Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of
Corvallis
Corvallis, Oregon
Force of Character: Aging in an Age of Youth
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Rev. Gretchen Woods
Reading:
from The Force of Character and
the Lasting Life
by James Hillman
Why do older people become moralists, sentimentalists, and
radicals? They chain themselves to threatened trees; they march, they shout.
They lecture Walkmaned ears about the moral decline of the West. We old ones
are indignant, outraged, shamed.
Why is fading away not enough; why can’t we let our light go
down behind the graying hills?
Sundown is the wrong image, for the sun’s decline is marked
with fire, a last protest, a call to beauty. We would enhance the day, not let
it dim into the evening’s serenity. “More light,” said Goethe as his went out.
Not sweet swallows twittering at dusk, but incessant vespers; summoning bells;
a call to sermonize. “According to Plato, robbing the Gods and subversion are
excusable crimes when committed under the influence of extreme old age.” (p. xxiii
)
To the question, “Why am I old?” the usual answer is,
“Because I am becoming dead.” But the facts show that I reveal more character
as I age, not more death. I am not denying my eventual death, but I am not
going to spend the last of life writing about what I cannot know.
Far more important is to look at older years as a state of
being, and “old” as an archetypal phenomenon with its own myths ad meanings.
That’s the bolder challenge: to find the value in aging without borrowing that
value from the metaphysics and theologies of death. Aging, itself, a thing of
its own, freed from the corpse.
An eager interest in “old” as an archetypal possibility in
all things, as a given with human beings as with all being, is what our society
misses, what older people miss particularly and yearn to discover. For we know
we must pass our days and nights under the auspices of the implacable god who
rules last years and wants sacrifice. The neglect of that god is reflected in
the neglect of the aged and in the old-age home with its routines in place of
rituals, a secular sanctuary with no transcendent vision, no archetypal
footing. (pp. Xxi-xxvii )
Sermon:
"Force of
Character: Aging in an Age of Youth"
In April, I
turned sixty years old. I never expected to make it past twenty-five, then not
past fifty. As my mother observed in a similar situation to mine at present, “I
am too old to die young!” Still, I am hardly an elder, compared to the many
wise folks in this congregation who are decades older than me. A recent
newspaper article asserted that “Sixty is the new forty, and eighty is the new
sixty.”
Yet, we
live in a culture where aging is kept at bay, then often hidden when the aged
show weakness. Entertainment Weekly laments the aging of the TV audience – and there is still “nothing
on.” In an article in the October 17 Time, Dr. Andrew Weil berates the
anti-aging industry. He states unequivocally, “There are at present no effective
antiaging medicines. Yet the field keeps expanding.” He goes on to note, “To my mind, all this represents attempts to
deny or make the outward signs of aging. It is nonacceptance of aging – one of
the great obstacles to doing it gracefully.”
Still, we are
living longer, more viable lives – and we are curious about what aging offers
us. A frequently asked question in the last two “Question Box” services had to
do with addressing aging, rather than dying. We offer information on dying
every year, but, as these folks note, we have not discussed aging itself in any
clear way. This is a first attempt, but I assure you, there will be many more.
So today,
let us consider stages of aging (as understood by James Hillman), some
suggestions on how to improve the quality of our aging (as understood by Dr.
Andrew Weil), and the deep spiritual potential of aging. That should be more
than enough to occupy our few minutes of study and search together.
James
Hillman reminds us that aging is part of the human condition. He says, “Let us
entertain the idea that character requires the additional years and that
the long last of life is forced upon us neither by genes nor by conservational
medicine nor by societal collusion. The last years confirm and fulfill
character.” (Hillman, p. xiii.) Hillman believes the study of human
nature lies at the heart of the human soul’s journey through life. This is
similar to the Vedic notion that each life is Brahma experiencing itself: the
richer and more interesting, the better.
Hillman notes, “The old are like images on display that transpose
biological life into imagination, into art.” (Ibid. p. xv.) He asks us
to consider aging as an art form.
Then he
divides the process into three stages: Lasting, Leaving, and Left. As he
describes this process:
. . . this (process). . . expands upon the changes character
undergoes in later life. First, the desire to last as long as one can; then the
changes in body and soul as the capacity to last leaves and character becomes
more and more exposed and confirmed until the third piece of the puzzle
emerges: what is left when you have left. (p. xxviii.)
While we
may not have given much thought to this process before, the stages make some
sense when examined.
The first stage, lasting, has
a deep history of respect and honor. Hillman opines:
Our
experience of aging is so embedded in numbers of years left to live, as given
by longevity tables, that we can hardly believe that for centuries late years
were associated not with dying but with vitality and character. The old were
not mainly thought of as limping through death’s door, but were regarded as
stable depositories of customs and legend, guardians of local values, experts
in skills and crafts, and valued voices in communal council. What mattered was
force of character proven by length of years. (p. 3-4.)
Hillman
reminds us that, in generations past, many children died in childbirth or
infancy, then accidents and illnesses took more of them, so mortality was
associated with youth. Those who made it through childhood were seen as
significantly valuable to society. But what is it that lasts? Is the person the
same or changed in some ways simply by lasting?
The answer
lies in one’s development of character. “Only if their character has refined
its intelligence, broadened its learning, and been tested in crises can the old
serve society.” (p. 17.) Native Americans believe that one should live so that
one has good stories to tell, good lessons to offer to those who follow.
“Society asks for qualities beyond stamina, remembrances, and piled-up
“experiences.”” (Ibid.) The elders become the “bearers of the heritage” of the
particular society, furthering the values of the whole or “the greater good of
all.” They are asked to grow down into the traditions of their people,
to listen well to what the people are saying and what their inward voice is
saying, and to expand their vision outward toward what is ineffable, so that
they may bring a depth of observation to the process of the group in which they
share. “This dislocation of self from center to indefinite edge merges us more
with the world, so that we can feel “blest by everything.” (p. 37.) We become
more eccentric as we age, discovering our true sense of self but also
uncovering the wider world as well.
Lasting follows a basic law of nature:
self-preservation. It makes lots of sense intuitively. Leaving, the next
stage, involves a change of attitude from holding on to letting go. “It is not
who we are leaving, but a set of attitudes and interpretations regarding the
body and the mind that have outlasted their usefulness – and their
youthfulness.” (p. 54.) In fact, we may feel more ourselves than ever before,
once we let go of the ideas and attitudes about ourselves and how we should be
in the world that seemed essential to lasting. The past attitudes “. . . can no
longer sustain us, not because we are old, but because they are old.
(Ibid.)
There comes
a time when all that we felt was most important comes into question and much of
it may be let go. We no longer need to raise our families and pay for their
needs. We care less about self-preservation and physical strength and more
about building our character. “As we unfold into speaking, standing,
walking, discriminating, and mastering, so we may infold, once called
the involution of aging.” (p. 59.) We may spend less attention on particulars
and a great deal more on the general, the big picture, the transcendent. In
India, older men go into ashrams to spend time in meditation.
When one
moves from leaving to left, one can refine the deepest things
that matter. After letting go of the superfluous, what is left? We may come
closest to our pure essence when we are preparing to leave the body, for the
character, the soul is now often most truly what it is and can be, given long
life. Hillman puts it this way:
Left at the end is not a simple piece of nature, but a
peculiar concoction of soul and nature, a composition that is both
psychologically susceptible and naturally resistant to being what it is not. We
are able to receive, to be moved and touched, and yet we remain undeviatingly
true to our given nature. (p. 163.)
Which is
not to say that one ever attains this completely. We are all still in process,
Each day presents new opportunities to reframe and reform, but our essence
remains. Carol Gaebler, one of the early gerontologists, once observed that we
simply become more of who we truly are, even if we are more cranky and
demanding, rather than sweet and caring. Most often we are both – and we are
truly unique, particular.
Santayana
noted, “Our distinction and glory as well as our sorrow, will have lain in
being something particular.” What is left is irreplaceable by anyone else. It
is in images that remain after we are gone, indelible images known by those who
remain and by the ineffable energies we leave behind that cannot be measured
but only experienced. Even when we have left, there is something left. That is
our immortality.
Far less
romantic than Hillman, Dr. Andrew Weil comes to the conclusion that living well
basically points toward lasting longer and truncating the actual leaving. He
eschews the anti-aging business for practical process, but believes we can take
control of our aging:
To age gracefully means to let nature take its course while
doing everything in our power to delay the onset of age-related disease. Or, in
other words, to live as long and as well as possible, then have a rapid decline
at the end of life. (Andrew Weil, “Aging Naturally,” in Time, October
17, 2005, p. 62.)
Weil want
us to live well, to last and leave with grace, and, finally, to allow the end
to be brief. No mention of what is left.
One
question I have for the good Dr. Weil, “When do I get to “Let myself go?” I
suppose it is an indication of entering the leaving stage, that I ask
this question, but it troubles me late at night when I really want some ice
cream, and feel I should avoid it to keep my blood pressure down. But I have
eaten abstemiously for years, and I still have high blood pressure! Sigh . . .
I digress. .
Weil points
out that eating well (lots of fruits and veggies, enough complex carbohydrates
and protein, chewy fiber, vitamins, water, and supplements) is one sure way to
extend lasting. Of course, exercise, in all forms, can extend the lasting stage as well. And he includes dancing,
walking, golf, swimming, yoga, and tai chi as examples, as well as running and
lifting weights. Rest – what’s that? – extends in the lasting and leaving
stages. On this, both Hillman and Weil agree. Hillman sees value in the lessons
within late night waking. Weil suggests that naps are useful to getting enough
rest. Both also understand that one needs touch and sexual stimulation, at
whatever age one is. Our bodies need the release. Stress may be relieved
through meditation and exercise. Attention to all of these improve the quality
of one’s life during later years.
Spiritually,
what does aging offer? First, more time to give to one’s understanding of one’s
relationship with one’s self and the world. One useful way to spend this time
of aging might involve creating an Ethical Will, giving voice to the character
we have become. We have already spoken often about Durable Powers of Attorney
for Health Care and for one’s legal issues, Living Wills and legal Wills, but
the Ethical Will is something else. It is a statement of the wisdom, the
values, one has gleaned from one’s life experience. Weil describes it this way:
“An ethical will has to do with nonmaterial gifts: the values and life lessons
that you wish to leave to others.” Ethical wills have been left to us by Vedic
masters, Zen teachers, and Jewish rabbis. Historically the practice goes back
at least 2000 years.
While
writing such a will, one will “. . . take stock of your life experience and
distill from it the values and wisdom you have gained.” Presently, people are
doing this not only through the written word, but on videos that include
biography and final expressions of wisdom for those one loves one leaves. This
can facilitate the process of leaving and left by giving tangible expression to the
particularity of one’s life. It is not only a gift to those we love, it can be
an ongoing gift to our selves.
There is an
old Russian proverb, “Live a hundred years, learn a hundred years, die a fool
anyway.” Each of us is a fool – and each of us is a precious spirit with
something to give to our world. As we age, the need to refine and present that
gift seems to deepen and strengthen. Religious communities provide the one
place where that process is offered both challenge and support. Thus, we need
our religious communities to listen to us, to encourage us in our struggles,
and to celebrate our lives throughout their spans. In community, we assert that
each life matters, has value. It is this that lasts, as Hillman says:
We are left as traces, lasting in our thinness like the
scarcely visible lines on a Chinese silkscreen, microlayers of pigment and
carbon, which can yet portray the substantial profundities of a face. Lasting
no longer than a little melody, a unique composition of disharmonious notes,
yet echoing long after we are gone. This is the thinness of our aesthetic
reality, this old, very dear image that is left and lasts. (Hillman, p. 202.)
So May It
Be! Blessed Be!
Sunday, October 23, 2005
9:30 & 11:00 a.m.
“Force of Character: Aging in an Age
of Youth”
Welcome and
Announcements
Prelude
Chalice Lighting
Opening Words
Opening Song:
#317 “We Are Not
Our Own”
Sharing:
“Rocks of
Resentment” by Claudia Hall
“Follow Our Flame”
Follow our flame
to search fro truth and meaning.
Treasure our
values found within or from above.
Join with our
friends who also see the gleaming.
Singing our song,
we come now in love.
Reading:
from The Force
of Character and the Lasting Life
by James Hillman
Celebrating with Music:
“Forever Young”
by Bob Dylan
Sermon:
“Force of
Character: Aging in an Age of Youth”
Sung Response:
#324 “Where My
Free Spirit Onward Leads”
Spoken Response
Offering/Candles of Joy and Sorrow
Meditation
Closing Song:
#114 “Forward
Through the Ages” (verses 1&2)
Closing Words
Closing Song:
#114 (verse 3)