Growing Older 4
Stacy Ikard & Janis Claflin

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Growing Older 4

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Holy Invitation to Growing Older
Growing Through Loss

What are some of the losses that we encounter in elderhood?

§  People

§  Position

§  Power

§  Independence

§  Health

§  Energy

How Loss Can Facilitate Spiritual Growth

How Loss Can Facilitate Spiritual Growth

Challenging Beliefs:

Loss can expose the fragility of our assumptions about life and the future, prompting us to re-evaluate our faith and values. 

Finding Meaning:

Grieving can help us search for deeper meaning in life, leading to a sense of purpose and connection beyond our own pain. 

Embracing Vulnerability:

Navigating loss can help us become more open, authentic, and resilient in the face of adversity. 

Cultivating Compassion:

Experiencing loss can deepen our understanding of human suffering and inspire us to extend compassion to ourselves and others. 

Deepening Faith:

For those with faith, loss can lead to a stronger relationship with God or a higher power, as they seek comfort and guidance during difficult times. 

Letting Go and Surrendering:

Accepting the reality of loss can be a powerful spiritual practice, allowing us to let go of control and surrender to the unknown. 

Five Stages of Grief – Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Bargaining
  • Depression
  • Acceptance 

Parker Palmer 

  • How shall we hold our losses?  That’s one of the most important questions we humans can ask.  The answers we come up with can make the difference between sinking into bitterness or despair and becoming a giver of life.
  • What might it mean to be “hallowed” by our diminishments?
  • Grief has made me more compassionate to those who suffer.
  • Maybe the most common obstacle to holding our losses well is a failure of imagination about ways to redeem them.
  • You can allow your losses to hollow rather than hallow them- filling inner emptiness with things that do not serve life.  We would have a better world if we would help each other become hallowed, not hollowed. 

•       When we lack the moral imagination to do something else with our suffering we do violence.  But it is possible to ride the power of suffering toward new life.

•       With inner work, our hearts can grow larger and more compassionate.  They can develop a greater capacity to take in others’ sorrows and joys – not in spite of their loss but because of it.

•       Suffering breaks our hearts, but the heart can break in two ways…The brittle heart breaks into shards, shattering the one who suffers and taking down others as well.  Then there is the supple heart, the heart that breaks open, not apart, the one that can grow into greater capacity for the many forms of love.  Only the supple heart can hold suffering in a way that opens to new life.

•       In nature the truth is concealed in plain sight.  Diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites; they are held together in the paradox of the hidden wholeness…they cohabit and cocreate in mysterious unity.

•       Though I still grieve as beauty goes to ground, autumn reminds me to celebrate the primal power that is forever making all things new in me, in us, and in the world.

you are not dead yet

it’s not too late

To open your depths by plunging into them

And Drink in the life

That reveals itself quietly there                         

                                                            RILKE