older adults – Page 6 – The Wisdom Years

Gathered Wisdom, Feb 13, 2024

February 13, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos
where you find
the peace
you did not think possible
and see what shimmers
beneath the storm

-Jan Richardson, The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings

Watching, Waiting, Working for Jesus

As Bro. Curtis Almquist reminds us, “Lent is upon us.” Ash Wednesday is tomorrow. We remember the time Jesus spent in the wilderness before he began his public ministry. It was a time for Jesus “to re-align himself to why God had given him life: to claim the right purpose, the right power, the right voice God had given him.” The focus of Lent, says Bro. Almquist, “can create space anew for the light, and life, and love to Jesus to teem in us and through us to our desperately broken world. Lent is to help us.”

Read the reflection.

From Society of St. John the Evangelist.
Visit their website for their Lenten study offering.

Love: The Fire of Transformation

Ilia Delio sees love as a fire of transformation. God’s fire, she says, “is destructive because it can swiftly eliminate all self-illusions, grandiose ideas, ego-inflation, and self-centeredness.” God’s fire will forge us into an ever-radiant new presence of God because God is forever being born within us.

Read the reflection.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.
CAC will offer virtual sit meditations during Lent. Learn more here.

Our Struggle with Riches

God is not against people having wealth – of money or talent or strength. The problem is that our wealth makes us think that we are self-sufficient, that we don’t need God. Jesus told us to be like little children because they understand that they need help.

Read the reflection.

From Ron Rolheiser.

For the Love of God

Were the desert mothers and fathers just a set of cranky, people-hating monastics? Or did they really give up all they had and move into caves the better to love God?

Read the book excerpt.

From Renovare.

Benedictine Way Of Life

Benedict cautions us to “listen with the ear of your heart.” This is the call to the spiritual life, says Deacon Joanna Seibert. It is a way to live in the world still connected to God. “First, we are to listen and pay attention. We are to use the ear of our hearts. We are to connect to something outside ourselves, hearing and loving. We hear and learn about love in a community outside of ourselves.”

Read the reflection.

From Joanna Seibert.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Feb 6, 2024

February 6, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?

-Rumi, Love’s Ripening
Found in Well for the Journey

The Light of Grace

His parents told him he could buy whatever he wanted with his newspaper income, but when he bought a conga drum for twenty dollars, his father made him take it back. It was a memory that never left him.

Read the story.

From Terry Hershey’s Sabbath Moment.

When My Father Faced An Emergency

What did her father do in an emergency, she was asked. You mean like the time the young man held them at knife-point while they were driving on the Big Sur coastline in California? That emergency? He was curious.

Read the delightful story.

From Awakin.

The Story of Accumulation

“The more you think you need to accumulate, the bigger fence you need to build around yourself and the fewer people you will trust and let into your life,” says Gareth Higgins, writing in Center for Action and Contemplation. “It’s the inverse of what it means to live in true peace and security, which only comes in the context of relationship with people you can trust.”

Read the reflection.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

A Lenten Fast to Live By

For what do you hunger? Can you even name it? Peace, yes, and freedom from fear. Safety for our children. A sense of spiritual well-being. And yet, our very daily practices undermine what we claim as our desires. Join the Wisdom Years community for a Lenten fast that invites us to lay down the old patterns and habits that deplete us and obstruct our full access to the divine image into which we were created.

Our study is from Feb 15 to March 21. We will meet weekly on Zoom for conversation, or you can use the material on you own.

To learn more

From The Wisdom Years.

The Dark Night as Impasse

Many good, healthy Christians speak of the “dark night of the soul,” a time when one feels completely bereft of God. It is a time when, as Fr. Ron Rolheiser puts it, “All the former ways you understood, imagined, and felt about things, especially as this relates to God, faith, and prayer, no longer work for you.”

Read the reflection.

More about Ron Rolheiser.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Jan 30, 2024

January 31, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

May you arise each day with a voice of blessing whispering in your heart.

-John O’Donohue, “For Belonging,” To Bless the Space Between Us

A Lenten Fast to Live By

Our study is from Feb 15 to March 21. We will meet weekly on Zoom for conversation, or you can use the material on you own.

To learn more

From The Wisdom Years.

Vocation: The Call is Lifelong

Your vocation, your calling in life, what you are to be now, will come out of your greatest strength and your greatest need, says Brother Curtis Almquist in this reflection on vocation. “When we are younger,” says Bro. Almquist, “our vocation – our calling – is more about what we are to do. When we are older, our vocation – our calling – is more about what we are to be.”

Read the reflection.

From Society of St. John the Evangelist.

Prayers for Election Season

Like Christmas decor at Walmart, the U.S. presidential election season arrives earlier and louder every time around, says Brian Morykon, director of communications for Renovare. Unlike Christmas, the election season—and politics in general—seems to many of us to have little redeeming value. To help us bring the presence of God into our lives in this election season, Renovare offers this prayer for the election season.

Read the prayer.

From Renovare.

Grieving as a Spiritual Exercise

Henri Nouwen once wrote, “The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through.” The choice we face in grieving, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser, is whether we are taking our hurts to our head or to our heart. “You need to let your wounds go down into your heart. Then you can live them through and discover that they will not destroy you.”

Read the reflection.

From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.

Sanctuaries of Silence

No place on earth is silent any more, says acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton. And yet the silence of the natural world connects us back to the land in a way that nurtures and enchants us. Hempton says in silence he disappears.

Watch and listen to this peaceful video.

Found at Karmatube.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Jan 16, 2024

January 16, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible…Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

-Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Peace Lecture, December 11, 1964
Found at Well for the Journey

Paradox Holds Us

Author Debie Thomas reminds us that even when evil is real and among us, like the weeds growing alongside the wheat in the field, our railing against it will not change it. Rather, God has a plan and is in charge.

Read the reflection.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

Effort Does Not Change the Person

Anthony DeMello reminds us that our intervention alone does not change a person. It is not what we do that brings holiness, says DeMello. “Holiness is not an achievement; it is a grace.”

Read the reflection.

From Awakin.

Giving Ourselves a Better Story

“Whether we feel good or bad about ourselves,” says Fr. Ron Rolheiser, “is often predicated on what kind of story we understand ourselves as living within.” Christians recognize that we live within a bigger story than our own, and that gives meaning and dignity to our problems.

Read the essay.

From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.

Prayer for the New Year

Courtney Martin prays for peace, “By which,” she says, “I mean both may we not murder other people’s children, and also may we apologize to our own when we lob empty threats their way because we still haven’t learned how to take the deep breaths we are constantly asking them to take.”

Read the rest of the offered prayers.

From The Examined Family.

The Precious Present

Living in our bodies not our heads, spending time with children, walking in nature are all ways to be present to the moment. “God is not in the past or the future, but is there to greet us in the present moment,” says Joanna Seibert.

Read the short reflection.

From Joanna Seiberts’ blog.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Jan 9, 2024

January 9, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

To be available to the mystery means that you are open, expectant, waiting — continually poised on tiptoe, prepared to be illumined — not locked in your own expectations of how you think it should happen.

-Daphne Rose Kingma, The Book of Love
Found in Well for the Journey.

Epiphany: The Lighted Path

Fr. Ron Rolheiser looks at the difference between King Herod’s reaction at the news of the birth of Jesus and that of the Wise Men in the biblical story. One seeks to kill the new king, the others bring gifts. How do you react when your star is being eclipsed? This article and more are part of the Wisdom Years Epiphany study now on the Wisdom Years website. (Art by Helen Taylor.)

Find the material for the entire study here.

From The Wisdom Years.

An Awe Walk

Dacher Keltner describes awe as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world” – a magnificent sunset, a tiny baby’s finger. But participants in recent research reported finding awe in ordinary places. Keltner suggests taking an “awe walk.”

Read the article.

From Awakin.

Epiphany Wisdom from the Wise Men

Joanna Seibert tells the story from Tolstoy about the three old hermits who turned out to be wiser than the bishop. She recalls that in the many times when she has tried to share her wisdom in retreats and classes, she most often learns from those who have been down-and-out.

Read the reflection.

From Joanna Seibert.

Healing from grace

Terry Hershey recalls a story of how a poem brought healing to a group of young Kenyan women who were escaping from the horror of genital mutilation. Words of a poem have the power “to open doors, rather than shut them. To invite vulnerability, rather than disconnect us from our heart. To create space to give, rather than put up rigid boundaries that divide us from one another.”

Read the reflection.

From Terry Hershey’s Sabbath Moment.

The Dance of Hope

“The roots of fear run deep,” says Steven Charleston in his book about the survival of Native Americans. In today’s world, “the hope we embrace must run just as deep. No matter what happens we must keep dancing, hand in hand, joined in a circle of equality, constantly moving in the slow rotation of justice and prayer.”

Read the reflection.

Found in Center for Action and Contemplation Daily Meditations.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Jan. 2, 2024

January 3, 2024Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

-Mary Oliver, “Instructions for Living a Life”
Found in Well for the Journey

Our Epiphany Study – The Lighted Path

Join The Wisdom Years for a 3-week exploration of the Epiphany light that beckons us to seek the path God intends for each of us to follow.

Each Monday, beginning January 8 for three weeks, you will receive an email with a link to our web page that includes:

An introduction to the week’s theme

Readings and poetry for reflection

A practice for the week

An invitation to gather by Zoom on Thursday, January 11, 18, and 25, at 4 p.m. (Central time).

To join the study, send an email to Marjorie George at marjoriegeorge62@gmail.com.

If you are unable to join the Zoom gatherings, you are welcome to use the material on your own. Comments will be welcome on the web page.

For more details, visit https://wisdomyears.org/epiphany-the-lighted-path/

May Your Cup Always Overflow

A poem from John Paul Moore

As I go along my journey
I’m reaping better than I’ve sowed
I’m drinking from the saucer
‘Cause my cup has overflowed.

Read the entire poem.

from Awakin.

Niksen: The Dutch Art of Purposefully Doing Nothing

Research has shown that “Doing nothing, but with a purpose to do nothing or no purpose at all, may help to decrease anxiety, bring creativity to the surface, and boost productivity,” says health journalist Elisabeth Almekinder. The Dutch and other cultures have perfected the art of doing nothing.

Gathered Wisdom, Dec 20, 2023

December 20, 2023Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

A Blessing for Christmas Eve

From Kate Bowler

You are here. What a wonder.
Robed in the everyday majesty of a newborn,
so beautiful, so soft, so new. Perfect in the terrifying fragility
that thrills every parent.
(Watch his head! Look at those tiny fingernails.)
God become human,
blinking at strange, new surroundings.
All wisdom and power poured into a smallness
that knows hunger and gravity
and unseeing urgency for your mother’s skin.
And Mary, so newly parted from you,
turns her thoughts to the impossible angelic visitation that promised you’d come.
And she knew, somehow, staring at your eyelashes,
that you were a great reversal
here to put all things right.

Blessed are we when our hearts warm with her.
You’re here. And we are too, newly come to worship
with kings and shepherds and barn animals and angels
as you light up the world on this holiest, loveliest night.

Find Kate Bowler at https://katebowler.com/

This blessing is from Kate Bowler’s forthcoming book, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!, releasing January 23, 2024.

The Wisdom Years Wishes you a Blessed Christmas

We are taking a Christmas break and will return January 2.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Dec 12, 2023

December 12, 2023Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

We are so often in too much of a hurry, expecting God, at our bidding, to work miracles overnight. And we often judge the progress of God’s Kingdom by what we can see. But so often the real growth happens unseen.

Br. Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE
Read More

Voluntary Simplicity

Voluntary simplicity is about doing one thing at a time and being present at the doing of it. It is taking a walk and noticing what there is to see and smell. It means “going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more,” says Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Read the essay.

From Awakin.

The Constellation of Your Belonging

This brief meditation invites us to imagine the constellation of our life. Using guided visualization and reflective prompts, this simple practice invites us into the realization of our connectedness to ourselves and everything around us.

Engage with the practice/meditation.

From Grateful Living.

Telling our story this Advent

It is easy to give up as we get older. To think there is nothing new to learn. To believe we are no longer needed. But Joanna Seibert reminds us of the importance of telling our stories, especially to our families.

Read the reflection.

From Joanna Seibert.

Mary as a Model of Faith

Giving birth to Christ is something more than biological, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. “Mary is the pre-eminent example of the one who hears the word of God and keeps it. For this reason, more than because of biological motherhood, Jesus claims her as his mother.” And we, too, are asked to give birth to faith.

Read the essay.

From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.

The Spiritual Practice of Awe

What does it mean to experience awe? Is it sitting in your backyard listening to the songbirds? Or seeing a magnificent sunset? But can it also be seeing the scab that has grown over a cut on your arm or looking into the face of your neighbor?

Read the reflection.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Dec. 5, 2023

December 5, 2023Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

Learning how to be still,
to really be still and let life happen –
that stillness becomes a radiance.

-Morgan Freeman, actor and producer
From Well for the Journey

Advent One

Give us grace to cast away
the things designed to lead astray,
the things that of necessity
distract our hearts most easily,

Read the rest of the poem.

From Joanna Seibert’s blog.

Sympathy, Empathy And Compassion

Compassion, says Jay Litvin, is not the same as sympathy or empathy. It is not limited as a response to suffering, but rather is a response to life itself. It is a quality that one would live with “in every situation, with every person, rather than only with one who is in distress.”

Read the reflection.

From Awakin.

A Deeper Lightness

In the second half of life, even though there is suffering, there is now “a changed capacity to hold it creatively and with less anxiety,” says Richard Rohr, adding, “In the second half of life, it is good just to be a part of the general dance. We do not have to stand out, make defining moves, or be better than anyone else on the dance floor.”

Read the reflection.

From Center for Action and Contemplation.

Sabbath Moment

How hard it was for the little boy to accept that he would not get the Lionel train set for Christmas this year. He had so wanted it, but father was in the hospital and money was tight. Then he discovered that the whole word is a Lionel train set.

Read the reflection.

From Terry Hershey’s Sabbath Moment.

Finding God in Community

God is not, first of all, a formula, a dogma, a creedal statement, or a metaphysics that demands our assent,” says Fr. Ron Rolheiser. “God is a flow of living relationships, a trinity, a family of life that we can enter, taste, breathe within, and let flow through us.”

Read the reflection.

From Ron Rolheiser’s blog.

Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.

If this post was forwarded to you, sign up to receive Gathered Wisdom in your email by subscribing at wisdomyears.org.

To learn more visit our website.

Gathered Wisdom, Nov 28, 2023

November 27, 2023Marjorie George

A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

I want to stand by the river…I want to sing, strong and hard, and stomp my feet with a hundred others so that the waters hum with our happiness. I want to dance for the renewal of the world.

-Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
Found in Well for the Journey

Preparing For Advent: Watch For The Light

Deacon Joanna Seibert recommends a book she returns to every Advent, re-reading with joy her previously underlined passages. The editors, in their introduction, remark that the main purpose of the book is “to encourage the rediscovery of Advent as a season of inward preparation.”

Read Seibert’s reflection.

From Joanna Seibert’s Daily Something.

Advent Resources

Even in the darkness we wait, for we have been promised a light that will shine in the darkness, and the darkness will never be able to overcome it (Jn 1:5).

From our website for your Advent journey:

A collection of daily meditations and and inspirations for Advent for you to choose from. And a reading list of Advent books.

And our Advent book study of All Creation Waits.

Advent begins Dec. 3.

Real and False Humility

Humility, says Fr. Ron Rolheiser, does not consist of “self-effacement, self-deprecation, never blowing our own horn.” Humility is recognizing the gifts God has placed in us and offering them to God for the furthering of God’s kingdom.

Read the reflection.