Friday, April 28, 2017

Not all become elders

It seems that most of the former dotCommonwealers who read this blog are a bit beyond the first blush of youth.  My guess is that everyone here is mid-fifties+, with some of us quite a bit beyond that, which is still middle age. So perhaps they aren't yet contemplating the next stage because they are still too busy working and engaged with mid-life issues.

Those of us who have left that age and world behind, voluntarily or not, have lots of time to think about what next.   Mariann Budde is the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington DC. She has two grown sons, is in her late 50s, and, as Bishop, is still highly engaged with her vocation and her job.

Yet she too is thinking ahead a few years. She gave a homily recently on "the spiritual terrain of aging'.

She quotes a conversation between Krista Tippett and Fr. Richard Rohr

"Krista Tippett began an exchange by saying:
There is a true progression of life that comes with age, which is about an accumulation of experience, but this is not necessarily chronological. Everybody doesn’t become an elder. Some people just get old. .... 
Richard Rohr agreed. “Some of the young people today feel like old souls,” he said. “And some of my generation feel like old fools.” ((https://onbeing.org/programs/richard-rohr-living-in-deep-time/
We all get older; not all become elders."
Bishop Budde goes on to quote Dr. Lisa Kimball, a professor at the Virginia Theological Seminary. Dr. Kimball's  expertise is the spirituality of teenagers and young adults. Yet she pointed out "that the fastest growing demographic in our country consists of people over the age of 70. “The spiritual terrain of those years,” she said, “is under-explored and under-valued. This requires our immediate attention as a Church.” I’ve never forgotten that."
Bishop Budde asks - So what is the spiritual terrain of eldership?

 https://mariannbudde.com/2017/04/26/not-all-become-elders-the-spiritual-terrain-of-aging/
I ask the same Right now, getting frighteningly close to my 70s, I fear that I am more of an old fool than a wise elder.  Is it possible to change how we are as we arrive at the threshold of old age - old fool or elder?  What role can the church play? Should it bother? It seems most denominations, facing a sea of gray hair and very few young people in the pews, are mostly concerned about the younger generations.  Should the churches simply focus on the young, since the old are in the pews and the young are not?  If the aging are to become "elders", with wisdom to share with the younger members of their families, communities and parishes, should the churches also be investing in programs to help older people draw upon their life experiences and perhaps discover that they do possess a bit of hidden wisdom?

36 comments:

  1. Somewhere in my many books is a study which says that while the age at which our brain works the quickest is somewhere in the twenties, the age at which our brain is able to put together all the things we know is age 65.

    This type of cognitive ability then declines but at age 80 we are still as good as we were at age 50.

    In other words that particular study gave evidence for what many cultures have believed namely the wisdom of people from age 50-80 which out performs people of lesser age.

    This corresponds to my personal experience, I was really smart when I was young, could think as well as many of my professors. But I didn't become wise until sometime after 50 when it all began to come together.

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  2. I was fortunate to retire at age 60, and regard my sixties as truly a golden age. Since about age 70 health problems have accumulated, about one diagnosis per year. They are beginning to put limitations on what I can do. However I think I will still be fine to age 80.

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  3. Good questions. Could we add to those the generational contrasts between young (20-40, middle (40-60,65), and elder (65 +). I suggest because in our info-saturated world we are always drawing contrast between what we say, what we look like, how we behave, with others...sometimes public others, sometimes neighbors, sometimes what we see on TV or the internet.

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    1. Margaret, your observation is a good one. Definitely there are generational contrasts, both in ones own life, and in differences we see in people our children's age, and our parents' age, and the in-between stages. I think the 20-40's are still trying to figure out how they will be when they grow up. The 40-60's are going in a direction, even if they're not convinced it was the right one. The 60-pluses kind of think, "If I still haven't grown up yet, I don't have to."
      Then there are the contrasts among the Millenials, Gen-X, Gen-Y, etc. I was talking to a friend yesterday who had been asked to sub for a teacher in the parish's CCD program. The students in this class were 9th graders. He had taught previously but not for 10 years or so. He said he had been expecting the usual messing around and not paying attention. But that was missing. They were paying attention, just not to class. They were glued to their I-phones, constantly texting and surfing. He finally got them to put the phones away by taking them over to the chapel and doing a presentation on Eucharistic adoration.

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    2. Fordham had a conference this past week-end on the Catholic Literary Imagination. One panel was made up of "younger writers." At least three of four mentioned being surprised that there could be a "Catholic" audience for what they were writing.

      They all seemed to have been raised Catholic, and two went to the same Jesuit high school (unnamed). The only one who didn't express surprise was a young woman (How old?? looked twelve! but has written a published novel). She was from Brooklyn Irish Catholic family full of firemen. The passage she read from her novel described the wife of a fireman attending his funeral..She had some wonderful remarks but she definitely knew she had a Catholic audience.

      The Four were impressive in what they read from their works, but the three who didn't know they had a Catholic audience...reminds us of the almost complete dispersal of the ethnic neighborhoods and consciousnesses that were part and parcel of a religious identity.

      But I would like to pursue this question of generational differences, religious and not. Should I start another post?

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    3. Should have added: another panel with "older" Catholic writers of whom two, Peter Quinn and Alice McDermott are probably know to most of you. They are both wonderfully witty!

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    4. That sounds like a good topic for its own post.

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  4. Good topic, Anne. I've been thinking about it a lot myself lately. I was close to my grandparents and older family members. I like old people. I just didn't think I'd be one so darned soon. But I'm 66, no matter if I color my hair and try to stay in shape. More than a fifth of my high school graduating class has died. That's sobering. My mother died when she was 68. I'll be retiring in a year or so; my husband is already semi-retired. I didn't used to think about death every day. I'm trying to think about it the way St. Francis described it, "our sister, death of the body". I don't want to waste the time I have left, so that's my task now, to try to figure out how God wants me to spend it. I think trying to be an "elder", and not an old fool, as you describe it, is a worthwhile goal. I think we can pick our role models, people who have aged well and contributed to society in old age. I want to be one of those described in Psalm 92," Planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God, still bearing fruit when they are old, still full of sap, still green."

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  5. A very good book on aging is COUNTER CLOCKWISE: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility by Ellen J. Langer. Perhaps some of you have read it?

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  6. I was close to my grandparents too. I have an old post with photos of them and me and my mom here.

    I don't know if people become wise when they age. Think of Trump, for instance. Maybe the people we think of as wise elders were wise when they were young too. Some of my favorite older wise guys .... the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, William Barry SJ, Hillary Clinton.

    When I was young I tried to become wise, I wanted to figure out the secrets of the universe, see a burning bush, follow the path to enlightenment, become truly good. But the older I get, the more I realize it will never happen. Now I'm trying to figure out if what I am will be enough at the end.

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    1. Nice pictures of your grandparents in your link, Crystal. How neat that you got to go to Hawaii with your grandma. Hawaii is one of my happy places, only been there once. A return trip is something to look forward to in retirement (maybe, if we're lucky!)

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    2. Gramma has a parrot! I have very fond memories of both of my grandmother's, who were astringent in different ways. My Dutch Gramma was a doer, not an emoter. If she didn't like something, she shut her mouth and set her jaw. She bet in horses and Canasta. She nursed half the neighboehood with sime ailment or ither, and half their luvestock, dogs, and cats, too. My Welsh Gramma was a steady stream of commentary and outrage. Her saving grace was her self-satire. Sometimes she would interrupt the flow with, "Say, I don't know how the world would keep going without my pronouncements."

      I don't know how wise they were, but they were both stable, sane, and a whole lot of fun. I miss them terribly.

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    3. I've been to Hawaii twice. Once with my grandmother and mom and sis. The other time was about 5 years alter with my sister. We stayed for three weeks at a zendo there. It really is a special place.

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  7. Bishop Budde:

    "The spiritual tasks of aging are even more daunting than the physical changes that occur. ....

    I believe that as a church we could do much better to explore this terrain with one another, that collectively we have been, as Dr. Kimball said, sorely neglectful of how we might have honest, courageous conversation about this great adventure called aging. We can do better in our support one another through it. So I gently put before us a collaborative challenge, that we might create circles of meaningful conversation for some of the most courageous work that we are called in this life to undertake."

    I find myself somewhat lost as I face this next stage of life. I have too many empty hours as I am not a hobbyist, my children live far away from us, and most of my friends from earlier stages of life have moved away. I am very aware of the shortage of time to do something "meaningful" with the years that remain to me. With death and dementia stalking some of our friends already, the sense of urgency grows. For some people, simply continuing to do what they have always done will work. But some of us need guidance. I do. The church focuses on the young, on those who will fill their pews in coming decades. Bishop Budde presents another challenge to the church - one that I hope some will accept, creating circles of conversation for the work we are to undertake so that maybe we can become elders instead of simply old fools.

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    1. I think I know how you feel. I tried a book by Sister Joan Chittister - The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully - but couldn't stick with it.

      In the Hindu tradition the third stage of life, after your family is grown and you retire from work, is the time to grow spiritually. I don't think we can count on the church to expend much effort on us oldies. We're going to have to be self-motivated. Maybe an Ignatian retreat?

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  8. My health problems will limit my lifespan. My first response was to read as much as I could and to fall back on the old Anglican precept of living a life of service within the confines of my limitations. That and to watch "Downton Abbey" and see what that fuss was about. Mr. Branson took a lady to the bedroom gallery and the under-butler reported him, and His Lordship's dog got lost, but a local yokel found it in 10 minutes. I may die of boredom first.

    I don't really think about being wise, and I don't know what that means. My daughter-in-law tells me I am old and out of it. I pray to keep my mouth shut in case she becomes less of an insufferable know-it-all before I croak. So far, my prayers have been largely ignored.

    I really like this post, though, for pointing out the Church's preoccupation with the lack of young people and perhaps ignoring the needs of the old.

    But I don't want to be ghetto-ized with my age cohort. We may be wise, but, God, we are verbose and tiresome. We've had a lot of rain here in rural Michigan, and if I have to have one more conversation with an older person about the rising and falling standing water levels in cornfields and ditches, I will scream.

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    1. Had to grin about your description of your DIL :)
      So the awaited wedding has taken place?

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    2. The Boy and Girl eloped. She comes from a troubled family, and she has very little respect for elders generally, and we are older than her grandparents.

      Tart words have been exchanged. And apparently in the 21st Century, disagreement makes you a "negative person," and you simply cut "negative" people out of your life in order not to be troubled by their inconvenient moral standards and opinions.

      But there is also some expectation that we are to cough up something called a bullet blender for $119.95 because we have been feeding The Boy wrong his entire life and he needs some type of cleansing diet.

      I'm sure there is a patron saint with an irritating abundance of patience and kindness to cover this type of situation, but right now I am mired in the "please, God, make her go away" phase.

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    3. So I googled patron saints of mothers in law, and came up with...St. Monica. As I remember, she nagged the living daylights out of Augustine for about 30 years. Maybe he would have come around sooner if she had been less pushy. So, not one of my favorites. The other one that came up was St. Anne. She was Joseph's mother in law. Jesus' grandma. That sounds like a better option.
      Cleansing diets...most of them sound like you better not get more than 10 feet away from the facilities. My husband tried "green drinks". That did not turn out well

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    4. St. Elizabeth, mother of Job the Baptist, was always my go-to unofficial patron of older mothers of only children who turned out to be live wires. And, of course, there is Our Lady of Why Are You Making a Spectacle of Yourself (Mark 3:21-31). Or good old St. Martha, worried about many things. I trust I have many girlfriends in heaven, not least among them my old college roommate gone these last 10 years, who are going to help me get through this.

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    5. Job the Baptist. Ugh. Sorry for feeding that view that Catholics don't know their Bible!

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  9. It does seem sometimes that the church is preoccupied with young people and the lack of them. However, in the end, it's up to them. You can lead a horse to water, etc.
    I notice that the daily Mass congregation is mainly older people, when it's not a school Mass. They seem to minister to one another. The ones who still drive give rides to those who don't, and if one of them is sick, someone takes him or her Communion. My grandmother lived through two world wars and said she went to daily Mass to pray for world peace. She was in it for the long haul. My dad will be 89 in June. He has his "rosary list", family members with needs to pray for. He still putters around the ranch; seems like old farmers and ranchers never completely retire.
    We don't live really near any family, Dad is 280 miles away, and our kids are 90 miles. Have toyed with the idea of moving to Omaha after I retire to be near the kids and grandkids. But every time we go to Omaha we are so glad when we get home.

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  10. My own life as older has become pretty restricted. Can't drive, bad eyes, bad knees. My sis is the only person I spend time with. I do worry about existential stuff like the meaning of life and if I can get it right before it's too late. But practical worries about health and money are getting more and more pressing. Meanwhile I pray and I listen to music and watch movies and read novels and spend time with the cats and feed the birds and take photos and do yard work :)

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    1. Music, movies, novels, cats, birds, and yards...there are a lot of worse things to spend time with!

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    2. Hi Katherine. You know those early Moody Blues videos I posted here a while ago? Justin Hayward of the group still writes and sings and he's 70 now. Here's one of his recent songs.

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    3. Is it possible to get it right? Again, the Anglicans talk a lot about one's duty not to be a trial to others or to oneself. I'm still trying to work on that. Nevermind muddying the waters with theology! As for the Meaning of Life, I thought it was 42.

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    4. 42 :) I don't know what the ultimate goal is anymore. I try not to do too much harm to the environment, animals, people. And I try to have a relationship with God, which is hard when I'm not sure he exists or is as good as he should be :)

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    5. Crystal, around age 40 I became concerned about where things were going, and went on a directed retreat with a wonderful woman religious.

      It was something like the Transfiguration in that I became very aware of the presence of God in my life. It also became very clear that I was not yet ready to live with that presence, that God often hides for the good reason that we are not ready yet. I became very aware that asking the question of where I am is a very dangerous question. I had to have faith in the Transfiguration to carry me through.

      A major way God works is through our in/ability to see the divine presence in our own lives, in the lives of others, and the in/ability for others to see the divine in our own lives.

      God sometimes lets other people see the divine in us more than we see it; in fact it is a great grace for that to happen for we are far less likely to become proud.

      So you might try looking around you to see if perhaps others might be seeing more than you are seeing. But remember that our inability to see our own godliness is a blessing.

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    6. Jack, what kind of retreat was it?

      I have never been to a retreat center - they all seem very expensive - but I did make a Spiritual Exercises 19th annotation (at home) retreat once. It lasted from September to Easter. I had a really helpful Jesuit spiritual director who helped me.

      It was kind of transformative too. I learned a style of praying that was a personal conversation with Jesus ... my favorite imagined place for it was at a diner :) That's as close as I've come to believing God was really there and cared about me. But I'm not sure now if I mostly created that myself. Believing in God is hard, especially with the amount of suffering in the world.

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    7. I think we are sometimes too quick to dismiss what happens in our imagination as somehow unreal or made up. Perhaps God created our imaginations as a conduit for conversation? Although in my imagination, God doesn't do a lot of talking, but takes me back to memories of people and places to wring some little insight from them. Or sometimes just takes me back to a place that was peaceful or beautiful so I can enjoy it again and feel grateful for having witnessed that bit of creation in that moment.

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    8. I think you are right about God talking to us sometimes through imagination. The same thing with dreams, sometimes there is a message there.

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  11. Where to retire is an issue that parishes could help address.

    The difficulty of moving to where your children are is that they may not yet be retired when you need them, and they may also be burdened with being grandparents. So you would need to find friends there that are not family.

    The difficulty in staying where you are is that your friends of the same age will die off. All the good company of the seventies disappears in the eighties.

    Parishes could become retirement communities. The basic idea is for people when they retire in their sixties to construct a support network for the oldest members of the community, and to socialize newly retiring members into that network so eventually everyone has a support network.

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    1. Jack, yes, there are drawbacks both to moving and staying put. We want to be more of a part of our granddaughters' lives, but by the time we might move they would be in middle school and high school. And kids nowadays are so busy. Not to mention the crazy metro traffic, when we have always lived in more rural areas.

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    2. I am hardly the only older Catholic who would like to see those empty convents repurposed! The problem is that "rooming houses" are illegal in some municipalities (so why not form an order? The Little Sisters of the Homeless Pets?), and some of them need asbestos removal. Otherwise, what a perfect set up! Private rooms, big bathrooms and kitchens, chapel, living rooms. Rent out downstairs space to beauty operator/barber, coffee concession, mini drug store, yoga instructor, bakery, pet groomer, nurse who does monthly blood pressure and give flu shots. Sad these things can't come to fruition.

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  12. Francis has talked about the importance of the elderly. He emphasizes their contributions rather than their needs. So perhaps his thinking could be used to motivate parishes.

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