“One of the greatest challenges for older adults is to make the shift from doing to being.” These are the words of Mel Kimble, a Lutheran pastor who specializes in the spiritual issues of later life.
His words and that of other professionals involved in ministry to older people form part of two short videotapes produced by the Park Ridge Center of Chicago, an organization devoted to the study of health, faith, and ethics.
These tapes form part of an educational package entitled “The Challenges of Aging” intended for use in church settings. Information on this spiritually rich program is available at (877) 944-4401 or www.prchfe.org. [link no longer active]
Some older people themselves are seen on the tapes as they speak of the changes that they experience in their later years. They have discovered the rich spiritual opportunities that arrive with these years, along with more than a few challenges to their faith.
An experience shared by many of them is a new way of looking at life. As the camera focuses on the ascent of a peak in a mountain range, the narrator says, “They can glimpse the larger patterns of the landscape they have traversed.” This new perspective enables elders to see spiritual patterns in their life that remained hidden from them when they were younger.
Referring to the wealth of experience she has gained, one woman says, “There’s so much in the bank that you can pull up as you need it.” Another woman, Myrtle, sees it in theological terms: “It’s not you holding on to Him, but He is holding on to you.”
Jane Thibault, a psychologist who works with older people, endorses Myrtle’s approach. She speaks of the “need to have a relationship with a transcendent reality.” This relationship is what makes it possible for many elders afflicted with physical suffering not to lose heart.
This attitude toward life does not necessarily mean freedom from doubt. “You question,” says another woman, “but it’s good to question.” And Rabbi Dayle Friedman finds it important, she says, “to honor the questions, the struggles, the doubts.”
It’s beautiful to see on the tapes the way the religious phrases learned long ago come back bringing solace to old people who feel stripped of so many things they valued. A man named Clem weeps as he recites a passage from the fourteenth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel. His eyes also drop tears as he recites from memory words the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is My Shepherd.”
Words like those from the psalm have a resonance in old age that they may never have held previously. They have grown familiar over the years and now, when adversity strikes, they have the power to offer comfort and spiritual strength.
The theologian Martin Marty tells about his own parents for whom the psalms had not meant much for some sixty years of their lives. In old age, however, they rediscovered the power of these biblical prayers and drew comfort from them.
Jane Thibault calls old age “a natural monastery,” a place where one can come to know God better. “You have to give up sex,” she says; “You can’t digest some food.” Then she asks a crucial question: “Could it be that God is saying . . . now I’d like to get the opportunity to get to know you intimately before you die.”
Not everyone will take to later life presented in such stark terms but Dr. Thibault is convinced that a personal relationship with God remains the key to finding fulfillment. That kind of link in love has the power to enable people to endure much deprivation and yet taste joy at the same time.
A elderly woman, approaching the matter from another angle, says: “God does not like quitters.” She thus suggests how keeping at the spiritual life has its rewards.
And no matter how difficult things become, people retain the power to give something spiritual. Rabbi Friedman says as much: “One thing older people can give is blessing.”
This view is confirmed by an African American woman who says, “that people needed me was a blessing.” This same woman is seen as a source of blessing when she sits down at a piano, plays a spiritual, and belts out the lyrics loudly and without inhibition.
Richard Griffin