Honoring Age

Dear All,

Today we started to accept the aging process, using part of Psalm 90 as our central text:
 

.... we spend our years as a tale that is told.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Just as important, though, were our preliminary and final musings about what we find hard to accept -- and what we may like, too -- in growing older.  It isn't about death, remember, or about accepting just any old change.  It is about this specific series or process: the changes that come about in us and our relationships with age.  Using our standard three-part, Baal Shem Tov-derived meditative sequence, we tried in effect to say "Amen" to the whole of it.

Next week, we'll aim to go a step further, beyond acceptance, to actually honor and appreciate the aging process as a positive good without ever denying its hard-to-accept/honor/love aspects.  As usual, our task is impossible, and as usual, we will achieve it.  The quotation from Yeats above can be a partial guide here.

And a picture can help us on our way:  The candle burns down.  Wick disappears, wax melts and disappears, light is gone.  But suppose the light emitted were to stay, and grow in intensity and expanse, as the wick and the wax were burnt off.  That would be an image of the human life well lived, as the body starts to fail while the spiritual light grows and stays.  Finally, at death, no wick, no wax, much light.

all blessings to all,

Michael