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Turner Publishing Company - Marjory Zoet Bankson

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86 pages

English

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Discover Your Unique Gift

"Creative aging is a choice…. If we remember that transition always begins with endings, moves on to a wilderness period of testing and trying, and only then do we reach the beginning of something new, then we can embrace this encore period of life with hope and curiosity, remembering always that it is our true nature to be creative, to be always birthing new ways of sharing our planet together." —from the Epilogue

In a practical and useful way, Marjory Zoet Bankson explores the spiritual dimensions of retirement and aging. She offers creative ways for you to share your gifts and experience, particularly when retirement leaves you questioning who you are when you are no longer defined by your career.

Drawing on stories of people who have reinvented their lives in their older years, Bankson explores the issues you need to address as you move into this generative period of life:

Release: Letting go of the vocational identity associated with your career or primary work
Resistance: Feeling stuck, stagnant, resisting change
Reclaiming: Drawing energy from the past, discovering unused gifts
Revelation: Forming a new vision of the future
Crossing Point: Moving from stagnation to generativity
Risk: Stepping out into the world with new hope
Relating: Finding or creating new structures for a new kind of work

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Making the Extra Years Count 1

1.WHAT NOW?
Rethinking Aging 7

2. RELEASE
The Inner Work of Leaving 23

3. RESISTANCE
Moving Beyond Security 41

4. RECLAIMING
Riches from the Past 55

5. REVELATION
Where Does Newness Come From? 71

6. CROSSING POINT
Joining Inner and Outer Worlds 87

7. RISK
Beginning Again with More Focus 101

8. RELATING
Finding the Right Form for Now 117

Epilogue: Living Wholeheartedly 133
Suggestions for Further Reading 137

Sujets

Religion

Christianisme

Santé et bien-être

Développement personnel

Santé du quotidien

Christian Living

Aging

Philosophie et théologie

Espiritual

Ageing

Spiritual

General officer

General

Informations

Publié par	Turner Publishing Company
Date de parution	01 février 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781594733307
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0850€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Creative Aging
Rethinking Retirement and Non-Retirement in a Changing World
Marjory Zoet Bankson
Creative Aging: Rethinking Retirement and Non-Retirement in a Changing World
2010 Quality Paperback Edition, First Printing
2010 by Marjory Zoet Bankson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information regarding permission to reprint material from this book, please mail or fax your request in writing to SkyLight Paths Publishing, Permissions Department, at the address / fax number listed below, or e-mail your request to permissions@skylightpaths.com .
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible , copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The stories shared in this book are true, but the names of most people have been changed to protect the privacy of each individual.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bankson, Marjory Zoet.
Creative aging : rethinking retirement and non-retirement in a changing world / Marjory Zoet Bankson.-2010 quality paperback ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59473-281-2 (quality pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-59473-281-7 (quality pbk.)
1. Retirement. 2. Retirement-Psychological aspects. 3. Retirees-Conduct of life. 4. Self-actualization (Psychology) 5. Aging. I. Title.
HQ1062.B36 2010
248.8 5-dc22
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cover design: Tim Holtz
Cover photo: Robert Findlay. Image from BigStockPhoto.com .

SkyLight Paths Publishing is creating a place where people of different spiritual traditions come together for challenge and inspiration, a place where we can help each other understand the mystery that lies at the heart of our existence.
SkyLight Paths sees both believers and seekers as a community that increasingly transcends traditional boundaries of religion and denomination-people wanting to learn from each other, walking together, finding the way .
SkyLight Paths, Walking Together, Finding the Way, and colophon are trademarks of LongHill Partners, Inc., registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Walking Together, Finding the Way
Published by SkyLight Paths Publishing
A Division of Longhill Partners, Inc.
Sunset Farm Offices, Route 4, P.O. Box 237
Woodstock, VT 05091
Tel: (802) 457-4000 Fax: (802) 457-4004
www.skylightpaths.com
For my mother, Edna McLaurin Zoet, who found her true self late in life.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Making the Extra Years Count
1. WHAT NOW?
Rethinking Aging
2. RELEASE
The Inner Work of Leaving
3. RESISTANCE
Moving Beyond Security
4. RECLAIMING
Riches from the Past
5. REVELATION
Where Does Newness Come From?
6. CROSSING POINT
Joining Inner and Outer Worlds
7. RISK
Beginning Again with More Focus
8. RELATING
Finding the Right Form for Now
Epilogue: Living Wholeheartedly
Suggestions for Further Reading

About SkyLight Paths
Copyright
Acknowledgments
T o all those who shared their stories with me about this amazing new period of generativity: As we ve explored what it means to age at this time in history, I have tried to tend your stories with respect and care, giving you some privacy by changing names, but otherwise keeping the details straight. Together we are coming to a new level of consciousness about why we are here, now.
To the members of Seekers Church, who have been my extended family while I struggled to find my encore work: You have walked with me, challenged me, and celebrated important passages along the way. As I became more conscious of the third round of call, beyond identity and vocation, you encouraged me to write it down and pass it on.
To my husband, Peter, for his patience and understanding of my call to write. You helped keep the household rhythms of meals and conversation from disappearing altogether. You guarded those Sabbath times that make this work a joy instead of bondage, and you kept my spirits up when I could not see the way forward.
And to Marcia, my editor and friend, who has once again helped me make sense of the circular style of my writing. Without you, this book would not have been born.
INTRODUCTION
Making the Extra Years Count
O n my sixtieth birthday, I stood in a small circle of women who were older than me. Shadows stretched across the dry grass, and an evening breeze sent a few dry leaves around my feet. We had spent the day together on retreat, and this was our final ritual. Starting from a large circle that included women of many different ages, we had moved inward by decades, naming the primary markers of each time span, and then leaving behind those who had not yet passed the next decade birthday.
From their own experiences, the women in the over-sixty circle told me that the decade ahead would probably hold three things: the end of my career, coping with a major health crisis for me or my spouse, and the necessity for sending down deeper spiritual roots to deal with the diminishments of aging. They blessed me with their close warm bodies and their prayers and urged me to celebrate the good in each day and each decade.
As I look back to that circle of women, I m struck by the fact that they did not identify the new wellsprings of creative work that have bubbled up since my sixtieth birthday. Perhaps they were simply speaking out of their own experience. Perhaps they were hardly aware of the new beginnings they were experiencing themselves.
In truth, the generative period between the ages of (roughly) sixty and seventy-five is a period of possibility that is almost new in our time. When Social Security was inaugurated during the New Deal, actuarial tables predicted death soon after the age of sixty-five. Today, women can expect to live beyond eighty and men, just a few years less. This extended life span presents us with the need to grapple with the question, What is this period for?
With more education and better health care available after World War II, women entered the workplace in large numbers during the 1980s and 90s. They juggled family and work commitments and demonstrated a remarkable entrepreneurial spirit. Today, women-owned businesses employ twenty-three million people, nearly double the fifty largest companies combined. Men have grown up with more expectation that they will share family and work responsibilities more equally with women. Now, as the early boomers reach traditional retirement age, both men and women are wanting to work in new areas, to be useful without feeling used or taken for granted.
Beyond our adult work or career stretches a span of ten or fifteen years in which most of us have valuable experience to offer but very little cultural expectation of being productive. Some might continue in their old career track, like some of the elder statesmen newscasters on television. Others, as pictured in AARP The Magazine , will focus on exercising to stay fit and traveling to stay intellectually engaged. Still, others will become easy targets for unrelenting ads for leisure living: endless activity, a gated community, and help when health fails. Much in our culture sends the message that endless leisure is the reward for our striving, and there are countless articles about stretching our financial resources to cover these golden years. However, there is a great shortage of discussion about the inner work of making our aging years creative and meaningful. That s what I want to explore in this book.
I think it s an incredible gift to be alive at this time in history. Never before have so many Americans reached retirement age with a social consciousness, advanced education, and such good health. Never before have so many women arrived at this milestone with so much experience with organizing others for a common purpose, or men who have been sensitized to the needs of children through more participation in family life. It is also clear that this boomer wave of our population has largely avoided traditional religious structures and sought spiritual guidance from many sources, so the practice of giving to others, of service to the community, is more personal and less institutional than in earlier times.
Financial need is obviously one reason for continuing to work, but our human need to feel useful and connected to the world around us is another major factor. The boomer age group has changed social structures of education, family, and work patterns as they have moved through each stage of life. Now they are changing the terrain of retirement with encore careers and a new global awareness. By the sheer force of their numbers, boomers will change the face of aging. And with the financial meltdown, there is even more impetus to change patterns, create new work, and explore part-time employment, as well as volunteer service.
Rather than the doom and gloom predictions that the boomer generation will bankrupt the nation with needs, I am hopeful that the activism that has characterized this age group will once again chart a new path. Right now, American society is not organized to welcome older workers who want to use their years of experience in a new way. Speed and efficiency seem to be the measure of the marketplace, but I am optimistic about the creative spirit that I see among people who are wanting to work with less pressure and more personal contact and move into a new field for a ten- to fifteenyear period after age sixty.
And surely part of my excitement is that this generative period is my story, too. What excites me about postcareer creativity is that it seems to arise from a deeper spiritual stratum-a layer of soul compressed under the pile of