Green Leaves for Later Years E-Book

Emilie Griffin

• Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 231

Beschreibung

"What wisdom do I bring to the later years? Nothing more than the wisdom of dwelling in the present moment. No more than the courage of God's promises. Nothing more than the courage to walk through sorrow. No more than the unlimited future of God's love."So, Emilie Griffin, author, teacher, spiritual director, writes in her seventy-fifth year. In these pages she reflects on the beauty and the difficulty of aging. Pain mingles with gratitude. With her we learn again how to draw close to the Lord who longs to guide us through. Ideal for both individuals and discussion groups, each chapter ends with reflection questions and a prayer. Discover a spirituality that will sustain you in the later years.

Leseprobe

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Green Leaves for Later Years

The Spiritual Path of Wisdom

Emilie Griffin

www.IVPress.com/books

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Formatio books from InterVarsity Press follow the rich tradition of the church in the journey of spiritual formation. These books are not merely about being informed, but about being transformed by Christ and conformed to his image. Formatio stands in InterVarsity Press’s evangelical publishing tradition by integrating God’s Word with spiritual practice and by prompting readers to move from inward change to outward witness. InterVarsity Press uses the chambered nautilus for Formatio, a symbol of spiritual formation because of its continual spiral journey outward as it moves from its center. We believe that each of us is made with a deep desire to be in God’s presence. Formatio books help us to fulfill our deepest desires and to become our true selves in light of God’s grace.

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InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected]

© 2012 by Emilie Griffin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from THE JERUSALEM BIBLE, copyright ©1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd. and Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

While all stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

The excerpt from “September Song” by Edward Petherbridge is used by permission.

Cover design: Cindy Kiple Images: green skeleton of leaf: ©Olga Demchishina/iStockphoto torn paper: ©Gary Alvis/iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-6337-2 (digital) ISBN 978-0-8308-3565-2 (print)

For William

Friend, lover, life companion

For Lucy, Ardis, Avery

Children of my heart

Troy and Sarah

Larisa and Henry

Houston and Barbara

Balancing actors

Wily as coyotes

Gentle as doves,

Loving to hang out

To hang tight.

And Cindy Bunch

Believer and friend.

When I needed you

You waited for me.

And the green leaves grew all around.

Contents

Preface

1: Pushing Past the Pain

2: Blue Skies, Gray Skies

3: Stretching Toward Happiness

4: Grief, Loss, Anger

5: The Sustaining Grace of Friends

6: Resetting Goals and Picking Up the Pieces

7: Age

8: Following Christ

9: Forever, Just Over There

Appendix: Writing Your Spiritual Autobiography

Books on the Later Years

About the Author

Preface

It is early in the morning, and I am grateful. Grateful that in this year of grace I took a little of my own medicine and returned with a kind of humility. Well, a kind of humbling, at least—a low-to-the-ground way of remembering what it is to begin again. And again. And again. This is the year I admitted, for example, that I cannot ever find my Bible in the early morning, because the house is filled with Bibles, and not one of them is ever the one I’m after when it is still dark and I want to watch the light come up over the trees. For me the light is Christ.

So I begin again, looking for today’s Bible reading electronically this time, pulling the day’s Scripture up from the website I have bookmarked as “hodie,” which is Latin for “today.” It is also the first word of the chant monks use to open the Christmas Day antiphon at second vespers. Hodie Christus natus est. Today Christ is born.

This is the first line of Benjamin Britten’s “Hodie” in the Ceremony of Carols, that beautiful work of almost-chant that long ago swept me into the Christian life. And so each morning now this simple Latin word—hodie, “today,” “this day”—is my entrance into the beauty of the moment and the life of the Lord. Fittingly, it is in the later years that I claim this phrase as part of the day’s opening reading and opening prayer. Why fittingly? Because I am fully present in the moment, in the instant, yet by grace connected fully to the Lord. His word, my action. His touch, my word and world enough. Stretching across the globe itself by grace. My self extended. This word, this time, this instant of prayer, my entry point into the day.

Then, through my window—dawn. I am surrounded by green leaves. Emerging from the ground as ferns, wildly successful plants that tap against my windowpanes when the wind blows. Poking up everywhere, rising again like sap one forgets till spring and all comes once again alive, with Christ, with meaning, my Word, God, Lord of hope and all.

First light, first prayer

Now into winking blue I dive for the first sacred word and prayer of the day:

well it’s not blue screen

(that’s a tech term, electronics, all that)

but it’s my screen

blue

deep

winking in pre-dawn light

which is

on the whole

the best time of my day with God.

(though it could be any time.

you know how that goes.)

My bell

My diving Dell

opens a path

early early

not sure when

sometime before dawn.

blue screen

for me

unlimited future

and just to make it extra nice,

the metaphor,

blue is Our Lady’s color,

larkspur,

loveliness,

joy.

Hard to explain.

you had to be there.

But I was there,

it was me

and Jesus

me and Jesus

and the whole world besides.

Heart of Christ

Extending pole to pole

and still farther

into the limitless future

of God’s love.

When the above text was written, it was January and bitter cold. The text for the day was from the book of Acts: “We set sail from Troas, making a straight run for Samothrace” (Acts 16:11 NAB). I love this reading, and I love Paul’s journeys as ways into the life of God.

Leave Your Chair

“Bill Griffin has gone,” I wrote back in January, “onto the board of the Alexandria Museum of Art. I am glad of it. That’s my one glimmer of hope in a desolate winter, shaken by illness, a chaotic family Christmas, periods of temporary deafness, surging blood pressure, new medications, unpredictability. Only one answer, I conclude. Get up, leave your chair, stop letting rheumatoid arthritis and its courtesies dominate you. Learn to deflect, charmingly, the constant hum of well-intentioned advice that tells you you are sick and getting sicker and put on the Keds, the ones Wendy says you shouldn’t wear because they hurt her feet. Oh yes, you heard me right. I shouldn’t wear them because they leave her comfortless.”

That’s it in a nutshell. Everyone seems to have ideas, thoughts, suggestions about how I should get well. But unless the Keds fit, everyone stumbles. My conclusion is that I have to stretch into my recovery. Without being too demanding or officious, I have to take charge. Until you take charge of your own recovery, until you intend to get well, you won’t. Intending to get well isn’t the same as getting well, but it’s a start.

Here is what Oliver Sacks has to say about adaptation in the later years: “Whether it is by learning a new language, traveling to a new place, developing a passion for beekeeping or simply thinking about an old problem in a new way, all of us can find ways to stimulate our brains to grow, in the coming year and those to follow. Just as physical activity is essential to maintaining a healthy body, challenging one’s brain, keeping it active, engaged, flexible and playful, is not only fun. It is essential to cognitive fitness.”

Oliver Sacks encourages me. I find that his explorations of the worst-case scenarios, in which people have had scary experiences of brain failure, unexplained brain failure, are not depressing but encouraging. These clever New Yorker stories of his may look like entertainment to some. But to me, wrestling with all the uncertainties of the later years, Sacks is optimism itself.

I pause to reflect on what lies ahead. This is a big year for me as I turn seventy-five and try to decide what part of me is ready to rest and what part ready to rise and shine.

I make a list of the things that have happened since last year. Not the best things but the most significant things, things that have marked off the months and days. And I find they are few.

Bill Vaswig’s newsletter, in which he accepts his approaching death.

Gratitude for knowing Bill Vaswig and working with him.

Thanksgiving and Christmas (chaotic, confusing).

Epiphany, and the chance to speak of it at the Renovaré Institute in Menlo Park.

The Chrysostom Society meeting in the Hill Country of Texas.

The health scare involving Luci Shaw.

The list trails off. At my age—did I say I am seventy-five this year?—I hear a lot of “athlete talk” about pushing past the pain. I think about my editors and readers who have said, “Tell us more about your pain.” I hope in these pages I can respond to that question, maybe even be glad of such questions at last.

Hard. It’s hard, admitting to myself that spirituality can make a difference. My evaluation of the preceding year has begun after a week of teaching the spiritual life. And speaking is sometimes euphoric. When you teach the spiritual life you believe you are living it. What you sometimes don’t realize is that you, like all those in your audience, need to live each day as a new beginning. In the spiritual life there are no time-outs, no free passes. Everyone has to begin, and begin again.

So I name it all: The gift of pain. The challenge of illness and other surprises. The relentless march of birthdays, joyful yet wistful because they mark off time. My own inadequacy dealing with seas of paperwork. Losing a cherished letter in the whole post-Christmas rush. Bursts of insight and gratitude—for Conversations, a wonderful Christian journal, for friends near and far (the season brings them to mind—James Catford, friend in Christ; Kate Campbell, grace maker; Jan Peterson, friend, encourager). The bah-humbug side of Christmas. Recovery, my own, because I have to begin again. Admitting to myself that Christmas is not always peaceful, that family connections are sometimes chaotic. The sorrow of it, taking the fall—that is, accepting my own inadequacy and my need to begin again.

Some weeks later, after days of new beginnings, another list emerges. This time it’s more of a gratitude list, but not without dark spots. “Amazing Bill Griffin,” the list begins. Then next I write the title of his novel, Dill of the Nile. March 25th, Feast of the Annunciation, is the publishing date for Dill. I begin to understand that part of me is unhinged by the flood of feelings released by the holidays—concerns about people in far-off places, friends I can’t always visit in person but don’t want to lose. Then there are friends and colleagues facing death—like our friend Father Val, a Dominican priest in his eighties, brilliantly transcending his illness though it is a constant fact of life for him.

A Spirituality for the Later Years

Some years ago one of the best modern writers on the life cycle, Erik Erikson (1902–1994), realized that he was starting to outlive his categories. He had identified seven stages of life, had written and studied and taught about them extensively, but the longevity of modern people was beginning to outstrip his analysis.

So he began to write and speak about the years after age sixty-five as new and adventurous territory. He applied many of the life lessons he had already discovered and came up with some new ones. The word “wisdom” continually appeared in his writing. But also he wanted to correct the ster­eotypes of old age and offer a freedom to reinterpret these later stages of living.

My central theme in this book is how Christian faith informs us in the life journey, especially in later years. From time to time I will also touch on my own struggle with illness, a wide array of autoimmune diseases. I don’t want to dwell on the pain. But the pain is real. I don’t want to suppose that if I just don’t think about it, it will go away. I want to show where my encouragement comes from: how God speaks in my life. Especially I am encouraged by Jeremiah 17, which tells us that the righteous person is like a tree planted by living water, whose leaves stay green.

In writing this book I have learned a good deal through observation, reading and study, conversing with others and simply through my own experience and reflection. The words I like best to deal with this stage of life are “transcendence” and “adaptation.” My focus is on a person’s quest to live deeply and well. My delight has been to raise good questions. Does later life have meaning? Should people continue to work? Should their work change or shift in some way? How important is the creative side of living? What about lifelong learning? What is a good fundamental attitude about change and diminishment? Should society change to accommodate these new “elders”?

The Hidden Spot

Sometimes I think there is a hidden spot in the universe where God is to be found, God and the whole rest of the world besides. It is a sort of Aladdin’s cave of memory, joy and courage where all the spiritual gifts glitter in the darkness and every jewel shines.

When I first set out to offer God the best I had, I reflected on an image: the apples of my experience ripening, falling, scattering on the ground. I pictured myself entering into my future with all the hopes and gratitude of a life well lived, trying to gather all the golden apples of the Spirit, the beauties God had bestowed on me.

The years ahead would be my new territory—years of joy and sorrow and uncertainty in the uncharted country of the heart with the Lord himself as my guide. Day by day I would follow this shadowy figure on the path. Sometimes Jesus would walk beside me; sometimes he would climb the rock just ahead and wait for me to catch up, battling with forces of fear and death like Gandalf at the crag of doom. Sometimes I would imagine Jesus as a twelve-year-old, a youth barely older than a child but already wise and able to explain to his elders the meaning of God’s plan.

That was my Jesus, and I would follow him.

I sat in a coffeehouse and attempted to capture—like a sketch artist who works quickly because the light is fading and the sun will soon be down—the vision I had seen, the glimpse into the meaning of existence that is the writer’s only spiritual treasure.

Then fear closed in. Fear and self-doubt, my ancient enemies: Who do you think you are, to bring the golden apples of God’s wisdom to the world? To the bystanders, the wayfarers, the random readers who riffle the pages and put the book down? Who declared you the keeper of the universe?

Then I knew for sure that the Lord was with me. At every step of the long journey that is the later years, he has accompanied me. There are many who tell me they do not know the Lord, that he has never walked with them, never offered a wafer of comfort along the hard and perilous way. And I tell them, “Wait.”

Wait until all earthly consolations and comforts fall away. Wait until the constellations that once populated the night sky fade and the universe seems to grow cold. Think, always, that when you are exhausted and drained from the long trudge of existence, there will be golden apples on the ground, scattered randomly but wonderfully ripe. Never hesitate to think, The Lord put this one here just for me. It is an old story, and the Lord never seems to stop telling it. It is a story of encouragement, confidence and love.

I am conscious of the passing of years. As I move into the future I am conscious of all the coffeehouse reflections of the past—discarded pages, lists and notes that have long ago vanished into the muddle of whatever I did to serve him, whatever I did to confront my own monsters on the crag, whatever I did to harvest the apples and scatter them to the world, to the random wayfarers with whom I stopped to share a bite.

What wisdom do I bring to the later years?

Nothing more than the wisdom of dwelling in the present moment. No more than the courage of God’s promises. Nothing more than the perseverance to walk through sorrow. No more than the unlimited future of God’s love.

Emilie Griffin

Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels

Alexandria, Louisiana

1 Pushing Past the Pain

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,

and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

For by me your days will be multiplied,

and years will be added to your life.

Proverbs 9:10-11 ESV

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

T. S. Eliot

You could live to be ninety,” my doctor said.

“Really?” I answered. He had gotten my attention.

We were discussing the distortion of my hands from rheumatoid arthritis. The doctor wanted me to consider surgery on my hands. At least he wanted me to investigate it. But for me, the revelation was that he thought I might live to my ninetieth birthday. Up to that point I had never considered such a long life.

Even though I am older than I ever planned to be, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about old age. In fact, I avoid the idea of “old age,” which for me connotes weakness, decline, debility, loss of faculties and maybe a certain distortion of vision. I have, in short, accepted without realizing it (without intending it) most of the caricatures of old age. Rather dark humor accompanies this phase of life. “What’s the alternative?” people say jokingly, but the joking has an edge.

There’s another way of looking at the later years: not as old age but long life. Scripture speaks of these later years as a gift from God, a reward from him. Our lives are extended by God because we are wise, having gained in knowledge and insight. But what does this mean on a practical level about how we are to live? What do we do with the gift, the blessing, the quandary and challenge of long life?

I went to see the hand doctor about a possible surgery. He took x-rays. He studied my case. He talked to me about how I use my hands, what kinds of things I can still do. He told me what surgery might accomplish; he also explained what couldn’t be corrected and what damage would remain. I kept repeating that my doctor had suggested the surgery.

“But do you want the surgery?” the hand doctor asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“We should do the surgery not when he wants it but when you want it,” he said. In the meantime, we agreed, he would monitor my situation. That visit was at least three years ago, and as far as I can tell my hands are the same.

True, there are certain negatives about growing older. Physical decline is a big issue. Still, I think the larger challenge of old age is not physical but spiritual. How are we to transcend the obstacles of the later years? How should we imagine long life? How can we cherish and value the gift of long life? What kind of people does God mean for us to be? What do we desire and intend for ourselves during the later years of our lives?

During my reflections I decided to look for examples of long life well-lived. And I resolved to consult the Bible for its wisdom on the later years.

A Long Life

On February 11, 2010, a great celebration was held in South Africa and around the world in honor of Nelson Mandela, then ninety-two. Great crowds remembered the moment twenty years earlier when Mandela was released from prison. He was hailed as the heroic figure who brought down the rule of apartheid. British prime minister Gordon Brown remembered that moment as a defining event of our times.

Thousands remembered Mandela walking to freedom after twenty-seven years of incarceration. They recalled him stepping out of the Cape Town prison, then called Victor Verster, holding hands with his wife Winnie, a figure of defiance in her own right. A ten-foot-high bronze statue erected on the site in 2008 depicts Mandela’s return to freedom: his fist raised, but smiling and determined to enjoy this amazing moment.

“We knew that his freedom meant our freedom had also arrived,” Cyril Ramaphosa told the assembled crowds at the prison twenty years later. Ramaphosa had been a leader in Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and headed a committee that welcomed Mandela back to freedom in 1990. On this day of commemoration he and other ANC leaders reenacted Mandela’s historic walk from the gates of the prison, linking arms and shouting, “Viva Mandela!” But Winnie Madikizela-Mandela decided not to join the reenactment. It would have been too painful, she explained. She and Nelson Mandela were divorced in 1996.

Four years after his release from prison, Mandela was elected South Africa’s first black president. He served just one five-year term, hoping to establish a precedent of democratically elected leadership that would be a contrast to the dictatorships and power-mongering elsewhere in Africa and the world. In his life as well as in his rhetoric, Mandela denounced fraud and violence. He also championed racial reconciliation, encouraging a peaceful transition of power for his beloved country. Mandela is a professing Christian, not only raised by Wesleyans in Africa but embracing his Christian faith over a lifetime. He has stated that his Christian faith helped him to endure his long imprisonment.

Since Mandela’s election in 1994, his ANC party has made great strides in reducing poverty. Houses have been built. Water, electricity and schools have been provided for blacks who never had them under apartheid. But great gaps remain between the rich and the poor. And now there is another irony. Some blacks are rich, including new black entrepreneurs, while others are poor.

Even so, Nelson Mandela can see how in his one lifespan he made a beginning. He knows what he did with his energy, commitment and time. For him, the gift of long life has allowed him to see and take consolation in South Africa’s achievements during his lifetime.

Mandela was born from an African royal strain, though he was not eligible for kingship. His lifelong struggle for justice and better living conditions for his people makes one wonder whether the ancient notion of kingship has merit after all. Like Henry V in Shakespeare’s play, Mandela went among his people in disguise as it were, asking few privileges for himself, working in menial jobs and struggling to be educated as a lawyer and gain accreditation. After becoming a lawyer he worked on behalf of blacks who could not afford costly legal representation. His whole concern seems to have been for justice. Throughout much of his early career he was an armed activist fighting against apartheid. Charged with sabotage, he was tried and convicted in the South African courts and sent to jail. During his long imprisonment he worked at hard labor and received poor rations but nevertheless studied law via correspondence and gained prominence as a political figure even in jail. This is a man who transcended difficulties and overcame obstacles.

Mandela has received 250 awards and honors, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2009 the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish his birthday, July 18, as Mandela Day, honoring his contribution to world freedom.

Morgan Freeman, the American actor, played Mandela in the film Invictus. It was a role he long aspired to, he told The Guardian; his challenge was not only to offer a realistic portrayal of a man still living, but also to humanize Mandela since he was already of such heroic and mythical stature. Freeman worked to show Mandela’s limitations yet also convey the inspirational quality of his leadership.

Such humanizing is a worthwhile effort. After all, the patriarchs were human. Abraham and Sarah were human. They had weaknesses and gave way to them. But their lives had tremendous impact and force. Their weaknesses made their strengths more believable. They inspired—and continue to inspire—many generations after them.

An Extra Decade

When someone lives to be ninety-two, we’re inclined to think he has been granted an extra decade. In fact, that’s what the Bible says: “For by me your days will be multiplied, and years will be added to your life” (Prov 9:11 ESV). However, what matters isn’t so much the accomplishments of those ten years. What counts the most is the perspective gained, both for those who live long and others who observe them. Time extended lets us see the arc of a life, what the trajectory of that life is reaching for, where it seems to be heading and, maybe, what that life has meant.

When I picture these extra years of long life I don’t immediately think of a happy, fulfilled person sitting in a rocking chair and receiving visitors. Instead, what comes to mind is more like a chase scene in a movie with Matt Damon playing Jason Bourne. The driver is maneuvering against oncoming traffic, and the likelihood of collision is high. With split-second timing he swerves to avoid obstacles, but his instincts are amazingly sure. The accumulated experience of a lifetime gives him very sharp judgment, uncanny skill. He moves with a kind of dead-on certainty toward what he is chasing. Life, in this scenario, is an obstacle course, and the winners are those who skirt the worst of it.

At the same time the person in question gives way to reality. He or she can’t predict exactly what lies ahead. The oncoming traffic of existence is part of the joy, part of the challenge and excitement. Not only that: the heart surrenders and lets go.

Two older people I have worked with in Renovaré are William Vaswig and Roger Fredrikson. Vaswig, a Lutheran pastor and prayer-healer, died in his late seventies after dealing for many years with a heart ailment. Fredrikson, a pastor who recently turned ninety, has struggled with various forms of cancer. Sometimes he is in remission. Sometimes the cancer returns. Always Fredrickson lives joyfully with simple trust in God.

Both of these men are known for strong faith. Their constant drive along the obstacle course of living seems to show unerring skill. I have loved being with them to share their childlike vitality and joy. Both men have reminded me to enjoy the adventure of living, to relish the unexpected. I think it is all about trust—how they have trusted God with the arc of their lives, the trajectory of their existence.

Not to mention loving the Bible. I enjoyed their keen love of the Bible and personal style of prayer, like they were having a constant conversation with God. They joked and laughed, sometimes even danced. They liked to clown around, especially with a friendly audience around them. Since Bill’s death, I am glad to say, the whole Renovaré circle has continued this delightful personal style of prayer.