Commentary on Older, Wiser, Fiercer
Life is full of paradox. Four years ago, Carol Orsborn and I launched the book we co-authored, The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker’s Guide to Growing Older, at The Harvard Bookstore. Our book confronts the shadow side of aging, finding spiritual opportunity in the challenges—including physical losses–associated with growing older. After working together for nearly 4 years, it was a night to celebrate the hard, long distance collaboration that birthed our book. But as Carol Orsborn, in this insightful new selection of her essays Older, Wiser, Fiercer: The Wisdom Collection, will be quick to remind you, even under the best of circumstances, growing older represents a disruption of how things used to be. “Any day can bring with it the realization that we do not have the power either to make things turn out how we’d expected, nor go back the way they were,” writes Carol.
And so it was that by the time our book tour took us to Nashville, I could barely stand for the presentation. Two weeks earlier, I’d injured myself during a Pilates exercise. Strain and pain took possession of my left hip and the symptoms continued with little relief. Subsequently, my condition was diagnosed as degenerative arthritis and osteoarthritis requiring hip replacement surgery. But that would have to wait, for, by tour’s end, just one month later, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer that also required surgery. This was a challenging time, to say the least, one in which I was hastened by circumstances to not only write about the paradox of aging, but to find myself doing first hand, deeper research about the spiritual opportunities that occur not in spite of, but because of aging.
Carol’s ongoing journey led to her literary connection and dialogue with the work of wise elders from across a broad spectrum of eras and disciplines, writers like Florida Scott-Maxwell, May Sarton and Joan Chittister, even as my own journey has taken me deeper into the work of others that Carol appreciates, as well, especially the teachings of Richard Rohr and Ignatius of Loyola. Through our reading and on-going conversations, Carol and I have continued both our individual and mutually-supportive quests for answers, trying to make sense of our aging and the meaning and opportunities that are part of this universally, inevitable process.
I am proud to call Carol Orsborn not only my coauthor, but friend. I have long admired both her passion for living: the ability to lay bare the truth of mortality while determined to live life to the full. Writes Carol: “I hope to feel as honest, raw, passionate about life through my last exhale as I do today. No slow fade, but rather, when it is absolutely clear there’s no turning back, a spectacular dive head-first at the last possible second, eyes and heart wide open.”
In his Introduction to Carol’s latest work, our friend Rick Moody refers to the notion of ”spaete Werke”, recognizing that what the elder artists disclosed through paint, writers like Carol Orsborn disclose to us through words. I couldn’t agree more. Like docents who open our eyes to the beauty of art, she opens our eyes to the beauty of artful aging. Reading Carol’s newest collection will inspire you to grow into your authentic self. I can think of no more apt way to mark the installation of Older, Wiser, Fiercer than with this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: “Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”
–Robert L. Weber, February, 2019
This excerpt provides a preview of the complete Older, Wiser, Fiercer: The Wisdom Collection, available now in paperback and Kindle eBook editions. To purchase, click HERE.
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To read Robert L. Weber’s Commentary in its entirety, click HERE
For Robert L. Weber’s Bio, click HERE
To Continue on to the Wisdom Collection Acknowledgements, click HERE
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