Hello Fierce Ones,
As we review this past year, the central question for many of us is simultaneously as old as history and as new as the year to come. How to awaken from denial while continuing to believe that ours is essentially a loving universe? From the Dalai Lama to Isaac Bashevis Singer, the entries in this special edition point the way.
Have a joy-filled holiday season! I look forward to meeting up with you again in the new year. Thank you, as always, for all of your great comments, kind words and support.
Fiercely Yours,
Carol Orsborn, Editor-in-Chief
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BEYOND THE FIRST WILD HYSTERIA
“When we first understand there’s a journey, a path, we tend to get somewhat hysterical. We want to sell it to everybody, change everybody…The zeal is based on our lack of faith, ‘cause we are not sure of what we’re doing, so we figure if we convince everybody else…
But we’re all kind of moving into a new space, we’re sort of finished with the first wild hysteria, and we’re settling down into humdrum process of living out our incarnation as consciously as we know how to do. If in the course it turns out this is your last round to get enlightened, fine. If not, that’s the way it is. Nothing you can do about it.”
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SPOILING FOR A FIGHT
“70 is a fantastic age for a fight! So the notion is on hold, that these next years will be a peaceful unwinding. But it’s not going to be the 60’s all over again. I was all in for those battles and I’m proud of civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, desegregation, and ending a war not worthy of our country. But I did too much running blind into brick walls with my hair on fire and for that I paid in ways I won’t do again.
This time I’m not just a warrior, I’m an Old Warrior. A warrior with the advantage of years. What’s that going to be like?…
How does an old warrior help bring light? They’ve got to be in me, the lessons I’ve learned over these 70 years that I didn’t know when I’d only lived 20? What do I know that will help make things better for all of us, what do I know that will help us all stop scaring each other. What do I know that could save us from vitriol and bloodshed? What are my plans for next week? What are yours?”
—Randy Bieler, GravyYears.com
MOVING BEYOND WOUNDOLOGY
“In this seventh decade of my life, I reflect with penetrating discernment on the personal shadow with which I have consciously struggled for more than 30 years…In recent years, I have become painfully aware that I must move beyond my own personal ‘woundology’ and the traumatic upbringing I suffered into a more astringent maturity with respect to the shadow.
The agonizing truth is that I have harmed many people in ways of which I am unaware…Long overdue appropriate guilt has repeatedly broken my heart as I ponder the careless and cavalier antics of the shadow and its damage to those I loved most.
While I resist using religious terminology, I have needed to embrace a certain ‘penance’ for my behavior which cannot undo it, but which has served to fashion me into a more compassionate and merciful human being…As Andrew Harvey writes in The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism, ‘When you can locate your deepest heartbreak and face your deepest heartbreak, then you will be guided to your most profound mission. Your deepest mission is hidden in your deepest heartbreak.’”
–Carolyn Baker, Dark Gold: The Human Shadow and the Global Crisis
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BOOMER DISILLUSIONMENT
“In the opening decades of the twenty-first century, we are witnessing, on a global scale, a mood of disillusionment…The aging of the baby boomers is a notable sign of this shift and members of this cohort, both individually and collectively, will face the challenge of how to convert their experience into a story that makes sense…
Baby boomers’ disillusionment is not surprising, and, as I’ve argued, its sources are many—age, cohort, and historical period. All are parts of the story. But explaining the phenomenon may be less important than, as Frankl says, taking responsibility. We will only do that by helping aging baby boomers find a new story, one that not only makes sorrows bearable, but also converts our experience into hope for future generations.”
–Harry R. Moody, Ph.D., American Society on Aging’s Generations
The newsletter Dr. Moody edits for the Gerontological Society of America, Human Values in Aging, is available upon request; e-mail him at hrmoody@yahoo.com.
MATURITY DOESN’T GLITTER
“Maturity is not based on talent or any of the mental or physical gifts that help you ace an IQ test or run fast or move gracefully. It is not comparative. It is earned not by being better than other people at something, but by being better than you used to be.
It is earned by being dependable in times of testing, straight in times of temptation. Maturity does not glitter. It is not built on the traits that make people celebrities. A mature person possesses a settled unity of purpose. The mature person has moved from fragmentation to centeredness…
The mature person can make decisions without relying on the negative and positive reactions from admirers or detractors because the mature person has steady criteria to determine what is right. That person has said a multitude of noes for the sake of a few overwhelming yeses.”
—David Brooks, The Road to Character
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“The three secrets of aging—initiation, transformation, and revelation—may generate painful and disorienting experiences, especially if you resist them! Everything you believe and count on can disappear overnight in the aging process, sometimes erasing all the familiar landmarks of our life. But remember, loss and hardship often precede great transformations…
We grow psychologically, spiritually, and mystically only in so far as we are willing to accept change, work on our self, and strive to find the next step on a pathless path. Keep in mind that this is not just another self-improvement project; rather it invites us to experience an extraordinary consciousness in which the whole idea of self-improvement disappears as well. From this consciousness flow revelations that would never come from the project of me…
Aging in the twenty-first century can herald a completely new stage of human evolution, one that holds the key to our future on Earth, if we understand and embrace it.”
–John C. Robinson, The Three Secrets of Aging.
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“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 Carol Orsborn’s commentary on this story, click HERE.
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“I’ve been dropping out again it seems. This version is quite different from when I dropped out years ago as a hippie, living in school buses and with friends in the countryside. But some things about it are the same.
The experience of letting go and opening up to a new way of being and living. Not having to be anywhere but right here. Spacious days. Being. No job, except for those tasks I choose to take up.
And even though I am a semi-reformed Type A, with a long history of big projects, I am enjoying this open experience. Gradually letting go, and living vividly in the midst of it.”
–Gaea Yudron, Sages Play
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ROAR LIKE A LION
“I’m getting as old as Methuselah; I climb a single flight of stairs and my heart begins to pound like a thief’s with the police after him…I went to Dr. Mintz.
‘Don’t get yourself excited,’ he says. ‘Bad for your belly-button.’
‘Aha,’ I tell him, ‘a fine trick if you can do it. Suppose you try, doctor,’ I tell him.
He imagines that all I have to do is stretch out on the sofa, close my peepers, and everything is settled. That’s not my way, professor. I have to roar like a lion. Do you hear me, professor?
If I wasn’t ashamed, I would let out such a roaring that Warsaw would collapse.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Family Moskat.
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“I was learning at seventy-one what it is to be deranged.
Proving that self-discovery wasn’t over after all.
Proving that the drama that is associated usually with the young as they fully begin to enter life…can also startle and lay siege to the aged.”
–Philip Roth, Exit Ghost
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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
Fierce with Reality: In Memorium 11/3/17
Some days I am grateful for all the years of my life, believing that they have grown me strong. Other times, I wear them as gravity, weighing me down: everything bent and sinking. On these days, upon awakening, I can feel I haven’t rested enough. Even without a mirror nearby, I can feel it: perhaps not as a physical truth but as a matter of spirit. My body, my energy, my world. I am not in control. But this is not necessarily a bad thing.
To read this blog and reader comments in their entirety, click HERE
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Cosmic vs. Actual Mothers: 11/6/17
The truth is that even when we mothers try our hardest—perhaps especially when we try our hardest–we are bound to disappoint. Life is hard, and the helpless creature we perceive to be in our arms, whether biologic or metaphorical, eventually figures out that we have fallen short of the ideal, leaving them to fend for themselves. Nobody is as disappointed about this as we, ourselves, most of whom are as shocked as our offspring to discover we have limits.
To read this blog and reader comments in their entirety, click HERE
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My Theory of Everything: 11/15/17
I know that many of us have glimpses of the field of love, but most consider these transcendent moments to be treasured exceptions rather than the rule, as if the love and beauty of life is something scarce that comes and goes, and is, at best, a sneak preview of coming attractions. But what if the truth is that we never really did leave the field of love that we envision as both preceding and awaiting us?
To read this blog and reader comments in their entirety, click HERE
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Stumbling towards Thanks 11/21/17
So, Thanksgiving, 2017. A painful time for our country and for ourselves, but I have learned something after all these years about life. For the sight of just one white crane dipping and soaring above the river that flows past our house—one beam of sun warming my hand—one glimpse into my grandsons’ eyes as the turkey arrives at the table–can go a long way towards tempering the losses suffered along the way. And one righteous act, one touch of kindness, one courageous response when one has been called moves all of us apace in the direction of redemption.
To read this blog and reader comments in their entirety, click HERE
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The old woman stood before the angel, so many tears welling in her eyes that she could not read the letters on the gate. While she had always tried to live a good life, the regret that consumed her sent a shiver down her spine. At last, trembling, she managed to ask the angel her question.
“Am I at the gate of heaven—or of hell?” she whispered.
“Tell me first,” the angel replied. “Why are you crying?”
To read this blog and reader comments in their entirety, click HERE
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