Part 1 - Is it Downhill All the Way?
It was when I reached 80 myself that I began to accept that I was ‘old.’ I remembered Shakespeare’s play As you like it, and the seven stages of human life, each playing a part on the stage of life. With my school companions we rattled off the words of melancholy Jacques, and poked fun at the ‘mewling’ infant, the ‘reluctant’ schoolboy,’ the ‘sighing’ lover. Carelessly, we dismissed the final stages of decrepitude, ‘second childishness’ and ‘mere oblivion’. Old age, we felt, would never happen to us! And for some it didn’t. Not all of us reached 80.

But now it has for me. It is true that at this stage, there are a few more pains and aches, visits to eye specialists, a restricted diet, and the inevitable medication! But I still resent Shakespeare’s caricature of the ‘last stage of all that ends this strange eventful history’; a spectre of emptiness, bereft of everything. It’s not at all like that. Shakespeare was only in his thirties when he wrote this play. His intention was simply to be funny. And indeed, sometimes we need to laugh at ourselves. But those of us who live this ageing stage of life, want more. There must be a meaning to living longer.

Is there something more that can be said about ageing other than it is downhill all the way? The wisdom of the Bible regarding old age is much more positive than Shakespeare’s and much more positive than the ageist mentality of our current culture. In the Bible as well as in early ancient texts, we find some thoughts for reflection. We learn that the wisdom of the elders in decision-making was appreciated, that it was the ‘old’ Simeon who hailed the birth of Christ with an ageless Benedictus, that Mary in her older years was spiritual companion to the apostles. The Bible holds considerable veneration for old age. Psalm 92 tells us that ‘planted in the house of the Lord’ we will ‘flourish in the courts of our God, still bearing fruit’ when we are old, ‘still full of sap still green’.  A spiritual vision of plenitude in the late springtime of our lives.

And so it is, as I begin to write this series of musings on ageing, and especially on my own, I propose, along with the renowned theologian Karl Rahner (1904-84), and many others who lived to be eighty and more, to dwell on the meaning of our Christian vocation as we live into our advanced years. Rahner said: “Growing old is a serious matter. It is a grace; a mission that holds the risk of radical failure…Advanced years are part of our vocation. They must not be considered as life running out but as life coming to definitiveness.”

So how do we live this special stage of our vocation, this ‘inner springtime’ that is available to us in later life? Can we feel the ‘rising sap’ in our lives as nature feels it? Is there a gardening of soul open to us in later life? Watch this space!

by Úna Agnew SSL