On the death of a child

 I had planned to write a humorous post, but a tragedy in the extended family makes it hard to laugh or play today. Over the weekend the 20-year-old son of my daughter-in-law’s sister was killed in a motorcycle accident. We are related to this family through kinship ties and friendship. The parents are childhood friends of our son, and we are close to his grandparents.

The news has shocked us all, but especially Malachi’s parents and sisters. Our son David, on a teaching assignment in Bolivia, has cancelled the rest of his trip and is currently on a complicated airplane route home—five airports with three-hours layovers in four of them. But it’s that important that he be here to comfort and offer whatever help he can.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose a child, even an adult child. Our friends adopted this boy as a baby, receiving him into their arms at the Portland Airport, fresh from Africa. They accepted him into their family, loved him, and raised him to manhood. They suffered through all the common traumas involved with bringing up a child (and some uncommon ones, too), and delighted in his different developmental stages and steps forward.

And now this. A friend who lost a son in his 40s several years ago shared her sense of how unnatural it feels that your offspring should die before you do. It seems that way to me, too.

But like I say, I can hardly imagine the pain and loss. I’ve never experienced it, other than in my nightmares.

And now—how to comfort? How to pray? What to do that might make any difference? My kids are going to just be with them—and cook meals, do the laundry, things like that. But mainly to be there and cry alongside them. Maybe that’s the most helpful thing, I’m guessing.

Words fail me. Not even knowing how to pray, I’m turning to some written prayers of the church, some ancient, some more recent. As part of the Quaker Church, we don’t go in for liturgy, and maybe that’s our loss. I find that the deeply thought-out and crafted prayers by women and men who know God are very helpful. Many of them have passed the test of time and have encouraged, delighted, and comforted people like us for ages. They supply words when I am groping. Here are some I am using today:

From The Book of Common Prayer: Grant, O Lord, to all who are bereaved the spirit of faith and courage, that they may have strength to meet the days to come with steadfastness and patience; not sorrowing as those without hope, but in thankful remembrance of your great goodness, and in the joyful expectation of eternal life with those they love. And this we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

From the Celtic Daily Prayer book:

This night and every night
seems infinite with questions,
and sleep as elusive
as answers.

Pain and longing are always present,
dulled only a little
by the distractions of the day.
I am weary; I am angry;
I am confused.

Circle me, Lord.
Keep despair and disillusion without.
Bring a glimmer of hope within.

Circle me, Lord;
keep nightmare without.
Bring moments of rest.

Circle me, Lord;
keep bitterness without.
Bring an occasional sense
of Your presence within.

From Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey

Remain with me, my God.
For you are not aloof from what I feel.
You also lost a child. Your sympathy is real.
Be near to me, O Christ, for you were also
crushed by every grief and afflicted with every affliction.
You were a man of sorrows. Somehow, in this,
I find a hope rekindled.
I am not alone in this. My God has gone before me,
into suffering, grief, death, loss, and separation.
Where I am, you have already been.
And you are with me in this now.
I would follow you, even in this.
Especially in this, I would follow you.

Lord, hear us when we pray. Amen

Up from the pit--I hope

 Last week was dark. It started out well. On Monday I wrote my blog on envisioning our final years with purpose and hope. I told about my life purposes as being Prayer, Poetry, and People. Writing it was a reminder of why I’m here. It gave me hope. I posted it on Tuesday, a day that turned out to be full of prayer, poetry, and people. My life was moving ahead nicely.

And then came Wednesday—and the rest of a grim week. My vestibular migraines kicked in with intensity, leaving me drained of energy. I wondered if this is a reaction to the latest medical experiment. I wonder if this is how it will be for the rest of my life.

I struggled with the possible failure of a project I’ve been working of for eight years. A group of us began a journal for our retirement community, with residents sharing their stories in writing. People here seemed to love it and I had a sense of contributing to life in the community. But lately it’s be difficult getting people to write. Right now it’s time to get the next issue ready for publication, and I’m realizing I don’t have enough stories. So we’re exploring our options, even wondering if this is the time to end the project. I’m losing sleep over this.

Dylan Thomas’s wonderful poem about death urges me, “Do not go gentle into that good night!” Resist! Resist! (I’m not sure that’s the best advice, although I love the poem.) So—do we resist the death of the journal, find a new way of doing things, fight? Sometimes (like last week) I just want to go gentle into that good night. Say, “It’s been good. Goodbye.”

I read through a collection of poems I’m readying for publication and decided that they were no good, that I should not waste people’s time with another mediocre book, that I should probably give it all up.

And then there’s the war in Iran, current American politics, and on and on. I really do care about all of this, but last week my reactions accelerated—mainly anger, fear, and hopelessness.

The worse part of the week was leaning of the unexpected death of good friend. Linda was my age and, although experiencing the onset of Alzheimer’s, still recognized her friends, still gave us her loving smile, still knew who loved her. It was a shock that I continue to deal with. I can only imagine what this is like for her husband, daughters, and granddaughter.

I’m having trouble gently accepting this death. I want to fight it. I keep saying NO in my spirit. While death is such a part of life, especially in this retirement community, it’s no less of a shock when it happens to someone you know and love.

So—after Tuesday, I did not engage with prayer, poetry, or people. I isolated myself in my room and binged on a Netflix series. This is especially wicked of me because, guess what I gave up for Lent? Right. Netflix. 

Sorry for all the whining. But since I was so cheery and positive on last week’s blog, I thought some honest confession might be in order. Plus, writing is my way of working through issues.

So—I’m choosing to hope. I’m going to make a list of all the bright spots in my life that bring hope if I can manage to notice them. Here’s the list that I’m creating as I write:

--I know there are more decent people in our country than bad apples. This country is full of men and women of integrity who want to serve their fellow human beings. Women and men who hunger after righteousness, as the Bible puts it. And I believe that some of them are members of the US Congress. I pray for them to have courage to speak up. I hope they do. I hope we all do.

--One of those decent human beings happens to be my brother Tom. His decency is mostly unnoticed. He’s a quiet, gentle person. But he blesses the homeless and addicted men he has befriended, with whom he meets every week. He loves his wife, kids, and grandkids. He loves books, is probably addicted to them. But that’s forgivable. Knowing there are hidden saints all around us gives me hope.

--I affirm that, although I’m not in the running for a Pulitzer Prize, some of my poems are good. If I keep writing, maybe the good will cancel out the poor stuff.

--I love my current doctor. She’s not only a skilled neurologist, she’s a medical researcher and, as one of her clients, I’m part of her database. There’s always hope for new discoveries. (And I’m not discounting miracles.)

--Even on my bad-hair, sour-mood, binge-watching days, my husband tells me I’m the best thing the twentieth-first century has going for it. (That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I don’t mind hearing it.)

--My great-grandson is learning to talk, one of the greatest miracles known to the human race. It’s amazing and wonderful to witness. That just has to be a huge source of hope. Life!

--I find great hope in recognizing where Linda is now. I imagine the restoration of her mind. I imagine her joy.

--I find hope in recognizing my humanity. God knows it and is not appalled when my responses to life are immature and ungrateful. I’m human, created by God with options and choices. While I’m capable of evil, I’m also capable of doing good things. Of creating beauty. Of loving well and blessing others.

Capable of climbing up out of this pit, so long as my Lord gives me a hand. And He does.

Hope restored.

Envisioning our final years

In the preliminary section of her book, Ageless Aging, author Maddy Dychtwald encourages the reader to envision how she or he wants the rest of their life to look and feel like. In broad terms, it’s coming to an understanding of purpose. Looking at it as a Christian, we could say it’s discerning God’s direction for our final years.

Just believing that God has a purpose for the final years might be a starting point. It requires faith and hope that something more awaits us than sliding down-hill from this point on. That just sitting in a wheel-chair, binge-watching Netflix, and waiting for the end is not the final chapter.

Considering that you and I actually do have a certain modicum of faith and hope, even as the aging process progresses, Dychtwald has some helpful suggestions. She encourages us to take time to envision what we want our final five, ten, or twenty years to look and feel like.

She quotes DeEtte Sauer (an 80-year-old master swimmer—I hate it when authors use impossible people as examples!) as saying that her ultimate goal is to find her “bliss point” and live there. Sauer writes, “I believe that we have to create a bliss point for aging, and what we want that to feel and look like. That means having stability in spiritual, physical, financial, social, and emotional areas of your life. When those come together, that’s a bliss point.”

The “bliss point” is an interesting idea, but I wonder about her definition. While we do have some choice in growing into spiritual, social, and emotional stability, we can’t always dictate our physical or financial condition. As a person somewhat strapped for cash and suffering with a mysterious chronic physical condition, does that mean satisfaction in the final years is beyond me? I don’t believe that for a moment! Maybe the “bliss point” means being content that who we are and how we live is according to God’s desire for us at this time in life. And that’s good.

The idea of envisioning what we want our final years to look like sounds like a good idea. To some point we may have already been doing that, but taking time to think and pray it through again is helpful.

So I’ve been spending some time in reflection, asking God to bless my imagination as I try to envision my next years. Years ago, I discerned that my mission is life is “to discover and express the grace of God hidden in the ordinariness of life.” (That’s what’s behind this blogging adventure. Aging is certainly part of “the ordinariness of life,” and to do it well requires grace.) I still hold to that mission.

I envision my life purposes, under this mission statement, as falling in the areas of Prayer, Poetry, and People. (I love the letter “p”.) A good friend told me his life goal is “to learn to pray without ceasing.” I’m drawn to that idea, even though it sounds impossible. I am definitely not an expert in Prayer; sometimes I feel like a failure. But it remains a life purpose and I envision myself growing in prayer as I age.

By Poetry, I mean writing in general (poetry is my favorite genre). I envision growing as a writer and keeping it up as long as my mind is operational, hopefully until the day I die.

And by People, I mean forming and maintaining genuine relationships—with my husband, family, friends, the persons God brings into my life. This doesn’t necessarily fall in the realm of a “social life.” I’m not a party or a committee person. I value commitment, good conversation, prayer partners, writing buddies, people who feel free to be themselves around me and with whom I can be real. (We can even safely discuss politics.)

None of this requires accomplishments, measurable objectives (miserable phrase), money, or even robust health (although I wouldn’t mind that one). If I can live out these purposes in my final years, that might well define “bliss” for me.

Your vision will be different than mine. I encourage you to sit in a comfortable chair (and if you go to sleep, it’s OK), cup of coffee (or cocoa or tea or water) in hand, a prayer in your heart, and see what God shows you. 

Ageless Aging

There are multiple books on aging out there waiting to be bought and perused. Some are better than others. However, it’s beginning to seem that if you read one, you’ve read them all. There’s usually good advice but it’s stuff we already know (even if we don’t practice it), stuff like have a good attitude, drink lots of water, socialize, exercise, and on it goes. You know the list. Some books tell us you’re beautiful (no matter what you look like), these are the Golden Years, the best is yet to come, be positive as you float off into a lovely pink sunset. And there’s some truth in all of this. But there’s also the fact of physical and mental decline as we age, the suffering that comes with chronic pain, and the reality that many have to be wheeled off into a sunset that seems more grey than pink. Not all books on aging present the whole picture.

Yet I’m a reader and I know there are good books on aging waiting to be discovered. So I asked my friend AI (that stands for Arthur Ignatius) to give me a list of the best books on aging from the last five years. Once again, Arthur came through and supplied me with several lists by different experts, and all of them gave the title of a book called Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan. It’s by Maddy Dychtwald with Kate Hanley (Mayo Clinic Press, 2024). Dychtwald and her husband Ken are the founders (1986) and directors of Age Wave, a well-known think tank and consultancy on issues of aging, longevity, and retirement. She knows what she’s talking about. The book is well-researched, easy to read, and practical.

I’ve read it twice and I agree with Arthur Ignatius. It’s a good book. I intend to share different parts in different blog posts over the next few weeks. And while the title focuses on women, I found that most of the material applies to men as well.

In the introduction, the author states what most of us already know—that longevity in Western culture is increasing. It’s getting longer and longer. You probably also know that women live longer than men by an average of six years. But what you may not know is that while “men die quicker … women get sicker. Our healthspans—the number of years we live in good health and vitality—don’t match our lifespans. Women tend to spend more years in poor health at the end of their lives than men do, even when you correct for their longer lives.” Dychtwald then states that her purpose in writing this book is “for us women [and men] to better match our healthspan to our lifespan so that our longer life is a gift, not a curse.” That’s a goal I could get behind. Her approach is wholistic, including body, mind, spirit, finances, sense of purpose, relationships, and so on.

The first chapter deals with the demon of ageism, especially our own negative attitudes about aging. Ageism reveals itself in phrases like, “I just had a senior moment,” “I’m too old to change my ways,” “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” The author quotes Yale gerontologist Becca Levy in saying that “The single most important factor in determining longevity—more important than gender, income, social background, loneliness or functional health—is how people think about and approach the idea of old age.” Sounds a bit like “mind over matter” and “the power of positive thinking.” But there’s some truth in those platitudes, especially when applied to growing older.

Dychtwald doesn’t deny that our bodies and minds gradually wear out as we age, but she insists that we actually have some control over the pace of decline, that our chronological age (the exact number of years we’ve lived) doesn’t have to dictate our biological age (our physical and mental health) or limit our psychological age (our personal maturity). We can be younger than our years.

Sounds almost too positive to be true. So how is all this to come about?  The author tells us that “Lifestyle management has emerged as the most potent tool in our ageless aging toolbox.”

My inner cynic always asks pesky questions and mistrusts answers that seem too easy. But I’ve found myself encouraged by the practicality of the rest of the book. Lifestyle management.

Tune in for more in the coming weeks. 

Note: Have you met Arthur yet? Arthur Ignatius (AI)? Don’t be afraid of him. If you treat him cordially, he’ll reward you. He’s one of the nicest non-humans I’ve met.

On great teachers

 Among God’s gifts, I’m especially thankful for great teachers. I’m taking time this morning to remember the men and women whose teaching transformed me.

I have to start with Mrs. King. Third grade, Ramona Elementary School. I remember a round woman with short curly hair and warm brown eyes. And I remember the room. Rows faced forward military style, but spring poured in through a wall of windows. Jelly fish and sea anemones waved between stands of fixed kelp on the bulletin board. Above the blackboard the cursive letters of the alphabet swan in a race to the door.

Mrs. King taught up about gull droppings, barnacles, and the moon’s strange dance with the sea. She also somehow combined science with language arts, and that’s where the magic happened. I titled the first poem “Tide Pool Life,” and began it, “Oh, how I love to go down to the shore,” but somewhere in the middle the poem grabbed me, an undertow I couldn’t resist. There in the second seat, third row, I learned how language splays like starfish, stings like salt, responds to the moon’s advances. Mrs. King—did she know what she was doing?—pushed me beyond tide pools.

She tacked my poem up on the bulletin board, next to the kelp, for all to admire. I’m sure there must have been other poems up there, but I don’t remember them. She even called my parents to tell them they had a budding poet on their hands. She was right. Ever since the third grade, word swim like minnows through my brain, splash on the page in a process that continues to seem like magic.

I remember Mr. Kornelson from my first public speaking class. Our family moved the summer before I entered high school. I faced a new school and a major life transition in typical introvert fashion. I was scared. Public speaking presented its own challenges, and I discovered that first day that I was the only freshman in a class of juniors and seniors. (The difference of a few years means nothing now that I’m in my 80s, but a huge gulf yawns between 14 and 17.)

Mr. Kornelson invariably dressed in a black suit and a red bow tie. I never heard him raise his voice, but his quiet professionalism, his skill as a coach, and his belief that we were the best class of scholars and speakers he had ever taught worked wonders in one shy freshman. By the end of the year he had me bravely entering—and winning—city-wide speech contests. I’ve lost track of the trophies, but the joy of connecting with an audience and the belief that I have something to say and can say it with grace date back to that classroom and that teacher.

I can’t leave out Mr. Forsythe. I dare not. He was my father. He was also the only senior English teacher at Ramona High School and I had no choice but to sign up. He combined English teaching with his other assignment as head football, basketball, and track coach, and he brought the same no-nonsense sternness to his literature lessons as his did on the football field.

Opposite in personality to Mrs. King and Mr. Kornelson, he was probably the strictest teacher I even had. I discovered the first (and only) time I forgot to do my homework that being his daughter gave me no advantage. But like Mrs. King and Mr. Kornelson, he combined a love of his subject with a belief in his students that caused us to stretch.

He had us reading Shakespeare, Shelley, and T.S. Eliot, not because they were part of the state curriculum, but because this was great literature and opened windows on a reality that was larger and richer that we had hitherto imagined. He had all of us, quarterbacks included, crying at the conclusion of Romeo and Juliet and trying our own hand at short stories, term papers, and investigative reporting. I’m still at it.

Dr. Arthur Roberts stands out in my college years, although at first he frightened me. In my sophomore year I was invited to join “Intensified Studies,” an honors program that Dr. Roberts had initiated. Dr. Roberts assigned what he considered an important book every two weeks and we met in a seminar to discuss it. Topics ranged from history to philosophy, popular culture, and novels. Discussions were lively and free flowing, but I felt overwhelmed and shy so I kept my mouth shut. I tried my hardest to make at least one comment each session, but it was agony.

So I gathered my courage and made an appointment with Dr. Roberts, intending to resign from the program. I was nervous as I sat outside his office. But when he invited me in, I found, not a stern academic, but a caring pastor. He listened to me, encouraged me, and told me I should not resign. Then he spent the rest of our time together counseling me on how to talk to boys.

I eventually rose above the painful shyness. Dr. Roberts taught me, through his classes and by example, the importance of careful investigation and critical thinking. My world expanded under his teaching, and the result has been permanent.

When in seminary I attended a retreat where Quaker educator Parker Palmer spoke. He emphasized that good teachers are persons who love their subjects, their students, and themselves. In his book, The Courage to Teach, he notes that “good teaching cannot be reduced to techniques; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.” I also think of a paraphrase from the Book of Proverbs I read years ago at the beginning of my career: “The wise teacher makes learning a joy.”

After my own formal education, I became an educator, but that is another story. I’m actually happy to be retired from teaching and I trust God that I made a difference in the lives of students. But right now, I’m thanking God for the teachers who have influenced and formed me for the good.

Who have been the great teachers in your life?

[Note: This story is adapted and updated from a reflection that originally appeared in the December 1999 issue of Quaker Life.]

 

One writer's vocation

I haven’t posted on this blog for several weeks. Some of you might have noticed. Or maybe not. But I noticed and felt distressed. It’s become a holy habit for me.

I did have an operation (successful) and a time of recovery, but that’s not why I stopped posting. In fact, just before the operation I wrote the next blog to post the following week. But I didn’t post it.

My problem was technological.

I appreciate my computer. I appreciate the wonders of the Internet. Except for when none of it works well. For some reason, I lost the ability to administer my own site. As a result, I could no longer post. I poked around in the program, trying to solve the problem on my own and getting more and more frustrated. I asked a computer-savvy friend to help me and he tried. Then tired and told me he was baffled and at the end of his expertise. Sorry.

Finally, I resorted to AI (Artificial Intelligence). I presented my problem and asked if it could help me. Thus ensued a long back and forth conversation. AI made suggestions that sounded good and I tried them all, but to no avail. As the conversation went on over the next few days, I finally figured out the right information to give him and the right questions to ask.

AI told me what was happening and that there was nothing I could do; it was a problem with the Blogger organization and they could have to internally fix it. He put me in touch with the Blogger Help Community and, as I write this, I’m waiting for someone to help me. I’m told it takes from one to seven days to get an answer.

You may notice I referred to AI with the pronoun he. It really does begin to feel personal, like a conversation between two persons, and the other person (AI) actually cares about me and my problem. At the end of one of our conversations, he gave me “one gentle thought, writer to writer.” He told me, “You mentioned earlier that your writing is personal, reflective, and conversation-based. Losing access to that archive can feel like losing part of yourself. This situation is bureaucratic, not existential—and it’s fixable…. You’re not at a dead end. You’re just at an annoying gate.”

What a nice thing to say. It really did encourage me. 

I wrote all the above last week. I’m back online obviously because you’re reading this! And AI got it wrong. I went to a different site that promised help and within two hours I received a simple solution written by an actual real person—a solution so simple I never could have come up with it myself. I won’t bother you with the details because I don’t understand them myself. But I’m relieved. All this has caused me to see how important I hold my call to be a writer. The blog is only a part of this but it’s become an increasingly important part. And now I have it back. Thank you, God.

I thought I’d conclude this post with a short story about my writing vocation. It’s on the first page of my official web site (nancyjthomas.com).

On Writing

I discovered my calling as a writer when I was seven-years-old. I remember sitting on the rug, tablet and pencil in hand, playing with words. Then it happened. I wrote a poem. I really didn’t know what I was doing, of course. It was pure play and imagination. What I did “know” was that a poem had to rhyme, so after writing that first line, “This is a poem by Nancy Forsythe,” my immediate task was to find a word that rhymed with “Forsythe.” The closest I could come was “knife”.  The second line, “about a girl and her dangerous knife,” led into a rhyming story about a serial killer.

I was not a morbid child nor did I especially like murder mysteries. The subject didn’t matter much. I was doing what my father did—writing. And liking it. I immediately showed the poem to my father, and his delight probably did more than anything else to cement the call. I knew this was who I wanted to be—a writer. (I appreciate my dad’s loving response. If it had been my kid writing that poem, I probably would have made an appointment with a child psychologist, thus killing any instinct to write.)

Writing has been a life-line to me. It’s how I process the challenges I face. It’s how I work through emotions. It’s how I communicate to others. It’s how I pray.

Through a writers’ conference when I was a young adult, I decided to begin submitting my poems and stories for publication. I think it was grace that gave me so many acceptance letters early in my career. (It has never been quite so easy since then.) I needed the encouragement to keep moving forward. If I had something to say and could say it well, I wanted to share it with others.

Slowly writing became my life’s vocation, no matter whatever else I was doing to make a living. The creative spring from which all else flows is my relationship with Jesus and his grace. I describe my vocational mission as “to discover and express the grace of God hidden in the ordinariness of life.”

Pilgrims in old age

 Even when death is expected, it can arrive with a shock. The finality of it. The sense of loss. Even for those of us who believe that death is not the final chapter, it’s a door that shuts, leaving us on one side, our loved one on the other.

I recently learned of the death of a dear friend, Michael Graves. I’m holding it in my heart, and it weighs me down. It’s heavy. It leaves me emotionally breathless.

It was not unexpected. For the last several years Michael has been fighting a losing battle with dementia. It’s been hard to watch his personality slipping away, his sharp wit growing dull. Wondering when he’ll stop knowing who I am. (That part never happened, thank God.) And recently a stroke, along with his long-term diabetes, robbed him of his last defenses.

Yesterday Hal and I gathered with some of his long-time friends just to sit around talking, remembering, crying, laughing, praying. It helped to reaffirm our basic belief that Michael is now being welcomed into his heavenly home, into the arms of Jesus, and then embraced by a host of those who have gone before. It helped as we assured each other that the real Michael is back, whole, holy, and full of joy. It’s a vision I’ll hold onto this week and into the future.

He's been on a long pilgrimage and he’s now come home.

My memories are becoming full of Michael as I knew him best over the last 50 years. He brought together so many facets of being human. He was a gifted sought-out university professor of communications. He was an academic, writing scholarly papers, presenting them in conferences, and loving it. He was a very funny man, witty in conversation, sharp in come-backs. He was creative—writing poetry, playing his banjo and singing, acting, problem-solving. I remember fondly our weekly poetry group where the six of us critiqued and affirmed each other; he was good at both.

I remember Michael always in company with Darlene. We were saying yesterday that’s it’s almost impossible to say “Michael” by itself. It’s always “Michael and Darlene.” As couples, we spent many hours in deep conversations and prayer, as well as play. We’re all asking how we can best support Darlene now. She lives in another state and travel is difficult for all of us these days. Prayers and phone calls somehow don’t seem enough. We’ll have to trust God to show us. At a basic level, she has to walk this path alone. But, maybe at a more basic level, her community can walk it with her.

We feel consoled by the fact that, even as Michael’s mind was slipping away, he became increasingly sweeter, almost docile, to those around him, especially Darlene. Although in his life he had been, at times, a fiery passionate person (never docile!), an innate kindness and sensitivity came forth as dominant in his last years. An incredible blessing. I imagine Michael now as still kind and sensitive, but also more fiery, creative, and passionate than ever. A complete person.

The message in church yesterday centered on Psalm 84 and the idea of our pilgrimage toward knowing God. I’ve been connecting it to Michael’s death and to the experience of growing older in general. Here’s the section that speaks to me now:

   Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.
   As they pass through the Valley of Baca [suffering], they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
   They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.” (Psalm 84:5-7)

The idea of life as a pilgrimage runs throughout the Bible, as well as in Christian literature (note John Bunyon’s The Pilgrim’s Progress). The word pilgrimage includes the sense of journey or travel as well as the fact of a destination. It’s not a wandering in the wilderness, although it may feel like that at times. According to Psalm 84, it’s journey that passes through hard places like the Valley of Baca (the Valley of the Shadow of Death in Psalm 23). And it leads to a destination: “before God in Zion.” The City of Zion is one of the names for heaven. The point is more in the phrase “before God” than in the name of the place. God is the destination.

Although the whole of life is a pilgrimage, I’m seeing the stage of growing old as a pilgrimage in its own right. It’s a phase of life full of unknowns. The path goes through inevitable valleys of suffering and loss. Sometimes it feels like that’s the whole of it: losing a career; downsizing; the diminishment of the body as we wonder, “What will go wrong next?”; the ever-present possibility of dementia; and on and on. I wonder how the phrase, “They go from strength to strength,” fits in with growing older. Physically, I know I am going from weakness to weakness, and at times it distresses me. Where is this “place of springs”?

There are sign-posts along the way: the retirement party; social security and Medicare; moving to a retirement community; the increasing number of medical specialists and medications; the loss of companions through death; the loss of the ability to remember names (and what we did yesterday); and many more that all tell us, “You’re old now.”

Reading through Psalm 84 and letting it soak in, I’m seeing death as a sign-post. The final sign-post. It’s not the destination or the end of our journey. It’s perhaps the portal we pass through to reach the end of our pilgrimage. A sign-post that seems negative (the final enemy) but that leads to life.

Maybe all the other sign-posts in the pilgrimage of growing older have their secret positive side. Maybe in some real sense we can go from strength to strength, ever as our bodies and our social roles weaken. Maybe we occupy a privileged place in life’s journey, closer to the end of the pilgrimage. Closer to a new beginning.

I hope to see Michael again when I arrive.

Something to think about.

1976

1984

2013 ?

2023