Spirituality and Aging

• To face the reality of age and death—from the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. Accepting the reality of death lets us live life fully.
• The need to review, reflect upon, and sum up one’s life. It is the need to tell one’s story before one dies. How interesting that we tell the story and look for the meaning when we memorialize a life, but do we listen when that person is still living?
• Draw some conscious mental boundaries beyond which it is not reasonable to expend the remainder of one’s time and energy. Consciously letting go of one’s burdens and aspirations lets one focus total attention and energy not only on what is attainable, but on what is one’s truest concern.
• Letting go of the dominance of one’s ego. Letting go.
• A new rooting in the Self. Bringing together the opposites in the most complete expression of our wholeness, which is also our uniqueness—the god within us.
• Finding the meaning of one’s life. In Jungian terms this is coordinating one’s memories with important outer happenings until a sense of one’s archetypal ground plan is revealed, and through it a reason for existence. We are connected to historical and universal meaning, a sense of life purpose fulfilled.
• Rebirth—dying with life. The creative function. It is a playful approach to life, using all the possibilities that life has to offer, not in an ego-dominated way, but as a creative artist or child at play. Living itself becomes the point, and the unexpected becomes the raw material of its exploration. One is one’s own authority.

Jungians see age as a paradigm shift. The first part of life has to do with ego, career, and family development, the second half is the pursuit of meaning, wholeness and the further creation of consciousness. One must overcome one’s resistance to change and resist the dread of age and its stereotypes as deterioration and decline. [Fountain Of Age, Betty Friedan, pg. 464-7]

Let me tell you the story of Two Old Women. I, of course, read the book as soon as I had time.

This is a story of the people of the arctic region of Alaska. They were nomads and lived in the harshest of worlds. Food was scarce and the weather was harsh. In this particular tribe there were two old women who were cared for by the people for many years. They were called Chickadee and Star. The chief would instruct the younger men to set up shelters for the women, provide them with food and water and pull their possessions from camp to camp. The women tanned animal skins for those who helped them.

However these women shared a character flaw unusual for people of those times. Constantly they complained of aches and pains and carried walking sticks to attest to their handicaps. No one reprimanded the two women and they continued to travel with the stronger ones until one fateful day.

The hunting had not been good and there was harsh weather ahead. The chief and the counsel made a decision and announced that they were going to leave the old ones behind. Hunger and cold had taken its toll and no one objected. The women were left with their possessions and the tribe packed up to move on. One of the women had a daughter and grandson, who needed the tribe to survive and made no protest. The daughter gave her mother some warm furs and the grandson his most treasured possession, his hatchet made of sharpened animal bones.

The women did not know what to do. They watched the tribe pack up and move on. They had seen the tribe leave others behind, but these were people sick and blind and ready to die. These women, although 75 and 80 years, were not ready to die. They sat there, angry and determined to do something. They could sit there and wait to die or they could believe they had earned the right to live and say: if we are going to die, let us die trying. They realized they were like helpless babies. They had learned much during their lives, yet here they were during old age thinking they had done their share and they stopped. No more working, even though their bodies were healthy enough. They realized why they had been left. Two old women. They complain, never satisfied. They talk of how good it was in their days when it really was no better. They spent so much time convincing younger people they were helpless that they were seen as no use in the world.

And so they went back in time to recall the skills and knowledge they were taught in childhood. They made leather traps and snowshoes. Then they began their long journey back into life.

They learned to feed themselves, and decided on a destination, a camp they had been to years before that had abundant food around it. The trip there was long and hard. It took all the strength and courage they had. They finally arrived and built a camp. By now they had grown close and each encouraged the other to keep going and to not let the bitterness of why they were there overpower their need to work. To pass the time they told one another the stories of their lives, the hardships they had survived, the misfortune they had seen, the love they had found. They grew closer with each day.

Eventually the winter ended and spring came. They remembered their fishing and hunting skills and worked all spring and through the summer catching and preserving foods. In the evenings they tanned the skins and saved these as well. By the end of that summer they had enough stored for themselves and a large surplus.

Still the women felt vulnerable. They felt defenseless against the younger generation and lost the trust they had. They decided to move further into the woods to hide their supplies and watch out for strangers. The summer passed and winter was coming upon them.

The People had not fared very well. The lack of food diminished their strength. Leaving the women behind diminished their spirits and the chief decided to return to where they had left the women. When they found no trace of them there, the tribe sent young runners out to look at the surrounding camps.

They eventually found the women and the women with great hesitation, talked with the runners. They did not know what to expect, they did not trust the people or their leaders. What now, they said. The chief will protect you, replied the runners. As he did the last time, they said. The runners realized that these were not the two women they had known before.

The women were in better shape than the much younger runners were and they fed them and warmed them by the fire. They feared the people would overpower them and steal their resources and they told this to the runners. They asked what would prevent the people from deserting them again if they returned. The runners realized that in these two women whom they had thought of as helpless and weak, they had rediscovered the inner strength that had deserted them the winter before. They would not let the women be abandoned again. Still there was distrust. They trusted these men, but what about the others. They sat around the fire and each told the story of their survival for the year. They agreed to share their food, but they did not want to rejoin the people. They slept knowing they were no longer alone.

That winter, daily visits from members of the people kept them fed. Gradually trust began to be restored as the people realized they were not as strong as they thought and the old women were not as weak. They sought the women out for advise and company. Eventually the women rejoined the tribe. All was forgiven and no one was ever the same again. [Two Old Women, Velma Wallis]

I tell this story because it has all the elements of Jung’s tasks of aging. The first task is accepting the reality of death and aging. The women were left behind. We get left behind other ways. The elders in our society are diminished by the deterioration of the body and a society that treats them like children. The reality of death comes upon us as we lose abilities. I did an exercise with a group where we each listed the eight things we would take on a trip. The car was too small so we could only take four. Then the leader came around and just took one thing from each of us. This is what happens. We do not get to choose what we lose. We can dwell on the loss or on what is left.

The women begin to review and reflect upon their life. Florida Scott Maxwell in her book, The Measure of My Days, reflects on who she became.

Age is truly a time of heroic helplessness. One is confronted by one’s own incorrigibility. I am always saying to myself, “Look at you, and after a lifetime of trying.” I still have the vices I have known and struggled with—well it seems like since birth. Many of them are modified, but not much. I can neither order nor command the hubbub of my mind. Or is it my nervous sensibility? This is not the effect of age; age only defines one’s boundaries. Life has changed me greatly, it has improved me greatly, but it has also left me practically the same. I cannot spell, I am over critical, egocentric and vulnerable. I cannot be simple. In my effort to be clear I become complicated. I know my faults so well that I pay them small heed. They are stronger than I am. They are me.

The Two Old Women take the strengths they have and the knowledge they acquired and decide to die trying to live. They forgive the People for leaving them behind, they remember and forgive themselves for the things they have done in their lives. Gradually they become the women they were meant to be, strong, skilled, loving and forgiving. Letting go of their ego, they are able to each become whole in their own eyes. Although they would like to rejoin the people, they do not foolishly suddenly return all they have accomplished. Trust is rebuilt one day at a time. Their strength gave the people strength to change and stand up to life.

I find this a story of faith and grace. The faith is that life has meaning. All of life and each stage of life has meaning. Meaning is found not in life’s past accomplishments, but in letting go of one’s burdens and aspirations and finding one’s truest concern. You let go of the ego.

…I am awareness at the mercy of multiplicity. Ideas drift in like bright clouds, arresting, momentary, but they come as visitors. A shaft of insight can enter the back of my mind and when I turn to greet it, it is gone. I did not have it, it had me. My mood is light and dancing, or it is leaden. It is not I who chooses my moods; I accept them, but from whom? —The Measure of My Days, Florida Scott-Maxwell

We need to find meaning not only in the moment, but in the whole of our lives. We hope this is an ongoing, growing process in life. The first half the meaning comes from things outside us, the second half of life the meaning comes from within us. This switch, a reversal in nature that happens at mid-life, can set the stage of our later years.

Grace is what happens when we let go of our egos and open ourselves to the possibilities that life holds for us. The old women graced one another with their memories and their love. Sharing the past and finding the meaning in it allowed them too step into the future without bitterness or regret.

Here is Shakespeare’s Lear decribing the walled prison of age…

…Come, Let’s away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i’the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who’s in , who’s out; And take upon’s the mystery of things, As if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out, In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by th’moon. —The Tragedy of King Lear, Act V/Scene 3

Grace comes through the tasks of old age, identified here as “we’ll pray, and sing, and tell old tales and laugh...” According to Helen Luke,

All these four things are activities without purpose; any one of them is immediately killed by any hint of striving for achievement. They come to birth only in a heart freed from preoccupation with the goals of the ego, however “spiritual” or lofty these goals may be. —Old Age, Journey into Simplicity

Old age is not without its fears,

My only fear about death is that it will not come soon enough. Life still interests and occupies me. Happily I am not in such discomfort that I wish for death, I love and am loved, but please god, I die before I lose my independence. I do not know what I believe about life after death; if it exists then I burn with interest, if not—well, I am tired. I have endured the flame of living and that should be enough…

I don’t like to write this down, but it is much in the minds of the old. We wonder how much older we have to become and what degree of decay we may have to endure. We keep whispering to ourselves, “Is this age yet? How far must I go?” For age can be dreaded far more than death. “How many years of vacuity? To what degree of deterioration must I advance?” Some want death now as a release from old age, some say they will accept death willingly, but in a few years. I feel the solemnity of death, and the possibility of some form of continuity. Death feels a friend because it will release us from the deterioration of which we cannot see the end. It is waiting for death that wears us down, and the distaste for what we may become. —The Measure of My Days, Florida Scott-Maxwell

Fear of death is like fear of living, we can see it and greet it as a friend, or we can let the fear block our ability to live fully. A living death. Jung says to let living itself become the point.

We will all get to face the prison of old age and face our fears of death. We can choose to do it with meaning in our community or we can strive for eternal youth. Becoming who we are is the task life sets before us. We are on the continuum from birth to death. We can cling, drag, strive, shout, and claw against what is our natural cycle, or we can see the richness in the last twenty years of life that is as profound as the years before. We can pray and sing and tell old tales and laugh. We can live with faith and grace. In closing, from Florida Scott-Maxwell:

I suppose that humanity is still very tribal. It feels tribal. For centuries to come, perhaps forever we will be working out the separation of the individual from the collective bond—that protective oneness that you see everywhere, and know is deeply essential to each of us. Perhaps primitives are less closely held together than I assume, but their unchanging ways over long periods must imply the existence of few people individual enough to differ from the group, or strong enough to establish their difference. Perhaps many do differ but wisely conceal it, since it is the most uncomfortable thing in the world to stand alone.

The ordeal of being true to your own inner way must stand high on the list of ordeals. It is like being in the power of someone you cannot reach, know, or move, but who never lets you go; who both insists that you accept yourself and who seems to know who you are. It is awful to have to be yourself. If you do reach this stage of life you are to some extent free from your fellows. But the travail of it. Precious beyond valuing as the individual is, his fate is feared and avoided. Many do have to endure a minute degree of uniqueness, just enough to make them slightly immune from the infection of the crowd, but natural people avoid it. They obey for comfort’s sake the instinct that warns, ”Say yes, don’t differ, it’s not safe.” It is not easy to be sure that being yourself is worth the trouble, but we do know that it is our sacred duty. —The Measure of My Days, Pg. 21

Closing Words

You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality. When at last, age has assembled you together, will it not be easy to let it all go, lived, balanced, over? —Florida Scott-Maxwell

The Rev. Ms. Sue E. Sinnamon is Pastor of the Unitarian Church of Evanston in Evanston, Illinois. Their website is at Unitarian Church of Evanston