Hello Fierce Ones,
I’m pleased to announce the next selection of the Conscious Aging Book Club: The December Project: An Extraordinary Rabbi and a Skeptical Seeker Confront Life’s Greatest Mystery by Sara Davidson. My blog inspired by the book follows.
The discussion board opens today in the comment section below and culminates August 2 both online and in-person at 10:30 a.m., Parnassus Books, Nashville. This will give you plenty of time to read the book if you are interested.
Meanwhile, a reminder that our current selection is Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey by James Hollis, Ph.D. The discussion is currently underway HERE and culminates next Thursday, July 5 both online and in-person at 10:30 a.m., Parnassus Books, Nashville.
To learn more about the Conscious Aging Book Club, click HERE.
–Carol Orsborn, Older, Wiser, Fiercer
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As teenagers, Margot and I giggled together for hours trying to learn how to kiss boys by practicing on pillows. The last time I’d seen her we were in our fifties and Margot could still have been mistaken for a teenager—long, dark hair and tight jeans, and that unmistakable, ageless laugh of hers.
That was who I was looking for in the hotel lobby when last week, twenty years later, a trip brought me within striking distance of our home town. A few people milled about, one vaguely reminiscent of my childhood bestie—but she had sparse grey hair, was bent over a walker and couldn’t possibly be Margot. However, when the appointed hour came and nobody else arrived, I pushed through my senses and ventured a tentative “Margot?”
It’s one thing to face aging when you’re in your sixties and relatively healthy. Back then, should you happen to be writing books on the subject of conscious aging like yours truly, you might say wise and true things like “The secret to living life to the full is to make peace with mortality.”
But now, having turned 70, making peace with mortality doesn’t feel quite so much like just another item on the conscious aging to-do list as it did even just a week ago. Catching up, I could see it in Margaret’s eyes: shadows upon shadows, as she spoke of unimagined pain and an unwanted prognosis. But what bothered her most: she hadn’t yet conquered her fear of dying.
All my inspirational sayings flew out the window and I found myself saying the only honest thing in my heart: Who possibly could? So, to make a long story short, that’s why I picked The December Project, based on late-in-life conversations with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, as the Conscious Aging Book Club’s August selection.
Logic would have led me to instead choose Reb Zalman’s earlier perennial bestseller From Age-ing to Sage-ing, written twenty years ago. Back then, when he was in his tender sixties, he embarked on a mission to get to the bottom of his fears about aging, infirmity and mortality, and the result was the progenitor of the conscious aging movement and a classic in the genre that you should absolutely read. As the book blurb puts it: “In this inspiring and informative guide, Reb Zalman…shows readers how to create an aging process for themselves that is full of adventure, passion, mystery, and fulfillment, rather than anxiety.”
But now, fresh from my time with Margot, I needed something more. After all, it’s one thing to feel positive about aging, embracing the prospect of mortality, when you’re relatively vital and healthy—but how about “when the decline is getting steeper?”
Fast forward to 2009 when Sara Davidson, the then 60-something author of the Boomer bestseller Loose Change among others, was surprised by a call from the rabbi, asking her to talk with him about a new book idea. “When you can feel in your cells that you’re coming to the end of your tour of duty, what is the spiritual work of this time, and how do we prepare for the mystery?” She jumped at the chance to spend time with him, and they met every Friday for two years.
I’m glad Sara Davidson said yes to Reb Zalman, for not only asking him the tough questions regarding how his own spirituality was holding up against the onslaught of time but for allowing the conversations to both reveal and challenge her own fears about the future. As it turns out, it’s a mixed bag—a steeper challenge than we may have been led to believe, and yet nevertheless an opportunity for profound spiritual growth.
So, given all this truth-telling, after reading her book, The December Project, is there still reason to hope for meaning in older age? Yes. But is there only adventure and passion—and no call for anxiety, none for despair for those times when the “inner rebbe” is remote and we’re on our own feeling like “a victim, a nebbish?” That would be a no. So now what?
“It’s a mitzvah to turn your attention to God—no action is required,” says the older, wiser, fiercer Reb Zalman. “I have less stamina, so sometimes I’ll just say, ‘Dear God, look into my heart and see where I am…’
Reb Zalman passed away in 2014 at the age of 89, just a few years after the book was published. Margot and I want to see one another again, but we both know that’s a hope not a plan. “Don’t think we should wait 20 years again,” she offered. “How about next year?” She left me with her distinctive laugh, safely tucked into my heart right alongside those well-kissed pillows.
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To learn about the Conscious Aging Book Club, click HERE
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