‘What’s Happening?’
For each of us, there is probably a defining moment when we sense we are crossing the threshold from feeling that we’re in ‘the prime of life’ to the awareness that we’re ‘not as young as we used to be’. For me the year 2007 was such. I had retired from full-time work in administration. I had time of my own; I could do what I wanted with my days. It was a great feeling, but also disorienting: ‘Who am I now?’ I asked myself, ‘and what will I be doing for the rest of my days?’
Then, on Good Friday that year a fire burnt down my Jesuit home. Much of the life I’d known went up in smoke, and a bleak and uncharted future loomed ahead. What was familiar had disappeared – books, writings, notes, bric-a-brac, clothes, photos – and part of me was gone with them. In this time of shock, I knew that I had been rocketed into a new phase of life, with new challenges and surprises. I was being introduced – against my will – to my senior years, the ‘Third Age’ as it is kindly called. So I am writing from that perspective, and I’m addressing primarily those of you who know ageing from the inside. If you haven’t yet entered this strange world, knowledge of its landscape may help you relate more richly to those who have.
Spirituality
The process of ageing occurs to everything: to cats and stars and TVs and saucepans, to the universe itself, and to all of us whether we like it or not. We see ageing all around us; we know what it is. But what about the ‘spirituality’ of ageing?
A recent book listed forty-eight definitions of the term ‘spirituality’, but let’s be simple and agree that the spirituality of ageing situates the ageing process in the context of our relationship with God. A spirituality is an assertion that there is Another involved in our life. Next, Christian spirituality means that Jesus interprets our life to us: Buddhists, Jews and Humanists would interpret ageing differently.
Practically it makes an enormous difference to you if you accept the Christian spirituality of ageing: there’s all the difference in the world between dancing alone and dancing with a partner, so we will be exploring how you can dance your final years with God, until you enter into the Dance that goes on forever.
‘Can I Trust You?’
Can we trust God to stay with us as we age? Does God grow tired of us, or will he truly lead us in the dance of our declining years? Trust is all-important in life, whether you are dancing with a partner, looking for a good friendship or living out a marriage. The deeper the trust, the more alive our relationship with the other will be, because we can then risk sharing more and more of ourselves. Ideally, when you trust someone enough, you can let yourself go completely into their arms.
So, if your relationship with God is already a trusting and happy one, you are ready to move along into this new chapter of your life, and even to enjoy it. If you are aware that God loves you through and through, thank God endlessly for this transforming realisation: it is not to be taken for granted.
As we age we become more dependent, less able to manage for ourselves: we can entrust our neediness to God only if we are at ease with him. But if you feel you can’t be sure of God, then you will be afraid to risk this deeper dependency on him. And so I start this series by addressing those of you whose relationship with God has not been so good. My hope is that you can then make a leap of trust in God or at least pray: ‘I trust you, God, but help my lack of trust.’
I also invite you not just to read but to pray the content of each article in this series: ask God what he wants to show you. God and yourself are in this together!
Loved Conditionally?
When I was writing the book, Our Graced Life-Stories, someone said to me: ‘I’d love to be in that group.’
‘Which group?’ I asked.
‘I’d love to be one of the people who have a graced life-story!’
This was a shock to me: I had taken it for granted that everyone had a graced life story, and only needed to be made more aware of it. In chatting, I found that the person meant that she had little sense of being loved by God.
‘And,’ she said, ‘there are so many like me. We try to be good, to live out our faith. We attend Mass and so on. We read the Messenger ‘Letters of Thanksgiving’ and often shed a tear, because we don’t really believe that God loves us. After all, why should he?’
She continued: ‘I feel that God just about tolerates me: he has to because he made me. I go to God to ask for what I need, but I’m afraid. Why? Well, I think that God loves me only IF I measure up to his standards, which of course I rarely do. I’m afraid he might get at me through my children – I can stand being hurt myself, but I couldn’t stand them being hurt. When I hear someone blithely say to me ‘God loves you!’ it hurts. I’m sure God pities me, as you’d pity a family outsider, but I doubt he has compassion on me such as I have for my own children. I feel I don’t belong. I don’t think of God as ‘kind’ – that for me is love in its truest form. I’m not at home with God – home is a kind word which for me means acceptance, welcome, belonging. Jesus says: ‘Make your home in me’ but I can’t do it. It’s a lonely place, to feel left out – the unwanted child.
‘I know I bought into what my parents taught me about God, and it wasn’t nice. Their acceptance of me was conditional, it was ‘iffy’. But if I wasn’t good enough for my parents just as I was, how can I be good enough for God? But still, that’s not the whole story! Over the past while all sorts of good things have happened to make me doubt my childhood voices. Now I want to let the real God speak for himself. I’ve always wanted someone who’d know me – my likes and loves, my fears, my secrets, the deepest parts of me – and I’m trying to risk trusting that God is that Someone who knows me and yet loves me and that I matter to him. I’m taking baby steps in trust. I pray a lot for that grace. I can’t be really alive unless I take that risk.
‘So I’m in a better place than I was ten years ago. I’m beginning to believe that I’m caught up in a love story with God. In a way I look forward to whatever years I have left, because they’ll be happier than the ones gone by. I can see that God’s looking out for me in the good things that happen me. Isn’t that great? And the flaws of the saints – Augustine and Ignatius and Matt Talbot for example – show me that having flaws isn’t a barrier to being close to God. I can be flawed and loved, like an imperfect diamond!’
So speaks an honest woman, and since none of us trusts God enough, her story can help us to ask for what we may need, as St Ignatius says. Here we will ask to trust more and more the God who leads us through this mysterious world of ageing.
Conversation with the Lord
Find a comfortable place and a quiet time. Imagine the Lord coming to you: his heart is full: he wants to get across to you just how deeply he and his Father love you. He knocks and comes in: he embraces you. You see in his eyes the message he has for you. You relax, and he says:
‘I want to tell you the most important secret you need to know for your later years. It’s this: my Father and I will always think of you as our beloved! Our love for you has no conditions. So can you trust us as we guide you on to eternal joy?’
How do you respond?