This is week 2 of our study using the book Pilgrimage into the Last Third of Life by Jane Marie Thibault and Richard L. Morgan.
My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness. – 2 Corinthians 12:9
Thoughts and questions for reflection.
When Maggie Kuhn was forced to retire at the mandatory age of 65 in 1970, she determined to put her anger and energy to work to fight against ageism. She pioneered the movement that came to be called the “Gray Panthers” and worked to change the idea that the elderly are just a drain on society.
Like Maggie, experiencing our limitations in one area can inspire us to move in other directions. As Richard Morgan writes, “It is easy to know the literature of aging; it’s quite another thing to live it” (pg 32).
Our limitations are boundaries, not barriers, says Joan Chittister in her book The Gift of Years. “Limitations, at any and every age, call out something in us that we never considered before,” says Chittister (pg 139).
What might want to be developing in you, because of or in spite of your limitations?
Richard writes of his disability that has limited his mobility. Still, he says, he sees blessings in it because it has given him “precious time for God, a time for contemplation and listening” to God (pg 35).
Do you find that you are drawn to more contemplative time with God at this season of your life? Can you give yourself permission to slow down to experience it?
Hearing loss and loss of vision affect almost all older adults sooner or later. Even though these losses can be compensated for with hearing aids and reading or computer glasses, Richard advises that they can also be gifts. We are drawn into deeper relationship with God when we look more deeply and listen more clearly for God’s presence with us (pgs 36-37).
In what new ways are you seeing and hearing God in your life? Is it because you are being more attentive?
Downsizing, says Richard, is an opportunity to discover what material goods we really need and what we can give up as we simplify our lives (pg 39). But downsizing in these years is about more than goods. We begin to lose and live without dear friends, spouses, sometimes siblings. It is common at this age that both of our parents are gone.
If you are experiencing the deaths of family and friends, is your conception of eternal life changing?
In the Gospel of Luke we read about the woman who was bent over with a crippling disease so that she could not stand up straight (13:10-11). Richard comments that she could only see the ground in front of her, never able to look up at the moon or sun (pg 40). But we don’t have to be crippled by disease to see only the ground we walk on, never lifting our eyes to the sky or the horizon. Intent on just getting the job done, whatever that might be at the moment, we don’t pause to notice the beauty around us in God’s creation or in other people. We often don’t adjust our sight to see where help might be waiting to share our burden.
When do you tend to focus so much on the task at hand that you don’t see the larger context in which you live?
In your old age, Jesus tells Peter in the Gospel of John, you’re going to be constrained and taken where you don’t want to go (21 :17-19). But author Jane Thibault points out that the point of Peter’s limitations will be to glorify God. How can that be? How can our limitations at this season of our lives be of any use? Perhaps we can be an example of living in such a way that whatever the circumstances of our lives, we represent God’s kingdom of love and contentment.
How might your attitude about your current limitations reflect God’s love for his people?
Our society’s idea of success is vested in power and accomplishment. These are the hardest things to relinquish as we grow older. Our grown children no longer need us as much as they once did. We retire from our careers and another person takes over with different ideas on how to do things. “You did a good job,” we are told. “But we will take it from here.” We feel powerless over our own lives.
Where are you feeling powerless? How can you glorify God in spite of or because of your situation?
Back to introduction to the study where you will find links to each gateway.
The Wisdom Years 