Category Archives: Gifts of Age
Gifts of Age (Part Seven): Aging Like Fine Wine by Dancing in Our Hearts
Dance of Youth
New bottles seldom hold particularly fine wine. Likewise, the gifts of age don’t come in teenaged bodies. On the outside I’m a short, plump, white-haired old lady on a walker. But inside me still live all my younger selves. And the imp inside has gotten braver with the passage of time, so I challenge other little old ladies on walkers to races and to consider themselves armed and dangerous. I plan to get tee shirts that say, “Bare Toes Beware” and “I Can Do Anything You Can Do, Just a Whole Lot Slower.”
Being in my mid-seventies, not only means that I’ve run out of a future full of possibilities, it also means that I’ve actually seen the consequences of some of my major screw-ups in my younger years. And part of my spiritual journey has involved developing enough self-awareness to recognize a self-serving element even in the good things that I do. Parting with delusions is a painful process, but like most difficult things in life, it has an up-side. It eventually makes it easier to live lightly, unburdened by carrying pockets full of stones to throw at others. All those cracks in my façade make that quite hazardous.
Letting go of physical agility and mental acuity as major parts of our self-image is one of the most frightening challenges of this part of the spiritual journey. When I was young and lithe, one of my few natural talents was ballet. In fact, I often expressed my emotions through dance. Once, I danced in sheer joy at the awesomeness of God, while reading The Well Springs of Life by Isaac Asimov. He used several diverse sciences, that study both the macrocosms and the microcosms of the universe, to trace the incredibly orderly and unifying processes of evolution in all aspects of creation. Even such a small glimpse of the brilliance and glory of God was almost blinding. Verbal praise was simply not enough. This cried for praise with my whole self. I put the book down and danced to express my overflowing joy.
I can no longer physically dance, nor do I have enough mental energy or short term memory to explore complex scientific descriptions of the glory of God in His creation. But age brings simple moments of grace that lift my heart and mind to dance on butterfly wings.
A grandchild whose journey through autism began with learning a few simple signs to ask for basic needs, now keeps me awake chatting past our bedtime. As I pray for energy to stay awake, I dance with delight in my heart at having this once unimaginable experience.
In another part of my series, Gifts of Age, I describe the timely sight of a cow-pile covered in golden Monarch Butterflies just as I was telling God that I was up to my neck in manure down here and asking where the heck He was in all this. What a perfect symbol of grace. Butterflies, the classic symbol of transformation, happen to need certain chemicals found in manure. Problems that go beyond our human ability to solve can open us to God and the grace to grow.
And, believe me, old age is full of that kind of fertilizer.
Dwindling energies and a sense of time passing at warp speed force me to re-evaluate my priorities. Where do I want to focus my limited resources? On image? On possessions? On my aches and limits? On pleasure as a temporary distraction? On a past that I cannot change? On a future that may never come? It seems more important now, to focus on recognizing the footprints of God in my daily life, on celebrating God’s presence in the small and ordinary, even in the heartbreak, and to share that awareness however I can.
No matter what our age is; today is the only day we actually have. We can seize it, rejoice in it, and dance in our hearts.
Healing: Mind, Body, and Soul
I don’t think any of us are intentionally evil, but we are all blind. When Jesus prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” he meant all of us. When Paul said, “We see through the glass darkly,” he meant all of us, including himself.
Without grace there is no way we can get beyond our limited perceptions. We are molded and even warped by our historical era, culture, climate, nationality, race, class, religion, education, genes, ancestors, parents, peers, personalities, bodies, health, and life experiences. We are all crippled and incomplete spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically.
Only by dying to these limits, to our earthbound selves, can we become free to see, and then to love, as Jesus did. Since many of these influences are rooted in our unconscious, it takes times facing our demons in the desert to even begin to know ourselves and times spent in prayer on the mountain with God to be set free mentally and reborn spiritually and healed physically. There is a huge difference between praying, “God, if it is your will, heal me.” And saying, “God, heal me according to your will.” God wants us healed. Though mental, spiritual, and physical healing are connected, I have been with both the young and the old when they were at peace dying physically, because they had been healed spiritually and I have seen people healed spiritually by being healed physically. With God all things are possible. He is the same, but we are all different. There are no limiting rules, just the goal of bringing each of us home to live immersed in His Love forever.
The scriptures show Jesus approaching healing differently for different people. “Do you want to be healed?” “Your sins are forgiven.” “Stand up and walk.” “Go show yourself to the religious authorities.” “Your faith has healed you.” “Some things take prayer and fasting.” The question isn’t whether God wants us healed. The question is where does the process need to begin.
Passion, death, and resurrection should be one word. Jesus struggling with his fears in the garden, feeling totally abandoned by his family and friends, his anguish so great that he sweat drops of blood, and finally being able to say, “Your will, not mine,” is what set Him free to rise again.
We are born again by recognizing and admitting we need to be set free, by putting ourselves in God’s hands, and then continuing to allow His Spirit to burn the chaff within us in life-long on going passiondeathandresurrections.
These things seem to me to be true: (I’ll get back to you later, when God tells me different.) 1.We all fall short: rich and poor, male and female, educated and uneducated, presidents and drug addicts, young and old, religious and non-religious, Republicans and Democrats. 2.Becoming is more important than achieving. 3. We can’t change anyone else. And the best way to help others isn’t by pretending to be a super person, but by sharing our struggle and our need for grace to become our best selves. (And that even our best selves may not be something to brag about!) 4. It takes a ton of grace and varying amounts of blood, sweat, and tears for each of us to grow closer to being the person we were created to be. (Some of us tend to make it harder for ourselves.)
Rediscovering my Muskrat Ramble Self
The challenges of old age and the feeling that time is running out have tended to bring out my sadder, wiser self.
The other day I watched a movie, A Little Bit of Heaven, and glory be, there was my old New Orleans’ French Quarter Self, just dancing like crazy to Dixieland bands. And remembering and loving the diversity of the French Quarter: black Dixieland bands, the St. Louis Cathedral, drag queens, street corner evangelists, jazz and blues drifting out of clubs into the street, pirate hangouts, like Jean Lafitte’s blacksmith shop, Antoine’s, Brennans, Antiques Stores, Rock and Weed Shops, the Cabildo, where slaves were once auctioned, tourists of every shape and size from Kansas to Japan, a clump of Baptist Sunday school teachers, huddled together for protection from all that blatant humanity,walking so closely knit that they looked glued together, nuns in traditional habits, Voodoo artists hawking their luminous paintings and potions.
I love it! I love it! I love it! All of it.
This is US, people……this wondrous, awful, frightening, lost, saved, becoming, struggling humanity; one and all beloved by a God so huge, complex, and awesome that He/She cannot be fathomed, only experienced and celebrated.
Taste and see the Goodness!
The same movie gave me my funeral….out doors, Dixieland band playing When the Saints Go Marchin In, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, St. Louie Woman, and you got it, Muskrat Ramble. Lots and lots of balloons, yellow flowers, wine, cappuccino, po-boys, shrimp, french bread, and everybody dancing.
I may need to have this before I die, so I get to enjoy it too.
It sounds weird, but I am excited about my funeral.
And I am so enjoying my old Muskrat Ramble self.
Hopes, Dreams, and Breadcrumbs
I’ve always struggled with unrealistic expectations and the depression that follows when I’m forced to face the realities of our human imperfections (including mine) and a seemingly hopelessly imperfect world.
One of my many disillusionments has been how imperceptible are the differences even the greatest of us makes. For every plague we cure, another one is born. From every war we win, the seeds of the next are sown. For every race or nation emancipated, we project our inner evil on another one. For every answer we discover, a new question arises.
I cling to the hope, that in the overall picture of eons of evolution, that there is progress imperceptible to us in humanity’s short history, but recognizable to God.
Sometimes in the crucible of my own struggle to become the person God created me to be, no matter how humiliatingly limited that potential may be, I get a glimpse of a tiny, almost imperceptible new strength, understanding, and freedom in my willingness to love. If I can resist being overwhelmed by the multitude of areas where I still fall short, I can focus on the next breadcrumb in the spiritual trail God has scattered for me in my daily life.
The key word for me is ‘tiny.’ My illusions are large with fairy tale size expectations.
My husband was a realist, who lived in the moment, and was able to focus on just the next task. I once had a dream in which we were at dinner on a river cruise. The waiters kept bringing small appetizer like courses, one after the other. My husband happily ate each one as it came, while I refrained, waiting for the main course. At some point I realized that there was no main course.
I cannot lie, it’s still frustrating. Sometimes, I have overwhelming dark days of discouragement. But they aren’t frequent, they don’t last long, and usually I can follow God’s bread crumbs out into the light again, feeling a tiny bit stronger and wiser and a tiny bit more able to love. Grace can turn dark times into what stretches us and increases our capacity not only for persevering, but for joy and love.
Some of those bread crumbs are found in blogs I follow. Two particularly (but not limited to these) are: Unshakable Hope and Make Believe Boutique
The many sources of bread crumbs vary greatly from Scripture, nature, friends, books, movies, TV, dreams, memories, and even the comic strips. When we look for God’s breadcrumbs, they are everywhere.
To My Children
This is a poem written by my best friend in highschool and college. We’ve kept up with each other for sixty-three years across the miles between Connecticutt and Tennessee.
Our journeys have been amazingly similar in the things that count, like family and spirituality. I have saved her letters and her writings from all the way back to highschool. I was reorganizing my files and found this and it touched my heart.
To My Children
I gave you life,
I gave you love: or tried to.
Sometimes I gave you pain.
The scars you carry still.
Because of my own wounds, I wounded you.
I wanted you to know God loved you;
But often my faith was feeble
As a candle
Flickering in the darkness –
And so you had too little light.
Sometimes I gave you much too much.
Sometimes my well was dry.
I gave you dung and dirt, sun and rain;
The things all flowers need
To live, to grow.
All that I gave you, good and bad,
Is yours.
I cannot take it back.
The soil is tilled; the seed is sown.
The rest is up to you, dear child.
Choose life
or death.
Whatever road you take,
I wish you joy and peace and courage.
My prayers are with you
Always.
And my love.
Your mother.
(Myra Berghane)
The Church of Devout Cowardice
Early in life I became a charter member of the Church of Devout Cowardice. Physical pain and I were not friends. As a child, I had no desire to climb trees, jump from roofs, or do anything else that had the slightest potential for injury.
This devotion was reinforced in my late twenties when some friends urged me to join them on a ski trip. Though one friend teased me unmercifully about being such a wus, I was completely shameless about my compulsion for pain avoidance. The fact that this friend broke her leg getting off the ski lift on her first trip up the mountain definitely confirmed for me that “Avoid all risks” should be the first commandment of all true believers of the Church of Devout Cowardice.
Ironically, being so inclined to imagine worst case scenarios all my life led to a stress related illness that not only caused me a lot of pain, but also put me into a wheelchair in my late fifties and early sixties. During this challenging time of life, a son’s job with an airline gave us the marvelous blessing of thirteen years of free air travel to Europe.
Tourist sites in Europe are not known for their accessibility. Though I could walk short distances, hills and stairs were often too much for me. My son suggested a catapult for accessing castles and fortresses, but wus that I was, I demurred.
However, while we were on an innocuous Sound of Music day trip in Austria, the bus stopped to allow the foolhardy to ride down the side of a mountain on a sled with wheels in a very long shallow metal luge. My twenty-something son, obviously having inherited none of my antipathy to pain genes, decided to try it. I sat in my wheel chair on the loading dock as he began to get onto a sled built for two. Out of the blue, a wild thought occurred to me.
“I’m already in pain and in a wheelchair, what have I got to lose?”
Before my wus self could talk me out of it, I stood up and said, “Wait, I’m going with you.” My son and my husband were too stunned to respond, so I climbed on as the worker began to start the sled down the luge. I was in the front where there was a hand brake. As we began to hurtle down the mountain, my instinct for survival kicked in, and I tugged desperately on the brake. To my relief, we began to slow.
At that point, a nine or ten year old boy luging behind us began to tail gate and my son took charge of the brake. I scrunched my eyes shut as we suddenly seemed airborne. As much as I wanted to scream in terror, I couldn’t risk it, since either my heart or my lunch was in my throat.
I offered God my first born son, (not the one with airline privileges), if He would save me from certain excruciating pain. When we came around the last curve and began leveling out and slowing down, I peeked out with one eye. There was my husband waiting at the bottom looking as terror stricken as I felt. When he helped me out and into my wheelchair, he asked anxiously, “Are you all right? How was it?”
“Piece of cake,” I replied through gritted teeth. I never told him I meant my dessert from lunch.
The Journey
At first, it seemed as if God walked
through the garden of my life
on velvet kitten paws,
gifting me with fleet impression
of brushing soft caress,
leaving feather light prints
in the tender earth
of my spirit.
But, in later times, God climbed
the granite mountain of my will
using painful stake and hobnail boots
to gain each foothold,
bringing about His kingdom
through the thundering voice
of circumstance.
Then recently, I sensed God lost,
absent on Sabbatical
of undetermined length,
leaving only fading echoes
in my memory.
Until at last, in desert night
and aching loneliness,
I faced my emptiness
and discovered Her within.
Don’t Forget to Keep Your Fork
Heard a story that, factual or not, gave me chills.
A woman was in the last stages of cancer. She gave her minister a list of hymns and scriptures that she wanted for her funeral. At the bottom was an enigmatic note: “Don’t forget the fork.”
When the minister asked for clarification, she replied: “I want a fork placed in my hand in the casket. I want to be buried with it in my hand.”
Looking puzzled, the minister agreed to make sure this happened, but asked her to explain why.
She explained, “When I was young, at all our special family dinners, my dad would always say, ‘Don’t forget to keep your fork. The best is yet to come.’ “
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 