THEME                Facing Reality with Hope

THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION

1. 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.
2. With the onset of frailty there is a greater possibility of being  sympathetic to the frailty of others.
3. Pain can be the beginning of liberation.
4. There is no worse fate than not to have really lived before you die.
5. The choice between life and death is the framework within which all other choices fall.
6. When you have experienced the mystery you can let go of the idea that you have to be eternally separate from it.
7. When you have experienced eternity in the present moment, you no    longer need to worry about that eternity which we call death.
8. When I stop struggling to be, I discover I AM.
9. What is death but a final letting go. The more I practice letting go, the more prepared for death I will be.
10. Below the crumpled exterior lay a surprising freshness.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

All will be well.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/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.