Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older , livre ebook

Turner Publishing Company - Dayle A. Friedman

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72 pages

English

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Offers inspiration and guidance to help you make greater meaning and flourish amid the challenges of aging. It taps ancient Jewish wisdom for values, tools and precedents to frame new callings and beginnings, shifting family roles, and experiences of illness and death. For seekers of all faiths; for personal use and caregiving settings.

Sujets

Santé et bien-être

Santé du quotidien

Philosophie et théologie

Judaism

Religion

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Publié par	Turner Publishing Company
Date de parution	03 mars 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781580238328
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

To my mother, Audrey Friedman Marcus, who demonstrates that one can grow older with vibrant engagement, courage, and a great appetite for fun.
In memory of my beloved sister, Jill Friedman Fixler, whose dignity, grit, and grace as she faced her cruel illness and untimely death will forever inspire me.
In memory of my father, Don Friedman, who taught me about transforming relationships as we grow older.
To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin.
-Martin Buber
[Growing older] is hazardous, but worth the effort.
-Rabbi Everett Gendler
Contents
Introduction: Births Out of Brokenness: Growing Whole as We Grow Older
Part I
Facing Shatterings as We Grow Older
1 Seeking Wisdom
Transcending Destructive Ageism
2 One Big Hole
Confronting the Broken Heart
3 The Ultimate Shattering
Embracing Our Mortality
4 Finding Wholeness as Our Bodies Break Down
5 Wandering in the Wilderness
Caring for Our Fragile Dear Ones
6 Making Sense of Dementia s Brokenness
Part II
Searching for the Sparks
Beginning Again (and Again)
7 Softening to Reality
Finding Sweetness amid Suffering
8 A Time to Heal
Liberation through Forgiveness
9 Declaring Inter dependence
10 Making Wise Choices about Medical Care at the Edge of Life
11 New Ways of Loving
Growing Up as We and Our Parents Age
12 Traveling Lighter
Winnowing Stuff
13 A Sanctuary in Time
Spending Our Precious Time Mindfully
Part III
Basking in the Light
Honing and Sharing Wisdom
14 Answering the Call
Saying Here I Am ( Hineini )
15 Drawing from the Well
Developing a Blessing Practice
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Using This Book A Guide for Book Groups and Wisdom Circles
Notes
For Further Learning
About the Author
Copyright
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INTRODUCTION
Births Out of Brokenness
Growing Whole as We Grow Older
The challenge of aging isn t to stay young; it s not only to grow old, but to grow whole -to come into your own.
-Connie Goldman 1
What Is Beyond Midlife?
When we are young, we fantasize about what life will be like when we grow up. We try on visions of our futures and happily share them with anyone who will ask. When we get to midlife and look ahead, most of us do not have a similarly clear picture of what we hope for, much less what we expect. We do not know how to propel ourselves into the terrain of later life. Many of us approach this next part of the life cycle with trepidation. We are afraid of the known-the end of this part of life is inevitably death-and of the unknown: How will we fill the days and years? How will we cope with new roles and the loss of old ones? How will we go on when we lose those dear to us?
Those of us approaching this part of our paths now can expect, if we are lucky, to live for several more decades. It is unlikely that we will face unadulterated disability and decline, as many of us fear. It is just as doubtful that we will have only triumphs, adventures, and joys.
It is not possible to break this post-midlife time into neatly demarcated stages. We cannot distinguish healthy from ill phases, since we may go back and forth between these states. And it is not particularly meaningful to divide the time by chronological age, since you could be eighty-five and playing tennis every day or sixty-four and physically disabled with multiple sclerosis. You could be retired at sixty and enjoying a life of volunteerism or be eighty-six and working full-time. You could be fifty-eight and have school-age kids at home, like me, or seventy-two and becoming a grandparent for the first time. You might be grieving the loss of a longtime partner at sixty-one or falling in love at ninety. It is probably more helpful to see this unfolding as rich, complicated, and challenging.
The journey beyond midlife is strewn with both joys and sorrows. The complex path ahead will include aging, changing, becoming, learning, forgetting, loving, losing, waxing, waning, ailing, healing, teaching, caring, being nurtured, feeling pain, savoring pleasure, doing, being, and dying. It is not a straightforward trip but rather an unfolding path full of twists and turns, of shocking surprises and, if we are open, perhaps unexpected delights. We cannot plan this journey; we simply cannot anticipate when and how our health will challenge us. We cannot prophesy about the future economic environment or how others around us will fare. Even if we have seen others go down this road, we will never be able to anticipate just what will happen or how it will be for us. We need guidance to find our way with resilience, courage, and blessing-to develop grace and grit in facing what lies before us.
Births Out of Brokenness
We can take strength from a teaching by the kabbalistic master Rabbi Isaac Luria. According to Luria, the world we live in, the life we have, was born out of a cosmic shattering ( shever ). God had intended to fill the world with the divine light, but the world could not endure this intense and overwhelming splendor. God contracted the divine presence in order to make room for the world, but in a devastating cosmic accident, the vessels intended to hold God s light shattered.
The light that was abundant and omnipresent was suddenly hidden and dispersed-encased in shards ( kelipot ) of the vessels that had been meant to contain it. So now the Divine is limited and concealed in a world of darkness. In the wake of the cataclysm, we are alive-there is space for us in the world-but we are in darkness. It is up to us human beings to locate and lift up the sparks of light hidden within the shards that surround us. This is the work of repairing the world ( tikkun olam ).
This mystical cosmology turns out to be an apt description of the journey beyond midlife. We are constantly encountering shatterings as we grow older-partings with jobs or roles; disappointments as things don t turn out the way we imagined; health crises; leaving cherished homes or communities to begin again somewhere else. We may feel that the light that illumined our way and gave us joy has left us. When things shatter in our lives, we are, in the words of health and wellness expert Elizabeth Lesser, broken open, 2 and in this way we become available to begin anew , with the capacity for deeper-than-ever learning.
We are wounded by the shatterings of growing older, and yet if we are alive, we have new opportunities to grow. As the Catholic priest Richard Rohr teaches in his book Falling Upward , 3 we can grow into the fullness of our human potential. This opportunity for growth emerges out of the shattering. Actually, later life is a series of births out of brokenness. We might wish to go back, but we are not given that choice. The only existential choice is whether we will dwell in the darkness or seek (and lift up) the sparks of light hidden within our new reality. This is what Rabbi Luria called tikkun -repair.
My sense is that the whole journey beyond midlife is a mysterious blend of light and dark, wholeness and fragility. I have seen the very oldest old and frailest frail share ecstatic joy and make a profound difference in the world around them. I have also seen people whose outer lives may have changed little felled by a single loss or a change.
We have a chance beyond midlife to become the person we were truly meant to be. We can draw on everything we have experienced so far to contribute to the people around us and the wider world and to find strength and resilience amid challenges.
Prepare Provisions for the Journey
How are we to equip ourselves to be able to seek out-and find-the hidden light amid our experiences beyond midlife? Another ancient teaching gives us a hint. Isaac Abravanel, a medieval Jewish sage, taught that later life has a unique purpose. Once we have passed through midlife, he posited, it is time to attend to our soul and to prepare provisions for the journey. What journey? The journey from now until our last breath. Abravanel suggests that as we grow older, we ought to live differently than we have before. Now, we place our focus on gathering spiritual sustenance for the path ahead. He does not mean that we are to stop all work or creative activity, or even that we must retire at any specific time, but rather that the center of our concern becomes growing deeper and wiser.
This book offers provisions for the journey beyond midlife. If you were setting off for an extended camping trip, you would pack all manner of things to sustain you. You would bring food and water for your body (or tools with which to gather them), clothes and blankets to protect you, and means of making fire to comfort you. In traveling on the path beyond midlife, it s not jerky or trail mix that you will need, but perspective, guidance, and practices. These are the things that will sustain you as you grow older.
Jewish tradition has for millennia approached growing older with a healthy combination of reverence and realism. Judaism offers a storehouse of wisdom through its practices, narratives, and norms; it offers just the kind of inspiration and guidance that can help seekers of all faiths find radiance and resilience as they age. In this book you will have an opportunity to draw from this ancient wisdom in order to lay in provisions-to learn, grow, experiment, and develop approaches to becoming whole in this unprecedented swath of life.
The book begins with exploring shatterings beyond midlife-changes and challenges that we must confront in the journey toward wholeness. The second part of the book offers pathways toward searching for sparks of light-beginning anew in the wake of change, loss,