Worship Materials: Aging
From the Celebrating Mystery collection
THEME Facing Reality with Hope
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION
- Unlike our bodies our spirits need not be wearied by age but can become more and more lively day by day. To grow in spirit requires a vision that holds all things together.
- With the onset of frailty there is a greater possibility of being sympathetic to the frailty of others.
- Pain can be the beginning of liberation.
- There is no worse fate than not to have really lived before you die.
- The choice between life and death is the framework within which all other choices fall.
- When you have experienced the mystery you can let go of the idea that you have to be eternally separate from it.
- When you have experienced eternity in the present moment, you no longer need to worry about that eternity which we call death.
- When I stop struggling to be, I discover I AM.
- What is death but a final letting go. The more I practice letting go, the more prepared for death I will be.
- Below the crumpled exterior lay a surprising freshness.
- Since the ageing process was locked into our genes at conception, it seems rather irrational for us human beings to have so much difficulty in accepting its inevitability.
- If the beating of one butterfly’s wings can influence the weather, if even so minutely, how dare I say that my life is of no consequence and that I have no contribution to make to the dance of this evolving planet.
- It is the function of ageing to look down the avenue of the years and to heal the memories of the past through embracing and transforming them, to let go of all things and to discover the I AM everywhere.
PRAYER
O God into your hands I commit the process of my body. Help me not to be afraid of growing older, for that is something that I ultimately cannot change. With all other flesh, my body will return to the elements thus completing nature’s cycle. As ageing takes its toll, help me to develop the quality of my inner life so that whatever loss of physical powers may occur, I may have a fiesta of spirituality before my time of dying.
HYMNS
When we feel all weighed down. (BL)
All our dying shares a process. (BL)
Must death appear as always stealing life. (BL)
You are the process God. (BL)
At each journey’s ending point (BL)
Everything has its own season.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/the-mystery-telling
All will be well.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/the-mystery-telling
Through the love of God our Father.
Singing the Sacred Vol 2 2014 World Library Publications
REFRAIN
In the letting go. (BL and SE/MU)
POEMS
THE BEACH
Wedged between
the gentle inevitability
of the slap, slap, slapping tide
caressing the thighs
of the beach
and a wall
of bawdy
going nowhere
bar-room songs
spilling out
from the pub,
a new-dawn couple
resolutely advanced
into the enveloping darkness
and a child wandered,
molding new patterns
on the top of the
waveless waters of the bay.
God as I stand
on the beach
of my twilight days
help me painfully
to liberate all the
children and young lovers
imprisoned within me
and together
embrace
your multi-colored
fiesta of life.
FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE
For most of his life he fought to protect his creativity
But in his retirement he became captive to it
As he sought vainly
To compress a life-time
Into the parameters of impending
Death.
All this was, however
Sweetened by the softness
Of his inner child
Dancing with his wedded
Playmate.
FOOTPRINTS
My
footprints soon will be
unremembered,
obscured
by time’s shifting sands.
Written words
may outlive breath
but value lies in
BEING
rather
than
remembering,
since life
is no future dream
but God’s ever-living,
seldom-lived
NOW.
IF I AM PRIVILEGED
If I am privileged
to live until
the point of the coming together
of past and present
and the immersing
of former pain and delight
in quiet pools of reflection
then, O God, with gentle determination
I will allow my life
to be transformed
into its own benediction for all that is
and commemoration of all that was.
THE OLDER I GROW
The older I grow
The more there is to unlearn
In order to put my thinking
Right side up.
Now I believe
That less is better than more,
That sharing is better than owning,
That there are many ways to God and
That the best way for me is not necessarily the best way for others,
That experience is more important than definition,
That it is better to be travelling than to imagine one has arrived,
That pilgrims should dance not march,
That letting go is more important than striving,
That trusting is more valuable than knowing,
That the process is more vital than the parts,
That wisdom comes from intuition as well as from the intellect,
That God wants us to be empowered rather than dependent,
That the less I am certain the wiser I become,
That true justice has a forgiving face,
That awareness of God comes most fully in the
present moment rather than past memory or future hope,
That everything is connected and
That complete separation is an unhealthy illusion,
That we are called to be co-workers with nature
Rather than manipulators and controllers,
That God is in the silence more than in the words
And that deep down all is well
Despite all the evidence to the contrary.
DOES IT MATTER?
Does it matter, O God,
that I will die
before I have finished?
Help me to be mindful
that for the dreamer
there is always another vision
clamoring to be born
from within the psyche.
What matters is not the product
but the process.
So, dear Christ,
may I each day
reverence the process,
learn from and delight in the journey,
and with wonder
pilgrimage the WAY
of the eternal NOW.
CHERRY TREE BLOSSOMS
Petals from the cherry tree’s blossomed profusion
Gracefully dance their requiem
In the wind.
And I also must walk the way of blossoms,
The path of life ending.
But fear not my spirit
For as trees remain after the blossom has fled
So family trees remain.
And as blossoms turn to fruit
Sometimes one’s life finds its true meaning after death.
TO THE YOUNG
To the young we older people
Sometimes seem rather odd
With our lined faces, protruding veins,
Uncertain gait and failing memories.
Often the young cannot imagine
That one day they will look like us.
And we who are old like to pretend
That this process is not happening.
Hopefully at least some of us oldies
Will have learnt that a person’s value
Does not lie in their appearance
But in the depth of their compassion.
Then we will grow to see
Christ in all people
Regardless of their appearance.
RETIREMENT?
Should retirement
Be a space of reflection?
Perhaps, if one has spent
One’s life in action.
If on the other hand
Life has been spent in reflection
Maybe retirement can be time
To birth reflection into concrete form
So that the inner life
Is not conserved
For private consumption
But shared with a generosity
That brings life
To both giver and receiver
Both guest and host.
ELDERLY GRACE
When I can no longer manage
matters myself
may I have the grace
to let others do it for me
so that I do not become
an irascible,
unlovable,
past my “use by date”
PAIN
to others.
ONE OF LIFE’S IRONIES
One of life’s ironies in so-called “developed” countries
Is how the elderly are often regarded
As bodies to be cared for and minds to be disregarded.
It seems because they were born before the advent of television,
Computers, cell phones, compact disks, DVDs, emails and faxes
They must of necessity be regarded
As incapable of being “with it”.
In the realm of technology that may at least be partially correct!
But would we not all benefit from listening to the wisdom
Which they have accumulated in the course of their life time.
Indeed if spirituality is a pilgrimage
Is it not more beneficial to listen to the reflections of age
Than the self assurance of youth.
Surely we would be wiser
If we rediscovered
The reverence for the aged
That so called “underdeveloped” and “primitive societies”
Have attempted to retain!
FOCUS FOR ACTION
One of our major developmental tasks as we face up to the relentless ageing process is to make our peace with the reality of death. In practice all actions of letting go are small deaths. Suffering and grief often precede letting go, but the letting go itself is one of the most peaceful moments in life. It is a moment of utter trust.
Death is also a moment of oneness. In the ideology surrounding free market economics, one of the supreme values is individualism. Yet our moments of greatest rapture lie not in our separation from other people, or from nature, or from God but in our oneness. It is as if one plus one equals three, i.e. the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Could we not view death as a dissolution into communal bliss, a reuniting with our human ancestors and also with our mother the earth, with our grandmother the sea, with our father the sky and in stillness await our reshaping into another form of the eternally creative now?
LOGO NOTE: At the heart of the mystery all the separate boxes disappear and all is one, all is love.
Text and graphic © William Livingstone Wallace but available for free use.