CHALICE LIGHTING
Earth brings us into life
And nourishes us.
Earth takes us back again.
Birth and death are present in every moment.
-Thich Nhat Hanh
We light the chalice this morning to celebrate the gift of each precious moment.
READING
My name’s Rick Paddock.
Our reading this morning is from the book, Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst. It covers the stage of aging that I suppose I’m in – the Mid-Life Transition.
It’s a time when, as Research Psychologist Daniel Levinson, writes, we forty- and fifty-somethings become aware of our mortality; become aware of the hurt we’ve doled out to others, and the hurt we’ve received. We also have a strong desire to become more creative, to advance human welfare, to contribute more fully to the coming generations.
Here is what Judith Viorst says:
Integration – the unifying of seemingly opposite tendencies – is seen as the grand achievement of mid-life. We strive to integrate our feminine self with our masculine self. We strive to integrate our creative self with the self that knows inner and outer destructiveness. We strive to integrate a self that must die alone with a self that craves connection and – yes – immortality. And we strive to integrate a wiser, more seasoned middle-aged self with the youthful zest of the self we are leaving behind.
But in spite of our youthful zest, we will have to let go – at mid-life – of our earlier self-image. Our season is autumn; our springtime and summer are done. And in spite of the calendar imagery, we won’t – when we reach the end – get to run through the seasons all over again.
Nor can we stop time.
All of us who’ve managed to survive our mid-life crisis would be grateful just to stay here – here with our seasoned sense of things, with passion and perspective, with people we love and work we want to do. Having relinquished our former self, unwrinkled and immortal, we feel we have done enough – we would like to be through with the letting go and the losing and the leaving.
We aren’t through.
SEARCH FOR MEANING - Ralph Millsap
I’m Ralph Millsap. I arrived at the threshold of this church two and a half years ago in, what is popularly described as a mid-life crisis. In addition to the usual complement of issues, I experienced a divorce from a twenty-year marriage, retired, moved to Virginia, found a new job, and purchased a condo and car. However, of all of these events, it was my association with this congregation that proved critical. It was here that I found an extraordinarily diverse group of people bound by common values—people compelled to express their spirituality positively in other communities.
In mid-life I was, indeed, confronted by my mortality, punctuated by the recent passing of my Aunt. Although, she resided at the premier assisted living facility in Atlanta, her care was sub-standard and certainly a senior member of my family deserved better in her final hours. My Mother visited her everyday and hired additional help, but her care remained far less than she deserved. It was during my visits there I discovered residents who had no family or family who didn’t visit. This was unacceptable to me. As I anguished over my Aunt’s care and faced the challenges in my life, I became
involved in a series of personal development seminars at an organization known as Landmark Education. It was there that I discovered the anger and bitterness that I harbored regarding the unexpected turn of events in my life. During my Landmark experience, I realized that I was living in the pain of my past and that this was a choice. I released my tie to the past and reinvented myself as a possibility in the future. Today, I live an extraordinary, joyous life present in the moment. I live in the possibility I invented for myself—the possibility of Love, Passion, and Integrity.
As a result of these experiences, I feel compelled to make a difference in the lives of the senior citizens in our community who find themselves in circumstances similar to those of my Aunt. It is my belief that the manor in which we treat each other is a fine measure of the quality of our society. Our senior citizens are the jewels of our society. It took years to make them. They should be cherished and valued as such. In cooperation with this church and Culpepper Garden, I have established a program referred to as “Golden Friends.” This program will bring together seniors in need and people who want to establish a relationship with them by offering support, monitoring their care and being a Golden Friend. If you would like to work with me in the Golden Friends program, I invite you to speak with me following the service. I believe the manor in which we treat the most senior members of our society to be generally unacceptable and want, in the words of Judith Viorst “…to strive to integrate a self that must die alone with a self that craves connection….” For me this connection lives in the possibility of Love, Passion, and Integrity.
SEARCH FOR MEANING – Vera Tilson
For those who don't know, my name is Vera Tilson and if you look at the cover of your bulletin you will see that I am Music Director Emerita—a consequence of having spent 46 years as Music Director of this church. I retired just two years ago. When I retired, I suddenly realized that there was a multitude of choices about what to do with the rest of my life. I initially thought that I was going to lie down and rest but that didn't turn out to be such a good idea. The need to interact with people and to make a positive contribution to my community became paramount.
To continue teaching has been important. My lifetime as a musician has
developed experience and an expertise that cries to be shared. It is music that has taught me that there are bottomless layers of meaning in life as there is in music and that those depths are never completely plumbed. The meaning is in the search.
I have learned that the vibrations of the soul that one transmits through teaching last a long time. I sometimes think of Mr. Holland of that movie when I even yet get letters or meet someone who has been influenced by my music as long ago as thirty years. Even now I'm enjoying passing some of my knowledge to my fifteen-year-old grandson as we play violin duets together.
At this moment in my life, I am in awe of the capacity of the human mind to change and grow. The changes in technology and medicine, the questions that are now being asked and explored, demand a faith in the future and a faith in the endless flow of ideas. At my age, that keeps me still excited about the future.
MEDITATION
Normal Day,
Let me be aware of the treasure you are.
Let me learn from you, love you,
Bless you before you depart.
Let me not pass by in quest
Of some rare and perfect tomorrow.
Let me hold you while I may,
For it may not always be so.
One day I shall dig my nails into the earth,
Or bury my face in the pillow,
Or stretch myself taut,
Or raise my hands to the sky and want,
More than all the world,
Your return.
-Mary Jean Iron
HOMILY Jane McKeel
Of all the mysteries we humans experience between life and death, none is more puzzling or fascinating for me than time. I mean, what is time? The fourth dimension? An illusion? Some sort of cosmic joke?
I recall my mother in her mid-80s telling me that inside she still felt about 16 years old. That didn't surprise me, for right now inside I'm somewhere between 16 and 40, at the top of my game, full of plans and ideas…! So much so that a glance in the mirror these days often comes as a shock: who is that rather older person staring back…?
Author Judith Viorst expressed this shock poetically:
What am I doing w/a mid-life crisis?
This morning I was seventeen.
I have barely begun the beguine and it's
Good-night ladies
Already.
While I've been wondering who to be
When I grow up someday,
My acne has vanished away and it's
Sagging kneecaps
Already.
Why do I seem to remember Pearl Harbor?
Surely I must be too young.
Why can't I take barefoot walks in the park
Without giving my kidneys a chill?
There's poetry left in me still and it
Doesn't seem fair.
While I was thinking I was just a girl
My future turned into my past,
The time for wild kisses goes fast and it's
Time for Sanka.
Already?
Viorst goes on to say that we rarely let our youthful self go without some sort of struggle. We make desperate attempts to be young again. Or we distract ourselves with causes, courses and general busy-ness- running too fast to notice what we've lost. Some become depressed or embittered -"Is this all there really is?" Or restless, self-destructive, or envious of the young.
Perhaps it is no wonder we fight the changes of our aging bodies, given our society's worship of youth and its dismissal of the elderly. Ram Dass in his new book Still Here describes the frantic, impersonal speed of our Information Culture in contrast to slower-paced traditional cultures which revere the wisdom of their elders.. He writes, "Because it does not know what to do with older people, our society has become impoverished of precisely those qualities its elders could offer. Unfortunately, most elders don't know, themselves, what it is they have to offer. It is only as we become more conscious, as a culture, that we will become more aware of our elder-gifts and how they might be shared."
Becoming more conscious…. Every wisdom source I consult insists that meeting head-on, deliberately, and carefully the changes that come with aging is not only healthier than denial, but vital. These changes may include decreased ability to concentrate, memory lapses, pain, loss, loneliness, diminished energy, or illness. Dass speaks of conscious aging - a deliberate approach that begins with facing our fear of all of the above and then learning to shift our perspective on them. He writes: "The sadness we often experience later in life may just be part of the Soul's evolution. The Ego experiences a kind of death in order to allow our Inner Self to be born into its own full Awareness….Age is an opportunity for considering questions like, 'Where am I in the flow of all this?' How is this grief - or sense of dependency…or pain - specifically affecting me?' Slowing down, drawing in, can open us to some of the most fruitful experiences of life, and some of the richest gifts that aging has to offer."
Dass says that each of us will find our own path to this acceptance -- some through humor, others through sharing, still others through conscious spiritual practice -- but whatever the means that allow us to live in our aging bodies with grace, rather than anger, morbidity, or denial, it is crucial that we find them."
Author Cathleen Rountree interviewed twenty inspiring and wise individuals for her book On Women Turning 60. She later observed that the eventuality of death was very real to these women. But rather than holding them hostage in a paralyzed state of fear, it seemed to add an intensity to their lives. They became more committed to living fully in the present moment and less concerned with either their past or their future.
Eternity is now, the world's religions have been telling us. Become utterly absorbed in your present activity, and time stands still. Through this kind of mindfulness, we find a restful freedom from thought. In the next sip of tea, next breath, next step, no present or past exists - and we come fully into the moment, savoring each for the precious gift it is. Mindful attentiveness is one of the major goals of conscious aging…and what a refreshing perspective on that old mystery, Time...!
In recent days as I was preparing these remarks, Jan Stoehr shared these lines by the American poet Longfellow:
Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.
HOMILY - Rev. Joan Gelbein
We live in a culture that too often portrays aging as a senseless event, a slip-slide toward dotage and the grave. But, you know, something has changed. Not only do we have to recast any despairing feelings so many of us have about growing old, but we have to recognize that we are coming into unknown territory – a time of senior dominance.
The Baby Boomers are probably the first generation to live longer than others have before. They, and following generations, are the beneficiaries of a revolution: there have been enormous advances in life-extending medicine and public health, and there is greater wealth, and more human and technological possibilities than ever before.
The values those who are aging now choose to live by cannot help but become a commanding influence in shaping the century to come. Age so empowered is a new historical phase. With most of us being enabled to extend our life span, history is shifting its rhythms.
Theodore Roszak, the author of a very interesting new book called, “America The Wise,” talks about the Longevity Revolution, and how the wisdom of a maturing America promises to be our richest resource.
His awakening to longevity happened when he was fifty. He had a serious chronic medical condition. He didn’t expect to live long. But, after coming through successful surgery and recovering his health, he realized he was going to continue the aging process farther than he ever expected. He was then ready to face the challenge of the second half of life – having to think about what he would make of that, now that the opportunity to even have a second half of life was restored to him.
He wrote, “Poorly prepared as I was, I decided to make all I could of it. I laid aside my work, took a leave of absence from my job, emptied my schedule, [meditated], and began to attend to a great deal of unfinished business. … I came to see that there was actually very little that I HAD to do, very little in all the world that depended on me and me alone. I could not think of anything on my usually busy agenda that could not be left to somebody else to do. I stopped playing the decision-maker who had to make everything work, stood back, and gazed at my life with as much objectivity – and mercy – as I could. It was a memorable episode.”
He decided to get serious about life. No, he said he wasn’t serious before, just busy. He’d been, like so many of us, over-scheduled, anxious, job-career-and-money worried. He reflected that “if some of what I had spent my time doing was of value, I had nevertheless been doing much of it in the wrong spirit and so had diminished its significance. I had spent fifty years getting older, but not much wiser.”
Those of us who will survive into what we now know will be a long old age need to come to grips with longevity as a personal challenge. It will also be a challenge to society that we will need to be involved in.
At the turn of the century in America the average life expectancy was about forty-seven. Now it’s over seventy-five. Two-thirds of all the increase in the human life span since time immemorial has occurred in this century! Since 1900, the number of Americans over sixty-five has shot up from three million to thirty-three million.
What are we to do with these later years? For some, this is a very present question. Even for those of us who are younger, it is an issue well worth thinking about.
What is our extended life span for? Isn’t there more? What does it take to fulfill the longings and learnings of the human spirit? Surely the later years have a meaning of their own, one that involves a sense of wholeness and fruition. Life’s second half provides unique opportunities for spiritual growth.
Even the losses we know we all experience with the passage of the years, can provide enormous opportunities. They push us up against our ego-self, or self-centeredness, and invite us to go beyond. They tell us that the time is right to plunge into the spiritual quest. Time is, in fact, of the essence.
For some, this spiritual transition and learning can come earlier, maybe in our thirties, forties, or fifties, provoked by life’s upheavals. For others, it will be associated with retirement or the approach of death. But it is never too soon to begin the work of “aging gracefully” by contacting the infinite riches within the human spirit.
What is it that we are ready to learn as elders?
Well, we’re ready to learn…
That we need to strip away our self-righteousness. Perhaps there are no heroes or villains, and that there are plenty of gray areas to learn about people and life. We discover that we ourselves often fail to live up to our own standards. We’re not so quick to judge.
We’re ready to learn…
That self-centeredness can ease away as we come to understand that life does not, after all, revolve around us. Destruction of our narcissism can lead to mid-life depression. But it can also be the start of elder wisdom. Life is weeding our garden, but to cultivate new growth. Over the years it can bear fruit in deepened humility, realism, and compassion.
And, we finally become ready to learn…
That we must let go of control. It’s tempting to want to run the world; after all God needs help, doesn’t She? But we need to recognize the true limits of our reach, and accept the vast, mysterious interdependence in which we find ourselves.
This Sufi story illustrates it well:
Nasrudin was now an old man looking back on his life. He sat with his friends in the tea shop telling his story.
“When I was young I was fiery – I wanted to awaken everyone. I prayed to Allah to give me the strength to change the world.
“In mid-life I awoke one day and realized my life was half over and I had changed no one. So I prayed to Allah to give me the strength to change those close around me who so much needed it.
“Alas, now I am old and my prayer is simpler. ?Allah,’ I ask, ?please give me the strength to at least change myself.’”Nasrudin has let go of self-importance. The self-important person is eager to fix others, but not willing him-or herself to be challenged and changed. There is an unfortunate stereotype of age: --“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” A growing Elder is quite the opposite. The real wisdom of aging is characterized by the stance of the perpetual learner.
Learning is a way to liberate the soul by seeking to answer the most fundamental questions. How are we to live? What must we know about death? What is the place of the spiritual in human affairs? Where are our lives taking us? Who am I? What was I in the past, and what will I become in the future? What is it that weighs me down? What is fundamental to my life so that I may prune the rest? That is one hard result of having more life: the quantity of years we may have ahead of us forces us to ponder the quality of life we will be living in those years.
In truth, we don’t really govern many of the forces that shape our existence. We don’t pick our parents. We don’t choose our bodies, our talents, our temperament. What we DO choose, especially as we increase in wisdom and years, is the way we approach the circumstances of our lives. Either we jettison the things that are no longer useful for the stages of our journey, or we live in a world of “might have been.”
A Jewish proverb goes this way – “None of us die with even half our desires fulfilled.” As we get older there is a growing tendency to torment ourselves with self-accusations and regrets. Why did I do this and not that? What would that have been like? I should have done that. It is a bittersweet nostalgia, whispering frustrations, siren calls.
Think of Odysseus on his journey home from the Trojan Wars, passing the island of the Sirens. The Sirens would lure sailors to shipwreck and death with their irresistible song. Like Odysseus, we too can willingly listen to the voices of the Sirens for at least a moment. We can understand the powerful but destructive attraction, and then sail on. Such clever navigation is an essential part of the challenge of successful aging.
To illustrate this point, here is a story of two Zen monks on a pilgrimage to a distant monastery. After many days of walking trough the wilderness, they come to a river. They see a beautiful young maiden standing by the water’s edge.
“Excuse me,” she said, “ I don’t know how to swim. Would one of you be kind enough to help me across.” “Of course I will,” says the first monk, and without hesitation, picks the maiden up, carries her to the other side, and puts her down.
The two monks walk the rest of the day in silence, finally reaching a place to stop at sunset. Here over the evening meal, the second monk says to the first, “You know the rules of our order forbid us to have any contact with women. It was wrong of you to talk to that young girl, let alone pick her up and carry her.”
“Oh, her,” says the first monk. “I put her down back by the river. You’ve been carrying her all day long.”Anxieties over the past, grudges, regrets, self-pity, helplessness – jettison them all! Instead, we need to cultivate being grateful for what life has put on our plate. We can receive with open hands the raw materials of our lives, the good and bad alike, welcoming both to learn from and deepen.
The wise ones have said that we repair the past and prepare for the future by living in the present.
Each of us can cultivate attention and mindfulness; we can give up what has to be given up, prune what has to be pruned. We can take time to be discerning in our choices, and spend time on things that are really important to us. Eventually we will surely find the means we need to live each day in the way we were meant to live it, and to become the person each of us was meant to be.
A New World is opening before us –- not across the seas, not in outer space, not in cyberspace -- but in time. LIVING time. Longevity is our voyage of discovery. It begins NOW!
BENEDICTION
It is eternity now.
I am in the midst of it.
It is about me, in the sunshine;
I am in it, as the butterfly
in the light-laden air.
Nothing has to come,
It is now.
Now is eternity,
Now is the immortal life.
-Richard Jeffries
