aging

AGING WITH DIGNITY: Meaning And Value Of Old Age by The Pontifical Council For The Laity

July 13, 2017

People today live longer and enjoy better health than in the past. They are also able to cultivate interests made possible by higher levels of education. No longer is old age synonymous with dependence on others or a diminished quality of life. But all this seems not enough to dislodge a negative image of old age or encourage a positive acceptance of a period of life in which many of our contemporaries see nothing but an unavoidable and burdensome decline. The perception of old age as a period of decline, in which human and social inadequacy is taken for granted, is in fact very widespread today. But this is a stereotype. It does not take account of a condition that is in practice far more diversified, because older people are [...]

SATURDAY READING: Winter by Walter J. Burghardt

January 24, 2015

From Seasons That Laugh or Weep: Musing on the Human Journey At about 60 the male of the species faces a new transition: to late adulthood. I am powerfully reminded that I am moving from midterm: old age. For perhaps the first time I experience mortality. Oh, I always knew I was mortal; now I sense it. Soldiers feel it in a foxhole; I feel it in my flesh. The decline, experts insist, actually began at 30, but now it is transparent. Joints ache, a virus will not leave me, ligaments heal slowly. Cucumbers make me throw up, and sauerkraut makes for diarrhea. For some there is a stroke, a growth, a clot. No matter what, I am not what I was. This flesh that gloried in its strength, that lusted in its manhood, that tanned so [...]

SIMPLICITY: A Second Simplicity by Richard Rohr

April 22, 2014

From Falling Upward Beyond rational and critical thinking, we need to be called again. This can lead to the discovery of a “second naiveté,” which is a return to the joy of our first naiveté, but now totally new, inclusive, and mature thinking. (Paul Ricoeur) People are so afraid of being considered pre-rational that they avoid and deny the very possibility of the transrational. Others substitute mere pre-rational emotions for authentic religious experience, which is always transrational. (Ken Wilber) These quick summaries (not precise quotations) are from two great thinkers who more or less describe for me what happened on my own spiritual and intellectual journey. I began as a very conservative pre-Vatican II Roman [...]

SOLITUDE: Solitude by Joan Chittister

March 18, 2014

From The Gift of Years “For a younger person,” Carl Jung taught, “it is almost a sin – and certainly a danger – to be too much occupied with himself. But for the aging person it is a duty and a necessity to give serious attention to himself. After having lavished its light upon the world, the sun withdraws its rays in order to illumine itself.” Carl Jung, the great psychologist of the inner life, brought to human awareness the notion that life develops in stages, some of them more centered on the outside world, others of them focused almost entirely on interiority, on reflection, on the search for meaning. The end stage of life, it seems, has something to do with making sense out of everything that has [...]

SUFFERING: Sadness by Joan Chittister

December 10, 2013

From The Gift of Years “Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read,” said Francis Bacon. And he was surely right, at least from one perspective. There is something about getting older that tempts us to settle down a bit. We begin to run the ruts in the road, not because we cannot find our way to other paths, other places, other people but because we really don’t want to make the effort it takes to do it. To meet new people, to develop new ideas, to talk about new things, to learn new patterns not only takes effort, it also demands new attention. The thought of the familiar, on the other hand, comforts us. It assures us that life as we have known it is still there, [...]