Coracle Trust E-Reflections
Late afternoon to evening
Tuesday 23 November 2010
Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come. Jane Kenyon, Let Evening Come
Music: Bach, Mass in B Minor BWV 232 Xxvi Dona Novis Pac Psalm 71:9 Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone. Job 5:26 You will come to the grave in full vigor, like sheaves gathered in season.
The soul needs the ageing process
We pause again between stages, peering furtively into old age. The psychologist James Hillman’s opens his book The Force of Character and the Lasting Life briskly:
Aging is no accident. It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul. Aging is built into our physiology; yet, to our puzzlement, human life extends long beyond fertility and outlasts muscular usefulness and sensory acuteness. For this reason we need imaginative ideas that can grace aging and speak to it with the intelligence it deserves.
In his short and robust sentences Hillman constructively reframes aging: ‘no accident’, ‘necessary’, ‘intended by the soul’ and brings aging into centre stage’s spotlight. No shuffling off to the sidelines here. Mid-life is confronted with decline and now elderhood cannot ignore it, and questions of mortality press in. The soul needs the aging process.
Ageing upfront
Psalm 71 could be written as our later life calling to our earlier stages, not as a plaintive cry, but as an integrative statement. In his latter years Pope John Paul II deliberately displayed and implicitly honoured aging bringing it fully into the soul journey by continuing to speak publically whilst his body clearly decayed. He rarely walked, his speech was slurred, he was hard of hearing and was suspected of having Parkinson’s disease. His intent? To persuade us that no stage of life is to be feared or ignored but each takes its share in the full glare of God's attention and design.
