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"The Spirituality of Aging" 
Bette Davis said once what most of us have yet to learn: "Old age," Davis wrote, "ain't no place for sissies."

And Dorothy Canfield Fisher wrote: "What nobody ever tells you about being old is that it's such a nice change from being young."

It occurs to me that age is one of the greatest lessons that a younger generation has to learn if it is ever going to be spiritual at all. And the major celebrations of life --jubilees, anniversaries, birthdays -- may simply be saying the same thing as the scriptures but in another key.

In the first place, it is events like those in life which enable us to see with our own eyes what geneticists are already discovering in their work on longevity. The fact is, they know that strength does not necessarily diminish as people get older. On the contrary. We see before us every day

that the strength that counts -- personal, moral and spiritual -- actually increases in us as life goes on.

"You shall rise before the aged," Leviticus teaches us...."The gray-haired and the aged are on our side," Job says...."The beauty of the aged is their gray hair," Proverbs tells us.

It is the milestone events of life that prove that age is a glorious achievement too often overlooked in a youth-centered culture and to our peril as a people.

Ageism, the devaluation of older people, the devaluation of people because of their age, is, in fact, actually a sin against wisdom.

And wisdom is too often clearly lacking in this world where a loss of respect for experience leaves us with a society in which the merits of ambition and greed -- of getting ahead and getting money -- too easily replace what (if we live long enough) we learn is even better: a devotion to deep human love, a commitment to high purpose and the sanctifying significance of relationships in the religion of love.

Milestone markers do not simply celebrate the amount of time we spend in one place; the positions we have held or even the things we have accomplished -- important as those are -- good as those are. No, crossover moments in life enable us to celebrate the gifts of insight and light, of truth and serenity, that other lives have become to our own; and so challenges our lives to be to others.

Transition times in life celebrate, in other words, the proof we see in one another that life is good, that life is livable, that life gets better as it goes along.

Anniversaries, in fact, are precious times, not only for ourselves, but as witness to the younger people among us, that no matter their present crisis; their present muddling mess; the present confusion, and unclarity and uncertainty that they are agonizing over today -- and will not remember tomorrow -- that they, too, can get older and wiser; happier and stronger; calmer and surer; more alive and more free of their own shackles -- as the older, more seasoned souls around them have done as life has gone on.

Indeed, we can see so plainly in the valiant lives of those around us that Robert Browning was outrageously correct and outrageously ignored, as well, when he wrote:

"Grow old along with me,
the best is yet to be,
the last of life --
for which the first
was made."

Marker moments, in other words, are demonstrations of hope to the rest of us. They are also pitiably -- pathetically -- undervalued, underestimated, and overlooked. Age, in other words, is that period of life in which we discover -- when all the baubles are broken and all the races are over -- what happiness is really about.

The Buddhists tell the story of a man fleeing from a tiger who went plunging over a cliff and saved himself only by catching hold of a small strawberry plant growing between the rocks of the precipice. Caught between the tiger above and the gorge below, the man clung to the bush with one hand -- thought for a moment -- and with the other hand picked the most luscious strawberry he had ever eaten in his entire life.

It is age that teaches us to enjoy life, to savor every moment of it, to spend our time on what counts, to be present where we are and see it for the first time.

Indeed age simply teaches the rest of us that we have nothing at all to fear from any stage in life. The aging of any of us gives the rest of us permission to keep on growing, keep on changing, and keep on living!

Or as Gelett Burgess puts it: "If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead."

What we celebrate when we celebrate the passages of life is the valor of people who every day of their lives teach the rest of us clearly that we, too, can learn the three great lessons of life:

Happiness in little things;

Fearlessness in everything,

And the presence of strawberries everywhere.

In every situation, clearly, we too like Abraham and Methuselah, like Sarah and the Prophetess Anna, like Moses and the matriarchs, can learn to live life well, to taste life wholly and, most of all, to pass on the meaning of life to those who come stumbling after.

A tourist tramping the mountain villages of northern New England came upon a grizzled old woman sitting in silence on her cabin stoop. "Have you lived here all your life?" the visitor asked.

"Not yet," the old lady replied.

Is life over after retirement has come and golden jubilees have been passed and the gold watches are all passed out and the home has been sold and work is no longer the reason we get up in the mornings? Are the markers of life simply subtle but insidious signs that all the really important things of life are really over? Oh no, my friends, not yet, not yet, not yet.

And how can we be so sure? That's simple: because the rest of us still have so much to learn from those who are going the way before us, who have tasted life and found it full of every flavor and come to appreciate them all -- because you and I still have so much life yet to live and because we still have so much to learn about happiness, about fearlessness, about tigers and strawberries.

There is no doubt about it: in a world where newness has become the neurosis of the age, we need the elderly now more than ever, so that as Jonathan Swift counsels -- we may learn to live all the days of our life.

It is just then, when all the baubles and bangles of life fall away that people begin to teach the really important lessons of in life: how to live without living for things; how to love without loving for personal gain. How to last beyond the million little deaths of life.

It is just then when younger people need the older generation most of all. It is just then that the older generation achieves its greatest stature and carries its greatest responsibilities to the rest of us. It is time for this world to discover a new respect for wisdom; to bring new attention to the spirituality of aging. It is time for the aging to realize their value and claim their responsibilities to the spiritual development of us all.

Indeed, the book of Proverbs teaches us well: "The beauty of the aged is their gray hair." Because scripture knows well that when a world loses its memory, it loses its way.

Interview with Joan Chittister

Orley Herron: Joan, I am getting gray hair.

Joan Chittister: Yes, you are.

Herron: I am getting close to taking early Social Security and I have been thinking the last few days few days about my mother and father. My mother is 91 years old, a marvelous Christian, loves the Lord, has taught Sunday school for over fifty years, bright, clear in her thinking, but she decided that she was too old to teach Sunday school. And then my father retired at 78 years old from a business he helped found, because he felt that younger people should take over. Now they find themselves at the sunset of a life saying, "You know, we have done what we should do and now we are waiting to die." And I think there are a lot of people like that, and what can the church do to really care for the aged?

Chittister: Oh, the church is a powerful tool in the development of a new social attitude toward aging. Remember that we are the first culture that now assumes age levels of this type, so anything we say is not meant to be a criticism of what we haven't done, but what we must now see as a future goal. I think there are at least three to four things. One of the things, of course, is something that the church can do like no other element or institution of society. The church can raise up models. I mentioned some of them earlier, Methuselah, Moses, Anna. Somehow or rather, people seem to drop off the spirituality cycle in their mid-forties and coast toward heaven as if catechism and creed was all that the spiritual life was about. I think the church can bring together mixed groups, young people listening to older people. I think the church could do a lot to the communication gap, to solve a communication gap that exists between multiple age levels. I think the church has got to begin to develop itself materials on the spirituality of aging. This is precisely the most contemplative period of life. This is the period, I mean I can understand when any person says, "I want off the carousel because there are bigger things to think about." But somehow or rather, we have to give older people the materials they need to think productively about the process of life and to share those with the rest of the church, and finally, I think the church has to take some sort of advocacy role where national legislation is concerned for the support of the elderly in a dignified and healthy life style.

Herron: You know, our friend Billy Graham, and we mentioned his new book that is out, but he has said most of the people with whom he comes in contact in his services, come to know Christ before they are 30, so what does that say about the church?

Chittister: Oh, yes, yes, but listen, there is this great tale from the Hasidism where the disciple says to the rabbi, "Rabbi, I have gone completely through the Torah. Now what should I do for my spiritual life?" And the rabbi says, "The question is not, `Have you gone through the Torah, the question is has the Torah gone through you.'" To speak for Christ before you are 30 is one thing, to live the Christian life until you are 91, having spoken when you were 29, now that is spirituality. What it says is that the church must now facilitate, support, guide, companion, be present to all of the challenges to Christian commitment that come at every stage. We never even knew before, Orley, what they were. We didn't live long enough to know the spiritual task of the post-retirement period, but it is a heavy one. It has something to do with despair, in depression, in feelings of uselessness, and a whole new identity that comes from recognizing that you are now the wisdom figure of this culture. You are accountable to us and we must listen.

Herron: And we know that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and so we must care for those bodies, and the church and others must teach us how to really care.

Chittister: Well, the church has some things to learn about teaching us how to care for our bodies. The church is just coming out of a psychology philosophy and theology, a dualism that said your body that your body is bad while preaching the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Herron: Thank you very much, Joan. I wish we could talk more.

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