Dear Fierce Ones,
Welcome to our Seventh Annual Best of the Year Edition of Fierce with Age: The Digest of Boomer Wisdom, Inspiration and Spirituality.
I dedicate this issue of Fierce with Age to all of us who are facing forward towards the future with eyes wide and hearts open. May the love and hope of the season replenish your spirit and keep you warm through the longest nights. See you in 2019.
Fiercely Yours,
Carol Orsborn, Editor-in-Chief
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SOUL WRINKLES
“The spiritual journey is an endless process of engaging life as it is, stripping away our illusions about ourselves, our world, and the relationship of the two, moving closer to reality as we do. That process begins with losing the illusion that spirituality will float us above the daily fray.
Reality may be hard, but it’s a safer place to live than in our illusions, which will always fail us, and at no point is that more true than in old age…I broke through the fearful illusion that I’m not worthy of being here, back into the truth that I am, as we all are…
Coming to terms with the soul-truth of who I am—with my complex and confusing mix of darkness and light—has required my ego to shrivel up. Nothing shrivels a person better than age. That’s what all those wrinkles are about.”
–Parker J. Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity and Getting Old
Parker J. Palmer’s On The Brink of Everything is the January, 2019 selection of the Conscious Aging Book Club. To learn more about the CABC and how this particular selection impacted me personally, click HERE
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MOVING TOWARDS TURBULENCE
“Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt. We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it. We move toward it however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away.
If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.”
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FLAMING WITH WILD LIFE
“My seventies were interesting, and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age…Though drab outside—wreckage to the eye…inside we flame with a wild life that is almost incommunicable…
It has to be accepted as passionate life, perhaps the life I never lived, never guessed I had it in me to live. It feels other and more than that. It feels like the far side of precept and aim. It is just life, the natural intensity of life, and when old we have it for our reward and doing. It can—at moments—feel as though we had it for our glory. Some of it must go beyond good and bad, for at times—though comes rarely, unexpectedly—it is a swelling clarity as though all was resolved…”
–Florida Scott-Maxwell, The Measure of My Days
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THE DALAI LAMA’S TEARS
“At one of his annual three-day retreats in New York City, the Dalai Lama…explained that when we open to the experience of interconnectedness with the world, our sense of individuality softens and the heart opens with compassion toward all beings. This compassion has a radiance about it, he added. Suddenly he paused, interrupting his own train of thought.
‘But that’s not the way things are,’ he shared. ‘We are just people groping in the dark,’ and he put his head down and began to weep openly.
After a few moments, he sat up, blew his nose, and continued where he’d left off.”
— Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle, Aging with Wisdom
To read commentary on this story, click HERE.
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A GREAT BLAST
“There is the overwhelmingly senseless gratitude we feel when we are finally fully awake. And it makes no difference what we awaken to, whether it is to pain or to pleasure, to life or to death; it is all of a piece, all the ground of a deep joy when fully inhabited, when wholly attended to.
Nor does it make any difference that we will inevitably sleep again, that we will drift back into our house (of unconscious routines) or one remarkably like it without even realizing that we have. It makes no difference that there will once again be walls between us and the rest of the world.
In the fullness of time, these walls will also fall down, and a great horn will sound, calling us to wakefulness again.”
–Rabbi Alan Lew, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation
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ON LONELINESS AND LETTING GO
“The more conscious we become, the more we transcend many things.…As the neediness for things, people, and experiencing started to dissolve it was easier to be present to, and enjoy, what is. At first, I confused this with loneliness and wanted to escape through my usual interactions, distractions, and activities, but as I allowed the experience of aloneness, all the way through, I found peace.”
–Anonymous
“She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go. She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments. She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go…
She didn’t promise to let go. She didn’t journal about it. She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer. She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper. She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope. She just let go…
In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forevermore.”
–Rev. Safire Rose
Thanks to Fierce with Age contributor Mary Beth Speer for sharing the wonderful poem by Rev. Safire Rose we excerpt here with us. For the whole poem, visit HERE
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THE TIME HAS COME
“Break your heart no longer. Each time you judge yourself, you break your heart. You pull away from the love that is the well-spring of your vitality.
But now the time has come, your time, to live and to trust the goodness that you are. There is no evil, no wrong in you. Your true essence is pure awareness, aliveness, love…
Forgive even the truth for its unknowing. Just let go and breathe into the goodness…”
—Adapted from Tara Brach from Bapu-ji and Vehanji.
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“I can say from my own experience that at a certain point people will begin to treat you as an elder and look for benefits that you may be able to give them.
That is your cue to make a shift. You are no longer part of the crowd. Now you have to step up and assume a new place in your community. For you, it is yet another rite of passage, an ascension of state and transformation of you and your life to a level where you can enjoy new pleasures and feel new obligations…
That act requires character and the ability to know yourself without falling into either too high an opinion of yourself or false humility. Normally you develop this capacity for honest leadership over many years. The apprenticeship for the elder begins very young and continues over a lifetime.”
–Thomas Moore, in Spirituality and Health Magazine adapted from his Ageless Soul: The Lifelong Journey Toward Meaning and Joy
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DANCING WITH LIGHT
After chanting Buddha’s name for years, an old woman suddenly feels “all the falsehoods of her life drop away and she is completely and utterly awake. Thrilled, she rushes to see the great Zen Master Hakuin, telling him that her whole body is filled with Buddha and that all of the mountains and rivers, forests and fields are shining with great enlightenment.
He looks at her: ‘Oh really?” he says. ‘And is this great light also shining up your butt?’
Even though the old woman is tiny, she pushes him over, shouting, ‘Well, I can see you still have work to do yourself, old man!’
They laugh themselves silly and are so happy that they dance and dance and dance—awakeness meeting awakeness.”
–Geri Larkin, “The Secret of Abiding Joy” in Spirituality/Health.com
This entry is dedicated to my coauthor and friend Robert L. Weber, Ph.D. on the occasion of our presentation together at the Sage-ing International Conference in Minnesota this past October, and for all the dancing we’ve done together over the years.
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RECENTLY AT OLDER, WISER, FIERCER
Don’t miss any of Carol Orsborn’s weekly blogs and reader commentary at sister site CarolOrsborn.com which houses her blog Older, Wiser, Fiercer and the Conscious Aging Book Club.
First Annual Best of Blogs Edition, 2018
The first annual “best of my blogs” 2018 edition kicks off with my confrontation with turning 70 and concludes with The Happy Ghost, dedicated to the memory of recently departed Bob Atchley, a gentle but powerful soul who helped build the bridge between the traditional world of gerontology and the conscious aging movement.
THE HAPPY GHOST
There was a happy ghost wandering through the hallways of my little cottage on the river yesterday… As she meandered, she sighed in wonderment at what she had made of her life: nothing fancy–no mansion, no fame. But at the same time, so much more than she’d ever dared hope for: the sense of having fulfilled what she had come here to do.
Then, turning the corner, the happy ghost stubbed her toe and remembered that she was still here, embodied: felt her life come throbbing back into her from the sole up. And could not help but ask the question: Walking around my house weeping for joy as if I had already passed…Is this normal?
To read the rest of this blog, click HERE
To access the entire Best of 2018 Edition of Older, Wiser, Fiercer, click HERE
For a free subscription to Carol Orsborn’s Blog, Older, Wiser, Fiercer, click HERE
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Editor-in-chief Carol Orsborn, Ph.D., a conscious aging expert with a doctorate in religion and author of 30 books, celebrates the increasing visibility of spiritual content on Boomer, aging and spirituality websites, classic sources as well as newly published books and articles.
She is coauthor with Dr. Robert L. Weber of The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker’s Guide to Growing Older. The book was awarded Gold in the Nautilus Book Awards, the highest honor in the category of Aging Consciously
Contact Dr. Carol Orsborn at Corsborn@aol.com
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