This is week 3 of our study using the book Pilgrimage into the Last Third of Life by Jane Marie Thibault and Richard L. Morgan.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. – Galatians 2:20
Thoughts and questions for reflections.
by Marjorie George
Apparently in Scotland in 2014 – and maybe in other years, for all I know – the book Tools of the Trade: Poems for New Doctors was given to all graduating doctors. Among the entries in this anthology was Jalaluddin Rumi’s poem The Guest House. It is a curious poem, one that took me a long time to like or even accept. It speaks of inviting into your home (or heart) all the emotions or thoughts that show up at your door – “A joy, a depression, a meanness . . . The dark thought, the shame, the malice.” Welcome them all in, says Rumi, “they could be clearing you out for some new delight.” (Read the poem https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/guest-house/)
What a joy to think that those Scottish new doctors are reminded to consider the souls of their patients as well as their bodies.
Rumi’s poem is good advice for “doing inner work” as gateway 3 invites us to. What needs to be allowed to show up in our hearts? What needs to be swept out? Jane Thibault starts with forgiveness – so basic and so important as to be a foundation block of The Lord’s Prayer where we are admonished that we will be forgiven by the measure with which we forgive others.
A key thought for Jane is that our forgiveness of someone who has wounded us does not hinge on reconciliation. There are those with whom we will never be reconciled this side of heaven. Nor should we. An abusive ex-partner, for instance, may need not to be invited or allowed back into our lives. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t forgive them.
For your own health, whom do you need to forgive? What are your barriers to forgiving them? What do you need to do next?
Jane invites us to continue our inner work with a practice called “rummaging for God.” Each night, before we go to sleep, we can review our day looking for the places where we saw God at work in our lives in the little things that we may not have noticed at the time. The practice increases our gratitude, and eventually we notice God in our daily lives more and more.
If you are not doing a nighttime reflection of God in your day, try doing one every evening for a week. Do you notice a change in your awareness of God in your life daily?
Envy, writes Jane, can be a frequent malady in our later years. Suddenly we are at an age when we have to admit that some things we had hoped for our lives are not going to come to pass. It is easy to become envious of those who have more energy, better health, finer houses than do we and to realize we have run out of time for those things to happen.
Make a list of all those things you had hoped for that are not going to happen. Now make a list of all of the joys and privileges that have come to you in your life. In some act of surrender, offer it all to God in abundant thanksgiving.
Like envy, pride can sneak up on us, says Jane. Pride is often bound to competition, she says, and even in later life when the marathons and ball games are behind us, we can get prideful about how well we are aging. It manifests as a certain smugness that I did better than you at exercising, eating right, etc etc. Jane points out that in our later years our refusal to accept the help we need can be because of stubborn pridefulness.
Where is the line in your life between deserved self-respect and prideful stubbornness? Are you making it more difficult for family and friends to provide the help you need?
Richard Morgan reminds us that it was Carl Jung who said “the afternoon of life” cannot simply be an appendage to the morning of life. In our earlier years we were busy with family and careers, but in our later years we have the luxury of time to more and more become the persons God created us to be. Part of this growth involves denying our own egos as we explore how we can help others.
Take some time to look around your community at the many organizations that could use your help. What are you good at? What speaks to your heart? How would giving yourself away strengthen your spiritual growth?
Richard writes about how he spent his earlier years trying to please others and live into their expectations for him. He calls it “wearing a mask.” But in later years he was able to become more of who he really is. He no longer feels the need to achieve or be better than others.
What roles have you played in your life? Whom have you felt you needed to please? What unreasonable expectations have you placed on yourself? Does recognizing them help you to rid yourself of them?
Richard suggests that one way to not continually live from our own egos is to be around those who are less fortunate than we. He spends time with people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia because he knows they will not give him adulations.
Are you aware when you are allowing your ego to want to make you the center of attention? How can you center more on the Christ within you?
Back to introduction to the study where you will find links to each gateway.
The Wisdom Years 