Harvesting Our Lives

In a film about Henry VIII’s six wives, his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was a teenager when Henry, nearly fifty, married her. It didn’t go well, and Anne ended up in the Tower, facing execution by beheading for a treasonous relationship with a young man.

The night before her execution, she asked her jailer to bring the block so she could practice. Which she did. Gracefully putting her head on the block, she reportedly faced her death with courage, equanimity and dignity.

This scene came to mind as I was reading Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi’s book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing, A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older. As we grow older, he writes, we encounter anxiety about our inevitable mortality, and deny the reality of our physical demise. It’s the unknown. As Religious Scientists, we believe our consciousness continues into another dimension, that we transition. But still, there may be nagging fears.

Oh well, “I’ll think about that tomorrow,” we say to ourselves.

Unlike Catherine in the Tower, we don’t know when it’s going to happen, or if we’ll suffer unspeakable decline. How depressing! Youth and vitality are fleeing, or have fled; my body is in decline. What’s left? I don’t like it. Aging is despicable!

The Rabbi recommends: shift from ageing to sageing. Become an elder rather than elderly. Integrate body, mind and soul to become a spiritual elder -- a fountain of wisdom to younger generations, a bridge builder to the future with freedom, life experience, knowledge of the past, and ability to survive and thrive. Use this transformation to advocate for the larger public good.

As teachers, mentors, role models, creative agents and custodians of humanity’s wisdom, elders can demonstrate a new paradigm of aging and enlightened values.

Elders who demonstrate zest, joy, service and deep meaning, empower themselves as well as younger generations, to re-evaluate aging as a promising time, a time of renewal and spiritual growth.

The first step, says the Rabbi, is to face our mortality. Look at time left, and figure out what to do with it. Rather than go back to work or get involved in the busyness of life, he suggests we “harvest” our lives.

Harvesting our lives! What is that, and how do we do that?

It’s an important task for life completeness, says the Rabbi. Basically it means life review, to reflect on our past experiences. They can be both positive and negative, successes and failures,. This helps us to understand the meaning of our lives.

How did we deal with these experiences in the past? Can we repair them? Can we forgive those who betrayed us? Can we see how traumatic events of the past, even when painful, moved us onto a different, even amazing path? Can we, with a broader understanding, reframe so-called failures into successes? Can we forgive ourselves for past regrettable behaviors?

And can we record what we have learned over a lifetime -- and who we have become -- so it is not lost in the dustbin of history but instead finds its way into global awareness?

When we, as elders or those on the path to becoming elders, do this work, says the Rabbi, we free ourselves to move forward, to enjoy and participate actively in the extended lifetimes common to our generation. With a sense of life completion, we can face mortality with the courage, equanimity and dignity of Catherine Howard.

Unlike Catherine, we have time --time to go forth as spiritual elders. As wisdom keepers, we become healers of family, community and Earth itself.  

And so it is.