recall beauty that made you gasp give yourself permission to write please put down on paper what you can tear up — Ruth Harriet Jacobs |
//
Notes
* Robert Sward (2010). Iowa. In M. F. Vespry AND E. Ryan (Eds), Celebrating Poets over 70. Hamilton, ON: McMaster Centre for Gerontological Studies. Iowa.
Copyright (c) 2004, 2011 by Robert Sward. Reprinted from “Collected Poems, 1957-2004,” Black Moss Press, and, “New and Selected Poems, 1957-2011,” Red Hen Press.
1 Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down The Bones. (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1986.)
2 Adams, Kathleen. Journal to the Self. (New York: Warner Books, 1990.)
3 Jaffe, Ellen. Writing Your Way. (Toronto: Sumach Press, 2001.)
4 Sewell, Marilyn, Ed. Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women’s Spirituality. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991.)
5 Ibid.
The Tapestry of Your Life by Nora Zylstra-Savage
Nora Zylstra-Savage promotes individual self-worth and community appreciation of personal life stories through her business, Storylines. She accomplishes this through memoir and creative writing courses which she has been teaching since 1993. “Bridging the Gap,” an intergenerational program which she created and facilitates, involves high school and middle school students. The program recently went international and is now being delivered in Holland. As a personal historian, Nora records other people’s life stories and brings enthusiasm, humor, and sensitivity to all her programs.
To view a Bridging the Gap Memories and Music International Program performance night, go to www.story-lines.ca.
Personal stories have the power to entertain, heal, and connect you with your own personal truths and beliefs. Reflecting, recording, and sharing stories is an exercise in discovery and validation that is vital for your own and others’ spiritual and emotional well-being. Life stories are the best connection to the past and are important to share with each other, family, and especially the younger generation. They’re a window into a different time period.
Before you decide which type or style of memoir is best suited to your life experiences and your writing style, it is extremely helpful to identify the major events in your life. Stop for a moment now to “prime the pump” with the following exercise which I call “Creating a Life Circle.”
Start with a large sheet of blank paper and draw a large circle to the outer edge of the page. Draw a ½” rim on the inside of this circle. Next divide the circle into eight equal sections. Take your current age and divide it by eight — this number (the years number) will be the number of years represented in each section. Start with your birth year and add the years number. So if you were born in 1931 and your years number is 10, the first section’s heading would be 1931-1941, each subsequent heading would be 10 years more until the current year. This allows you to jot down all the major events in your life within the correct section and to observe at a glance the events of your life. If there are blank areas, knowing what came before and after can help you figure out what is missing. If you are planning to only write about a particular time period or a specific set of experiences such as having survived cancer, that span of time can be extrapolated and expanded into a new circle and further divided into smaller time periods for more detail.
Once your life circle has been filled out, you are ready to decide what type of memoir best suits your actual experiences. You may choose from the highlights of your life, an autobiography, a partial memoir or a thematic or a reflective one.
Stacked and scattered,
tall and tumbling,
mounds of records,
each a thought, a feeling,
or a melody.
— Sigrid Kellenter
The highlights of your life, or a life review, encourages you to write about your strongest memories which normally represent a few stories from each life stage or milestone. This form is the most diverse of memoir types, as it allows for a variety of formats and styles in one book. It can be a collection of events, relationship stories, family traditions, moments in time, character sketches, social and political essays, poems, recipes, photos, sketches, or memorabilia; and it normally is presented in chronological order, by theme, or a combination of both. If you can’t remember all the details of a certain event or have gaps between years, or if you simply prefer a variety of writing styles and memoir inclusions, the “highlights” memoir might be your best option.
The second type of memoir is the autobiography, which normally spans from birth to the present day. The autobiography is a detailed factual account of your whole life, which usually adheres to one style of writing. Each chapter could represent a year or several years; chronological order is usually maintained. Photos or poems are not usually included in an autobiography; however, many have a photo collection section either in the middle or the end of the book.
Tapping the trees of memories
boiling down the sap
of long and challenging years,
— Helen Vanier
A partial memoir represents a specific period of time in your life. Many areas and periods of time could be chosen. Consider writing only about your childhood. Liar Liar, Your Pants on Fire is one good example; here the author, Mary Cook, writes about her childhood years growing up in the country during the depression. If you were a teacher, you may only want to write about all your teaching years, including your training, the different schools and grades you’ve taught, and the many, personal challenges, highlights, and insights that you’ve experienced. Consider writing about living in a particular community, town, or city. What about your struggles and triumphs with a sickness or disease? Another partial memoir could detail your experiences during war time, which could include your decision to enlist, the many reactions to this, your training, deployment, and return. Your war stories could also include current reflections on your past experiences or the topic of war. A partial memoir allows you to focus and delve deeper into particular topics, experiences, or periods of time.
Thematic memoirs are another style that you may choose. There are several types within this category. Thematic memoir topics — music, family traditions, travel, clothes, appliances, friends, cars (the list is endless) — continue to repeat themselves throughout your life. All the stories selected must hook onto the theme chosen. An example might be: my life told through the clothes I wore. A book with this theme — Love, Loss, and What I Wore — was written and illustrated by Ilene Beckerman. Other thematic titles might include: all the cars I’ve ever owned, or my spiritual journey.
Internal life challenges are also a choice in this thematic memoir style. You may choose to write more than one thematic life story. Themes could include addictions, betrayal, responsibility, disabilities, familial struggles, life lessons — this list, too, goes on and on. For this type, you need to identify your theme and then consider stories that represent your journey or evolution. These memoirs tend to be the most powerful as they normally represent universal struggles that resonate with everyone’s life in one way or another. An excellent book that provides the structure for you to identify personal themes is Writing the Memoir by Judith Barrington.
The final type of memoir is reflective. There are two different styles. For those of you who enjoy philosophizing about life, here is an opportunity to share insights about your life or life in general through metaphoric poetry or prose. You might compare your life to a river with its many branches, depths, speeds, directions, and obstacles. Or you may be fascinated with plants, the environment, the elements, the weather, nature, or even non-living elements. Imagine your life as a sports car, an orchestra, a color, or even a boat. The other way of approaching a reflective memoir is to identify all the major turning points or milestones in your life. Write about each event followed by a reflection describing your feelings, decisions, insights, and directions based on the event.
The driveway is haunted by
bodies of cars that rust in weeds
and rubble on the edges of towns
where nobody goes
— Robert Currie
There are many story styles available for you to choose from. The best thing you can do for yourself, your family, or your friends and even the community is to START. Family members have died, and often with them die irreplaceable stories. A vital part of our social, cultural, and family history will be forgotten and lost. Life stories help you understand your past, acknowledge the present, and create new possibilities for your future. The time is now — Put it in writing!
//
They Say, I Say
they say
cut to the chase
shorten your stories
I say I’m trying to
share an experience
why must I boil it down
to its essence
deglaze it
evaporate it
to an extract
what will we talk about
in the spaces
around the words
you say I should leave out
please
relax
listen
slide into reverie
linger with me
– Joyce Harries
Writing Your Way: A Guide to Writing and Aging with Spirit by Ellen S. Jaffe
Ellen S. Jaffe is a writer, teacher, and psychotherapist living in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She grew up in New York City and spent several years in England. Her published books include: Writing Your Way: Creating a Personal Journal; Water Children and Skinny-Dipping with the Muse (poetry); and Feast of Lights, a young adult novel. She has also published poetry and prose in many journals and anthologies, and teaches writing in schools and community organizations.
Unfortunately, Writing Your Way and Feast of Lightsare now out of print, but Feast of Lights may soon be released as an e-book. To order Skinny-Dipping With the Muse, please contact Bryan Prince Booksellers (1-800-867-0090) or staff@princebooks.net. To contact Ellen directly, please visit her website, where you can learn more about her work and use the contact form there: www.ellen-s-jaffe.com
I sit here day after day
Alone but not lonely…
I’ve learned to be alone,
I’ll never learn to be lonely.
— from a poem by Viola A. Jaffe
My mother, Viola, wrote these lines at age 90, in her room at an assisted living residence. She had always written “light verse” for family occasions but started writing poetry seriously, as a way of expressing and voicing her feelings, when she entered the residence at age 89. She wrote until the end of her life at 91 — in her words: “Something occurs, I react, and a poem results. Feelings turn into language, and language validates my feelings.” I think that she wrote to better understand herself and the world around her, and to find a way through the world’s mystery, chaos, and silence. Even — or especially — at that time in her life, writing helped her on her spiritual journey, helped her define her place in the world and in relationship to others. After one of her table-mates died (a not-uncommon occurrence in residences and nursing-homes), she wrote,
One more death, an empty chair at the table,
No one cares, no one marks the passing,
Each one thinks, “Who’s next? Not I, not I.”
One death as important as 300 in Pakistan, thousands in Darfur.
One person less, but a person, a woman I knew.
My mother was still alert, able to watch and care about the news as she had done all her life; she was aware of death on a large scale, far away, publicized in the media — but she was also able to see and mourn the death of one person, her friend, even when other residents and staff kept silent.
Writing allows us to do this: to bear witness to ourselves, our loved ones, and the world.
Why Write?
We often turn to writing and other art forms at turning-points in life — adolescence and sexual flowering, love, birth of children and grandchildren, illness, loss and grief, growing old. We find words and images (my love is like a red red rose; her icy heart) for our deepest, most joyful or devastating feelings, and this can help us go through these times without getting so lost. Poetry and other writing helps us to empathize with the feelings of others and also to feel we are less alone in our own feelings; many people have found poems or quotes that are healing in times of grief or which express the ecstasy of love. As we age, we tend to look both backwards and forwards, and also to see the present with new eyes — and writing can help us come to terms with the self we are now becoming. Finding the “right” word or combination of words can be a kind of “open sesame” to the treasure-trove of understanding.
The word we use about the process of aging is interesting in itself. We talk about “growing” old — which implies we are still growing, like a tree, or the grass, or the gardens we have tended all our lives. We may be growing in different ways, but we are still growing, we continue to grow — to flower, to fruit, to change, to go on. The word “grow” is related to “green” — the color of new grass and leaves. The green chlorophyll in plants is what allows them to turn sunlight into food and energy, the process of photosynthesis. How can we, metaphorically, keep this chemical/physical process alive in ourselves as long as we can? We need to be careful not to shut the door on this spiritual and emotional growth — and then accept the burst of color, the sweet fruit, as the green fades.
Your writing need not be for publication, and certainly should not start out that way. You are developing a relationship with yourself, with the hidden corners of your mind; you are exploring that dark basement, that attic full of old suitcases, those birds flying just outside your window, and your own (sometimes unfamiliar) body. Writing can become a practice — not in order to get “better” at it (though that will happen), but as a spiritual practice, a way to develop inner guides and guidelines, something that becomes part of your life.
How to Begin?
The first step is to find a journal or notebook that suits you, one that feels comfortable to write in — it might have a fancy cover or be a school exercise book. But it is important to have a book, rather than a collection of scattered papers that can disappear. You can paste a favorite photograph or art card on the cover if you like, to make it more personal.
It also sometimes helps to have a time to write — early morning, just before bed, with tea after lunch — whatever time suits you. But you also want to have the book at hand for thoughts and impressions that come spontaneously; you might see a beautiful rainbow, or have a wish for a loved person, or remember your mother’s Aunt Clara and the cookies she baked for you, or suddenly recall your experiences as an immigrant child in a new school. Some people do write (or rewrite/copy and file) on the computer, and this is okay, but not necessary: even writers who often use computers find it is good to have the physical experience of writing by hand — and a notebook is much more portable, user-friendly, and doesn’t need batteries or electricity. You are your own source of power!
Journal entries can take the form of random paragraphs, a memoir, “letters” that you won’t send but address to a particular person (even someone who has died — this is a wonderful way to still communicate in your mind and perhaps resolve some loose ends), poems (rhyming or just free verse), a piece of fiction (short story), or anything you like. You may have dabbled in writing earlier in your life — or not; now is the time to begin. It’s possible you will want to meet with a group of friends (whether you live in your own home or in a retirement home or residence), to write together and, if you like, share your writing with each other, reading it aloud. Meeting regularly as a group (e.g., once a week, twice a month, etc.) helps one to focus, and when everyone does their own version of the same theme, surprising things can happen. The group need not be large — 4 to 6 people is a good size.
People often think they don’t have time in their busy lives to write — or the prospect of looking at a blank page for hours, waiting to be inspired, is too daunting. One great way to overcome both these problems is to do a “timed writing” of 5 or 10 minutes (you can even start with 3 minutes — use an egg-timer!). The rule is to keep your hand moving for all that time. If you get stuck, you can simply repeat your title or subject, and then see what new words or ideas come. You can write a surprising amount in this time — and you may surprise yourself with the thoughts, images, and associations that come to mind in this “sprint” of energetic writing. Although in everyday life, we worry about our words making sense, following rational logic, and being useful to other people, in creative writing we are using the same words with a different purpose — to find images for our thoughts and feelings, to explore the past, to play with language, and to use our imagination, to dream, to wonder. Like Alice in Wonderland, we can become “curiouser and curiouser” about ourselves and the world around us.
A Few Exercises to Get Started
I will now suggest a few exercises to help you get started. These can be done on your own or in a group. They can be found in my book, Writing Your Way: Creating a Personal Journal (Toronto: Sumach Press, 2001). Information on ordering the book can be found at the top of this article.
1. Colors of My Mind
The world around us is full of colors, to which we have our own associations. These can be personal, or cultural; the colors of weddings and mourning vary around the world. A color can suggest something in the outside world — red could make you think of a cardinal, or of your favorite sweater, for example — or a feeling, like love or anger. A color might even suggest a sound, or a smell. Write down a color (start with one you really like, then do one you dislike), and describe what each color makes you think of. There are two ways of doing this:
List at least four things each color makes you think of. These can be anything at all. Example: Blue: forget-me-nots, blue jays in the garden, my son’s old baby blanket, Bessie Smith singing the blues.
List your five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) plus “emotion” and then write one or more associations to the color you’ve chosen. Example: Red is the sight of a rose in bloom, the sound of a cardinal singing, the smell of fresh strawberries, the taste of hot peppers, the touch of velvet. the emotion of love, or of anger. The sense-images don’t have to relate to objects having that color: for example, red could be “the sound of cymbals clashing,” yellow could be “the sound of a child laughing.” In both forms of the exercise, the more details you use, the better.
The exercise using the five senses can be used with other nouns: home; spring; holidays like Christmas, Passover, Ramadan, etc.
2. Body Language
One way of getting to know your own body is to write as if a part of your body is speaking: perhaps your hands, your hair, your eyes, your back, your feet. It can be an inner organ like the heart; it can even be a part of the body that is missing (either from birth or because of surgery, illness, or accident). Do a timed writing of 15 minutes. Before you start writing, take three deep breaths, relax your body in a way that feels comfortable to you, and see if you can hear the voice of a particular body part. It may be something you and others can see (hair, feet, breasts), or an organ deep inside. It may be an area where you have been experiencing illness, pain, or loss. You might try writing several pieces about different areas of your body, including parts you like as well as those you don’t like or those that are causing you concern. The writing can be a series of paragraphs, a poem, a letter from your body part to you, or a dialogue between the two of you.
3. I remember/I don’t remember
I learned this exercise from Natalie Goldberg’s inspiring book Writing Down the Bones (Shambala Publishing, 1986). Natalie also emphasizes the importance of timed writing, especially for this exercise. Write “I remember” on your paper, and for five minutes, write what you remember — you may find yourself focusing on a particular person or subject, or just writing at random (both are okay). If you feel stuck, go back to “I remember.”
Read over what you’ve written. Then (now or next day), write the heading “I don’t remember.” Wait, you’re saying — how can I write about what I don’t remember? It’s a paradox, but most of us know that there are things we can’t remember — whether it is what we ate for breakfast yesterday, next week’s doctor’s appointment, or the house we lived in when we were 6 years old. Write about that. (“I don’t remember the house in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but I know my mother always wanted to go back there…”) You can even write something like “I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t called fat…” as one woman did in a workshop. If you are really ambitious, or curious, you can try writing this part of the exercise with your non-dominant hand: sometimes this brings up deep memories. (Be prepared — but know that you only remember what you are able to handle.)
You are writing this for yourself, of course, but some of these memories may turn into memoirs or stories you can pass on to your children, grandchildren, and other family members.
4. Final Exercise
The late U.S. poet Audre Lorde wrote, “I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.” (“The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” Sister Outsider, p. 41). How does this apply to your life?
Good luck! As novelist Ann Beatty says, “It is only through writing that you discover what you know.” Another writer, Ali Smith, gives us this lovely image: “And it was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us the rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us natural acrobats. They made us brave. They made us well. ….” (from Girl Meets Boy).
Celebrating Poets Over 70 by Marianna Vespry
Marianne Vespry is one of the editors of Celebrating Poets Over 70, published in 2010. She worked as a librarian, editor, and administrator in Canada and abroad. Her final 13 years before retirement were spent with the United Nations regional office in Bangkok. In addition to poetry she has published abstract bulletins, thesauri, community editorials in the Hamilton Spectator (Ontario), and a fantasy novel
Celebrating poets over 70 began for me as an accidental project. I was feeling that I could and should move on after my husband’s death. At a Tower Poetry meeting Ellen Ryan described her vision of an elder-anthology, and then asked if I would edit it. Of course I don’t step into such commitments blindly: I ask myself “Why not?” and allow at least 10 seconds to pass to see if any compelling negatives present themselves. Nothing. I said “Yes.”
Over the next months we received 1,100 poems, and with the help of 16 reader/evaluators, we winnowed them down to 330. We had decided to group the poems by themes, but we could not slot them into pre-set categories; we had no preexisting list of chapters. Rather I dealt them into piles of poems I hoped would illuminate each other. If a pile was too big, it was divided. If it was too small, it disappeared, and the poems were distributed among other piles. Twelve piles emerged, twelve piles in need of one-word titles. Sometimes it was easy: Childhood, Love, Death. Sometimes it was difficult: Encounters, Reflection.
At the beginning it seemed so tenuous: Every poem records an Encounter, embodies its author’s Reflections; all poetry is about Love and Death. But as each theme was sub-sorted, as each poem fell into place (fell or was pushed), the themes and even the placement on the page acquired inevitability. In the Introduction I apologized in advance to anyone who might feel that their poem was misplaced, but no one complained.
Individual themes offered surprises.
//
Childhood poems did not overflow with the innocence and optimism popular culture expects; they were mostly sober, even sad. Poets remembered dead siblings, a grandmother’s funeral, the struggles of the immigrant experience, and the 1930s. The birth of a baby is wonderful:
this is the kind of news
that can set the tilting world
up straight.
—“Bret Andrew, February 5, 2003”
by Marion Frahm Tincknell
But another poet has a bleaker view; he see the newborn as:
a baby critter
that didn’t beg
to be begotten
on a hopeless
starving stage
— “Basic Needs”
by Jerry Andringa
//
Generations weaves together love, memory, recognition, concern, playfulness, the heartache and laughter that dance together through family interactions. A great-grandmother worries about her daughter, squeezed by sandwich generation obligations. The family traditions that chafed a child are now upheld by her much older self, and imparted in turn to her grandchildren. The Depression scarred and terrified a generation; the next generation deals with the fallout.
After her mother moved to a nursing home
Hazel cleared out her house.
In a kitchen cupboard she found a jar labeled
string too short for anything.
— “Saving” by Sharon MacFarlane
//
History starts with a tongue-in-cheek capsule biography of Julius Caesar, and a meditation on falconry.
Everything flows,
says the old dark wisdom.
Blood flows, tears flow,
falcons are flown.
— “Falcons and Their Kings”
by Francis Sparshot
It goes on through more recent tragedies. Canada lost perhaps 100,000 marriageable young men in World War I, dead or severely wounded. That left an equal number of young women unmarried or widowed and unlikely to remarry. One or them writes:
I never met the man
I would have loved
For in any war
There is
No rhyme
No reason.
— “Unknown” by Joan S Nist
//
Love poems celebrate present love, recall beginnings, dream past loves back to us. A poet marvels at his good fortune:
Your spirit is my flag freshly unfurled.
Old Valentine! How new you make my world!
— “Old Valentine” by Irving Leo
Another speaks of union and separation:
till we peel
limb by limb
he from me
me from him
each to reach
best we may
separate selves
born of the day
— “One and One Are One”
by Sandy Wicker
Another remembers:
. . . long journeys
Through the seas
Of the mind, in
A white ship, steered
By the stars.
Your hair
Blowing in the wind.
— “Under an Opal Moon”
by Stephen Threlkeld
//
Encounters spills forth with rich moments and seasons of life.
In a well-loved house,
. . . the ghosts
of former tenants . . .
. . . whisper from the rooms and on the lawn
but leases end and then we, too, are gone.
— “Passing Through” by Patricia Brodie
Emigrants are forever divided from those they left in “the old country”:
we travel through
each others’ lives
only in thought
we left our souls behind
by leaving
— “Emigrants” by Giselle Braeuel
At a summer music festival in Ottawa, a concertgoer muses about post 9/11 security in the U.S., preferring local arrangements:
As for police sharpshooters here, or razor wire
forget it: we have retained
Beethoven, Mozart, Dvorak
to provide our security.
— “Security” by Christopher Levenson
The flavour of Aging is bittersweet. Losses are acknowledged, but what is left is valued even more. A poet says of her chimney sweep:
He wears the leer of men who peer up more
than sooty shafts. I pay no mind, for like the hearth,
I know: when we no longer burn, we die.
— “Chimney Sweep, November”
by Elisavietta Ritchie
Moving out of the family home has been hard; the treasures stored in the attic have gone to family members who will value them.
The attic is bare
but my heart is full
of what has been.
— “Change” by Naomi C Wingfield
New technology can help enrich old lives, substitute for failing senses:
At one hundred
Etta is au courant.
Her watch talks to her.
It is eleven fifteen.
— “Lifetime” by Carrie McLeod Howson
Sometimes only the poet’s skill is left to celebrate:
Yesterday I was indestructible
eighteen, the sea
was deep; today
decaying in the shallows.
— “Macular Degeneration”
by Killian McDonnell
//
Who would have expected the funny poems about Death? They share space with the elegiac:
And the long snows of winter
Softly settle upon them all.
“— Farewell to Friends”
by Joan Shewchun
. . . and afterwards [we] talked incessantly, unwilling
to finally confront the silence
of her loss.
— “Celebrations” by Don Gralen
and the refusal to “go gentle”:
I’ll be like that leaf,
hang on to that damn
limb no matter how hard
the gusts whip me around.
— “Obstinance”
by Nancy Gotter Gates
and many more.
//
The section on Nature begins with three poems about deer and goes on to water: water birds, living by the water. Next are the seasons.
winter:
Champagne air, dry, biting,
dances with light.
Wind-scoured snow, trackless,
flashes with diamond fire. –
— “–50C” by Isobel Spence
spring:
rain-drenched tulips
my inside out
umbrella
— “Haiku: Tulips” by Sonja Dunn
summer:
The wasps are in the windfalls,
Take care, my dear, don’t touch!
“Late summer warning”
— by Muriel Jarvis Ackinclose
fall:
The last leaf to fall
sees on its earthbound spiral
the first buds of spring
— “Season Haiku”
by Julie Adamson
//
Reflections serves up memories, dreams, arguments, meditations, wisdom. Sometimes the reflections are literal:
I can reflect back the sunshine’s bright beams,
recovering sky-tinted shards of my dreams.
— “Shards of Glass” by Marion Wyllie
(age 103)
Sometimes being mindful is hard to bear:
The pot simmers, I stir, taste, season.
A roadside bomb kills an American soldier
and two Iraqis . . .
— “Mindful Soup” by Sylvia Levinson
Reading obituaries, a poet thinks about her own:
Loved ones, when you write my obituary,
say this: Once, sitting still,
she turned into a tiger.
— “Reading Obituaries” by Mildred Tremblay
Sometimes poetry itself is a path to wisdom:
The Advocate
stopped playing god
The Pacifist fought
to find inner peace
And the old Survivor
healed her wounds with words
— “Getting There”
by Lorna Louise Bell
There are funny poems about death, but no one can make light of Dementia.
. . . it takes and takes and takes
until all that’s left is one working heart,
locked inside a warm empty body
that’s forgotten how to die.
— “Morning Musing” by Diane Buchanan
//
Poetry arises out of memory. Wordsworth said that it “. . . takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Memory as a specific theme might appear redundant, until you read the poems. They talk of remembering and forgetting (accidental and deliberate), of voices and silences and ghosts from the past.
I heard the wind in the night
And I remembered.
— “Memory” by Isobel Spence
Words celebrates language, writing, poetry:
I read poetry
and for a short time
live inside a stranger’s world
— “I am the Poet of My Courtyard”
by Rita Katz
It celebrates communication and its failures:
Please
relax
listen
slide into reverie
linger with me
— “They Say, I Say”
by Joyce Harries
And indeed, it celebrates words:
I love friends and flowers and birds
I must add, I do love words!
— “I Love Words” by Marion Wyllie (age 103)
Elders and the Practice of Hope by Henry C. Simmons
Henry C. Simmons, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA, where he taught courses that explored the intersection of social sciences and the practice of religion. His recent books include Ecotheology and the Practice of Hope(with Anne Marie Dalton) (SUNY, 2010) and Thriving after Mid-life (with E.Craig MacBean)(Richmond VA, 2007). He currently volunteers as board co-chair of the Fan Free Clinic and on the Age Wave Planning Initiative of the United Way of Greater Richmond and Petersburg.
The journey called aging cannot be understood outside the environment within which it happens, namely the earth itself that sustains all life. And thus we must put the lives of our elders into the context of the first years of the 21st century — where nothing looms as large as the issues of a sustainable environment.
While we cannot avoid the fact that the global situation daily becomes less sustainable, there are hopeful signs. Twenty-five years ago most people [including those who are now the elders]. . . enthusiastically supported the policies that still dominate the planet. They accepted the theories of the experts, and looked forward to the prosperity that would fulfill their expectations. That is not true today. Disillusionment is widespread. There is openness for new ideas. (1)
The journey of aging is happening to each of us within this compelling context. Whatever the challenges and opportunities of aging, responsibility for the earth is shared between us all. To take the elders out of the heart of this conversation would be wrong.
Interspersed throughout this text is a series of remarkable panels that make up a “Stations of the Earth” in a garden in front of the south window-wall of a church in Toronto, Canada. More about that church later. As you view the panels and read the text below each panel, take a moment of silence for your personal meditation. There are nine panels. (2)
//
Station One: The universe flares forth
At once explosive and radiating, fiery and full of power, the original flaring forth provided the originating conditions for all that followed and continues to follow in our own time. Perhaps the greatest challenge of this new century is to appreciate who we are against the backdrop of what we are learning about the Cosmos, in its dramatic beginning more than 13 million years ago, and its contemporary unfolding.
“All the energy that would ever exist in the entire course of time erupted as a single quantum — a singular gift — existence. If in the future, stars would blaze and lizards would blink in their light, these actions would be powered by the same numinous energy that flared forth at the dawn of time.”
—Brian Swimme, The Universe Story
//
I know that the environment and the future of our children’s children to the seventh generation are widespread concerns. Perhaps for some, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has made the awareness of the fragility of the earth and the warming of the environment more acute. Perhaps it was your attention to initiatives on climate warming and its negative impact on the majority world. And of course for some the impetus was quite local: the terribly destructive tornados in thenmid-west, Gulf-coast hurricanes, or California droughts, or “weather-wierding” in your own locality, which is more and more conclusively linked to the emission of greenhouse gases. (3)
One author put it succinctly; we now live in an era where “nothing is ecologically innocent.”(4) Like many of you, I can’t even get rid of a Styrofoam cup or an Albertson or Kroger’s plastic bag without second and third thoughts. Nothing is ecologically innocent.
I am convinced that no context is as important as the degradation of the environment. (5) In my 40 years as a seminary professor, I have had the opportunity to study more than 100 congregations; in my volunteer work at the United Way of Greater Richmond and Petersburg, I have studied and worked with many non-profits. There are people in both groups whose main concern is justice now, especially for the poor. But there are also people, particularly in congregations, for whom a genuine concern is immortality and the afterlife to the detriment of involvement in guarding the earth. I am not among them. Immortality will not be the issue for generations who are never born. Daniel Maguire put things crisply: “If current trends continue, we will not. And that is qualitatively and epochally true.” (6)
//
Station 2: Our blue green planet emerges
Born of the fiery activity of the early universe, Planet Earth began its journey around the sun and galaxy 4½ billion years ago. All generations have sought to understand the meaningfulness of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. It is not unusual that we too should ponder this cosmic event.
“If we lived on the moon, for example, our sense of the Divine would reflect the lunar landscape. We would not have anything like the awareness of the Divine that we have at present. Imagination is required for religious development. What would there be to imagine if we lived on the moon?
But think of being born on the moon and then coming to the earth. What a stunning, beatific experience that would be!”
—Thomas Berry, Befriending the Earth
//
At times my outlook on the chances for survival of the earth as we know it has been very dark. What saves me from despair are people who are deeply aware of environmental crises and profoundly concerned about their grandchildren and their grandchildren’s grandchildren. Because they are aware and concerned, they continue in what I have come to see to see as “practices of hope.”
In some of the contexts in which I live, it is the voices of elders that are clearest. Perhaps they have more at stake. Perhaps they have longer horizons. Perhaps as their sight loses acuity, their vision sharpens. I am grateful to elders in intentional green communities, and some congregations I have studied, who “encourage group-centered, cultural-based altruism at the expense of personal selfishness, which in turn favors the genetic survival of the group [and who are a] cultural force which favorably influences the direction and/or strength of biological evolution.” (7)
//
Station 3: Life Emerges
Very early on the Earth’s journey, life arose, first with great simplicity, but constantly acquiring the marvelous information and transformational power of DNA. From a common origin, magnificently diverse genetic codes arise.
Scientists remind us that we are precipitating a vast extinction of the abundance and variety of the web of life. Thomas Berry highlights the religious dimension of the crisis: “To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a Divine voice.”
//
To practice “green hope” is not easy nor is it to be taken for granted. In fact, for most of us, one of the most puzzling aspects of our ecological problems is how hard it is for us and for others to choose to act now in ways that are against our own immediate interests and in favor of the interests of people who suffer from our over-indulgence in carbon fuels and our disproportionate use of all of earth’s resources. Twenty percent of us create 80 per cent of all pollutants in the atmosphere.
Recent advances in evolutionary biology have raised questions about the limits of knowledge in decisions about actions. As Carolyn King points out in her book Habitat of Grace: Biology, Christianity, and the Global Environmental Crisis, it is easier to understand human nature if we understand biology, if we understand that culture is an elaboration of biology, and if we recognize that free will must be exercised within biological constraints. (8)
From the perspective of what evolutionary psychology has to say about the evolution of public morality and about how community decisions are made”, (9) we learn specifically that “the default setting of human nature . . . is the need and ingrained habit of fitting in with, and looking out for one’s own closest group.” (10) Few biological predispositions are as real as the need to care for one’s own group and most of all for one’s own children — and we judge this to be right. “The force behind the moral attitudes that comes most naturally is to be conditionally co-operative with members of one’s own group, but much less co-operative with — at least wary of, and necessarily hostile to — members of other groups. (11) But it is not enough for earth in crisis.
Carolyn King concludes, “Unfortunately for the environmental movement, it is basically unnatural to humans to think in terms of the global, rather than the local, community.” (12) But that is not the whole story. There are places of hope, practices of hope, and people of hope, against the odds, as it were. Knowing what we are up against in terms of evolutionary biology locates the problem with precision and sets the parameters within which gathered intentional groups and committed individuals must work for a sustainable earth.
It is the very fact of abundance within the universe that makes it possible to freely give gifts, in particular the gift of attention to suffering and its causes. Anne Primavesi writes:
The presence of “givenness” within myself too, my own ability to give, also flows from procreative interactions between beings who lived before me (most obviously my biological ancestors) and “gave” birth to me. . . What I give, and to whom, will be decided by the quality of attention I pay to those around me. Indeed, that attention may itself be the greatest gift I can offer them. In particular, being attentive to what it means for someone else to be alive means being attentive to their wellbeing but, above all, to their suffering and to its causes. (13)
//
Station 4: The human emerges
We unique creatures are here depicted linked to all life and manifesting passion and peace, male and female, wholeness and fragmentation. In our time, humans have transformed the Earth with an effectiveness previously unimaginable. Yet, as Thomas Berry states, we are the creatures “in whom the universe reflects on and celebrates itself in a unique mode of conscious self-awareness.” — The Great Work
“In one manner or the other it still remains true that, even in the view of the mere biologist, the human epic resembles nothing so much as a Way of the Cross.”
— Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man
//
There is a recent part of our evolutionary history — just 30,000 years ago — that we still benefit from today, namely the care of grandmothers for the children. Compelling in its urgency to create a safe future is the contribution of grandparents, who in their connection with their grandchildren display a deep, somatic, and even survival-of-the-species kind of faith. This must be understood within the larger context of history and the survival of the human race. For the past 30,000 years of human history, grandparents have raised children while their own adult children were hunters and gatherers, fisher folk and farmers, artisans and miners.
This is not just an accident of economic history. It is written deep into that part of humans that controls life-preserving behavior for the species, demanding that the young and the bearers of the young be protected if we collectively are to survive. From an evolutionary point of view, longevity is not an accident but is somehow crucial to our development as a species. That’s the perspective of the so-called “Grandmother Hypothesis,” suggesting that post-menopausal survival of grandmothers permitted the nurturing of young children and the success of the human species . . . by providing extra care for children. The first grandmothers, in the Neanderthal era, were available to baby-sit, and while they did so, they had the time and the audience to pass on the stories learned in their own youth. This is credited with sparking the birth of traditional culture. Grandmothers are believed to be the evolutionary advantage of modern humankind. (14)
Built deep into the unconscious mechanisms of the brain is a level of attraction and bonding that helps grandmothers, and by extension grandfathers, do what they have done for tens of thousands of years (and in most parts of the world continue to do) — care for the grandchildren while the parents toil in the workplace.
//
Station 5: The rise of agriculture
Here Mother Earth’s abundance of nourishing and healing harvests is seen to be interrupted by a barren gap. Gradually introduced by the human invention of agriculture starting 10,000 years ago, it continues to widen as long as we are blind to the vibrant web of life.
“Look at the planet. Everywhere freedom twines its way around necessity, inventing new strings of occasion, lassoing time and putting it through its varied and spirited paces.
Everywhere live things lash at the rocks.” — Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk
//
When we look at the grandparents that are part of most of our social circles, we see a type of grandparenting that is a cultural aberration — leisure or companion grandparenting. Grandparent-grandchild relationships are defined by a week at Disney World and two weeks at the beach — or some version thereof that plays out an affective and autonomous role for grandparents. The issue this raises for those who now have the resources and leisure to be companion grandparents is this: What is the appropriate use and scope of their talents, strengths, and resources? Millions upon millions of young children who do not have companion grandparents cannot afford to lose from a wider social arena the strengths of the older adult population.
We have access to a historically more typical picture of what grandmothers have always done if we look to other social circles. In our own country today some, perhaps many, poor grandparents raise grandchildren because it is their cultural norm, or because parents are absent by reason of work, sickness, or incarceration. It’s hard to be green when you are urban poor; it’s hard to protect the grandchildren from poor environments. The economic and social injuries of class are powerful.
But I have often been deeply touched by grandparents raising grandchildren — grandparents whose deep faith in the future of these same children is the root and raw energy that wills to give all the young a chance for a sustainable future. This is a practice of hope in often quite desperate circumstances. It is the best and truest kind of the practice of hope and perhaps most closely models what elders must do who have the luxury of practicing green hope.
Our challenge is twofold: first, to be sure that every child lives in a healthy physical and social environment; and second, to work to redress the growing threats to the stability of urban families and communities.
//
Station 6: The rise of culture and religion
The Tree of Life here exhibits the human form in two modes — the “cruciform”: head red — and the ecstatic: head white. The tear in Earth’s integrity is deepened by the human zeal for transcendence, whether through culture or religion. Only the aboriginal sense of human transcendence seems to have remained free of this disastrous psychic distancing from the Earth.
“We need an experience wherein human consciousness awakens to the grandeur and sacred quality of the Earth process. This awakening is our human participation in the dream of the Earth, the dream that is carried in its integrity not in any of Earth’s cultural expressions but in the depth of our genetic coding. Therein the Earth functions at a depth beyond our capacity for active thought. We can only be sensitized to what is being revealed to us.”
—Thomas Berry, The Great Work
//
Bill McKibben, himself now an elder, began a recent article titled, “Meltdown: Running out of time on global warming,” with these words: “We need a movement to combat climate change, we need it fast, and we need it to involve as many people as possible” (15) He is right. And he certainly would not have said this were he not sure that many intentional communities are already open to or engaged in practices of hope.
“Overruling our deep-seated natural emotions is never easy”(16) but it is possible. Biological predispositions are real, but they cease at the frontier of the tribe, so that is where our collective commitments must take over from cultural evolution answer the greatest ethical question of all: “And who then is my neighbor?”
Speaking from her Christian perspective, Carolyn King says: “In other words, ‘grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it’, as Aquinas maintained . . . Cultural traditions such as religion reinforce existing group selection favoring the better survival of the most strongly co-operative social groups. It is our best hope for the future.”(17) “Religion [like any thoughtful, communal ethical inquiry] can encourage group-centered, cultural-based altruism at the expense of personal selfishness, which in turn favors the genetic survival of the group, then religious traditions can be a cultural force which favorably influence the direction and/or strength of biological evolution.” (18)
“We are creatures adapted to small groups, ideally not more than about one hundred and fifty strong. . . . If we are to find a solution, we have to do it together, and soon. It will require the sort of mediation that an informed, alert, contemporary group can contribute — a cool-headed but affectionate view of human nature, combined with an [ethical sense] that encourages people to trust each other and negotiate conservation agreements in good faith.”(19)
//
Station 7: The Rise of Science and Technology
The nuclear cloud, product of science and technology, is fascinating and alluring. But its violence is contrasted with the opulence of our privileged planet. If science is to become Wisdom, its insights must transcend the technological. Then it can teach how to re-join our beautiful and numinous Earth.
“The crucial step here is to awaken to the fact of the Sun’s gravitational power. The Earth is one immense planet and it is being whipped around the Sun by the power of the Sun. This is something the Sun is doing in every instant of every day. We are held by the Sun. If the Sun released us from our bond with it, we would sail off into deep space. . . To contemplate the solar system until you feel . . . this immense planet being swung around its massive cosmic partner is to touch an ocean of wonder as you take a first step into inhabiting the actual universe and solar system and Earth.”
—Brian Swimme, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos
//
Let me tell you about one of my favorite green initiatives, St. Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church in suburban Toronto. (20 I quote from an architectural review in the Globe and Mail.
Rather than creating an introverted experience of worship inspired by stained glass windows, the emphasis has been placed on the mystery of the natural world. Views are directed to the outdoor gardens just beyond the massive clear-glass curtain wall. . . Oriented to the south, the church embraces the sun and disperses it throughout its spaces.
With its LEED designation, St. Gabriel’s is among the most sustainable churches in Canada. But there is another message that comes from a walk through the garden where the stations of the earth pictured in this article are located. They chart the evolution and trauma of the universe, from the big bang, to the bursting forth of flowers, to the beginning of agriculture, to another station depicting the atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud. “To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a Divine Voice,” wrote Thomas Berry, the earth scholar. (21)
These are the garden panels whose text I have quoted throughout, and they tell a powerful story of hope, of elders, and in this case of a community of faith. The small religious community that financed and built this church has an average age of well over 70 years; Thomas Berry, who was the inspiration for the design, was 92. St. Gabriel’s is the “practice of hope” of committed and visionary elders.
There are pastors, laity, and academics of every denomination, religion, and faith who have been “practicing green hope” in their writings, teachings, and lives for decades. Book titles include Buddhism and Ecology: the Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds; Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Human; Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4000 years of Ecology in Jewish Thought; Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-being of Earth and Humans, and most recently Ecotheology and the Practice of Hope.
I know the Christian tradition, and I know — at least by name, reputation, and their works — many of the pioneers in this area. These are people who, academically, practiced hope in their writings beginning back in the days of Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring, Greenpeace, Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, and Starhawk. They took risks; they were leaders; and 40 years later these elders and their texts are still practices of hope. These are women and men passionate about social justice, about the women and children of the majority world, about our own citizens of color whose health is compromised by the effluents of Superfund clean-up sites and toxic inner cities.
//
Station 8: The Rise of the Flowers
Because the natural history of flowers in the Earth Community has been so spectacular and meaningful, it is presented in these Stations out of its evolutionary sequence. It becomes a symbol of hope for the Earth and our own religious ability to value the Earth as Sacred.
“Somewhere, just a short time before the close of the Age of Reptiles, there occurred a soundless, violent explosion. It lasted millions of years, but it was an explosion, nevertheless. It marked the emergence of the angiosperms — the flowering plants. . . Flowers changed the face of the planet. Without them, the world we know — even (we ourselves) — would never have existed.”
—Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey
//
There are, of course, faithful elders whose efforts are not directly connected with any traditional religion. But perhaps some religious traditions, whose work is easier to track than some other groups, can model for us practices that we can incorporate into our own intentional communities. Some of the practices of green hope in which they are engaged are astonishing. Second Journey: Mindfulness, Service, and Community in the Second Half of Life is among a small number of emerging organizations helping birth a new vision of the rich possibilities of the second half of life. Much of Second Journey energies are focused on the
opportunity to encourage the growth of new communities — and new models of community — to support living, learning, and social change for the 21st century. [They] recognize that existing institutions — from senior centers to Sun City — are based on assumptions about “the elderly” that do not apply to the generation of Baby Boomers now poised to redefine later life.
Our culture is entering a fertile period of social experimentation. The current conventional “continuum of care” — which includes catered and assisted-living facilities and nursing homes, late-life options you will NOT find covered in the pages of this Guide — is being replaced by promising new forms, promising innovative solutions to the challenge of Creating Community in Later Life. Among their cohousing communities is the EcoVillage at Ithaca. In their own words they are, “part of a growing global movement for a saner, more sustainable human culture.” (22)
For those of us who love cities more than the country (and I, for one, confess that trees make me nervous), there is another initiative that is a practice of green hope.
The Los Angeles Eco-Village is located three miles west of downtown L.A. These urban pioneers seek to model low-impact living patterns, as they increase neighborhood self-reliance in a variety of areas, such as livelihood, food production, energy and water use, affordable housing, transit, recreation, waste reduction, and education. The Eco-Village’s founder, Lois Arkin, believes that “At some point in the not-so-distant future, our choices will be increasingly limited by the accelerating degradation of our life support systems — air, soil, water. Our work. . . is about demonstrating that it is possible to make lifestyle choices that actually increase the quality of life while significantly reducing our environmental impacts.” (23)
These are among the practices of hope that sustain me.
There are other practices of elder-hope to which I can point, but as I have indicated there are strong evolutionary tendencies that we have to recognize and move beyond. Some choose to articulate these in the language of the cross and creation. We may choose any language set that helps us focus our energies on sustainability of the earth, and by extension of the cosmos.
//
Cross and Creation
These “Stations of our Cosmic Earth” are reproductions of a series of stained glass windows originally commissioned by Holy Cross Centre.
A “Station” is an important moment that produced an irreversible Earth/Cosmic transformation.
The general theme of the “Stations of Our Cosmic Earth” is depicted here. The Cross is close to the earth and surrounded by colorful flowers, affirming that it is linked to the Story of Creation. The artist suggests that the space in the center of the Cross hints at an open space of wondrous possibility.
Although it is the symbol of suffering and death, the Cross also proclaims hope and resurrection. Carved from a tree it is also the Tree of Life.
//
When we come to the realization of what our actions do to the poor of the world, it is a moment of shock. Rosemary Radford Ruether tells this story:
A Northern ecofeminism that is not primarily a cultural escapism for an affluent female elite must make concrete connections with women at the bottom of the social-economic system . . . I remember standing in a market in Mexico in January looking greedily at boxes of beautiful strawberries and wondering if I might be able to sneak some back through Customs into the United States to my snow-covered home. A friend of mine, Gary McEoin, longtime journalist of Latin American liberation struggles, standing next to me, said softly, “Beautiful, aren’t they?. . . and they are covered with blood.” To be an ecofeminist in my social context is to cultivate that kind of awareness about the invisible underside of the goods and services readily available to me. (24)
Rosemary’s story is powerful and poignant. It might also be an example of the kind of face-to-face challenge that is possible in a small group that meets the criteria Carolyn King lays out for small groups that maintain social cohesion in a world largely marked by a level of mobility that makes sustained conversation with one’s neighbors impossible.
Only when self-interest is restrained by local interactions and the relentless scrutiny of inescapable close associates can it drive the various forms of cooperation and conditional altruism that underpin the lives of [supportive social groups]. (25)
In fact, might it be possible that this is precisely the role of elders in face-to-face intensive groups?
In 1991, David Maitland, a scholar and Presbyterian minister, wrote Aging as Counterculture: A Vocation for the Later Years. This book seeks to answer the question: “What are the distinctive possibilities in aging?” The title of the book indicates clearly its political thrust and spiritual dynamic. The vocation of aging is political and countercultural; the energy to reshape one’s world is a vocation.
Elders who can afford to be leisure grandparents have a particular opportunity to embrace this vocational imperative. Aging is a vocation, and as Maitland says, it is countercultural. There is a powerfully countercultural dynamic to aging that is your opportunity, challenge, and responsibility to awaken and foster in the elders who share your passions. I come to this conclusion in part through study and observation; in part I come to it personally by reason of elderhood. As a colleague recently wrote,
On a personal note, this past month I celebrated my 62nd birthday, thus becoming eligible for (early) Social Security benefits. Being a member of the generation for whom “the personal is the political,” I am finding that aging issues are more personal and relevant than ever. And that especially includes concern about what kind of world my children and grandchildren will inherit. Yes, environment is an aging issue.
That or similar kind of reflections are resonating with increasing intensity for many elders. Being where we are in our personal journeys of life, we simply have come to claim a longer perspective, a further horizon well past ourselves to the next and next and next generations.
First and critical steps need not be complex. Here are three actions for intentional communities and individuals to engage in that cannot wait: own the problem, resist despair, and protect all the children.
Own the problem: Become articulate about the depth and breadth of ecological destruction and the specifics of harm and potential harm where you live. Understand the cost of suburbs, the scarcity of carbon resources, the need for alternative sources of energy, and above all the imperative of changing our lifestyles. Join your local environmental group; save your local rivers; support local farmers; join the Sierra Club. Find some local organization that is smart and effective in making change. Don’t back off. Own the problem. If we don’t and other elders don’t, who will?
Resist despair: That’s another way of saying, “Practice green hope,” but it points to the danger of getting sucked into inaction because the situation seems hopeless. Join forces with people who are practicing green hope. Log on to www.webofcreation.org and learn steps to green your congregation. Work with the organizations that are the best fit for you. And if you do nothing else, use your vote as the way to change laws so that we send all the children into a sustainable future. Don’t back off. Resist despair and practice green hope. If we don’t and other elders don’t, who will?
Protect all the children: Imitate and emulate the toughness of grandparents in poverty whose deep faith in the future of the children is the root and raw energy that wills to give all the young a chance for a sustainable future. It’s no longer just about our own grandchildren. It’s about all the children — those to whom we are closely related by blood, those whose blood ties are closer to the beginning of the rise of the human. It’s about all the children — human children, and animal children, and insect children, and plant children, and the clean air, sky, and soil they all need to survive into a sustainable future. Protect all the children. Let’s reinvent aging and give a new sense of purpose to those travelling with us on the “journey of age.” If we don’t and other elders don’t, who will?
Let us be untiring in our work to lift up the vibrancy and resiliency of the human spirit in the sacred journey of age. All life is holy. Let us practice a green hope together, support and educate each other, and never discount the stake that elders have, each and all, in a sustainable future.
Notes
1 John Cobb, Jr., The Road to Sustainability: Progress and Regress.
2 These Cosmic Stations of the Cross were crafted in stained glass for Holy Cross Centre, Port Burwell, ON, a Centre dedicated to developing spirituality for the new ecological age. The artist is Carolyn Van Huyse-Delaney. The link between the evolution of the earth and the cross was articulated by Teilhard de Chardin: “Nothing resembles the evolution of the earth so much as the via cruces.” These stained glass windows are now reproduced, with the text you will read below each, as Garden Panels at St. Gabriel’s Passionist Parish, Willowdale, ON. For an analysis of the original stained glass stations, see Susan D. Shantz,The Stations of the Cross (London, ON: Centre for Social and Humanistic Studies, University of Western Ontario), 105-123).
3 “Increased flood risk linked to global warming,” Quirin Schiermeier, Nature, 470, 316 (2011). Published online 16 February 2011.
4 George Myerson, Ecology and the End of Postmodernity (Icon Books: Cambridge, UK, 2001), 70.
5 See, Ecotheology and the Practice of Hope, Anne Marie Dalton and Henry C. Simmons (SUNY Press, 2010). This book is available in hardback or for download from State University of New York Press.
6 Daniel Maguire, The Moral Core of Judaism and Christianity: Reclaiming the Revolution(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1993), 13.
7 Carolyn King, Habitat of Grace: Biology, Christianity and the Global Environmental Crisis(Hindmarsh, AU: Australian Theological Forum), 102.
8 Ibid., 117.
9 Ibid., 94.
10 Ibid., 95.
11 Ibid.,96-97.
12 Ibid., 123.
13 Anne Primavesi, Gaia’s Gift (London: Routledge, 2003), 238-239.
14 [removed]
15 February 20, 2007, http://www.christiancentury.org/article_print.lasso?id=2978 Accessed February 27, 2011.
16 King, op. cit., 109.
17 Ibid., 116. Emphasis added.
18 Ibid., 117.
19 Ibid., 123.
20 [removed]
21 Lisa Rochon, Cityspace, “Seeing the light on Sheppard” (n.d.).
22 [removed]
23 Idem.
24 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women Healing Earth (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), 5.
25 King, op. cit., 122
Remembrance as a Spiritual Practice by John G. Sullivan
There is a polish for everything.
and the polish for the heart
is remembrance of The One.
Consider this story of a 3-year old girl.
The little girl is firstborn and only child. Now her mother is pregnant again. The little girl is excited about having a new brother. Within a few hours of the parents’ bringing the new baby home, the girl makes a request: she wants to be alone with her new brother in his room with the door shut. Her parents are uneasy. Then they remember they have installed an intercom system in the baby’s room. They could honor their daughter’s request and, if they heard any sign of difficulty, be in the baby’s room in an instant. So they let the little girl go into the baby’s room and shut the door and they moved quickly to the intercom listening station. They first heard their daughter’s footsteps moving across the baby’s room. They imagined her standing over the baby’s crib. Then they heard her say to her three-day-old brother, “Tell me about God — I’ve almost forgotten.”(1)
What does it mean to remember God, to remember the One, to remember the Whole? I am coming to think of the Whole as the place where three circles meet and overlap:
- The Circle that is the Source, “whose center is everywhere
and whose circumference nowhere,”(2) - the Circle of All Life, and
- the Circle of Self.
Each circle mirrors the others. Each, in its own way, is intertwined with the others. In this oneness, we can say, as was said in ancient China: “All people are my brothers and sisters and all things are my companions.”(3)
At the start of our life we have a certain simplicity. Call it a first naiveté.(4) At the end of a well-lived life, we return to simplicity. Call it a second naiveté. This second simplicity contains hard-won wisdom. Still, something of the child leads the way. “Tell me about God, I’ve almost forgotten.”
Suppose we are like children blowing bubbles. Each bubble a notion of God. The bubbles may be small or large. Think of a bubble big enough to enfold the universe. It would still not be large enough! Think of bursting each bubble and in the fleeting moment of the bubble bursting, catching a glimpse in wonder, awe, and grateful praise of the Mystery of mysteries. Beyond the beyond and more intimate than the center of my heart. In this defused, open awareness the sacred is present.
//
Remembrance and the Source
What is it to remember the Source, the One, the unity on which all depends? Think of Source as that which joins all things, sustains all things, attracts all things.
- When we approach with love, the Source appears as a person. Always larger than the best human we know.
- When we approach with awareness of nature, the Source appears as a force moving through all things and allowing us to participate. The Way opens before us and beneath us and all about us.
- When we approach with the awareness that all is gift, the Source, Circle of Life and my deep Self manifest in gratefulness and joy.
- When we approach with peace within and peace without, each circle shines with the wisdom of reconciliation, returning us and all beings to the One.
Let us speak of “The All-Inclusive One.”(5) A oneness beyond and within all things, excluding none and welcoming all. Such a oneness helps us think of each being as a microcosm, mysteriously mirroring the whole. For certain purposes, each being can be seen as alone – a unique perspective on the whole from a never-to-be repeated “place in the whole.” Just as truly, each can be seen as all-one — as manifesting the whole from a unique perspective.
//
From Oneness to Presence
Nicolas Herman was born in France in the year 1611.(6) At age eighteen, he had a vision. He was looking at a tree in the midst of winter– bare and still. Suddenly, he saw, as in a vision, the tree manifesting its life, becoming green with spring and then bearing fruit in summer. In that moment, he knew God and God’s providential love and care. Six years later, Nicolas entered a Carmelite monastery in Paris and took the religious name, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. Having but little education, he entered as a lay brother and worked mainly in the monastery kitchen as a cook, until his death at age eighty.
Brother Lawrence embodied the practice of the presence of God.(7) He realized that God is present always – in the depth of the heart. All that is needed is to remember that. To remember we are thus companioned. We are known with forgiveness and gentleness. We are loved always and without measure. Then our response is to do all we do for the sake of such a God, for the love of such a friend, beyond thought of reward or punishment, praise or blame. Brother Lawrence tells us: “We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God.”(8)
Brother Lawrence developed, over the years, a single-minded attentiveness both at prayer and in the midst of daily activities. Until the two became one. Until all became prayer. All became a “to and fro” of converse with the One. “I began to live as if there were no one save God and me in the world,” Lawrence remarked.(9)
An Eastern Orthodox monk was once asked what monks do. He replied: “We fall and we get up again.” Lawrence witnesses to a God who is gentle and loving, who calls him to remember when he becomes distracted or forgetful. Such gentle reminders were enough for the friendship to continue and grow.
As he truly practiced the fond awareness of God, Brother Lawrence came to see that every detail of his life possessed surpassing value. He saw himself cooking meals, running errands, scrubbing pots, and enduring the scorn of the world — alongside God. One of his most famous sayings refers to his kitchen:
The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.(10)
The Sufis – the mystics of Islam – would have understood Lawrence well. I think of Sufi master, Abu Sai’d who extends the core practice of remembrance fully into the everyday world. He writes: “The true saint is one who walks amongst the people, and eats and dwells with them, and buys and sells in the market, and marries and socializes, yet never forgets God for a single moment.”(11)
//
Many Names and No Names
What I am here calling the Source has many names and no adequate name. Remembrance begins with names. Names arise in the context of religious or wisdom traditions.
In Judaism, there is the Shema (or Sh’ma): “Hear [O] Israel, The Lord (YHVH) our God, the Lord (YHVH) is one.”(12) In Judaism, one keeps silent and speaks. Keeps silent in not speaking the name that the Holy One gave to Moses (YHVH). Yet speaks using other forms of address such as Adonai (Lord / Ineffible One), Shalom (Peace), Ribbono Shel Olam (Master of the Universe) and HaRachman (Merciful One).(13)
From the Torah, two instructions: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4) “And love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18) These two were called by Jesus the Two Great Commandments.(14) To remember God, we can well begin here.
While vigorously affirming oneness, Christians see the One relationally — as the Father (the Source, perhaps even Source beyond Source), the Son (seen humanly in the icon of Jesus) and in the Spirit of Love that dwells in all as the very life breath of life. No wonder that Dante imaged the Source as the Sun – noting its life-giving, light-giving and warmth-giving aspects.
Islam also begins with oneness. La ilaha illa’ llah. There is no god but God. There is no reality save Reality Itself. Indeed Islam sees all the prophets as coming with the message of oneness, of tawhid.(15)
And in the East where the natural world is prized, learning from nature becomes a Way to align with the power of the whole and to return to our true nature. And we are reminded that even to speak of the Tao or the Way is only a pointer. “The Tao that can be named is not the Eternal Tao.”(16)
//
Remembrance and Repetition
Turning and returning — the power of repetition. Repetition of a chant, a prayer, words of a melody, movements of a dance. Coordinating movement with attention to the breath – all these are ways to call us back to the present and to “that which matters” in those times when we forget.
The spiritual disciplines use many names. This can remind us that each name is but a finger pointing to the moon (as the Zen tradition would have it). Repeating word or gesture or pattern is a way to stay focused and not go back to sleep! Repetition is the road to embodiment.(17)
In Islam, there are 99 names of God and Sufis will often chant several of them with appropriate movements at what they call zikr(pronounced zicker) which is a communal ritual of remembering God. One Sufi group has this advice:
“The moment you recognize that you are struggling on any level,
stop, return to the Remembrance,
increase your connection to your heart,
receive guidance and insight, take inspired action.
This will return you to the flow.”(18)
//
Remembrance and the Circle of Life
A teacher says to Johnny: “Pay attention.” Johnny replied: “I am paying attention. I’m paying attention to everything!”
What does it mean to remember God? Does it not involve remembering everything? Remembering everything is indeed an exercise that only a child or a lover or a fool would attempt. How much do you love me? “This much,” says the child, holding out her arms as far as they will go. So small and yet encompassing all. Like the heart, so small and yet capable of encompassing all.
To remember everything might seem unbearably difficult as if I were seeking to remember a very long list of things. Yet that is not how Johnny sees it. Suppose he is correct. Suppose that everything is so intimately interconnected that paying attention to one thing draws with it all things, not in focused enumeration but in a kind of peripheral sense of being companioned by all. Suppose that everything is arriving at each moment without effort, that the whole is present in each part. Suppose that everything is passing away at each moment, without effort, joyfully awaiting the next wonder.
//
Three Glimpses of the Tao
Let us begin with nature as the Tao (pronounced Dow), meaning the Way of the Universe. Here are three glimpses of the Tao:
- The first glimpse is in nature.
- The second glimpse is in meditative mind.
- The third glimpse is in the behavior of the masters.
First let us look to nature. Here is a passage from the Tao Te Ching:
The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.(19)
Like water, the power of nature finds ways around and through. We can learn much from this “watercourse way,” as Alan Watts calls it.(20) We can learn simplification and skillful strategy. How to act without provoking reaction. How to lead in such a way that when the task is done, people will say: “We did it ourselves.”
The Tao is both spacious and special. Vast beyond universes, yet present in the particular flower, or sunset, or face of the loved one. Mysterious and yet very concrete, right before us, touched in what we touch.
The second glimpse of the Tao comes from Meditative mind
As group leader, John Heider puts it: “Tao means how: how things happen, how things work. . . . Tao cannot be defined but Tao can be known. The method is meditation, or being aware of what is happening. By being aware of what is happening, I begin to sense how it is happening. I begin to sense Tao.”(21)
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection.
The water has no mind to receive their image.(22)
This is such a wonderful image of meditative mind. Thoughts and sensations, desires and emotions are like the geese. They arise and fly over the mirror of meditative mind. The mind does not invite them in. The mind does not push them out. They come and go. We observe their comings and goings, their appearing and disappearing. We are not led to repress them. Nor are we led compulsively to act them out. Observing them we sense the patterns of the Tao.
The third glimpse of the Tao is in the behavior of the masters
Here is what the Tao Te Ching says about them: (chapter 15):
The ancient masters were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive.
The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable.
Because it is unfathomable,
All we can do is describe their appearance.
Watchful, like people crossing a winter stream.
Alert, like persons aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests.
Yielding, like ice about to melt.
Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood.
Hollow, like caves.
Opaque, like muddy pools.
The Old Master says:
Who can wait quietly while the mud settles?
Who can remain still until the moment of action?
Observers of the Tao do not seek fulfillment.
Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by desire for change.(23)
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness,
which is the way of nature.(24)
//
Remembrance and the Self
Is there a way of remembering one’s life that integrates the three circles: my God, my world and my life? I believe there is.
First such a remembering will be in the present tense.(25) As Jorge Luis Borge says: “Only in the present do things happen.” Only in the present am I aware of where I am on the spiral path. Only in the present am I able to choose what to return to and how to see it. Perhaps I return to forgive and to seek forgiveness — for what I have done and failed to do. Perhaps I return to recognize that greed, opposition and ignorance clouded and constricted my heart.(26) Perhaps I understand that, even when I saw more clearly, I was unskillful in my response. As I increase mindfulness and develop sensitivity and skill, may I benefit myself and all given to my care.
Second, the Navajo introduce intergenerational time by reminding us that we stand in the midst of seven generations: behind us, our parents and their parents and their parents; before us, our children and their children and their children. When we act, we need only ask two questions: Will this honor the ancestors? Will this serve the children?
I am beginning to see my life over generations. As I do, I become even more mysterious to myself. I glimpse only dimly how my ancestors live in me and how future generations also are gifted or wounded by what I do. And I come little by little to realize that my ancestors include the human ones and all other forms of life that conspire (that is breathe together) to make this world habitable and ever so beautiful.
I realize I have roiled the waters through my unskillful ways. I enter the stillness at the core of the great heart of us all. The waters remain waters of unknowing. Yet I sense in the unknown a presence of love and compassion, joy and peace.(27) The Circle of the Source, the Circle of Life and The Circle of my deepest Self are co-present. And I can say with Lady Julian of Norwich that “all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”(28)
//
Notes
1 I take this story with a few slight edits from Marcus Borg. He recounts the tale in his book, The Heart of Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 1989), p. 113.
2 I think of this quote as emerging in the middle ages. Alain of Lille has a version, perhaps deriving from hermetic sources: “God is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” It is sometimes quoted as “God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”
3 The phrase comes from the West Wall Inscription from the office of Chang Tsai, an 11th century administrator in China which reads: “Heaven is my father and earth is my mother and even such a small creature as I find an intimate place in its midst. That which extends throughout the universe I regard as my body. That which directs the universe I regard as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters. And all things are my companions.” See William Theodore de Bary, Wing-Tsit Chan and Burton Watson, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. I (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 469.
4 I take the terms first and second naiveté from the philosopher Paul Recoeur.
5 I speak of the One as the All Inclusive One because it is all too easy to think of the Ultimate as named in one particular tradition as calling only to enter that tradition. This is a partial oneness at best; the cause of dissension and disunity at worst.
6 There is some doubt about the exact year. I choose 1611 following the editors of The Practice of the Presence of God. See details below. Others put the date three years later.
7 My source is the slim volume by Brother Lawrence, entitled The Practice of the Presence of God, and The Spiritual Maxims (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2006). This work is supposed to have been written down by M. Beaufort, Vicar to the Archbishop of Paris, by whose recommendation the conversations and letters were published.
8 Ibid., p. 61.
9 Ibid., p. 17.
10 Ibid., pp. 60-61.
11 Quoted in Mohammad Ali Jamnia and Mojdey Bayat, Under the Sufi’s Cloak: Stories of Abu Sa’id and His Mystical Teachings(Beltsville, MD: Writers’ Inc. International, 1995), p. 95. I modify slightly for inclusiveness.
12 Shema Israel, Adonai Ehloheinu, Adonai Echod. “Hear [O] Israel, The Lord (YHVH) our God, the Lord (YHVH) is one.”
13 I take this from Mary Blye Howe’s Sitting with the Sufis(Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2005), p. 31, where she is speaking of meditation practice of a Jewish Renewal group, Hesha Abrams, in Texas.
14 See Mark 12:29-31; Matthew 22:37-40; Luke 10:25-28.
15 See Sachiro Murata and William C. Chittick, The Vision of Islam(New York: Paragon House, 1994).
16 See Tao Te Ching, a new translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), chapter one.
17 In the Catholic Christianity, I think of use of the rosary and also the revival of the Centering Prayer. See Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington et al., Centering Prayer in Daily Life and Ministry, ed. Gustave Reininger (New York: Continuum, 1998). In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, I think of the Jesus prayer — “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” — as it is used to develop the habit of praying always. See G.E. H Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Bishop Kallistos Ware, Philokalia: The Eastern Christian Spiritual Textswith selections annotated and explained by Allyne Smith (Woodstock, VT: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2006). I also think of the American Black congregations where repetition in spirituals and in preaching is such a powerful way of focusing the mind and heart.
18 From “Leading from Inner Wisdom” by LionHeart Consulting, Inc. This was brought to my attention years ago by a friend, Greg Lee.
19 See Tao Te Ching (as above), chapter 8.
20 The phrase is from Alan Watts. See Alan Watts, with the collaboration of Al Chung-liang Huang, Tao: The Watercourse Way(New York: Pantheon Books, 1975).
21 John Heider, The Tao of Leadership(New York: Bantam, 1986), chapter one, p. 1.
22 See Zenrin Kushu, quoted in Nancy Wilson Ross, The World of Zen(New York: Vintage Books Division of Random House, 1960), p.258.
23 See Tao Te Ching (as above), chapter 15.
24 See Tao Te Ching (as above), chapter 16.
25 I am engaged here in expanding the present to include all that is — in time and beyond time. This is a point of view we can only catch sight of as if out of the corner of our eye or in the stillness beneath sound. I think here of Boethius’ sense of eternity as the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life. This is not life going on a long, long time, it is “ [to embrace] the whole of everlasting life in one simultaneous present. (Boethius, Consolation, V.VI.)
26 These are what are called in Buddhism the three poisons: greed (or clinging), hate (or condemning) and ignorance (or identifying with less than the whole).
27 I explore these four in my book, The Fourfold Path to Wholeness: A Compass for the Heart (Chapel Hill, NC: Second Journey Publications, 2010).
28 T.S. Eliot uses these lines at the end of his “Four Quartets.” See T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934/1952), p. 145.
Books of Interest: Walking Our Talk, reviews by Bolton Anthony
The New Normal: An Agenda for Responsible Living
by David Wann
St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011
Choosing a Sustainable Future: Ideas and Inspiration from Ithaca, NY
by Liz Walker
Penguin Books, 2006
//
Older people are not just card-carrying members of Leisure World and mid-afternoon nap-takers. We are tribal elders, with an ongoing responsibility for safeguarding the tribe’s survival and protecting the health of the planet. To do this, we must become society’s futurists, testing out new instruments, technologies, ideas, and styles of living. We have the freedom to do so, and we have nothing to lose.
— Maggie Kuhn
I remember visiting the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, the summer residence of the Hapsburg monarchs. And as I was herded through the 40 rooms included in the tour (40 of some 1,400 in the residence) — the sitting rooms and bedroom of Maria Theresa and the parlor where the 6-year-old Mozart used to entertain the Empress; the parlors and apartments of the last of the Hapsburgs, Franz Joseph and his consort — a deep anger began to grow in me. By the end of this orgy of frescoed ceilings, crystal chandeliers, mammoth mirrors, and gilded baubles, I was almost suffocating with outrage: Who could think they had a right to live this way!
Well, the fact is, I live this way. My “modest” life style (in which I take a small measure of pride) is, when compared to the lives of 90% of the world’s population, anything but modest. Could we cultivate a righteous indignation about the manner in which we live that would spur us to forswear our consumption-driven life style?
The problem is that the negative strategy of renunciation will get us only so far. More powerful incentives to change are activated when our sense of the possible is expanded and we glimpse better, more fulfilling ways of living grounded in a celebration of genuine community. This is the message of two recent books by authors whose pioneering work we have followed over the years.
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David Wann’s new book, The New Normal,reflects the just-in-time emergence of a new way of thinking — a new way of being in the world — where production and consumption are no longer the defining characteristics. These are instead replaced by cultural richness and expression, health, efficiency, cooperation, ecological design, and biological restoration. Wann sees this not as a moralistic stance, but an inevitable step in the progression of our civilization. When empires neglect the true sources of their wealth (as ours has), and overstep their resource base, they inevitably retract: “As the organizing principle of a civilization, unlimited material growth on a finite planet is and always has been a fairy tale.”
Far from being a tragedy, this crisis presents us with an opportunity to create a qualitatively better society, based on new assumptions and a healthier ethic. The book explores key leverage points where interventions can quickly shift our economy and culture in a more admirable, affordable, and sustainable direction and provides a detailed agenda for rethinking topics at the core of all our lives:
- Where we live and how we build
- What we eat and how we grow
- How we interact with, and protect, nature
- What we buy, and how we design and make it
- How we provide power, mobility, and access
- How we prioritize and budget both private and public capital
We should shoot for health and wellness, rather than wealth and “hellness,” writes Wann, “and agree to move, together, away from a lifestyle of deadlines and dying species and toward lifelines and living wealth.”
The New Normal is the third book in a “trilogy” by Wann whose earlier titles include Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic and Simple Prosperity: Finding Real Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle, which provided an in-depth exploration of non-monetary wealth including health, social connection, time affluence, and natural abundance.
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The new book by Liz Walker, Choosing a Sustainable Future: Ideas and Inspiration from Ithaca, provides a kind of case study of the macro changes Wann explores. It captures the breadth and essence of the fast-growing sustainability and social justice movement in this “small city’s big vision.” Walker, who has been a grassroots activist her whole life, says she has rarely seen such a blossoming of interest and activity with a common purpose as what is growing in Ithaca: “Amazing activities are going on in fields as diverse as local food and farming, challenging racism, caretaking our watershed, enjoying lively celebrations, honoring our indigenous heritage, and building a vibrant local economy There is a unity of purpose here that is reflected across a wide spectrum of players”:
- from the county planning department, which has a goal of cutting carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 — for the whole county of 100,000 people;
- to small businesses, such as Garden Gate, which uses a biodiesel-powered van to deliver fresh, locally grown produce, dairy, meats and more;
- to a consortium of academic institutions all engaged in creating courses about sustainability topics as well as greening their own buildings and operations;
- to grassroots efforts to provide alternative health care, alternative currency, food security, and more.
“Liz Walker takes us into Ithaca’s innovative adventures in a way that’s both awe-inspiring and warmly companionable. This tonic of a book expands our sense of the possible and readies us for it with stories and strategies. It holds up a mirror in which we can see ourselves reconnected with our innate creativity, fairness, and basic sanity… And that is good news.” — Joanna Macy
Honoring Our Elders: Fred’s Amazing Journey by Randy Morris
The time is ripe for elders to reclaim their rightful role of speaking for Earth and future generations.
— Fred Lanphear
The first time I laid eyes on Fred Lanphear was a late summer morning at the Songaia Community. He passed by a large picture window, wearing a wool shirt against the morning chill and pushing a well-used wheelbarrow down a pathway lined with green plants. The bright morning light wreathed his head in a golden arc causing a glow to emanate from his tall, stooped shoulders. It could have been a Rembrandt painting, “Man with Wheelbarrow.” I thought to myself: “Now that is how an elder should look!”
When I inquired as to who it was that was fulfilling my archetypal fantasy of an elder, I was told “Oh, that’s Fred!” Fred’s reputation had preceded him. I had heard about his incredible life of international service, his role in the founding of the Songaia Community, and his many contributions to Rite of Passage Journeys. But I did not know at that time how he would become my own “revered elder” and the man to whom I would turn when I sought my elder initiation.
My relationship with Fred began with a lunch date at which we shared our latest thinking. I found Fred to be fascinating, with his ideas about Thomas Berry, the dream of the earth, and a revolution of Earth Elders. He seemed genuinely interested in my own ideas and made helpful suggestions about new directions to pursue. Within a year of our meeting, he was diagnosed with ALS. As the disease progressed, I asked him if it would be OK to talk with him about his approach to the disease and his own impending death. He welcomed it, seeing in the deterioration of his own body his return to the earth and the cosmic dust from which he originated.
Emboldened by his warm welcome, I then asked if he would help me transition into my own elderhood. I told him that he was the only initiated elder that I knew, and that it was important to me that I be initiated by someone I truly respected as an elder. Despite the fact that he was now in a wheelchair and using oxygen, he agreed to help me. Fred called together a group of elder men to advise me, and we had several discussions about the meaning of elderhood and how a ceremony marking a transition into elderhood might look. I also called together an advisory circle of women who, in an intact culture, would be considered elders. I asked them what they would want an older male to know as he went through an initiation into elderhood.
When I think back about these rich discussions, full of wisdom and laughter, I realize how much community was being created by my commitment to this ceremony. As Fred pointed out to me, such a ceremony is not only about the person undergoing the ritual. Rites of passage are the glue that hold a community together; they mark the transitions and growth of the whole.
My elder rite of passage was held on my 60th birthday, May 23, 2010. I had planned to hold it later in the year, but Fred said he might not be around then and that he would prefer it be held in the spring. I didn’t think I could go through with this without Fred, so I moved the ceremony to my birth date. About 60 or so people showed up in a large, decorated hall. The elder groups of women and men had each taken responsibility for different parts of the ceremony; and they pulled it off without a hitch. I’ll never forget the moment when all the elders were asked to stand. I began to feel sorry that Fred could not take his rightful place with the other elders, when he pushed a button on his electric chair and rose majestically above the crowd. Cheers and clapping broke out, and a big smile spread across Fred’s face. The rest of the evening was spent in ceremony, feasting, and dancing. It was the greatest of wakes, but for a person who was still alive. It was everything I had hoped for, and I found myself wishing that everyone could have this opportunity to be seen and witnessed and appreciated while still alive. In my closing “elder address” I could feel new powers of speech coursing through my body, powers that have remained to this day.
Fred was right that he would not make it through the fall. I continued to meet with him on a regular basis to talk about death, Thomas Berry, and the dream of the earth. To our Thomas Berry study group he gifted the materials he had created for “The Cosmic Walk” ritual and instructed us to “Tell the Story!” Fred was near the end as I was preparing to lead a vision quest trip. We said our good byes and it felt so good. Because Fred had been so open and conscious about his dying, the end felt very natural. It was simply the right season to die. Fred’s last lesson to me was that the greatest gift of “conscious elderhood” is “conscious dying.”
Fred Lanphear — friend, mentor, and Earth Elder — died on September 9, 2010. His life was a lesson in wisdom, generosity, and conscious wholeness. It is an honor to dedicate this issue of Itineraries to him.
The time is ripe for elders to reclaim their rightful role of speaking for Earth and future generations. Those of us who are willing to accept the challenge need to come together in local groups, connect via the Internet, and periodically gather in council to share our experiences, learnings, and the emerging vision of our role.
As I face my mortality, I feel a sense of urgency in taking steps to help build the movement of Earth Elders now. This is not something we can put off to another time, as many of us are in or approaching the final time of our lives. It is urgent because of impending planetary shifts that may be irreversible, such as global warming and the accelerated extinction of species.
— Fred Lanphear
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Randy Morris, Ph.D., is a core faculty member at Antioch University Seattle where he supervises a Spiritual Studies program and teaches classes on depth psychology, the history of ideas, and liberal arts. He also serves as President of the Board of Rite of Passage Journeys, an organization dedicated to the renewal of rites of passage across the lifespan. He has been guiding vision quests for over 15 years. Randy also serves on the national Stewards Committee of the Work that Reconnects, working to bring the ideas and practices of Joanna Macy, the Universe Story, and the Great Turning into public awareness.
Rites of Passage into Elderhood by Guest Editor Randy Morris
We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos — the right moment — for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” of the fundamental principles and symbols.
— C. G. Jung
How we might go about reviving rites of passage into Elderhood — and why we should do so — is the focus of this Fall 2011 issue of Itineraries.
When asked to sum up what is most important to know about being alive at this time in history, Fred Lanphear (to whom this issue is dedicated) replied, “It’s all about Story!” At first I thought he meant the story we tell of our lives. That personal story, of course, changes throughout our lifetime, as we remythologize our biography on a regular basis. But then I remembered Fred’s fascination and commitment to the “The Universe Story” which the work of Thomas Berry had inspired. Fred had often reminded me that the story of the evolution of the cosmos — from the Big Bang to the birth of our galaxy and solar system, to the emergence of life on earth — was “the greatest story ever told.” He believed it had the power to reconcile science and religion and lead humanity to a new awareness of its identity as a single whole, dedicated to the sacred task of maintaining the living systems of the earth in a new “ecozoic era.”
As the threat to our existence as a species begins to accelerate through global warming and overconsumption, Fred’s response reminded me of how important it is to tell a good story about what is happening to us. For example, we could tell ourselves that there is nothing wrong at all with how things are going. Science and a growth economy will see us through our current predicaments, so we can go about our lives as we always have. Nothing needs to change. Or perhaps we tell ourselves a different story. Confronted with the evidence of a deteriorating planet, we could tell ourselves that there is no hope for the future at all, that the human species is doomed to live out the dire consequences of its actions and will simply go extinct, like 99 percent of other life forms before us. In this story, a story of the “Great Unraveling,” all we need to do is to serve our time in a prison of fear while love and time fade around us.
The story that Fred told, however, was much more generative. He agreed with the Gaian teacher Joanna Macy that we are living in the time of the “Great Turning” — humanity awakening from a destructive trance based on an imagination of empire, corporatism, and unsustainability — moving toward a global civilization grounded in earth community and sustainability. In this story of what is happening to us, human beings have the opportunity to live the most meaningful lives in the history of our species: Each one of us is called to maximize our gifts so that we can, in the words of the Pachamama Alliance, “bring about a spiritually fulfilling, environmentally sustainable, and socially just human presence on the planet.”
To live out of the story of the Great Turning is to say that we are on the verge of a rite of passage for the human species as a whole. “We are living,” as Jung said, “in the right moment for a metamorphosis of the gods.” Thomas Berry said it a different way: “In the 20th century, the glory of the human has become the desolation of the earth. The desolation of the earth has become the destiny of the human.” To make a shift of this magnitude requires wisdom, and the wisdom-keepers in every tradition known to the history of humanity are the elders. Our culture, the culture of late-stage capitalist Western civilization, the very culture whose values are destroying the planet, is the one exception to this truth. In this sad culture, elders tend to be dismissed, forgotten, or ghettoized. The solution seems self-evident: Revive the tradition by initiated elders and use them to ignite a renaissance of culture that will restore rites of passage to the people, awaken them from their destructive trance, and inaugurate a new age of sustainability in which the needs of future generations are assured. Now that is a story worth living! But the forces of forgetting run long and deep. Most elders in our culture have lost the imagination of being wisdom-keepers, and many who do hold wisdom have forgotten culturally appropriate ways of sharing it.
Fred Lanphear would say that, in the end, a call for a “revolution of Earth Elders” is a call from the “dream of the earth” herself. That calling comes from a force that moves through the human psyche, originating in the same forces that created the universe. It is often experienced through dreams, synchronicities, intuitions, revelation, strong feelings of grief and joy, and other manifestations of the unconscious. In this way, the call to be initiated is experienced as a kind of “archetypal hunger.” Always, it seeks wholeness and expects your all. The time of the Great Turning demands nothing less. I hope these writings will stimulate your own archetypal hunger and awaken you to the possibilities in your own nature to step forward as an Earth Elder, someone who is “prepared to reclaim their rightful role of speaking for Earth and future generations.”
Tribute by Jim Clark
Jim Clark is a retired software developer who loves cosmology. He is equally happy whether contemplating the mathematics that describe the evolution of the universe or celebrating the Great Story, evolution told as a mythic story of creation. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Jim’s association with Fred grew out of an Earth Elder study circle that Fred had started at Songaia. At Fred’s invitation, Jim joined the circle and participated in its small group discussions, and thus began a deep personal friendship that continued until his death in 2010.
Fred Lanphear lived his life with great intentionality. He was intentional about his career, which he thought of not as a job but as a calling or vocation. He was intentional in his devotion to his family. He committed the last decades of his life to helping found and grow an intentional cohousing community, Songaia, located on the outskirts of Seattle. Finally, he was intentional about his role as elder.
As he approached his 60th birthday, Fred had felt a need to mark and celebrate his passage into old age. He created a yearlong program for himself. He traveled to Rhode Island, where he had grown up, to reconnect with family members and with the land and sea of his youth. He created a “mythological quilt” that depicted the primary involvement of each decade of his life. He attended to physical needs of his aging body. And, finally, he undertook a four-day vision quest. The outcome of this yearlong program was a renewed sense of calling and a renewed commitment to devote his remaining years to fostering the growth of communities that helped reconnect the human community with the natural world. Over the next decade, Fred’s sense of his mission as elder grew, and by his 70th birthday he’d arrived at a deeper understanding: Becoming an elder meant becoming an elder for the Earth — becoming an Earth Elder.
Fred’s various initiations — first as an elder on his 60th birthday, then as Earth Elder on his 70th birthday — are interesting in themselves. The deeper questions are, of course: What did Fred mean by these titles? And how did he arrive at this awareness that he prized so deeply?
Fred began his career as an agronomist, a scientist convinced that modern industrial agriculture held the key to providing for future human needs. Slowly, however, his awareness of the harmful consequences of this mindset began to grow. He told me the story of his working with a colleague in St. Louis who had become curious about the death of street trees in the city. After they mapped the locations of the dying trees, a pattern emerged: The area of dead trees formed the shape of a cone with its apex at a chemical plant — clear evidence that emissions from the factory were the source of the toxins that were killing the trees.
The next phase of his life was service within a Christian service organization, the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA). He spent years in Africa and India, teaching the agricultural skills in which he had been trained, a member of the small outreach teams that ICA created to foster community development. The experience confirmed his sense of the importance of community development and led directly to his efforts to form an intentional community. His initial partners in the founding of Songaia in the 1990s were his wife Nancy and colleagues from ICA, Stan and Carol Crow. After Songaia had become established, Fred contributed leadership to the national intentional community movement, helping found the Northwest Intentional Community Association and serving on the board of the Fellowship for Intentional Community.
Up until now, community to Fred had meant the human community of family, friends, and associates. Then he read The Dream of the Earth by the cultural historian and ecotheologian Fr. Thomas Berry. “It’s all a question of story,” Berry had written. The old stories that have informed our cultures for millennia are no longer adequate for present conditions. The new story of evolution speaks of a profound interrelatedness between all beings in the cosmos. Human life emerges from and is deeply embedded within creative processes that have been operating over billions of years. These periods of deep time are simply staggering for a human consciousness that typically spans just a few decades.
Here was a notion of community much larger than what Fred was used to. Community had to include all of the beings, both living and nonliving, that inhabit planet Earth. Fred had devoted his life to nurturing the human community; now he sensed he was being called to something more: Given the needs of our time, living in the context of the “old stories” with their limited sense of community was no longer adequate. Continuing to live his life intentionally, he chose the title Earth Elder to express his dedication to the “something more.”
What did being an elder mean to Fred? In traditional societies, the elder is one who is able to draw upon years of experience to provide guidance to the community. The concept of guidance is interesting: Thomas Berry asks, how will we humans obtain the guidance we need to navigate the difficult transition we face? For Berry the answer lies in the evolutionary story: Guidance comes from all of the processes that have worked together to bring forth the world in all its wonder as we now experience it. Elders are the storytellers who remind the community how it came into being and how it has survived the great challenges of the past. These are the stories that bind the community together and provide the members with their sense of meaning and participation in the great community of existence. So Fred, in addition to offering guidance from the wisdom he had garnered through his own experience, moved naturally into telling what Thomas Berry called the Great Story.
For Fred, being an Earth Elder required he devote himself to three activities: learning, living, and mentoring.
“Learning the Great Story” meant learning a new story that differs from traditional stories of creation in several important ways. First, in the Great Story the universe is not a static place where creation is finished and Earth is a completed home; rather, the universe, profoundly creative and dynamic, has been evolving and continues to evolve. Second, human presence has become so powerful in the dynamics of the earth that the future of evolution and of continued life on Earth now hinges on the choices and activities of the human community. Thomas Berry likens human presence to the geological forces that have created the differing epochs in Earth’s evolution. Third, humans are deeply interdependent with all other members, living and nonliving, of the Earth community. Earth does not consist of inert stuff for use and disposal solely for the benefit of humans. Finally, evolutionary development occurs as much through cooperation as through competition. A prime factor in our “fitness” to survive is our ability to forge mutually enhancing relationships.
“Living the Great Story” meant coming personally into a sustainable relationship with the processes of the planet. Fred’s cohousing community, where many members strive to live in a manner that is conscious of the consequences of their choices for the larger Earth community, was an important locus for this activity. An important dimension of this conscious living is to view Earth and her systems as sacred, to be accorded reverence and to be celebrated. The community has created a labyrinth and peace garden as concrete manifestations of this sense, and they celebrate the natural seasons of the planet, the solstices and equinoxes. Songaia has also created a Festival of the Earth as a community holiday, merging elements of Earth Day with the festivities of May Day and their own creative expressions.
The final dimension, “Mentoring,” meant not only being present to younger members of Songaia, but also helping the larger community find ways to celebrate the Great Story. He was inspired by a ritual called the Cosmic Walk, created by Sr. Miriam MacGillis of Genesis Farm in New Jersey. In this ritual a rope, approximately 140 feet long, is laid out on the ground in the form of a spiral. The length of the rope represents the timeline of the evolution of the entire universe, one foot representing 100 million years. The beginning of the rope at the center of the spiral represents the beginning of the universe, some 14 billion years ago. Particular moments of emergence, such as the beginning of life on Earth, are marked along the timeline the rope represents. As participants in the ritual walk along the spiral, we are invited to reflect on the variety of gifts that have come into existence during the course of evolution. Fred led people in the ritual on a number of occasions, and one of his final gestures was to bequeath the Cosmic Walk materials to members of the Earth Elder study group, with instructions to “Tell the Story!”
After Fred was diagnosed with ALS, sensing that the terminal disease left him only a couple of years to live, the intentionality that had characterized so much of his life intensified: He invited members of Songaia, family members, and other friends to share his final journey. His neighbors responded generously by assisting in the care he needed increasingly as the illness progressed; and Fred accepted their care graciously, freely sharing his feelings about his steadily progressing disability and its implications.
While he still had use of his hands he created another image: a rocket ship blasting its way into the cosmos — an image that aptly represented his feelings about his life and death. He had fully internalized the sense of his own emergence from the earth through an evolutionary process, and he expected his death to mark his return into the fundamental processes that have guided the universe through its 14-billion-year unfolding.
Until his final passing, Fred Lanphear, Earth Elder, dedicated himself to the challenge laid down by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in a quote that Fred loved: “The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to shake off our ancient prejudices and rebuild the Earth.”
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Writings by Fred Lanphear on Earth Elders:
“A Movement of Earth Elders: Learning, Living and Empowering Others to Live,” The Ecozoic Reader, vol. 4, no. 4, 2007.
“The Journey to Becoming an Elder,” Itineraries, Fall 2007.
“Earth Elders: An Invitation,” Itineraries, Spring 2008.
“A life transformed: Insights on my journey with ALS,” Posted to Fred’s blog on October 21, 2009.
The Earth Elder Initiation of Fred Lanphear by Craig Ragland
Craig “Oz” Ragland has lived at Songaia Cohousing Community near Seattle since 1992. Inspired by one of Songaia’s founders, Fred Lanphear (who passed away in 2010), Oz left his 20-year career in software to support the Intentional Community movement. He joined the Cohousing Association of the United States board of directors in 2006 and was hired as its Executive Director, serving in that position from 2008 to July 2011. Oz, currently 54, aspires to grow into Elderhood and become an initiated Elder in the coming years. Oz recently joined the Rites of Passage Journeys board of directors to support others in this important work. For more information, see OzRagland.com.
After dinner on March 27, 2006, the men of Songaia Cohousing Community burst into the common house dining room wearing masks, hooting and hollering, and beating drums. They settled Fred Lanphear, Songaia’s oldest member, into the well-padded wheelbarrow they had brought with them, then rolled him off into the night for his elder initiation.
The conversations that were the catalyst for this initiation had started in December 2005, when Fred, nearing his 70th birthday, asked members of the community to sit with him individually and talk about the last phase of his life. Awareness of this impending passage had dawned on Fred ten years earlier; at age 70, he was ready for his elder work.
He shared his vision of moving gradually from a life of “doing” to one of “being and teaching” through writing and mentoring. Among other things, he was ready to share the story of Songaia’s creation by writing a book about the community.
As one of the founding members, Fred had put tremendous energy into Songaia’s formation. As a widening circle of people collected, joining the original four founders, Fred’s gentle leadership helped build a strong community — a ten-year endeavor that culminated with 13 families moving into new and remodeled duplex homes in 2000.
In addition to regular community-wide meetings, the Songaia’s women and men have monthly circles and often attend retreats together. At one men’s circle — rare in that Fred was absent — the men were discussing the initiation of the community’s boys, when someone noted that Fred’s elder passage needed to be acknowledged and celebrated.
Though none of the men in the community were themselves initiated elders, all felt that the men in his community should design the experience. Fortunately, Songaia’s other male founder, Stan Crow, was an experienced ritualist who had founded the nonprofit Rites of Passage Journeys and had designed many initiations. Together, then, the men explored ideas, worked out a basic framework, and assigned responsibilities, ultimately weaving all the elements together into a cohesive whole.
Separation
The first step in that ritual was Separation. The men who wheelbarrowed Fred into the dark and up a steep forest trail were separating him from the women and children of the community. Halfway to the ritual destination, a large log blocked the passage of the wheelbarrow. It served as a threshold, a point of conscious choice for Fred: either embrace his initiation as Earth Elder or return to the community.
Fred stood and accepted the challenge. As he crossed the threshold, he was handed a beautifully crafted staff which he used as he climbed the rest of the way up the hill to a ceremonial fire. The men closed the circle around the fire and began ritually calling the directions, inviting Fred’s ancestors, the powers of the universe, and the more-than–human world to witness his transition into the next stage of his life.
Initiation
Northeast
I invite the emerging mystery of the Northeast, the Sky, the Heavens to join us, the men of Songaia, tonight.
The Northeast is the energy of Conception. Tonight could be the 71st anniversary of Fred’s conception. At this very moment, 71 years ago, his father’s sperm and mother’s egg may have made that love connection, creating a unique life force which has taken the journey to become the man we now know as Fred.
We are here tonight to witness and support Fred, a man of mystery. We are here to support his ongoing connection to spirit and his emerging role as a Songaia Earth Elder.
Fred, I ask you: Will you as Elder call the men of Songaia to connect with mystery?
And Fred responded: “I will.”
East
I invite the inspirational energy of the East to join us, the men of Songaia, tonight.
The East energy is of beginning, the in-breath, the dawn; it holds inclusion and enthusiasm in its excitement. For many years, the men of Songaia have witnessed Fred’s East energy through his many roles in the drama of creating Songaia community. We honor these roles in which Fred has welcomed us into Songaia’s circle of men. He has invited us to participate, and many of us have responded. Fred has promoted and helped focus our community as well as our roles as men.
Fred, I ask you: Will you as our Community Elder call the men of Songaia to support your initiation as Earth Elder?
And Fred responded: “I will.”
South
I invite the South’s creative work energy to join us, the men of Songaia, tonight.
The South is the summer, joyous implementation, our perspiration, being in the thick of it. The South is where we make it happen. It’s where we grab the shovel, gentle it into the ground, and lift some beauty of the earth into a wheelbarrow — and then do it again. Fred has moved many a shovelful of Songaia beauty. We invite Fred to bid us join him as he continues to create. Over his years of Songaian leader- and follower-ship, Fred’s South work has focused on many things, but it has often involved a shovel.
Fred, I ask you: Will you as Elder call the men of Songaia to perspire?
And Fred responded: “I will.”
Southwest
I invite the Southwest’s earthy sustenance to join us, the men of Songaia, tonight.
The Southwest provides our connection to the earth. It provides our core grounding. It is about nurturing and physical caretaking, it is about beauty. It is about timeless wandering, about downtime, relaxation, and play.
Fred’s groundedness is manifest as one moves around Songaia. It is, perhaps, the most tangible way we witness Fred’s contributions to our lives. The landscaping, the many trees he has planted, the gardens, the arbors, the greenhouse, the storage areas, and more. Think of how much of Fred’s energy you have personally eaten over the years. How many tomatoes, zucchini, beans, peas — and even cucumbers! (Fred’s active avoidance of cucumbers was a long-standing community joke.)
Fred, I ask you: Will you as Elder call the men of Songaia to be grounded, to be in place?
And Fred responded: “I will.”
West
I invite the Learning of the West to join us, the men of Songaia, tonight.
The West is about gathering after the work, after the meal. It is about bringing people together to learn, to understand, and to build community. The West is about us sharing our gifts of appreciation. It is about seeking our truths, our stories, and the fruits of our labors.
Fred honors the role of the symbol, of story, and has deeply shaped the way we see our community. Think of the many Songaia workshops and meetings he has led, the Thanksgivings, and the many walls of wonder. With his involvement in the broader communities of NICA (Northwest Intentional Community Association) and the FIC (Fellowship for Intentional Community), Fred shares his learnings from Songaia and his other communities on a whole new level. Fred also responded to a call and will be leading a workshop about becoming an Earth Elder at the Art of Community NW event in September. I call the Songaia men to support him as he prepares for this event.
Fred, I ask you: Will you as Elder call the men of Songaia to share our gifts?
And Fred responded: “I will.”
North
I invite the Vision of the North to join us, the men of Songaia, tonight.
North energy includes vision and purpose, wisdom, perspective, and deep gratitude. It integrates. It reflects. It also retreats to hibernate and emerge anew. It holds teams together; it coordinates, organizes, and connects the dots.
Fred’s many years as Songaia Navigator were crucial in holding together a series of core teams through our biggest challenges. He was a keeper of wisdom and integration; he helped us remain balanced through thoughtful post-meeting reflections and conversations. Through these years, Fred also held the vision for other nonprofits, including The Northwest Institute of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, and One Sky Medicine.
Fred, I ask you: Will you as Elder call the men of Songaia to deeply reflect?
And Fred responded: “I will.”
Northeast
I now invite a different type of Northeast energy to join us, the men of Songaia, tonight. I invite us to glimpse the return to Mystery that lies ahead for us all.
Given that 71 years have passed since his conception, Fred will not be with us in flesh as long as others of us here. We initiate Fred tonight as Earth Elder. We expect him to hold this role for many years. We trust and call him to grow in his coming years of Earth Elderhood. We also call him to help us develop and share a greater vision of Eldering at Songaia.
Fred, you were initiated as Elder when you turned 60. Tonight, we, the men of Songaia, initiate you as our first Earth Elder. We call you to help us understand what it means to be an Earth Elder. What does having you as an Earth Elder mean as we consider our next initiation? What does having an Earth Elder mean to our circle of men? What does it mean to our community? We call upon Fred to help us shape our story and vision.
Fred, we call you to become our Earth Elder… an Earth Elder for Songaia, an Earth Elder for the bioregion, an Earth Elder for the planet.
Fred, I ask you: Will you as Elder call the men of Songaia to support your new journey as an Earth Elder?
And Fred responded: “I will.”
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After the directions were called, the men sang several songs, including ones special to Fred and others that pertained to change. Fred, who had been asked to share his intentions around Earth Eldering, then spoke somewhat hesitantly, but with a touching depth and compassion. In the lengthening evening, each man shared personal thoughts, stories, and poetry.
After formally presenting Fred with the wheelbarrow, staff, and the gift of a day-long workshop with storyteller/mythologist Michael Meade, the men released the directions: the emerging mystery of the Northeast . . . the inspirational energy of the East . . . creative work energy of the South . . . the earthy sustenance of the Southwest . . . the learning of the West . . . the vision of the North . . . and the return to mystery of the Northeast.
Thank you for joining us, the men of Songaia, tonight. The men of Songaia thank you for joining them!
Then the men hiked back from the woods, supporting their first initiated Earth Elder as he leaned on his new staff.
Reincorporation
Initiating Fred as an Earth Elder within our community recognized him for what he had been growing into for many years, including his 10-year journey as an initiated Elder. It gave community members a framework for how they might relate to him. Explicitly, wearing the mantle of Earth Elder, he made himself available to the community for conversations, stories, and support.
Shortly after his 70th birthday, Fred was diagnosed with ALS. Instead of treating this like a disaster, he approached it as a new opportunity for connection and participation. In a special community circle, Fred did a remarkable thing in inviting members of the community to actively participate in the last phase of his life, in whatever minor or major ways felt right to each individual. This transformed his final journey from one dominated by loss and grief to one of gratitude, mentoring, and service.
Throughout the progression of his disease, Fred embraced an attitude of gratitude. He was grateful for the personal care his community provided for him and his wife, Nancy. He was grateful to the ALS Society, which provided equipment and information. And perhaps most importantly, he was grateful to be alive as The Great Story became known and for the opportunity to be of service to the Great Turning.
The level of care provided by his community neighbors enabled Fred to stay in his home until he died on September 9, 2010. Unlike some with ALS, Fred never lost the ability to communicate, but as the disease took him closer and closer to his death, he had no choice but to spend less time actively “doing” and more time “being.” He sank more deeply into his Earth Eldership.
Fred had many companions on his final adventure. Because he had befriended his disease, he transformed it into chances for others to connect with greater depth.
Fred had many opportunities to share as an Earth Elder, including playing key roles in the initiation of other Elders and Earth Elders. He engaged in a great many dialogues, helping others understand the Great Story and think about their roles in contributing to the Great Turning. Fred’s growing connection to Spirit and appreciation for life inspired many. He served as a role model and mentor to many adults and children at Songaia and, as a revered ancestor, continues to be an important part of many people’s lives.
Several involved with his care felt that they received more from him than they were able to give. While no longer able to work in the garden, Fred’s active eldering had a profound impact on his community, friends, and family. As his body declined, Fred’s Earth Elderhood deepened as he mentored and blessed those around him. He helped several embrace the later portions of their own lives, enabling them to envision a possible future as Earth Elders themselves. Fully participating in others’ lives as an Earth Elder, Fred communicated his optimism about the future, encouraging each of us to find our rightful place in the Great Story of the Universe.
What Are You Waiting For? by Darcy Ottey
Darcy Ottey recently stepped down from serving as Executive Director of Rite of Passage Journeys. A writer, teacher, speaker, and mentor, she has 15 years of experience in environmental and experiential education. Her areas of passion include community building, rites of passage, ritual and ceremony, antiracism and cross-cultural education, leadership, and nature education. Darcy holds a Master’s Degree in Environment & Community, with a focus on Leadership, from Antioch University Seattle.
This is a call to action to the baby boomer generation.
Over the last five years, I have been blessed to sit in many cross-generational circles. I have attended “elder initiation ceremonies” with hundreds of guests. These opportunities have helped me understand better the challenges that face aging adults, and they have provided insight about what our society needs from folks as they age. I have been struck time and again by the hesitation of older people to claim the role of elder, either because of a fear of becoming old (and thus irrelevant) or a fear of being so audacious in claiming a wisdom they feel they lack.
I suppose my impatience is rooted in my youth. From my perspective, my generation and the generations that follow are inheriting a very challenged planet, and we need all the help we can get. So again: This is a Call to Action. If you’re over 50, please step forward and fake it until you make it as an Elder.
What might that mean? Here are some of the things I’ve learned over the last five years.
Share your stories and share your wisdom
I hear resistance from many of you baby boomers to call yourselves elders, because you don’t feel you’ve attained enough wisdom to qualify as an elder. It is as though you believe you need to know what you’re doing to be an elder. But the challenge is that our cultural models for how to truly be an elder no longer exist, so how are you going to learn?
This is a perfect task for your generation; you’ve been doing exactly this — pushing the cultural edges — since you came along. You emerged into a world of values that you didn’t share, and you pushed hard to create something new. Throughout your teens, twenties, thirties, and beyond, your passion for creating new forms led to a lot of mistakes and failures. It’s also led to a huge number of inspiring successes. Those of us coming into our prime adult life are grateful for both the new paths you’ve blazed — AND all the failures you had from which we can learn. We don’t always know the questions to ask. We need your guidance! Please share it. You don’t need to know what it means to be an elder. It’s fine if you learn as you go. You’ll make horrible blunders along the way. But hopefully by the time you’re done, my generation will have a road map.
Give us space to lead and to make mistakes
If you want more than that, I can tell you what I want personally. I don’t know if it’s shared by my peers, but I think it is. Being an elder is about giving up center stage and allowing those of us following in your footsteps to begin to take leadership. I often see a hesitation to step back among aging baby boomers. I believe that the root of this hesitation is fear of becoming irrelevant. But it’s couched in very different clothing. Usually, it’s dressed up in statements like, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I’ll do it better than someone who’s just learning. We want the work to be the best it can be, right?” That’s all well and good — until one day you up and die. I realize that I have a lot to learn, and I’ll stumble and make mistakes as I learn things that by now come naturally to you. Nonetheless, it’ll be far easier for me to learn while you’re here to answer questions and offer guidance.
I know that’s a far more awkward role for you, because it means you don’t really have anything to do. But I can tell you that if you open your time up to eldering, there will be plenty of young people banging down your door for guidance. And then your only task is to simply be.
Offer blessings
One of the greatest gifts you can offer as an elder is the act of blessing. When I reflect on the mentorship I received from Stan Crow, the founder of Rite of Passage Journeys and my mentor and elder for 18 years, his greatest contribution to me was that he blessed me. I inherited his organization from him, and he graciously stepped out of the way almost immediately, despite the fact that he had poured 25 years of blood, sweat, and tears into the program, and I clearly had absolutely no idea what I was doing. He let me lead, he let me make mistakes. And when I didn’t know what to do, I would knock on his door. He would invite me in, give me a cup of tea, listen to me share my concerns and questions. And then he’d smile, and tell me I was doing a great job. He’d tell me that it sounded like I knew just what to do. He offered me his blessing, and it gave me an enormous amount of confidence. I believe that he made me a far stronger leader by doing this than by telling me what I should do — even if he probably had far better ideas than those I proposed.
When he died last year, and I couldn’t ask him for his advice, I could still call on him to offer me a blessing. And I knew just what Stan’s blessing sounded like.
Take care of yourself
Randy Morris, Director of Spiritual Studies at Antioch University Seattle, had a large public event to mark his 60th birthday and initiation into elderhood. One of his students, Elizabeth Zinda, was invited to speak for all of his students about what they would ask for him as he enters into his elder years. Elizabeth said many wise things. But the moment I will always remember was when she looked Randy straight in the eye, and said, “Take care of yourself. Take care of your body. Take care of your health. Because what we need most from you is that you’re able to live as long as you can.” This may be the most important principle of elderhood there is, and also likely the hardest.
Teach us how to care for you
Several years ago, at a large cross-cultural and cross-generational gathering, I watched as a woman my age stood up, walked across the room, offered an older man a chair to sit in while he was speaking. She said “Excuse me, elder, I should know better than to let you stand there without offering you a seat. My apologies.” He warmly accepted the seat.
I learned a lot from the younger woman in this encounter about what it means to confer respect upon our elders with simple, caring gestures of kindness. I learned a lot from the older man about accepting this kind of care and respect.
The situation could have gone differently. The older man could have said, “Thank you, I’m happy to stand,” or said, “I can take care of myself.” Thank goodness he didn’t. Whenever an elder allows him or herself to be cared for, they offer a gift to the community. Personally, I find that when an older person is willing to accept small gestures of kindness from me, it makes me a kinder, more caring person in general. I feel better about myself, and more aware of the people around me.
I’ve observed this in how my husband related to his grandmother as well. She passed away last year, almost 90. What made me fall in love with him, more than anything, was watching the patient attentiveness he showed to his grandmother, helping her out of the car, holding an umbrella over her as we walked, doing small tasks around her apartment to make her life easier. When older people accept this kind of care with grace, it makes us all better people.
But I think many young people don’t really know how to offer kindness, care, and true respect. Honestly, it’s not something we’re taught. So that’s another place where elders can serve — by teaching us through both words and example how to care for you, and reinforcing our feeble attempts with “Thank you,” smiles, and gentle suggestions.
Traditional cultures revered, and continue to revere, their elders as wisdom-keepers. But there is no roadmap left in our culture for what it means to be an elder. Similarly, younger generations have no roadmap for how to truly respect our elders and how to seek guidance from them. Yet there are many places to learn how to do this! Increasingly, organizations and communities around our country are creating opportunities for elders to hold a place of service. In addition, there are many organizations (like Rite of Passage Journeys) that offer programs to help folks think about what it is they have to offer in elderhood. There are creative aging Web sites and study groups. And probably, as you look around your block, there are young people just waiting for guidance and an older adult to take an interest in their lives.
Don’t hesitate. Reach out today, and continue to make a difference in the world. Maybe, just maybe, your greatest contribution is still to come.
What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been: Finishing Our Generation’s Work by Edith Kusnic
Edith Kusnic has been working in adult and community education for over 35 years asking questions about how to foster the natural human learning process, build communities of active learners, and empower people to build the lives and world they want. She has a BA in History and an MA in Educational Philosophy and Design and a lifelong interest in the dynamic relationship between society and the individual. Currently, she works with others to create opportunities for the deep learning needed in response to the challenges of our times. She joined Rite of Passage Journeys in 1999 and, after making her own “vision quest,” has served to help guide and build Journeys and create rites of passage experiences for adults, including elders.
An image has been slowly forming in my mind over the past few years — an image that paints a picture for me of the remarkable collective history of my generation’s lifetime. One of the pleasantly surprising gifts of aging is this much broader perspective that allows one to see the Big Story of one’s life and the times and their inextricable interconnection. It’s as if pieces of a puzzle have slowly become visible one by one. With enough of them visible, it becomes possible to make out the whole picture.
What this long view has to offer us as we step into and through our elder years is what I want to talk about here. Letting it inform our choices about how we spend the time that remains is increasingly urgent.
In 2009 I led an elders’ retreat, Stepping into Elderhood, with a small group of folks, most of them in their early- or mid-sixties. Our common task at the beginning was to create a visual timeline of our collective social history. All our concrete recollections — local, national, and international events; customs, fashion, music; every sort of thing — we posted on a big wall. Then we tried to make sense of it all. What was this era we had all lived through and that created the landscape within which our lives took place?
We realized we were the Atomic Generation, the first generation to grow up in the shadow of “The Bomb” (note the capitalization). Uncertain exactly how that fact impinged on our lives, we were nonetheless sure it had had incredible influences.
As we explored our shared social history, a clearer picture began to emerge. Our generation came of age during the tumultuous sixties, inspired and challenged by tectonic social changes: the Civil Rights struggle for human dignity; the quest for peace of the anti-war movement; and the dawning awareness, spurred by the environmental movement, of our connection with the more-than-human world.
As we moved into the seventies and eighties, we watched our youthful idealism be mocked and minimized. A new story of the sixties gained currency: We were a generation of hopeless, irrelevant idealists who didn’t understand the real world and whose major concerns were sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And that was the positive spin! The more negative view was that we were a failed generation who had not brought about the changes we dreamed of back in the sixties — a world of peace and justice, a world where the dream of democracy would be realized for all people in this country and where solutions for the problems we faced would be found.
Looking now at the world of 2011, things do look like one big mess. In the late eighties, my young adult son said to me, “Don’t talk to me about all your ideals and all that stuff. Your generation gave up. Things got hard and you just walked away.” Well, that’s part of the prevailing myth. But is that really what happened? Did we just walk away? Or did we find places to put our energy and ways to begin to work toward the world we had imagined? Certainly, some did walk away and others got lost along the way, but many of us sought ways to put our values into action.
What if we began to see and tell a different story of our life and times that challenges the prevailing story? Can we see ourselves instead as the forward wave of a cultural rite of passage, a time of transition for the culture as it moves toward a new stage of development? When we look at our lives in this light, we may see that the work of our generation is unfinished, and we can gain energy and strength to resume our work with the goal of bringing this cultural rite of passage to completion.
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Rites of Passage are often characterized as having three distinct stages: severance (separating from what has been), liminal space (the place of unknowing between the “no longer” and the “not yet”), and incorporation (reentering the community in a new role).
Viewed through this lens, for our generation the sixties was a decade of severance. As young people are wont to do, we set ourselves apart in dress and appearance. For many, however, this outward symbol marked a much deeper transformation, as many saw ourselves, albeit dimly, as the harbingers of a new reality.
A huge field of new energy came into the world in the sixties; people everywhere were inspired to imagine a wholly different form of human organization — a modern world, yes, but a world worthy of the dignity of human beings, a world that fosters the best of the human spirit. Cultural historian Thomas Berry characterized the “Great Work” of our times as nothing less than the reinventing of the human species. I think that’s what our generation in fact glimpsed: that the work we were called to was to reinvent the human species.
Few people were immune from this energy unleashed during the sixties. The times were, indeed, “a-changin’“ — as the civil rights movement, the war on poverty, the women’s movement, the anti-war movement, the environmental movement, and many, many others transformed our society. Change was also manifest in the music, in the “hippie” culture that was born, and in the burgeoning interest in Eastern religions. But the long register of positive developments was also balanced by negative ones: violence, drug abuse, the collapse of faith in social and political institutions, a divided country.
As the seventies gave way to the eighties, the backlash of reaction coalesced into a strong political force of its own. Those advocating the “new way” became increasingly marginalized. Hair got cut, suits put on, and the childish things of the sixties were put away. Reagan became president, and order was restored.
But ferment was going on beneath the surface. The unleashed energy had brought intimations of what is possible in the human realm along with vague directions and clues about how to pursue it. Like a vision that comes to one fasting in the wilderness, it needed much interpretation and a lot of time to understand. If we challenge the cynical story of our generation, perhaps we can see that the field of energy let loose in the sixties was not extinguished or burned out. It went underground, carried by those of us who had experienced it. We might come to see our lives as having unfolded in the liminal space of a larger cultural rite of passage — no longer the old world, but not yet the new one.
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Eco-philosopher and teacher Joanna Macy calls the aim of this work The Great Turning. She describes three streams of work necessary for shifting our culture to a life-sustaining one. First are holding actions, the work needed to blunt destructive practices and policies and mitigate the suffering they cause. Dealing with the consequences of homelessness, opposing wars, and advocating sane actions against climate change are examples of this stream. The second challenge is building new forms, the work of creating new social forms and practices and developing the conceptual understanding necessary for them. Examples of this have been the alternative health movement, the local and organic food movement, and work on alternative energy. The third stream is shifting consciousness and includes work in psychology, consciousness studies, and new spiritual and religious practices.
My daughter once characterized the people she knew from my generation as pathfinders who forged trails through new territory so that her generation could find their way more easily. Perhaps we could all see our generation this way. We didn’t give up; rather we dispersed and began laying trails through these three streams of knowledge and action that Macy described. Some of us have been working to save habitat and wilderness areas, others have taken on poverty and economic injustice, while still others have focused on alternative energy. Others have worked on the crafts of teaching and learning; others have explored new spiritual understandings; and still others, cooperative living. And that is just the beginning. Everywhere we look, we can see evidence of people who have been hard at work for years laying a foundation for a new way of thinking needed to meet the challenges of the future.
But we also see the evidence of the strength of the forces that have fought the kind of change we sought. Social, environmental, and political problems we had begun to identify as early as the sixties have festered and grown more virulent. Our political system is broken, our economy in tatters, the effects of global climate change already in evidence. In short, we all know that we have made a grand mess of things and, even if we have different interpretations of what and why and how, we all know that something is terribly wrong.
I am writing this in mid-November 2011 with news of the occupy movement finally being covered on mainstream news. Like many other demonstrations and protests that since the seventies have been tagged as originating from the “Left,” it was ignored for many weeks by the mainstream press and disparaged and denigrated by those on the Right. In the revived epithets we hear clear echoes of the sixties: “Dirty Hippies!” “Get a job!” “Take a bath.” “Anti-American!” “Socialists!” “Communist!” It’s been over 40 years since the height of that era’s “young people’s uprising,” but those anachronistic slogans are once again marshaled to keep us locked into a fraudulent story of our generation. Meanwhile, it is business as usual toward planetary destruction.
Most recently the coverage of the occupy movement has been about the over-the-top police response and what appears to be a concerted effort nationwide to stop the movement. As I watched the video of the pepper spray incident in Davis, California, I flashed back to the image of the young girl at Kent State bent over the body of a young man, and the horror two weeks later at Jackson State. Two iconic images of college students — our nation’s young people — bearing the brunt of military-style policing 41 years apart. The shadow of the sixties is visible across the country. The forces amassed to repress this latest attempt to visibly bring forth new values are strong.
But the occupy movement also brings a new glimmer of hope. Is this the moment we have been waiting for all our lives? The moment when consciousness shifts, a new worldview grabs the Zeitgeist, and suddenly we are united in working for a better future for all of us? Can this become that moment — not the moment of a grand ideological struggle where the battles of the sixties continue to be fought, but the moment when we move beyond them, together finding new solutions to entrenched problems? Or will we continue on the old path, allowing problems to continue to fester, leaving challenges unmet? What a heroic struggle is taking place in our body politic, not between Right and Left, but between hope and cynicism!
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I don’t want to inflate our importance, but I think that answering these questions is the unfinished work of our generation and the key to choosing between the two paths open to us. I also think that in finishing that work we will be completing our generation’s rite of passage, the stage called incorporation. Incorporation is the stage where one returns to the community; steps into his or her new role, takes on its responsibilities and claims its rights; and brings his or her gifts in service to the community. Many of us were denied that completion as we stepped into adulthood. The gifts we brought were disdained by a mainstream culture fighting not to change. But if we are strategic and conscious, our elder years may offer the opportunity to complete our work.
A few years ago I encountered the “Awakening the Dreamer; Changing the Dream” symposium designed by The Pachamama Alliance. The ambitious mission of that symposium is “To bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on the planet.” What struck me most were the words “to bring forth.” I realized that bringing forth requires an orientation that our generation has commonly had. We were held in the position of children, dismissed and disdained. As we tried to bring forth the values and knowledge that came into our consciousness in the sixties, we were met with riot police and eventually guns. As a generation, we were not welcomed by our elders and encouraged to bring our gifts into the larger community. What we stood for was mocked. We were told to be quiet and fit in, if we wanted a place in the community of adults.
The similarities between the occupy movement and the movements of the sixties are striking, but there are also key differences. One of the most important of these is that this generation of young people — sleeping in tents across the country, suffering abuse, and getting arrested — have elders who share their values. We can welcome them into adulthood, valuing what they have to offer. We can mentor them; we can offer to share the skills and knowledge gathered on our underground journeys. In short, we can be the elders all of us needed and few of us got.
Another difference seems to be that the slogans thrown out this time around no longer seem to have the power they once had. They’re beginning to ring hollow. More and more people trust the evidence of their own eyes and ears. Schoolteachers and cops and firemen are not Communists bent on overthrowing the government. They are not wastrels, living on the dole. But the forces that want us to adopt the other story are strong and very well organized. For over 40 years they have been effective at characterizing — as somehow a left-wing Communist plot — the basic human work of living up to one’s values, trying to make the world a better place, and living in harmony and balance with the wider natural world.
Perhaps it is time to come full circle and complete our generation’s rite of passage. Perhaps, in our elder years, we can change the orientation we adopted and cease to see ourselves as simply advocates for the world we imagined all those years ago. Instead, we are those with the knowledge and skills needed for building that world.
Perhaps by stepping fully into our roles as elders we can help shift the tide and help a New Story be written. Perhaps by naming and claiming the story of our own generation, we will be telling the stories the young ones need to hear. Perhaps by naming and claiming what we’ve learned during these past 40 years we will be passing it on to a new generation actively trying to overcome the cynicism and gridlock that holds this country in its grip.
We’ve learned in many ways and in many different arenas what it means to be a human being and the conditions necessary for humans to thrive and reach their full potential. We’ve learned about how to communicate, cooperate. and collaborate to create social forms that nurture the human spirit. We’ve glimpsed spiritual understandings that unite instead of divide. We’ve learned about what hurts our precious planet Earth and what nurtures it and us. We’ve learned so much in our individual journeys as pathfinders — so much that will help create an “environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on the planet.”
Now appears the time to find ways to share what we’ve learned and nurture a new generation struggling to find hope and the will to action — struggling to find a way to transcend the cynicism and despair rampant in our times. To do that, we must step fully into conscious, intentional elderhood, taking responsibility for the future. This may well be the path of redemption and fulfillment for our generation — the action needed to finish our generation’s work and help put this nation on the track that will lead to the world we have been imagining all our lives.
Portals to Conscious Elderhood by Ron Pevny
Ron Pevny, M.A., has for forty years been dedicated to assisting people in negotiating life transitions as they create lives of purpose and passion. He is Founding Director of the Center for Conscious Eldering, based in Durango, Colorado. He is also a Certified Sage-ing® Leader, was the creator and administrator of the twelve-organization Conscious Aging Alliance, and has served as the host/interviewer for the 2015, 2016 and 2017 Transforming Aging Summits presented by The Shift Network. He is author of Conscious Living, Conscious Aging: embrace and savor your next chapter,published in 2014 by Beyond Words/Atria Books. Ron has presented many conscious eldering programs at Ghost Ranch and other retreat centers around North America over the past fifteen years.
Ten mature adults and two guides, each engaged in silent prayer accompanied by a gentle drumbeat, stand on the edge of a mesa at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. The chill of a late-springtime dawn at 7000 feet is being dispelled as the sun rises over sandstone monoliths and pinnacles to the east and sunlight gradually envelops the mesa, making luminous the new tender green of the scrub oak and cottonwoods just emerging from a long, cold winter. The raven soaring overhead pierces the silence as it calls the world to come to life and revel in this new day. To the west, the stunning walls that enclose this enchanted natural amphitheater are emerging from darkness to reveal a palette of layered color ranging from white-gray to beige to vermillion. A new day has begun in the season of new beginnings for a group of people enacting rites of passage to inform and empower their journeys into conscious elderhood.
The ten people, ranging in age from 50 to 85, all in or approaching their elder years, are following in the footsteps of countless others since the beginnings of humankind. At critical turning points in life, people have retreated to wilderness places to enact rites of passage. When they returned to their communities, spiritually and emotionally renewed, they returned with new insight about how best to live and contribute as the next stages of their lives unfolded.
Anthropologists tell us that throughout most of known human history, cultures marked life’s significant changes with rites of passage or initiation. Extensive physical, psychological, and spiritual preparation was followed by an intense, spiritually charged ceremonial rite of passage, which most commonly took place in a wilderness setting away from the village. The intent was both to mark the fact that a major life transition was occurring and to empower the initiate to fully and consciously embrace his or her new life role.
Through such powerful processes, people were assisted in letting go of attitudes, behaviors, and self-concepts from previous life stages that would not serve them or their communities in their new life roles. Concurrently they were guided in identifying and strengthening the skills, wisdom, psychological resources, and spiritual connection necessary for claiming their new status and effectively fulfilling their new roles. Upon their return, they and their communities knew that in some essential way who they had been — both personally and in terms of their societal role — had died and a new self with new wisdom and gifts to contribute to the community had been born.
Our secular, contemporary world is marked by a dearth of meaningful, emotionally and spiritually empowering rites of passage to help people realize the potential fullness of each of life’s stages. We expect people to move from one ill-defined life stage to another, largely on their own, with little psychological and spiritual preparation. There are two areas where this lack seems to me most detrimental to personal and societal well-being: They are the ambiguous passage from adolescence into adulthood and the equally amorphous passage from career-focused adulthood into the senior years. Though they reach only a miniscule number of those who would benefit, there are organizations devoting their efforts to creating meaningful rites of passage for those entering adulthood. There is, however, almost no awareness of the value of similar ceremonies for those seeking as they age to become elder and not merely older.
A Call for Meaningful Rites of Passage
This article, and this entire issue of Itineraries, is a call for meaningful rites of passage for the ever-increasing cohort of people, in and approaching their elder years, who feel a call to claim the role of elder in a society where that role is largely nonexistent. It is a call to the leaders of the many spiritual traditions in our country, as well as those others who, through various means, have stepped into and owned the wisdom of their own eldering, to develop inspiring programs of preparation for elderhood that culminate in empowering rites of passage. The balance of this article will look at perspectives, dynamics, and elements that are critical in constructing such rites.
Traditionally, rites of passage drew their power from multiple sources: (1) cultural understanding of how the human psyche develops throughout life and what it needs to flourish in each life stage; (2) reverence for and connection with the spiritual dimension of life; and (3) the power of the natural world to open hearts and minds.
Indigenous peoples recognized, as do many contemporary lifecycle development theorists, that optimal human development occurs in discrete stages. The inner and outer dynamics of each stage must be supported by the community if the individual is to flourish and contribute fully to the community. If the psychological tasks and potentials of each stage are not recognized and supported, development may well be hindered or atrophied. Lack of cultural recognition and support for this process is why many people in adult bodies and with adult roles never grow out of emotional childhood or adolescence. It is also why many people with aging bodies continue to try to live as though they are 40 or 50 — as parodies of their mid-life selves — never actualizing or even being aware of the rich possibilities of aging and of the necessary inner work that prepares one for a conscious elderhood.
The Dynamics of Human Development
Rites of passage are necessary because people rarely fulfill the potential of life’s developmental stages by unconsciously drifting through their lifespans. At certain key times the human psyche needs, and either waits for or instigates, some event in our lives with the potential to catapult us from the relative security of the current stage into the powerful unknowns of the next chapter. Serious illness can be such a catalyst, as can loss of employment, death of a dream, ending of a relationship, or inner crisis caused by a loss of purpose and meaning. Some people are able to use such catalysts, whether consciously or not, to serve as rites of passage in their inner development. Many others are not.
Rites of passage are structured ways of spurring human development. They impress upon those undertaking them the significance of the inner and outer transitions they are undergoing. They help to dismantle those elements of previous life stages that will retard our growth and wholeness in the next. They force a descent into the depths of oneself where one must encounter both our shadow and our unrecognized potential. And such rites provide the opportunity for a life-transforming experience of one’s spiritual resources and for the vision and empowerment that come with embracing these.
The Power of Nature to Support These Rites
Traditionally, most rites of passage take place away from the village in wild places. Indigenous people had the same understanding of the psyche that led Jesus, the Buddha, and so many other great teachers of humanity to retreat to the desert or forest to enact their own rites of passage before moving forth into the new chapters that defined their contributions to the world.
Being in nature broadens our perspective and helps us see beyond the narrow self-definitions and limited sense of possibility that life in society imposes. Embracing that which is wild and untamed, both outside ourselves and within, frees the mind of conditioned small-world thinking and provides a big-picture view of our place and potential. Surrounded by and immersed in nature, it becomes much easier to experience connection and relationship with all of life, with life’s rhythms and cycles (which are also our own), and with the Source that is alive in all of nature’s beings, including ourselves. These are the experiences that provide vision for the next stages of our lives, empowerment to live that vision, and courage to let go of or transform those elements in ourselves that are not in alignment with the potential that calls to us.
The Three Stages of Rites of Passage
Anthropologists who have studied the many forms that rites of passage have taken around the world identify a three-stage process that ritualizes and supports the three stages that characterize all significant life transition.1
The first phase is usually called severance. Initiates (those undergoing a rite of passage) leave behind (sever from) the community and their former roles. With the guidance of elders who know these dynamics, they take stock of their lives: who they have become, what strengths they have developed, what weaknesses need to be recognized and overcome. They become aware of attitudes, fears, beliefs, behaviors, and self-identifications that tend to stunt their vitality and disconnect them from the wisdom and passion of their hearts. Then they symbolically let these encumbrances go, as a snake sheds its old skin so that it can grow into a new one. They allow themselves to experience grief that has been blocked, to forgive others and themselves for that which has not been forgiven, and to review and learn from significant life experiences. With gratitude, they celebrate who they have been, sever their ties to that earlier identity, and embrace the unknown of the future.
The second phase — the threshold phase (indicating a crossing of a threshold into the sacred world) or liminal phase (from a Latin word for “limit”) — reflects the fact that during this process, the initiate encounters the limit of his or her former self and formally steps beyond those limits. In this phase, the initiate is alone, facing the wilderness without and within. Fasting is employed to cleanse body and mind and help open one to spirit. The initiate enters a timeless space of day and night, light and dark, alone with earth and sky, suspended between an old life chapter and a new beginning. It is a time of calling out with all one’s heart to the Great Mystery (however one conceives of it) for guidance and strength for the next chapter.
This is what Joseph Campbell called the hero’s journey. Precious treasures are usually guarded by fearsome dragons. Initiates must face and conquer old and deep fears before they are allowed to glimpse the shining jewel of their true beauty and potential. There are times of emotional pain and physical discomfort, as many old scales must be scraped off before the new self that is seeking to be born can emerge. Yet the experience of purpose, passion, and spiritual connection that emerges, often punctuated by striking experiences of synchronicity, powerful dreams, or tear-laden melting of the heart, is one that is not soon forgotten. Indeed, it becomes the foundation for an entirely new life chapter.
The threshold is then recrossed, and the phase of reincorporation begins. The initiate’s experience in the liminal world is shared with the elders whose role is to witness, affirm, and help clarify those experiences which — on this side of the threshold — often seem ephemeral and must be firmly grounded in daily life if they are to nurture the fragile new self that is emerging. The elders and the larger community support the initiate as he declares ownership of the gifts he received in the liminal world and makes concrete commitments for how he will put his new insights and emerging inner qualities in service to the local community as well as the larger community of life.
This is the basic framework that rites of passage take in indigenous societies. We moderns, however, living as we do in a world where the role of elder is neither defined nor revered, must each envisage our own unique way of embracing that role in a way that aligns with our unique personalities, callings, and gifts. And whatever form they take, effective rites of passage into elderhood in our society will be as diverse as the world we live in. There is one constant, however: To be truly effective, contemporary rites of passage will reflect the age-old wisdom about the three-phase inner dynamic of human growth from one life stage into another.
Without truly empowering rites of passage, our world is impoverished and much human potential is squandered. Who better to reawaken society to the importance of this process than those of us who recognize (or at least sense) the power and responsibility of initiated elders? For, as has been the case for millennia, it is the elders who mentor and initiate the young, champion enduring life-sustaining values, shine as beacons of hope illuminating the darkness of fear, and use their wisdom and compassionate hearts to heal a wounded world.
As this group of newly initiated elders packs up to return to the city, they know the task won’t be easy. There are few societal structures in place to support their visions for growing older. The dominant culture’s obsession with youth and newness will continue. Computers will generate ever more information, but wisdom will remain in short supply. The environment of our earth home will continue to be degraded. The media will continue to sell messages of fear.
Yet, the sun will continue to rise over those pinnacles to the east and shed its warmth on the mesa. The raven will continue to soar overhead, seeing the big picture and calling all below to awaken. And ten more people will add their visions and voices to the emerging new understanding of the gifts that conscious elders can bring to a world desperately in need of elder wisdom and passion rooted in soul. Looking one final time from this mesa to the horizon, this group offers their fervent prayers that this enchanted mesa and places like it will long be there to nourish the human spirit when the canyons of the city become too stifling, the noise too loud, and the view too narrow.
Notes
1 Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation by Louise Carus Mahdi, Steven Foster, and Meredith Little (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1987) for a comprehensive exploration of rites of passage, traditional and modern, around the world.
Recognition Rites for Elders by Tom Pinkson
Tom Pinkson, PhD, is a psychologist, ceremonial retreat and vision-fast leader, sacred storyteller, and shaman. For 32 years Tom worked with terminally ill children at the Center for Attitudinal Healing in California, successfully integrating the wisdom teachings of the Huichol and other medicine teachers into the world of the practicing psychologist. The founder of Wakan, a nonprofit organization committed to restoring the sacred in daily life, he lives in northern California.
During the second half of life you are called to serve something bigger than yourself; have to have an eye on being all you can be for yourself, those you love around you and the planet. You have to try to be in the moment and give to the people around you as much love and knowledge as you have to share.
— James Hollis
Everyone wants to succeed as a human being. We all want our lives to be meaningful. Our own aging provides us with the best opportunity for both success and meaning. Elderhood is a time of new beginnings, new possibilities. and new forms of contribution. Average life expectancy in the United States is nearly 78 years, and every seven seconds a new person joins the growing wave of people living the second half of their lives. This gathering tide of elders brings with it a growing need to transform the way we see and live out this final stage of the life cycle.
Aging has a bad rap in this country. The challenge is to reawaken, reclaim, re-envision. and revitalize our understanding of its true potential. We must consciously embrace the natural process of aging and relate to its wisdom in a way that brings forth our own wisdom. It’s not about anti-aging; it’s about conscious aging. People who bring consciousness to their aging process understand that the future is not something to dread. The future is where we create a rich experience that will bring dignity, fulfillment, and completion to your time on this planet.
In our individual lifespans, our 60s are the youth of elderhood; our 70s, its midlife; and our 80s and beyond (the time sociologists refer to as “the third age”), the time of full elderhood. In this “second maturity” we are called to deeper involvement with our inner world and the development of our greater self. Our focus needs to be on what gives meaning to our lives. The time is about being; we no longer measure success by things or doing.
Psychologist David Powell points out,
Deepening requires surrender, letting go of control, abandoning competition, power, possessions and prestige. It means going to a larger, spiritual sphere that embraces others and their story. In the first half of life you focus mostly on “My Story” and “Our Story”: your traditions, family, group, community, country, and your religion. In the second half of life you begin to focus on “The Story,” wherein you realize you play a small but vital role in something greater than yourself, a cosmic story found in a sense of interdependence with others, our world, the Earth, our Creator.
Quest — a journey of exploration into deeper meaning, deeper connection, deeper understanding — is central to later life. What do you care for most passionately? Where is your excitement? Your curiosity? What gives you a sense of fulfillment in life? What is your purpose in being here? How do you want others to remember what you stood for? The growth process that reflecting on such questions initiates forces us to examine what doesn’t work — and stop doing it — and what does work — and do more of that.
Recognition Rites for a New Vision Of Aging
This constellation of ideas is what prompted me to design and implement a program called Recognition Rites for a New Vision Of Aging.
The program works in two steps — the first step being an individual guided session which uses 14 reflective questions to help individuals identify, gather, and harvest the wisdom of their lives. The questions address finding your bearings; appraising your relationship to yourself; examining the beliefs, values, and goals that guide your life; identifying your coping strategies; tracing crucial turning points; and exploring your relationship with the significant others who have journeyed with you.
The session also addresses unresolved relationships in a healing context. We learn how to use the mind to open and heal the heart, restoring inner peace and loving relationships and, by that restoration, increasing self-esteem and promoting mental and physical well-being.
The process helps participants realize their “gifts of being” — personal assets they can share with others in addressing needs in the community. This facilitates a meaningful vision of their future as a contributor to social and cultural well-being benefiting younger generations.
The second step1 of the program is a ceremonial event that honors and celebrates the participant’s life. Participants develop their own unique rite of passage which will carry them across the threshold into conscious aging. This ceremonial act of power is offered to the guests they have invited from various areas of their life.
These invitees are asked to come prepared to share how knowing the participant has impacted their own lives, and this they do in the first part of the celebration. This way the honorees get to hear what otherwise might only be shared at a future memorial service, when they are no longer there to hear it.
In the second part of the celebration, the honorees present their new identity and share their gifts. Using poetry, song, music, ritual, theater, etc., they give a concrete form to the awareness developed by their individual sessions. All honorees have committed themselves to aging consciously, gracefully, powerfully, and meaningfully; and the public rite — each honoree beyond his or her comfort zone through an “act of power” — dramatically embodies their intention. As a community event it enriches and enlivens all attendees with new possibilities for their own conscious aging.
Every Recognition Rite is tailored to the uniqueness of the participant’s gender, values, and belief system and utilizes their favorite music, symbols, art, colors, and key life themes.
An individual example will be helpful. Martha was 85 years old at the time she was a participant in the program. She lived in an assisted living home in Northern California where I visited her regularly. She and her husband of 50-plus years had had a loving marriage and had together run a business. He had died several years earlier. Martha had had several strokes and walked with a walker, diminishing the vital and active life she had had. But her resilience — based on her belief that there was more to her than her physical body — was undiminished. She believed her essence was spirit, that she was love, and that her present task was to be a channel of love to others. While lying in bed and unable to move, she sent out love to others — family, friends, caretakers, whoever came to mind.
Martha believed that when she died, she would join her husband and other relatives and friends who had passed on before her. She didn’t fear death. She befriended it. She reviewed her life to discover unhealed places or relationships and worked hard to forgive herself and others and to complete unfinished business. She felt good about how she had lived her life and the legacy she would leave behind.
She also continued to explore her creative interests and exercise her mind through painting and her love of music. She maintained social involvement through a support group, activities of the retirement home, and outings with friends. She nurtured her spirituality through meditation, reading, and listening to CDs of spiritual wisdom teachers. She also drew on the wisdom lessons from her own life, making a daily effort to apply them in meeting her considerable challenges.
I spent much time with Martha and am sad that she died before she was able to enact the Rite of Passage she was developing. But even without that capstone, I know she enriched her life in the midst of physical loss and limitations. She aged consciously and skillfully, using behavioral and cognitive practices that helped her maintain a positive attitude and outlook. She grew spiritually, deepening her faith and belief that she was a vital part of life and that she had something of value to contribute to others. She lived a full life until the moment of her peaceful death, excited about being part of something that transcends this life.
My work with Martha and others convinces me that aging fruitfully can be an adventurous exploration of what is possible right up to the very last breath. In every moment that we are present and aware, opportunity exists to make a conscious decision about how we want to experience that moment, where we want to put our attention, and how open we will be to love’s presence. Maybe that is the very reason we came into this life — to remember that we are love and that love is for giving.
//
Notes
1 A 6-minute video about Recognition Rite of Elders may be accessed at http://drtompinkson.com/recognition-rites/.
Dreams and Elder Initiations by Harry R. Moody
Harry R. Moody, Ph.D., is Director of Academic Affairs for AARP. Before coming to AARP, he served as Executive Director of the Brookdale Center on Aging at Hunter College and Chairman of the Board of Elderhostel. He is the author of many articles and several books on the humanities and aging, including Aging: Concepts and Controversies (now in its 6th edition); Ethics in an Aging Society; and The Five Stages of the Soul: Charting the Spiritual Passages That Shape Our Lives, translated into seven languages worldwide.
“Is this all there is?” Peggy Lee asks in her famous song. Whether we have fulfilled our hopes in life, or realized that we never will, the question is still the same. “Is this all there is?”
That question invites us to begin a journey. It is the Call, the first of what I have described as the “five stages of the soul” in which the Call is followed by Search, Struggle, Breakthrough, and Return.1 Though this initial invitation may come to us at any point in our lives, in later life, it often comes with particular power and urgency.
The Call is an awakening, the moment when this inward dimension we call soul comes to life — that moment when we “come to ourselves” and ask the perennial questions: Who am I? Where am I going? What is this life all about? These questions prove painful because, as James Hollis puts it, by midlife what we have become — the strong ego we have built — is frequently our chief obstacle to listening to the Call.
The inner voice demands to be heard — demands we begin the journey. Jung warns us of the price we pay if we ignore the invitation: “Only the man who can consciously assent to the power of the inner voice becomes a personality.” Everything around us, however, conspires to keep us from hearing this “still small voice.” We avoid looking inside ourselves because:
Looking in will require of us great subtlety and great courage — nothing less than a complete shift in our attitude to life and to the mind. We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. — Sogyal Rinpoche
In ancient Shamanic traditions, the Call was recognized as an opening to initiation into the world of the spirits; this Call to initiation would often come through our dreams. The potential shaman who hears the call through his dreams ignores it at his peril: “Most shamanic traditions take the position that refusal to follow the call will result in a terrible accident, a life-threatening sickness, or insanity.” — Stanley Krippner
Do we dismiss this warning as just an ancient superstition? Or is it an all-too-accurate description of what happens when an entire culture, a global civilization, ignores the invitations of the soul seeking actualization? Today, as we see the world around us plunged in such collective insanity, we must wonder: How many around us have ignored the Call or dismissed its message? How many have ignored their dreams?
The cry
The great Jewish theologian martin Buber begins his book Between Man and Man by telling about one of his own dreams, a classic dream of the Call. This dream came to him again and again, sometimes after an interval of years. In the dream he finds himself in a “primitive” world, in a vast cave or a mud building, or “on the fringe of a gigantic forest whose like I cannot remember having seen.” Perhaps this “gigantic forest” is the same “dark wood” where Dante found himself at the beginning of his own spiritual journey. Here is Martin Buber’s dream:
The dream begins in very different ways, but always with something extraordinary happening to me, for instance, with a small animal resembling a lion-cub (whose name I know in the dream but not when I awake) tearing the flesh from my arm and being forced only with an effort to loose its hold. The strange thing is that this first part of the dream story, in the duration as well as the outer meaning of the incidents, always unfolds at a furious pace as though it did not matter. Then suddenly the pace abates: I stand there and cry out.
Buber goes on to tell us that, in terms of waking consciousness, he might suppose that his cry could be joyous or fearful, depending on interpretation. But when he remembers the dream in the morning, “the cry” is “neither so expressive nor so various.” Instead, he remembers that “each time it is the same cry, inarticulate but in strict rhythm, rising and falling, swelling to a fullness which my throat could not endure were I awake…” The cry becomes a song, and “when it ends my heart stops beating.”
But then, somewhere, far away, another cry moves towards me, another which is the same, the same cry uttered or sung by another voice. Yet it is not the same cry, certainly no echo of my cry but rather its true rejoinder, tone for tone, not repeating mine… so much so, that mine, which at first had to my own ear no sound of questioning at all, now appear as questions, as a long series of questions, which now all receive a response.
A dream like this cannot be translated into rational discourse: “The response is no more capable of interpretation than the question. And yet the cries that meet the one cry that is the same do not seem to be the same as one another. Each time the voice is new.” Though the rational mind cannot grasp the meaning of this Cry, Buber still comes away from the dream with a sense of certitude: “A certitude, true dream certitude comes to me that now it has happened. Nothing more. Just this, and in this way —- now it has happened.”
Martin Buber had this dream over and over again, until the last time just two years before he spoke about it in his book. Of the last instance of the dream, he wrote: “At first it was as usual…my cry died away, again my heart stood still. But then there was quiet. There came no answering call. I listened, I heard no sound.” Buber, surprised by this absence, waits, in vain, for the response. But then something happened to him, a change of awareness, as if his senses had suddenly become magnified. “And then, not from a distance but from the air round about me, noiselessly, came the answer.” Rather, the answer was already there, was present even before his cry: “When I laid myself open to it, it let itself be received by me.” What he received at that moment he received “with every pore of his body.” Once again, he experienced profound certainty, “pealing out more than ever, that now it has happened.”
What Martin Buber has so beautifully described in this dream is the powerful, overwhelming reality of the Call. It is what the poet Rilke speaks of (in the Duino Elegies) when he tells of listening to the call of “the Angel” and realizing that to have lived on earth, “To have been here once, if only for this once, can never be cancelled.” In essence, it has happened. The Call is a moment of certainty, but not a dogmatic conclusion that can be put into words. On the contrary, it is a hunger for the Infinite.
Rilke put it beautifully in his Letters to a Young Poet: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.” The Call, then, is different from some “religious experience,” or any sort of “conversion” that gives us clear or definitive conclusions. Quite the contrary. The Call is an encounter with emptiness, with our own deepest questions, now no longer experienced as doubt but as certainty: It has happened.
But to listen to the Call we must learn to listen to an Inner Voice.
The old men in the cave
Initiation into Elderhood need not come only in later life. On the contrary, in world mythology, we find repeated pairing between the young hero and a hero who represents the Elder Ideal. The following is the dream of a young man who was seeking direction in his life. He had gone alone to camp on Mt. Shasta in California where he was practicing nightly “dream incubation,” a custom familiar to the ancient Greeks. On the fifth night on the mountaintop he had the following dream:
I am in a cave with a group of old men. They are drinking water from an old bowl that is being passed around. As the bowl comes closer towards me I realize that this must be a dream. An old man with dark skin and dark hair sitting next to me hands me the bowl. I take it and drink the water. I suddenly hear a humming sound and as I look up the men have disappeared and a beautiful white deer is walking in the light in the far distance. I awake feeling ecstatic.
The dreamer considered this lucid dream to be an initiatory experience. Apart from the dreamer’s individual psychological associations, key features of this dream are important for understanding the place of dreams over the life course.
In every respect, “The Old Men in the Cave” is a dream of initiation during youth. The dreamer goes alone out into the wilderness, as would be the custom for a Native American shaman seeking dream initiation. Among the Plains Indians the dream was treated as a significant event, occurring on different planes of reality. Thus, among such groups the “vision quest” was also known as “crying for a dream” and was found especially among the Lakota. Among the Iroquois it was understood that the spirit world could communicate with individuals through these “Big Dreams.” The Mohawk word atetshents means, simply, “one who dreams,” the same word used for a shaman or healer. A Big Dream could be a healing for the whole community, conveying revelations or warnings to be heeded.
Though the young man who dreamed “The Old Men in the Cave” was not a Native American, the condition and the imagery of his dream have lessons well beyond him. The psychological journey into the self is, in many respects, a path toward aloneness. Each of us must learn to be alone with ourselves. The journey into the wilderness is also a passage into an unknown world, to discover something in us that is wild and untamed. The dreamer here has actually gone to a mountaintop in order to incubate his dream; and the mountaintop, too, is a significant symbol: It is the point where earth touches heaven. Recall that Moses went to the top of Mt. Sinai to receive revelation, and Muhammad went into a cave atop Mount Hira, where he received the revelation of the Quran. Yet the setting of this dream has another curious feature. It is not only on the mountaintop but also in an opposite direction: that is, downward, into a cave, as if suggesting, in the words of Heraclitus, “The way up and the way down are the same.”
Caves symbolize what is deepest and oldest in the psyche. “Before humans built shelters, the earliest sacred places were caves,” writes A. T. Mann: “The connection of cave to underworld remains a primary ancestral memory for us, and thus, caves remain formidable places.” Joseph Campbell says: “The cave has always been the scene of initiation, where the birth of the light takes place. Here as well is found the whole idea of the cave of the heart, the dark chamber of the heart, where the light of the divine first appears.”
The oldest art works of humanity — the cave art at Lascaux or the even older cave of Chauvet in France — are cave drawings from our remote ancestors. Cave dwelling evokes a primordial condition which can be understood as the context for this dream. The dreamer at first is not alone in this cave but is with a group of old men, as if to suggest that the process of initiation itself is a connection between youth and age. As in the ritual of the Eucharist, in “The Old Men in the Cave” a bowl is passed around and, just as the dreamer is about to drink, the dream becomes lucid. The image of an old man with “dark skin” and “dark hair” suggests an element of darkness or shadow belonging to the dreamer, who has now drunk from the initiatory bowl. From that moment on the old men in the dream disappear, and the dreamer is once again alone. The circle of aloneness is complete. As philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once remarked, religion is what each of us does with our aloneness.
The cave drawings at Lascaux and Chauvet depict magical animals, and in “The Old Men in the Cave” the dreamer now sees another magical animal: the “white deer walking in the light in the far distance.” This vision of an illuminated animal symbolizes the distance this dreamer has already traveled and must still travel in the process of initiation. The dreamer has now been granted a holy vision, and he wakes up ecstatic. The word ek-stasis, in Greek means, literally, “standing outside oneself,” as this dreamer has gone outside himself.
“The Old Men in the Cave” is the dream of a young man seeking guidance. But where can youth find guidance today? In a society like ours where age is devalued, young people are left adrift. Not surprisingly, they crave some kind of initiation or viable path into adulthood. Because we lack any journey into the wilderness, or a genuine ritual for reconciling aloneness within society, we end up forcing young people to behave in ways disconnected from the adult world and from the self they might become. And so they join gangs to find solidarity and a viable path to adulthood. The image of the elders in “The Old Men in the Cave” expresses a longing for such guidance and direction in life — a longing that too often remains unfulfilled.
This challenge of initiation is not limited to young people. At every transitional or “liminal” stage of life we need guidance. “There persists in all of us, regardless of gender, an archetypal need to be initiated,” as Jungian analyst Anthony Stevens writes, even though “our culture no longer provides rites of initiation, except in training members of the armed forces and providing examinations for students.” So we turn to stories, myths, fairy tales, and dreams that respond to our hunger for a “rite of passage” that will help us move during critical or transitional points in the life course — marriage, death of a parent, and so on — to the next stage of life.
Meeting the Sage
Our culture’s market impoverishment when it comes to offering initiatory symbols or experience make the need for guidance urgent. The Search — the second stage of the soul, the stage which follows the Call — is in fact a search for guidance. This dynamic may also appear in dreams, as in the following dream experienced by the late Brugh Joy, a physician and spiritual teacher, when he was age 45. In the dream, which took place three days before Easter, a date predicted as his death in an earlier dream, the figure of the guide makes an unexpected appearance:
I am sitting in a pastoral setting, watching a strange event take place. A white, triangular tent, covered at both ends so I can’t see inside, is in an open area. I hear a small boy’s laughter coming from inside the tent. Long, multicolored sashes, tied together and forming a multicolored snakelike pattern, are being pulled into the tent through a sphincter-like hole at one end. Suddenly, seated next to me, appears an East Indian Sage, about forty to fifty years old, with a radiant face. He, too, is laughing. He is dressed in orange saffron robes, which he wears comfortably and casually. He has a graying beard. The Sage informs me that I need a teacher to help guide me into my next initiation. He suggests that I go to the bookstore and see what strikes me as interesting.
He then tells me to lie down on my stomach. He places one hand on the back of my head and the other on the lower end of my spine. I suddenly feel a current of energy, as though I were plugged into an electrical outlet. I begin to cry tears of appreciation. The Sage tells me he is healing my body… and I awaken.
In this dream the Sage tells Brugh Joy that he needs a teacher to guide him toward his next initiation. The dream culminates with an intimation of the Breakthrough experience that is possible on the path.
When the time is right
We live in a time when unprecedented numbers of people are living to experience aging. Yet our culture lacks institutions to give guidance for those in the stage of the Search. Fortunately, efforts are underway to develop new institutions appropriate to our time and to the opportunity for initiation into Elderhood. The Sage-ing Guild, inspired by Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, is one example of such an opportunity for those seeking a path toward conscious aging. Ron Pevny, the founder of the Center for Conscious Eldering (see his article in this issue) is one of those working in the Guild. Pevny says he did not come to this work without going through his own Struggle, as shown in this dream he experienced when he entered midlife:
I am in my relatives’ home in Durango, Colorado. It is my birthday. There is a card table set up and covered with wrapped gifts, which are for me. In my eagerness, I rush up to the table and accidentally knock against it. One of the gifts falls to the floor, and the wrapping partially opens. I see that it is a beautiful agate ring or pendant or bracelet or the like. I know that this is representative of the beautiful gifts on the table, and that I am not supposed to open these gifts yet. I feel bad for having crashed into the table. I awaken with the words “All this will be yours when the time is right.”
Ron Pevny notes that this dream came on his first vision quest training. His life at the time was filled with doubt and “dark nights,” reflected in that Struggle: “I felt very flawed, stuck spiritually, and questioning whether these struggles would ever end. Finally, on the last night of the quest, when I was trying to stay awake all night, I just gave up struggling. It seemed nothing of consequence had happened on my quest, but I could no longer continue to work at making something happen. I let my eyes close, and was blessed with this dream which 30 years later is still alive in me and has helped me persist and stay on my path through many dark times since.”
No regrets
Eventually, “when the time is right,” more than 25 years later, Ron would have a powerful dream of the Return, which gave him the direction he needed to establish his program of wilderness vision quests, the signature program of the Center for Conscious Eldering:
An important mystery play is happening, and I have been chosen to represent human beings on their deathbeds in this powerful ceremony. I am not dying myself, but am experiencing the dynamics of being about to die and learning what is necessary to die a good, peaceful death, free of baggage and emotional encumbrances.
The ceremony has me being carried on a bier by several people. The only light is provided by torches and candles. The setting is one of great spiritual power and sacredness. I am carried to several stations where I experience specific teachings. One of these is a station where I am to make amends for anyone I have hurt in my life. I realize that I don’t have many such amends to make. Neither this nor the other stations (which I don’t remember as I write this) has a big impact on me in the dream.
Then we come to the final station. Here tremendous power becomes focused, the heavens seem to open up, and I am deeply shaken as I hear the words, “No regrets. You can have no regrets. You must teach no regrets.”
I awaken with these words vibrating throughout my being. I go to the bathroom still feeling enveloped in this dream with these words repeating in my head. I go back to bed and I’m back in the dream, with me trying to understand how I am supposed to teach “no regrets.” It seems this goes on for ages. Then, the scene shifts and I am with my rite of passage mentors from 30 years ago, Steven Foster and Meredith Little. They are teaching a large group who listen with rapt attention in an outdoor amphitheater. Then, when they are finished, they tell me that it is now my turn to teach “no regrets.” I try, but most of the people are leaving, the shape and acoustics of the setting change, and I find myself yelling just to be heard by a few people. Then Steven and Meredith tell me that before I can effectively teach “no regrets” I have to first truly understand and embody “no regrets” in my life. Then people will listen and no yelling will be necessary.
Ron Pevny commented about his dream: “This is perhaps the most powerful, impactful dream I have ever had. It has been pivotal in helping deepen my experiential and conceptual understanding of the inner work of conscious aging. It has given me a feeling of mandate for doing the work I am doing in the conscious aging movement. The inner work of transforming regret that helps people to die in peace and to enter the next life without negative karma — that is the same work that is necessary for dying to one’s previous self-identifications, those encumbrances that prevent us from moving into the life stage of elder free of our old baggage, attachments, and other energy drainers. Those who shine most brightly as elders live with “no regrets.”
Changing the culture — slowly
Note that more than a quarter of a century elapsed between Ron Pevny’s early vision quest dream and his dream of “No Regrets” which pointed him toward the practice that has become his distinctive contribution. The work of conscious eldering, as exemplified in the Sage-ing Guild, Second Journey, and other groups established in recent years, is not something that can be accomplished quickly. That fact seems to me all the more reason we commit our energies anew to the task of changing the culture.
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Notes
1 See Harry R. Moody and David Carroll, The Five Stages of the Soul: Charting the Spiritual Passages That Shape Our Lives (New York: Anchor Books, 1998).
Discharging Your Loyal Soldier: Shadow Work For Elders by Richard Rohr
Fr. Richard Rohr, O.M.F., entered the Franciscan order in 1961 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1970. He founded the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1971 and the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1986 where he presently serves as Founding Director. He is an international speaker, teaching on such themes as male spirituality, adult Christianity, politics and spirituality, and non-dual thinking. He is the author of numerous books, including Everything Belongs; Adam’s Return; and, most recently, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. He lives in a hermitage behind his Franciscan community in Albuquerque.
The Way Up and the Way Down
The soul has many secrets. They are only revealed to those who want them, and are never completely forced upon us. One of the best-kept secrets, and yet one hidden in plain sight, is that the way up is the way down. Or, if you prefer, the way down is the way up. This pattern is obvious in all of nature, from the very change of seasons and substances on this earth, to the six hundred million tons of hydrogen that the sun burns every day to light and warm our earth, and even to the metabolic laws of dieting or fasting. The down-up pattern is constant, too, in mythology, in stories like that of Persephone, who must descend into the underworld and marry Hades for spring to be reborn.1
In legends and literature, sacrifice of something to achieve something else is almost the only pattern. Dr. Faust has to sell his soul to the devil to achieve power and knowledge; Sleeping Beauty must sleep for a hundred years before she can receive the prince’s kiss. In Scripture, we see that the wrestling and wounding of Jacob are necessary for Jacob to become Israel, and the death and resurrection of Jesus are necessary to create Christianity. The loss and renewal pattern is so constant and ubiquitous that it should hardly be called a secret at all.
Yet it is still a secret, probably because we do not want to see it. We do not want to embark on a further journey if it feels like going down, especially after we have put so much sound and fury into going up. This is surely the first and primary reason why many people never get to the fullness of their own lives. The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move further. Why would we?
Normally a job, fortune, or reputation has to be lost, a death has to be suffered, a house has to be flooded, or a disease has to be endured. The pattern in fact is so clear that one has to work rather hard, or be intellectually lazy, to miss the continual lesson. This, of course, was Scott Peck’s major insight in his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled. He told me personally once that he felt most Western people were just spiritually lazy. And when we are lazy, we stay on the path we are already on, even if it is going nowhere. It is the spiritual equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics: everything winds down unless some outside force winds it back up. True spirituality could be called the “outside force,” although surprisingly it is found “inside,” but we will get to that later.
Some kind of falling, what I will soon call “necessary suffering,” is programmed into the journey. All the sources seem to say it, starting with Adam and Eve and all they represent. Yes, they “sinned” and were cast out of the Garden of Eden, but from those very acts came “consciousness,” conscience, and their own further journey. But it all started with transgression. Only people unfamiliar with sacred story are surprised that they ate the apple. As soon as God told them specifically not to, you know they will! It creates the whole story line inside of which we can find ourselves.
It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences — all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey. As my favorite mystic, Lady Julian of Norwich, put it in her Middle English, “Sin is behovely!”. . .
Discharging Your Loyal Soldier
In his work at his animas institute in Durango, Colorado, Bill Plotkin takes people on long fasts and vision quests in nature. His work offers a very specific and truth-filled plan for moving from what he calls an “ego centric” worldview to a “soul centric” worldview.2 Like me, Plotkin is saddened by how much of our world stays at the egocentric first stage of life. His work reveals a historical situation in post World War II Japan that demonstrates how people could be helped to move from the identity of the first half of life to the growth of the second half. In this situation, some Japanese communities had the savvy to understand that many of their returning soldiers were not fit or prepared to reenter civil or humane society. Their only identity for their formative years had been to be a “loyal soldier” to their country; they needed a broader identity to once again rejoin their communities as useful citizens.3
So these Japanese communities created a communal ritual whereby a soldier was publicly thanked and praised effusively for his service to the people. After this was done at great length, an elder would stand and announce with authority something to this effect: “The war is now over! The community needs you to let go of what has served you and served us well up to now. The community needs you to return as a man, a citizen, and something beyond a soldier.” In our men’s work, we call this process “discharging your loyal soldier.”
This kind of closure is much needed for most of us at the end of all major transitions in life. Because we have lost any sense of the need for such rites of passage, most of our people have no clear crossover to the second half of their own lives. No one shows us the stunted and limited character of the worldview of the first half of life, so we just continue with more of the same. The Japanese were wise enough to create clear closure, transition, and possible direction. Western people are a ritually starved people, and in this are different than most of human history. Even the church’s sacraments are overwhelmingly dedicated to keeping us loyally inside the flock and tied to the clergy, loyal soldiers of the church. There is little talk of journeys outward or onward, the kind of journeys Jesus called people to go on.
The state also wants loyal patriots and citizens, not thinkers, critics, or citizens of a larger world. No wonder we have so much depression and addiction, especially among the elderly, and also among the churched. Their full life has been truncated with the full cooperation of both church and state.
The loyal soldier is similar to the “elder son” in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. His very loyalty to strict meritocracy, to his own entitlement, to obedience and loyalty to his father, keeps him from the very “celebration” that same father has prepared, even though he begs the son to come to the feast.4 We have no indication he ever came! What a judgment this is on first-stage religion, and it comes straight from the boss. He makes the same point in his story of the Pharisee and the tax collector,5 in which one is loyal and observant and deemed wrong by Jesus, and the other has not obeyed the law — yet is deemed “at rights with God.” This is classic “reverse theology” meant to subvert our usual merit-badge thinking. Both the elder son and the Pharisee are good loyal religious soldiers, exactly what most of us in the church were told to be, yet Jesus says that both of them missed the major point.
The voice of our loyal soldier gets us through the first half of life safely, teaching us to look both ways before we cross the street, to have enough impulse control to avoid addictions and compulsive emotions, to learn the sacred “no” to ourselves that gives us dignity, identity, direction, significance, and boundaries. We must learn these lessons to get off to a good start! It is far easier to begin life with a conservative worldview and respect for traditions. It gives you an initial sense of “place” and is much more effective in the long run, even if it just gives you “a goad to kick against.”6 Many just fall in love with their first place and position, as an extension of themselves, and spend their whole life building a white picket fence around it.
Without a loyal soldier protecting us up to age thirty, the world’s prisons and psych wards would be even more overcrowded than they are. Testosterone, addiction, ego, promiscuity, and vanity would win out in most of our lives. Without our loyal soldier, we would all be aimless and shapeless, with no home base and no sustained relationships, because there would be no “me” at home to have a relationship with. Lots of levers, but no place to stand.
Paradoxically, your loyal soldier gives you so much security and validation that you may confuse his voice with the very voice of God. If this inner and critical voice has kept you safe for many years as your inner voice of authority, you may end up not being able to hear the real voice of God. (Please read that sentence again for maximum effect!) The loyal soldier is the voice of all your early authority figures. His or her ability to offer shame, guilt, warnings, boundaries, and self-doubt is the gift that never stops giving. Remember, it can be a feminine voice too; but it is not the “still, small voice” of God7 that gives us our power instead of always taking our power.
The loyal soldier cannot get you to the second half of life. He does not even understand it. He has not been there. He can help you “get through hell,” with the early decisions that demand black-and-white thinking; but then you have to say good-bye when you move into the subtlety of midlife and later life. The Japanese were correct, as were the Greeks. Odysseus is a loyal soldier for the entire Odyssey, rowing his boat as only a hero can — until the blind prophet tells him there is more, and to put down his oar. If you ever read the Divine Comedy, note that Dante lets go of Virgil, who had accompanied him through Hades and Purgatory, knowing now that only Beatrice can lead him into Paradise.
Virgil is the first-half-of-life man; Beatrice is the second-half-of-life woman. In the first half of life, we fight the devil and have the illusion and inflation of “winning” now and then; in the second half of life, we always lose because we are invariably fighting God. The first battles solidify the ego and create a stalwart loyal soldier; the second battles defeat the ego because God always wins. No wonder so few want to let go of their loyal soldier; no wonder so few have the faith to grow up. The ego hates losing, even to God.
The loyal soldier is largely the same thing that Freud was describing with his concept of the superego, which he said usually substitutes for any real adult formation of conscience. The superego feels like God, because people have had nothing else to guide them. Such a bogus conscience is a terrible substitute for authentic morality. What reveals its bogus character is its major resistance to change and growth, and its substituting of small, low-cost moral issues for the real ones that ask us to change, instead of always trying to change other people. Jesus called it “straining out gnats while swallowing camels.”8 It is much more common than I ever imagined, until I myself began to serve as a confessor and spiritual director.
There is a deeper voice of God, which you must learn to hear and obey in the second half of life. It will sound an awful lot like the voices of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of “common sense,” of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of our deepest self, of soulful “Beatrice.” The true faith journey only begins at this point. Up to now everything is mere preparation. Finally, we have a container strong enough to hold the contents of our real life, which is always filled with contradictions and adventures and immense challenges. Psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness never exclude the problem from the solution. If it is wholeness, then it is always paradoxical, and holds both the dark and light sides of things. Wholeness and holiness will always stretch us beyond our small comfort zone. How could they not?
So God, life, and destiny have to loosen the loyal soldier’s grasp on our soul, which up to now has felt like the only “you” that you know and the only authority that there is. Our loyal soldier normally begins to be discharged somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five, if it happens at all; before that it is usually mere rebellion or iconoclasm.
To let go of the loyal soldier will be a severe death, and an exile from your first base. You will feel similar to Isaiah before he was sent into exile in Babylon, “In the noontime of my life, I was told to depart for the gates of Hades. Surely I am deprived of the rest of my years.”9 Discharging your loyal soldier will be necessary to finding authentic inner authority, or what Jeremiah promised as “the law written in your heart.”10 First-half-of-life folks will seldom have the courage to go forward at this point unless they have a guide, a friend, a Virgil, a Tiresias, a Beatrice, a soul friend, or a stumbling block to guide them toward the goal. There are few in our religious culture who understand the necessity of mature internalized conscience, so wise guides are hard to find. You will have many more Aarons building you golden calves than Moses’s leading you on any exodus.
Normally we will not discharge our loyal soldier until he shows himself to be wanting, incapable, inadequate for the real issues of life — as when we confront love, death, suffering, subtlety, sin, mystery, and so on. It is another form of the falling and dying that we keep talking about. The world mythologies all point to places like Hades, Sheol, hell, purgatory, the realm of the dead. Maybe these are not so much the alternative to heaven as the necessary path to heaven.
Even Jesus, if we are to believe the “Apostle’s Creed” of the church, “descended into hell” before he ascended into heaven. Isn’t it strange how we missed that? Every initiation rite I studied worldwide was always about “dying before you die.” When you first discharge your loyal soldier, it will feel like a loss of faith or loss of self. But it is only the death of the false self, and is often the very birth of the soul. Instead of being ego driven, you will begin to be soul drawn. The wisdom and guidance you will need to get you across this chasm will be like Charon ferrying you across the river Styx, or Hermes guiding the soul across all scary boundaries. These are your authentic soul friends, and we now sometimes call them spiritual directors or elders. Celtic Christianity called them anam chara.
Remember that Hercules, Orpheus, Aeneas, Psyche, and our Odysseus all traveled into realms of the dead — and returned! Most mythologies include a descent into the underworld at some point. Jesus, as we said, also “descended into hell,” and only on the third day did he “ascend into heaven.” Most of life is lived, as it were, on the “first and second days,” the threshold days when transformation is happening but we do not know it yet. In men’s work we call this liminal space.11
St. John of the Cross taught that God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening, and what Mystery / transformation / God / grace will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or stop the whole process.12 No one oversees his or her own demise willingly, even when it is the false self that is dying.
God has to undo our illusions secretly, as it were, when we are not watching and not in perfect control, say the mystics. That is perhaps why the best word for God is actually Mystery. We move forward in ways that we do not even understand and through the quiet workings of time and grace. When we get there, we are never sure just how it happened, and God does not seem to care who gets the credit, as long as our growth continues. As St. Gregory of Nyssa already said in the fourth century, “Sin happens whenever we refuse to keep growing.”
Notes
1 The two excerpts included in this article (taken from pages xvii–xx and 45–51)are from Richard Rohr’s book, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, published in 2011 by Jossey Bass. They are used with the author’s permission.
2 In Plotkin’s eight-stage wheel of development, he sees the early stages as largely ego driven, as they have to be. Until we make some kind of “soul encounter” with the deeper self, we cannot be soul drawn and live from our deeper identity. It is a brilliant analysis that parallels our own work in initiation (M.A.L.Es) and my thesis in this book. See Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008), pp. 40 f.
3 Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (Novato, CA.: New World Library, 203), p. 91 and following.
4 Luke 15:25–32.
5 Luke 18:9–14.
6 Acts 26:14.
7 I Kings 19:13.
8 Matthew 23:24.
9 Isaiah 38:10.
10 Isaiah 31:33.
11 See Victor Turner, The Ritual Process (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1977), page 94 and following. This book first clarified for me the concept of liminality, and why spiritual change, transformation, and initiation can happen best when we are on some “threshold” of our own lives. “Liminal space” has since become a key concept in my own work in initiation. Many people avoid all movement into any kind of liminal space, keep on cruise control, and nothing new happens.
12 Gerald May, The Dark Night of the Soul (New York: Harper-Collins, 2004).
The Purpose Choice: Keeping the Flame Alive by Richard Leider
Richard J. Leider is the founder and Chairman of The Inventure Group, a coaching and consulting firm in Minneapolis, MN. Consistently rated as one of the top executive educators and coaches in the world, Richard has a worldwide practice working with leaders from organizations such as AARP, Caterpillar, Ericsson, Habitat for Humanity, MetLife, Pfizer, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He is the author of eight books, including three best sellers, and his work has been translated into 21 languages. Repacking Your Bagsand The Power of Purpose are considered classics in the personal development field. Claiming Your Place at the Fireand Something to Live For have been touted as breakthrough books on “positive aging.”
There are at least three times in life when we ought to be required to go off on a retreat where we sit by a fire and reflect on the question, “What’s next?” One is when we choose our vocation; another, when we choose a life partner. The third is when we contemplate what used to be called retirement.
Something happens to us when we sit before fires. New choices come up within us, and we glimpse new visions that were not there before. A fire shifts the mood to one of purpose and possibility. No matter where a fire happens to be, it always weaves its spell.
Earlier in our history, fires were our homes. We slept circled around them at night. We gathered beside them for councils. Around fires, lives of hope are created and unwritten commitments are made. Around the fire we feel a sense of our place in the world.
Once we feel the warmth and connections around a fire, we make contact with our core and with the universal fires of our ancestors. So fundamental is this feeling that the very building of a fire has symbolic significance. Each step evokes our histories. Although we may not need the fire today for warmth or cooking, it is still a human necessity — an essential ritual.
Since the dawn of civilization, elders have sat around fires discussing and debating the essential choices. There is an evolving elder within each of us, and there is a danger of losing contact with that core in ourselves. As Carl Jung put it, “Every human being has a two-million-year-old man within himself, and if he loses contact with that two-million-year-old self, he loses his real roots.” The “elder within” is an essential part of our genetic hardwiring, and it is called forth around the fire.
Four Essential Flames
Positive aging, also referred to as “conscious aging,” has proven to be a difficult and elusive concept to define. Among the many definitions that abound, none is fully adequate. Yet, since it is essential to have a working model, let me offer my own model which I call the “four flames” formulation.1 I find the “fire” metaphor is especially useful because it is so universal and timeless in its appeal.
The “four flames” of positive aging describe four tasks of development that are essential for our happiness, health, healing, and longevity in the second half of life. Those who have successfully completed each task demonstrate distinctive characteristics, or “flames”:
- from Identity comes deep freedom to choose a course of action in life situations;
- from Community, deep compassion for others and all life;
- from Passion, deep energy, expressed in creative, experiential, or attitudinal actions; and
- from Purpose, deep desire to make a difference in the world.
Consistent with other wholistic approaches, the model suggests that each task builds on and informs the next.
The centerpiece of this model is the last of the four — the purpose choice — which is tied to life-enhancing beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, human rights, service to life, and reverence for life.
The Purpose Choice
Theory is always in debt to life experience, and the “four flames” concept has been shaped by my life, my studies, my clients, and my teachers. Among this latter group, I am in profound debt to Viktor Frankl whose life story may be familiar to many.
During his three years of internment in two Nazi concentration camps, Frankl witnessed and experienced starvation and acts of torture and cruelty beyond imagination. Yet despite the overwhelming suffering and the near certain threat of death, he also discovered an inspiring human capacity to find meaning and purpose in life.
In the preface of Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, Gordon Allport wrote, “How could he — every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination — how could he find life worth preserving? A psychiatrist who personally has faced such extremity is a psychiatrist worth listening to.”
I couldn’t agree more. So, I listened to him. Frankl returned from the death camps with the knowledge that we have freedom to choose an attitude or way of reacting to our fate. It did not matter what that fate was. “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how” (Nietzsche).
Frankl created a form of therapy for people whose lives lack meaning. “Logotherapy” (as he called it) is based on three principles: (1) the freedom of will, (2) the will to meaning, and (3) the meaning of life. The first of these, the freedom of will, involves freedom to choose our reactions to our life conditions, which then results in the freedom to rise above those circumstances. Thus, we are not determined by biological instincts, childhood conflicts, or other external forces. The will to meaning and the meaning of life refer to the need to search not for ourselves, but for a meaning which will offer a purpose to our existence. A purpose that is larger than ourselves.
The search for meaning in the second half of life necessitates personal choice. Frankl called the lack of meaning “noogenic neurosis” — a state characterized by purposelessness, aimlessness, and emptiness. This results in people living in an “existential vacuum” in which life has no meaning and they feel bored and passionless. Frankl observed a growing existential vacuum throughout the world, and he felt the solution was to find or regain a sense of meaning in life.
Logotherapy offers three ways to give meaning to life: (1) by what we give to the world in terms of some “creation,” (2) by what we take from the world in “experience;” and (3) by the attitude we take toward “suffering.”
His experience in the concentration camp led Frankl to conclude that life’s main motivation is to find meaning in life so there is reason to get up in the morning — reason to continue living. There is no universal will to meaning; meaning is unique to each person, and it will change as situations change. This search for meaning, however, increases “inner tension.” And as a vital person grapples with the gap between what one is and what one could be, Frankl believed that tension increased. He believed that tension was a prerequisite for psychological health and the alternative — a life without tension — led to noogenic neurosis.
Finding meaning in life allows us to reach the state of “self-transcendence” — the ultimate state of a fully-realized human being. What Frankl called “self-transcendence,” I call “the purpose choice.”
The Big Distinction
Though some regard finding a purpose and living on purpose as interchangeable phrases, I believe they are not. There are critically important differences.
Finding a purpose most often occurs in reaction to the external circumstances that the world presents us. Like Frankl in the concentration camps, the sudden shift in circumstances that is perceived as threat mobilizes a basic, unexamined instinct for survival. We do not stop and think about it; we simply act — our action prompted by the threat. The action that arises tends to be temporary, lasting as long as the circumstances that provoked it persist. At the same time, the act of finding a purpose begins to reveal what people really care about. The circumstance becomes a triggering event in the choice to live on purpose.
Living on purpose means making a clear choice about what it is that we care about in our lives, what it is we have passion about, and what it is we choose to have our lives be about. Then, we use this conscious choice as the ground upon which we build our lives. Rather than having life push us into a purpose, we choose our purpose and dedicate our lives to living on purpose. We use our purpose as our “center” — our solid core — that we go to when we make the decisions that shape our days and our future.
Back to the Future
When we go to the villages of the original peoples, like the hunter–gatherer Hadza in East Africa, and we participate in that most elemental of human experiences — sitting around a fire at night, talking, trading stories, sharing wisdom — we come to notice a certain arrangement of the group. Certain people find places closer to the fire; these members of the group tend to be the primary participants in the discussions and storytelling. Behind them tends to be a larger group — not excluded, but at a respectful distance — listening. The spontaneous arrangement is determined in part by age, but more so, by wisdom. Those who are perceived to have a wise voice to offer claim the place closest to the fire.
I view the people living on purpose today as much like this. Becoming a wise elder means finding one’s voice and claiming one’s place at the fire. And like the arrangement of individuals around the Hadza tribal fire, it does not depend solely on a physical age: how white hair your hair is or how wrinkled your skin. Rather, there are states of mind and heart that are common to those upon whom we rely for wisdom and guidance.
There is no universal path for becoming a wise elder. But going back to the future — sitting around the fire with the Hadza — helps to light the path.
Becoming a purposeful person is a choice. It’s a way of relating to the world and the people in it that, though it generally bears a relationship to getting older, is neither guaranteed nor prevented by one’s chronological age. It is characterized by a choice to continue deepening the experience of growing, knowing that life is about ongoing development from cradle to grave. People who are choosing to live on purpose are curious. They recognize and accept their own mortality while still continuing to discover, learn, and grow.
Becoming a conscious elder means choosing to live on purpose. It involves a kind of paradoxical choice — one that comes from relinquishing external power but which requires us to take ownership of our internal power. It means claiming our voice, speaking softly, yet with purpose and hope. Defining what it means to be a conscious elder requires us to look both forward and backward simultaneously, to draw from the past while advancing confidently in the direction of the future.
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Notes
1 For a fuller treatment of this topic, see Claiming Your Place at the Fire: Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose by Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004).
Markers in the Stream by John G. Sullivan
I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.1
Imagine the long arc of a life, like a stream, flowing to the sea. Then think of markers in the stream. Some are universal or nearly so — a sequence of unfolding, a set of themes present throughout. Others are specific to this or that life. Each event challenges us. How will we respond? What will we learn? Who will we take ourselves to be? What will the Web of Life receive from our deepening?
Here, we shall look at both the longer line of a lifetime and at some key transitions. In particular, I want to explore two initiations: the first into adulthood, the second into elderhood. Here is a verse to introduce the themes:
One is the lifetime in which we now dwell.
Two are the halves of life, upward and down.
Four are the stages, a season for each.
Two rites for entering each half of life.
One is the Source and Goal, drawing our love.
From Half to Whole
Storyteller Michale Meade shares this fragment of a story:
Once upon a time, in a village in Borneo, a Half-boy is born, a boy with only the right half of his body. He becomes a source of irritation, embarrassment and confusion to himself, his family and the entire village. Nonetheless, he grows and eventually reaches the age of adolescence. His halfness and incompleteness become unbearable to him and all around him. One day he leaves the village dragging himself along until he reaches a place where the road crosses a river. At that crossroad, he meets another youth who exists as only the left side, the other half of a person. They move towards each other as if destined to join. Surprisingly, when they reach each other, they begin to fight and roll in the dust. Then they fall into the river. After a time, from the river there arises an entire youth with sides put together. The new youth walks toward a new village. He sees an old man and asks: “Can you tell me where I am? I have been struggling and don’t know where I have arrived at.” The old man says: “You have arrived home. You are back in the village where you were born. Now that you have returned whole, everyone can begin to dance and celebrate. And so it was and so it is.2
Perhaps today, two groups find themselves as Half-people. Springtime youth are entering the Arc of Ascent, seeking passage into the stage of adult Householder. Those facing retirement are entering the Arc of Descent, seeking passage into elderhood (i.e., into the stages of Autumn Forest Dweller and Winter Sage).3
As in the story, these two Half-people — youth and elders — seem destined for one another. How can youth be initiated if there are no elders to instruct them, if there are no elders to welcome them as they find the gifts they bring for the wider tribe? How can the young be seen and appreciated if there are no elders to dance with them and celebrate them? And how can those entering the second half of their lives (or final third)4 find ways to develop and give their gifts if they are set apart and exiled from the next generation? Is it any wonder that the uninitiated old fight with the uninitiated young?
Yet perhaps there is even more to the story. Think of one of the Half persons as “First-Half-of-Life Person” (Youth-Householder). Think of the other Half person as “Second-Half-of-Life Person” (Forest Dweller-Sage). First and second half of life meet and engage in a struggle. They fall into a river and emerge whole. Now there is healing of four stages, and a new image emerges from the water: an integral person not fixed in any age but having access to all ages, access to all four capacities of life: (a) the experience and discovery of the Spring Student, (b) the experience and responsibilities of the Summer Householder, (c) the reintegration into the natural world of Autumn Forest Dweller, and (d) the light and easy dwelling in the ocean resources of Winter Sage. When we have access to this fourfold, then we are whole, then we are home in an integral way.
Four Themes Always Present, Ever Changing
All that unfolds throughout the lifetime is contained in seed at every moment. What are these seeds that need to be watered and tended throughout? I would say: (1) the soul-centric, (2) the communal-centric, (3) the nature or eco-centric, and (4) the cosmic- or spirit-centric.5
First, development throughout must be soul-centered. By soul I am pointing to the concrete and specific, the very particular perspectives, gifts, and contributions of each unique person. Frederick Buechner teaches us that to find our calling is “to find the intersection between our own deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger.”6 Such is our soul work. Ultimately it is to be more and more our unique selves, our “perfectly imperfect” selves.
Second, development must be communal-centered throughout, seeing ourselves dwelling in a web of relationships ever expanding. We pass from child to adolescent and then to adult householder. As we do, our sense of community expands — family to peer group and then, through relationships of intimacy, into marriage and a new family. Beyond family, the circle expands to organizations and the larger communities in which they dwell. Under special conditions, we glimpse a circle expanding beyond tribe and nation to the whole human family. “I am a human being,” says the playwright Terrence, “and nothing human is alien to me.”
Third, development must be Earth-centered or eco-centric throughout. We are embedded in the natural world and interconnected with people, other animals, plants, and minerals — all of whom co-create and sustain our ecosystems. Seeds of this need to be tended at each stage.
Fourth, development must be cosmic-centered or spirit-centered throughout. We are developing in an unfolding universe and need a cosmology, a way of placing ourselves in the widest context so that we learn how to care for the whole and to align with the deep currents of what is unfolding. In this usage, “soul” points to what is most concrete and unique in us; “spirit” points to what is as vast as the universe and open to the Great Mystery that is within and beyond all that is.
Each of these seeds is watered by daily practice — the work of “coming to life more fully so as to serve life more wisely and more nobly.”7 Each of these seeds is linked with a stage.
- Youth are drawn into soul work, finding and developing their gifts.
- Householders care for the human community, ever widening its scope.
- Forest Dwellers (early elders) expand the circle to include all species: people, other animals, plants and minerals, plus ecosystems such as mountains and meadows, rivers and oceans, forests and plains.
- Winter Sages (later elders) expand the family still further, returning to the place where Source, Self, and Circle of All Life meet. Paradoxically, Winter Sages are aware of both the vastest of horizons and the most intimate of practices, namely dwelling in “present moment, wonderful moment.”8
As noted, in the midst of this stage sequence, we experience marker events. Some are relatively universal. Think of birth, puberty, first love, first sexual experience, marriage, childbirth, the end of childbearing, the end of full-time work, the rediscovery of nature, and finally a confrontation with death.9 Other markers are less predictable: accidents and sickness, injustices suffered, hurt inflicted, reversals at work, the death or injury of loved ones, and on and on. Through it all, we are called to daily practices of stillness and service — quiet inward deepening for the sake of serving; outward serving for the sake of deepening all our kin.10
On the Arc of Ascent, the daily work of Spring Students and Summer Householders is dominated by a kind of striving: striving to actualize an ideal of who we might be, could be, should be, striving to maximize our potential. The beauty here is that we are striving for excellence, desiring to be open to more and ever more. We are learning to care for units larger than ourselves. Our striving is not for ourselves only. Still, in this striving — even for good things — a trap appears: a kind of perfectionism. Under its spell, we are like the greyhounds in a race, chasing a mechanical rabbit that stays always beyond our reach. So we are ever falling short of who we think we are meant to be. Striving, striving, striving. Then comes a turning, and we enter the Arc of Descent. Down into Autumn release and further down into Winter waters.
What signals this reversal? Perhaps we step down from the work we have done as a career. We retire from the tasks that have shaped us. We release from being so defined by roles and beliefs. We surrender into a greater unknown. Our children are grown; grandchildren arrive. For women, menopause arrives, and they know in a bodily way that the years of potential childbearing have come to an end. Both men and women enter, in different ways, the Arc of Descent through Autumn into Winter. The waterfall energy is moving downward and inward. We can resist, or we can align with the energy. In Autumn, we can return to a new appreciation of our place in the natural world. In the starkness of Winter, we can release still further, returning to the moment, to the here and now — a here and now in which everything is contained. In the Arc of Descent, we let go of striving to change the world, let go of seeking to control others, let go of achieving some ideal or other for ourselves. We let go of thinking life is about us at all! We become a window allowing the whole to be present in and through us from a unique place, a unique history of choices.11
The fourfold is indeed an image of wholeness: four directions, four seasons, four stages of life.12 Perhaps we can hold out a new image of the human by not imagining ourselves at a particular age, but instead by bringing together the capacities of all four ages: Spring Student, Summer Householder, Autumn Forest Dweller, and Winter Sage. Let us consider again this possibility. Then becoming fully human would mean being:
- Ever young, ever learning, ever returning to “Beginner’s mind.”
- Ever in householder service to those given to our care, as we expand the circle to the full human family.
- Ever in Forest Dweller mode, releasing, turning, and returning to the natural world, experiencing interconnection with the Circle of all Life, the Great Family.
- Ever in the joyous sagely way of “loving what is,”13 ever reflecting more fully the place where the three worlds touch: Self, Source, and the Circle of All Life.
A beautiful image of harmony. Four stages coming together for the sake of all beings.
Growing up: the Initiation of Fire:
From Spring Student to Summer Householder
In the early 1900s, anthropologist Arnold van Gennep distinguished three phases in a rite of passage ceremony, namely (a) severance, (b) threshold, and (c) incorporation.14
Before the beginning of the rite, the elders prepare the initiates, instructing them as to what will happen and its meaning. The elder men prepare the adolescent boys. The elder women prepare the adolescent girls. The stage is set to hear what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, how to be with the mysteries of sexuality and spirituality as understood by the tribe in the widest and deepest way, how to find one’s gifts and serve the community. Think here of a Native American vision quest, a process that is being revived by much wilderness work.15
The Severance Phase
In this phase, the initiates may be sent into the wilderness to fast and “cry for a vision.”16 Severance marks an ending — and with it, some grieving for what was, some fear of what will be, some gratefulness at shedding an old stage, some excitement at entering a new.
The Threshold Phase
In the midst of the experience, the initiates are in a “between state.” Brought face to face with powers in the natural world far greater than themselves, they undergo trial and hardship. They are instructed to be open to the living and the dead. Open to all manifestations of the Great Family: humans, animals, plants, and minerals. All is spirit-infused, including places such as lakes and mountains, trees, rock formations, open meadows. The initiates confront deep fear. By fasting and other prayerful practices they open to altered states of awareness. They dream dreams and see visions. They undergo a symbolic death and rebirth. In all this, they seek their destiny, their particular way of serving the community, their uniqueness-become-gift. They are being changed in ways they can hardly understand. Fearful and fascinating are the mysteries.
The Phase of Incorporation
Here, the initiates are welcomed back into the community, with a new status and sometimes a new name. Each youth recounts his or her experience, and the elders help interpret and confirm the change. All this is not for the individual alone. It is for the sake of the tribe continuing. Now the young boy is a man; the young girl, a woman. They assume new tasks not for themselves alone. (They serve the tribe.) They assume new tasks not by themselves alone. (They are companioned in their service.) They assume new tasks not by their own powers alone. (They participate in the Great Mystery and draw strength from powers greater than themselves.)
Growing Down: the Second Initiation
From Householder to Forest Dweller/Sage
Carl Jung speaks about a second initiation, calling it “The Night Sea Journey.” I think of it as going over the waterfall and descending like a drop of water moving ever deeper into the great sea. The Arc of Descent has begun. Less a matter of doing, more a matter of not doing, A matter of following the Watercourse Way,17 using its own gravitational arc. Receiving. Releasing. Returning. Remembering. Coming back to what was and is and ever shall be.
What might that second initiation look like if we partly rediscovered it, partly reinvented it, for our times? What would it be to mark the Arc of Descent with its own initiation? Here is a possible template, using the three phases already described.18
Preparation (19)
In the spirit of Forest Dweller and Sage, preparation calls us to a work in our time. Joanna Macy calls this work “The Great Turning,” taking us from an industrial growth society to a life-sustaining society. Thomas Berry calls this “The Great Work.”20 This work beckons us to step into a new cosmology, a new universe story large enough for science, art, and spirituality.
Suppose we invoke — in space — the Great Family: the spirits of all the creatures of Earth and sky and sea; all the elements — earth, water, fire, and air; and the Great Mystery that breathes through all.
Suppose we invoke — in time — the beings of the three times, our ancestors (human and all the other species), our contemporaries (human and all the other species), and all the children yet-to-be-born (of all species).
Suppose further that we open to a context greater still — one that adds to everything so far invoked the place where the three worlds meet. The place where Source, deep Self, and the Circle of All Life intersect. Suppose we also ask a blessing from the Mysterious Source that sustains us and flows through all things; ask a blessing from our own deep self; ask a blessing from the depth dimension in all things.
The Severance Phase — leaving one way of being and acclimating to another
The initiates into elderhood may enter the wilderness literally or invoke this wilderness context in other ways. Surely, it is in the spirit of Forest Dweller to find the Great Mystery in all of life and in each place. Surely, our awareness of the greater powers is heightened as we fast and pray and cry for a vision for the remainder of our life. Surely, we will enter the great silence, the solitude and solidarity of contemplative openness, the simplicity and humility of our fragile self.
The Threshold Phase — the experience itself
We are falling like the leaves, falling like the drop going over the waterfall on its way to the sea. The way is letting go and letting be. Relinquishing control. Loving what is. Learning to live until our death and to die again and again to our illusions and misdirected fantasies. We are all the characters in the drama, the heroes and villains, the major players and those who appear for only a moment. And we need the help of the universe. As Rumi says:
Pale sunlight,
Pale the wall.
Love moves away.
The light changes.
I need more grace
than I thought.21
Perhaps we review our life, acknowledging what we have done and failed to do. We enter forgiveness work by bringing to mind those we have hurt and those who have hurt us.22 We bring to light in gentle ways the bright and dark shadows23 of our youth and householder, of our Forest Dweller and Sage as these shadows are manifesting right here and now. We are supported in this by all whom we have invoked. What are our gifts at this stage? What is the place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger touch? Where is the place where our hearts open to all of life? How will we continue to access the youthful Student-in-us, the adult Householder-in-us, the elder Forest-Dweller-in-us, and the timeless Sage-in-us? We are dying to a way of being that sought to accomplish and to control ourselves and others, sought to bring our answers to the world. Now we learn to shift to asking questions and listening to what each moment brings to teach us. We have died to one way of seeing and being. We are symbolically reborn into another way. We are beginners at this new possibility. And we have all we need and all we seek.
The Phase of Incorporation — gifts for the larger community
Imagine meeting with fellow elders in a council setting to clarify the meaning of what each newly welcomed elder brings. Perhaps such meetings take place periodically — in a retreat setting conducive to stillness and service. Let them provide a context to explore personal deepening and community enrichment, a context combining the particularity of soul work and the vastness of spirit dwelling.24
To close, let us call to mind and heart these words from the poet and playwright, Christopher Fry:25
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul we ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise
Is exploration into God. . . .
It takes
So many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake for pity’s sake!
//
Notes
1 John O’Donohue’s poem “Fluent,” from Conamara Blues (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).
2 Michael Meade tells the story in his introduction to the book Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage, edited by Louise Carus Mahdi, Nancy Geyer Christopher, and Michael Meade (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1996), p. xxi. I have invoked storyteller’s license to tell the story in my own way.
3 For more on this overlaying of the seasons and the stages of life from ancient India, see my book The Spiral of the Seasons: Welcoming the Gifts of Later Life (Chapel Hill, NC: Second Journey Publications, 2009).
4 For certain purposes, it is useful to see life in two halves. And yet where the Arc of Descent is most easily felt is upon retirement, upon entering what the British call The Third Age, roughly the last 20 or so years of life. Here we might think of the Student stage lasting some 20 years, the Householder stage lasting perhaps 40 years, and the stage of Elderhood (Autumn Forest Dweller and Winter Sage) lasting some 20 years.
5 Here I am indebted to Bill Plotkin and his book Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008). Plotkin identifies the soul-centric, eco-centric, and spirit-centric dimensions. I add the communal dimension. Awareness of this communal aspect, as it matures, adds an ethical component. The Rotary Four-Way Test provides a concise guide to ethics: (a) Is it the truth? (b) Is it fair to all concerned? (c) Will it build good will and better friendship? and (d) Will it be beneficial to all concerned? This communal component must be part of the Student-to-Householder transition, so that the individual more and more dwells in awareness of interconnection, awareness of the Web of Life. So dwelling, each person can develop the capacity to seek what is good for the whole and fair to each participant-part.
6 This is the form of the Buechner remark as I first heard it and have come to cherish it. The original version occurs in Frederick Buchner’s Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancis-co,1993), p. 119. There he speaks of vocation as “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.” I continue to use the variation, with all due respect.
7 This is a formulation/mission statement I drafted for two programs at Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel, MD. One was a non-degree-granting adult-education program called SOPHIA — the School of Philosophy and Healing In Action; the other, a master’s degree program now titled Transformative Leadership and Social Change. For more on this mission statement, see my book Living Large: Trans-formative Work at the Intersection of Ethics and Spirituality (Laurel, MD: Tai Sophia Press, 2004).
8 I take this phrase from Thich Nhat Hanh. See his Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), p. 9.
9 The seven Catholic sacraments mark some of the expected marker events: (i) baptism (welcoming the newborn into the faith community), (ii) confirmation (marking the transition to adulthood), (iii) Eucharist (commemoration of the death and resurrection of the Lord in the form of a communal meal), (iv) sacrament of penance/reconciliation, (v) sacrament of marriage, (vi) sacrament of the priesthood, and (vii) sacrament for the sick (and especially last rites where a way is opened to a good death).
10 For more on the practices rooted in the great spiritual traditions, see Roger Walsh, Essential Spirituality: Exercises from the World’s Religions to Cultivate Kindness, Love, Joy, Peace, Vision, and Generosity (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999).
11 To do this consciously, to be this microcosm of the whole from a unique perspective is becoming a sage, a wise old man, a wise old woman often disguised as a fool. A wise old man, a wise old woman, in love with the Great Mystery.
12 For my reflections on the fourfold, see my book: The Fourfold Path to Wholeness: A Compass for the Heart: Cultivating Love, Compassion, Joy and Peace for All Our Kin (Chapel Hill, NC: Second Journey Publications, 2010).
13 See Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life(New York: Harmony Books, 2002). See also Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell, A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are (New York: Harmony Books, 2007).
14 See Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika Vizedom and Gabrielle Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). The original French volume was published in 1909.
15 See Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2003) and Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008).
16 The Lakota vision quest is called hanblecheya which translates “crying for a vision” or “lamenting for want of a vision.” See Chapter 43, “A Note on the Vision Quest” by Louise Carus Mahdi in Crossroad: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage, ed. Louise Carus Mahdi, Nancy Geyer Christopher, and Michael Meade (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), p.355. There are also rites especially designed for women. For a sample, see Louise Carus Mahdi, Steven Foster & Meredith Little, eds., Betwixt & Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation (La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing, 1987).
17 The phrase “Watercourse Way” is from Alan Watts. See Alan Watts with the collaboration of Al Chung-liang Huang, Tao: The Watercourse Way (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975).
18 My guess is that as women have shown with croning rites, such initiations may first be developed by women for women and by men for men. My work has been to seek to illuminate what elderhood might mean more generally.
19 A prior task is to notice the elders already in our midst and to discern their gifts, then to call the circle of elders and animate the bonds of community. If they are not a group, how can they welcome other elders on the path into their company?
20 Joanna Macy calls this participating in The Great Turning. Thomas Berry calls it taking part in The Great Work, and he reminds us that we are called to learn from Earth in all the enterprises of life. See Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada: New Society Publishers, 1998). See Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York: Bell Tower, 1999). Bill Plotkin, in his book Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008), takes Joanna Macy as his example of what he calls Early Elderhood, and Thomas Berry as his example of Late Elderhood.
21 See Coleman Barks with John Moyne, The Essential Rumi (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), p. 53.
22 See Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Mil-ler, From Age-ing to Sage-ing (New York: Warner Books, 1995). Reb Zalman provides a number of exercises pertaining to this transition. See pp. 267–285. For ex-ample, he suggests an exercise entitled “A Testimonial Dinner for the Severe Teachers!” (pp. 279–280).
23 A bright shadow might be something generally positive (e.g., a young football player likes poetry and is shamed for it. Hence he relegates this side of himself into his shadow). A dark shadow might be something generally considered negative, certainly in one’s circle (e.g., rage or certain sexual tendencies), and hence these qualities are put into the shadow. Yet they contain an energy for life that deserves reclamation in some, often healthier form. On shadow work see Robert Bly, A Little Book on the Human Shadow, ed. William Booth (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988) and Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991).
24 For an alternate way to envision elders in the context of Open Forum work, see Arnold Mindell, The Deep Democracy of Open Forums (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2002), chapter 11, “The Open Forum as the Elder’s Monastery,” pp. 162–172.
25 This poem is the epilogue from the play by Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners. The play, written to be per-formed in a church, was first performed in England in 1951. For the full text see Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners, acting edition (New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1998).
Elderhood Initiation: A Personal Story by Larry Hobbs
Larry Hobbs is a guide and a trainer for the School of Lost Borders and the founder of the 4-H Rites of Passage Program. He is a wildlife biologist and has conducted research on whales, dolphins, polar bears, and seals in many parts of the world. Larry now leads ecotours worldwide, focusing most recently on the Antarctic, the Arctic, Baja California, and Alaska. He has been publishing his research on truly systemic sustainability for the human species in scientific journals for over a decade. He is also a professional photographer and a retired psychotherapist. Larry lives in the Cascade Mountains of Washington.
I think I have told you, but if I have not, you must have understood, that a man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see.
— Black Elk
Prologue
In May of 1999, I got a call from a dear friend of mine who had lost his 16-year-old daughter in a tragic electrical accident in their home in southern England. This man, Sir Wally Herbert, is probably the greatest polar explorer of all time, and we had spent a lot of time together in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. We often talked about conquering the Third Pole (the “inner pole,” since he had conquered the North and the South Poles already).
Wally knew that I, like him, was searching for purpose and meaning in life. I knew that spirit must be involved, but I wasn’t interested in being an American Indian wannabe, and I felt that traditional religions had lost the sinew and guts that I was seeking in a spiritual life.
In his quest for healing from the devastation of his daughter’s horrible and seemingly senseless death, Wally found himself doing a traditional rite of passage deep in the southwestern deserts at the School of Lost Borders with founders Stephen Foster and Meredith Little. He told me that I must come there, that I must meet Stephen, and that Stephen must meet me.
Because Wally knew me so well, I totally trusted his summons, called Stephen that day, and found myself two weeks later in the California desert claiming for myself, for the first time in my life, that I was an adult man. I was initiated by the forces of nature during a 4-day and -night fast spent alone in the wilderness with only a tarp, a sleeping bag, and 4 gallons of water. When I returned from this time alone, my story was heard and reflected back to me, and I was pronounced initiated into adulthood by a council of elders. I was 53 years old at that time.
Stepping Into Elderhood
The transition into adulthood, though relatively short, was not easy. It involved, among other things, a divorce; extremely difficult times with my daughter; and a wrenching move away from friends, community, and support so that I could live in Big Pine and train as a guide with Stephen and Meredith. A practice that evolved during this time was an annual fast on the land — each fast being a rite of passage, that is, a death from one way of being or life stage followed by a rebirth into a new life.
In preparation for these rites of passage, it was essential that I come up with (1) a clear statement of where I was in the inner and outer world and (2) an intention statement that encompassed who I had always most deeply been but had not yet manifested in the world. Intention, as I understand it, is very different from wish-fulfillment. Intention, as used here, is a statement of that which is most deeply true and must emerge at this particular time in one’s life.
What I find most incredible about intention is that it is made up only of words — yet those words can transform one’s life. Obviously, the words are only pointers toward what is most deeply true within oneself. Just as the map is not the territory, the words are not the intention. For both myself and for those who come to rites of passage ceremonies, getting through the vast jungle of wants, desires, and hopes to a clear statement of intention is a daunting task. We ask people to begin their intention statement with the words: “I am …” We insist on this formula, because the intention statement is about who they are most deeply at this time, not about who they have been or want to be.
We sometimes invite initiates, in framing their intention statement, to metaphorically walk with us over a hilly plain to the precipitous edge of a deep canyon. During our walk on the plain, we explore together the various aspects of their lives: family history, relationships, work, dreams, connection to spirit, relationship to their physicality, fears, and shadow. Then we ask them to jump off the cliff into the canyon and immediately press them to put words to what bubbled up within them at that request: what is most deeply true at that moment; what has always been true; what is being called forth to manifest in their life. When the initiate speaks the words of true intention, everyone listening knows and feels their rightness and truth. I am astounded each time I witness participants in a rite of passage ceremony plumb their depths, struggle with their demons and desires, and reemerge from the canyon knowing what they must now manifest in the world.
In preparation for my rite of passage at age 58, the word “elderhood” kept coming to mind. I had a thousand reasons why I was not ready to become an elder: not old enough, not wise enough, not experienced enough. The list went on ad nauseam.
All my attempted evasions proved fruitless, and so I went out to the wilderness to claim my elderhood, knowing absolutely nothing about what that meant, except that it would require of me a responsibility for the beings on the planet that I was not sure I was willing or able to accept.
Shortly after I returned from the wilderness and while my understanding and embrace of elderhood was still gestating within my being, a desire to bring rites of passage to the young people within the mainstream of American culture took shape. I had no idea how this might happen. I only knew that somehow elderhood required it of me. Within weeks, an old friend, colleague, and fellow educational consultant contacted me; she had recently retired as Assistant Superintendent of Schools in an urban school district and was now working with the 4-H organization in King County, Washington. When I mentioned this crazy “calling” to her, she responded without hesitation, “Let’s do this within the 4-H clubs of Washington State.”
Enactment of an Elder Vision
Rites of passage, as we practice them with youth at The School of Lost Borders, involve a three-day preparation for a three-day and three-night fast alone in the wilderness. When we presented this to the risk management people of Washington State 4H, their jaws dropped, their eyes rolled back, and they could not believe we were actually asking to do this with “the children.” However, with my friend’s diplomatic skills, the School’s 30-year history which included no serious accidents working with youth, and my growing knowledge of the rite of passage ceremony, they decided that the benefits outweighed the risks.
Teaming with another guide friend, we began training volunteer adult leaders as rite of passage guides. Each year a new challenge presented itself, and each challenge brought us new people to meet that challenge. There were setbacks and countless times when I felt the fledgling program would disintegrate. Yet each time that it seemed completely hopeless, I would be reminded by myself or others of the responsibilities I had claimed in my elder initiation. Then someone (another “angel”) would show up and move us through another impasse.
After a few years of training future guides and struggling to find appropriate youth for the program, a young woman who taught at an outdoor program within a city school system attended one of our trainings. (Not knowing she would learn this ceremony experientially, by going through it personally, she had arrived with her notebook, ready to take notes in a class setting.) She was so moved by her own rite of passage that, through tireless perseverance, she manage to convince her own school distinct to adopt the program. Another woman did the same at the private international school she worked at. We have now trained over 50 adult leaders, and the program should be available nationally within another year. Administration within 4H has gone from county to county, and each time new and dedicated people have contributed their time and expertise to making sure this program flourishes.
Lessons Learned
Initiation into elderhood and living as an initiated elder has taught me some critically important lessons that directly mirror the phases of initiation itself: severance, threshold, and reincorporation.
As initiates and creative, energized citizens, we must sever from our home and from what is familiar in the outer world. We must jump off the cliff into the inner world of truth where we will find our intention, the deep and abiding reason for enduring an initiation ceremony or entering into a life worth living.
Having severed from the past in both mind and body, it is essential that we spend time alone (preferably in the wilderness) without the trappings of society: no food, no shelter, and no company (the threshold time). This time alone gives us the spaciousness to find and confront the demons of fear that guard the gateway to a new position in life and the actions worthy of our deepest self. Solitude creates the possibility of emergent transformation.
The other crucial learning I have gained from being initiated as an elder is mirrored in the final phase of initiation: incorporation. Incorporation, from the Latin root corpus, means coming into the body, or making the “vision” we have glimpsed, or the intention, real in the world. When we return from our wilderness experience, we must share it with our community. Although the time fasting in the wilderness can be extremely difficult, sharing our learnings is often even more challenging.
In elderhood, as within any genuinely generative or creative endeavor, it is impossible to know the final outcomes of our visions. We must simply begin and learn to trust that the necessary “angels,” skills, and resources will show up along the way. For these and a thousand other reasons it seems critically important to me that we reintegrate elderhood initiatory rites of passage into the mainstream of our society. In the dark times ahead, wise leadership will be imperative. Without initiated elders, the visions for the people that I and countless others have been given are unlikely to happen. With initiated elders, however, we can hope that we will pass on to our children a reasonable future in which to live.
An Elder Vision Quest by Helen Kolff
Helen Kolff has taught high school sociology, been a family planning educator with Planned Parenthood, helped organize the Beyond War peace movement in Seattle, planned conferences, written a book on wildflowers of the Peruvian Andes, organized Northwest Earth Institute courses, and taught Nonviolent Communication. Currently, she is an active member of her Unitarian Fellowship and the Port Townsend EcoVillage. Serving as a guide for adult wilderness quests with Rite of Passage Journeys, hiking in the wilderness with her husband and friends, watercolor painting, and being a grandmother are a few of her passions in life.
Ritual is a way of shifting the energy of an archetype.
— A Wilderness Guide
This is exactly what happened for me when I experienced a wilderness vision quest for adults run by Rite of Passage Journeys in September 2008. I had heard about this opportunity from a good friend who was planning to go. The idea of going on a wilderness vision quest had attracted me for decades, ever since I encountered a group doing a guided vision quest in a remote canyon in Southern Utah and read parts of Bill Plotkin’s book, Soulcraft.
I spent the week before the quest in intensive preparation by tying prayer bundles, going on a long solo walk, writing my intention statement, and gathering the many needed supplies.
There were 9 participants — 4 men and 5 women — ranging in age from 25 to 60. I was surprised that I was the oldest person there. The three experienced guides led us through various community-building exercises — assignments to deepen our experience including poetry, rituals such as mask making, and an “ecumenical” sweat lodge. I am an experienced back-packer and had gone on several solo trips. What was different about this experience was that it happened in the context of community and was greatly enriched by the ritual space created by the guides. We spent three days preparing for our solo time, three days fasting alone in a wilderness spot, and three days integrating our experience into our lives. I found the whole quest to be physically challenging and deeply meaningful in a way that is hard to put into words.
I had wanted to go on the quest because I had just turned 60, had finished up a major volunteer commitment, and was searching for a way to give back in an authentic and exciting way. I was looking for direction that the quest might give me. During a solo nature walk, we were asked to formulate and memorize an “I am” statement — our ideal vision of ourselves. Here was my statement: “I am a woman of wisdom who has learned to listen to the stillness and to share her gratitude.”
I kept a journal throughout the nine days of the quest. Here are some (slightly revised) excerpts:
I spent the whole morning searching for my solo site… I found a site that is right on a tiny stream that flows through Devil’s Club. It is very shady but there are ancient trees, a nearby deer trail, a nurse log, a view, and it’s just the right distance away — about a 30-minute walk from base camp… I spent a long time finding the center of my site, establishing the four directions by compass and forming a circle around me by tying all 6 strings of 25 prayer ties around me. It’s a bigger area than I imagined. I spent hours putting up my tarp and getting it taut and as perfect as I could. It was trickier than I expected.
…I survived the night. It was cold and dark and a bit scary. I thought I heard an animal walking up the creek, but my headlamp is so weak I couldn’t see very far. I don’t think there really was an animal. I think it was my fear and imagination that created it. …A chickaree Douglas squirrel just scampered across the altar I’ve set up and test-nibbled the white pumice stone in the north and the green medicine bundle on the center pole symbolizing the earth. He didn’t eat anything and ran off in about 5 seconds. What does this mean? Does this mean I need to pay special attention to the north, the place of elderhood, cold, winter, and death? Do I need to accept my role as an elder, a mentor, and a woman of wisdom? What am I called to teach and to whom? Rite of passage journeys for adults? That sounds very exciting!… A deer just walked by going from south to north and didn’t even notice that I was here. What does that mean?
Where am I on Joseph Campbell’s diagram of the Hero’s Journey? I am between north and east. Why do I resist being an elder? I don’t feel old. I doubt whether I have anything to teach. I don’t want to die. I’m grateful that I still feel so strong and healthy at age 60. One’s health can suddenly disappear or decline overnight as it just has for two of my peers. There are many ways to teach other than giving lectures to reluctant or resistant listeners. There is the asking of questions and deep listening. There is teaching by example, rather than with words. The learners need to want to be learning, be open and eager and receptive to what is being taught.
…Yesterday, one of the guides was describing the interview between Bill Plotkin and Thomas Berry. Plotkin’s first question was “What is the difference between being an elder and being an older person?” That is an excellent question. To me, an elder is wise. Wisdom means listening when it’s time to listen and speaking your truth with authority when it’s time to speak and knowing the difference. It means remaining open to new perspectives, giving back to society, accepting what is, accepting aging and death, and loving oneself and the earth.
…We spent the whole day on Saturday telling the stories of our quests. …I described the time in my site; my fears and weakness and nausea; my companions, the plants and animals; how cold and shady it was, etc. …I declared that I believe it is time for me to step into being an elder, a mentor, a wise woman. Part of me resists that — this culture and my nuclear family worships youth and physical fitness. I also declared that I wanted to become a wilderness guide. (Even though it seemed a bit presumptuous, it also seemed exciting.) I also described my ecstasy in seeing the sun rise. I was yelling to convey my joy and gratitude. At times I was in tears; at times I was laughing and shouting.
…After dinner, as the nearly full moon was rising, we assembled for our final campfire with our prayer ties and wearing special ceremonial clothing. I wore my late son Adam’s tie-dyed T-shirt over my pile top. “Dame Nature” (one of the guides dressed up in green with branches coming out of her head) went around and tapped each one in turn with a mushroom in a silly way to nominate us as a Shambhala Warrior — those legendary fearless and gentle warriors whose goal is to create an enlightened society of wise and compassionate human beings. The whole ceremony was done in an irreverent but reverent way, making jokes and being serious simultaneously.
I was the last to be nominated and accepted as a Shambhala Warrior. I was then also asked to sit in a special chair, was wrapped in a ceremonial blanket, and told (to my amazement) that I was being celebrated as an elder, becoming part of the group of elders. One of the guides asked each of my fellow questers to come up, get down on one knee, hold my hand and the special polished white heart-shaped stone, and tell me what they appreciated about me as an elder. It was a very moving and powerful ceremony. I was then presented with the special white stone to keep as a symbol of my rite of passage. I felt in awe of the whole process, very honored, very special. I became an elder in that ceremony! …I realized that I had wanted to become an elder, and I had openly stated that was my intention. My fellow questers and guides had affirmed me as an elder and witnessed the special ceremony of my initiation. So now I was an elder. There is no going back. There is no changing my mind. I am now an elder, a woman of wisdom. I celebrate my new role, my newly claimed self! I know this is just the beginning of learning what it means to be an elder, to fully claim that place. I am full of gratitude. I have found my path.
Since my quest experience, I have taken the year-long “Art of Ritual Leadership” course with Rite of Passage Journeys, apprenticed and served with that organization as a wilderness guide for three Adult Wilderness Quest groups, served as a mentor for the Coming of Age program for youth at my Unitarian Fellowship, and been a member of a Council of Elders for an individual through his own rite of passage into adulthood. I am appreciating more and more a statement made by one of our guides during my wilderness quest: “A ritual helps incorporate what you’ve learned into your bones.”