Diversity In Old Age

FRI., MAR. 13, 1998, 11:47 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

Old age is creeping up on you. Oh, you’re not in the state that most of the women you just sang and spoke to are, but with each year you move closer to this category in earth life. You realize that your lifestyle is reasonably healthy and sustainable (with some important adaptations continuing to be necessary). You appear to have genes from both parents that would predict more years of life. Still, you have no great yen to live into a time of multiple disabilities. I have encouraged you to see bodily death as quite an important and worthwhile adventure… and you do… pretty well.

It is rather clear that there is much diversity in the elderly population. Today I won’t elaborate on the physical variations (including susceptibilities) or on the various ways oldsters can and will use their brains and express emotions. My main focus will be on the spiritual and on human/spiritual interacting.

As you assess yourself you see yourself becoming more “mellow”, having less concern for “causes” and for “only one way” of properly reacting to situations. While at one extreme some elderly become more set in their ways and in their interpretations of “what is right”, you are becoming more moderate and more accepting of variant ways of perceiving and valuing. In terms that I have used with you, you are becoming more of a both/and thinker. There is rarely only one way to achieve “the good”. Consider the illustration you used this morning: can the Irish Republican Army be equated with the early colonists in this country? Is revolt against British rule as desirable… or less… than it was 225 years ago? Or… is a diminishing of deaths from cancer purely desirable, or is cancer one of the interactions I allow (or even cause?) to balance populations, preventing harmful increase in numbers?

While I do encourage some elderly folk to “tighten up” and take firm stands for or against certain actions and intentions, I also encourage opposite perceptions of life events… economic, political, social, and religious. The way you are increasingly interacting is the best for you, but not necessarily the best for all others. It should be obvious that if I have created, allowed, encouraged… and do love… diversity in your elderly I would be a strange God/Spirit if I then expected you all to think, act, and decide in only one way.

I have told you it is quite desirable for you to be and remain a Presbyterian (even one who leads in worship), while having a view of the nature of eternal life not consistent with your church’s doctrine, and practicing this particular “mystical art”. You are aware that your Church has given up on the determination and prosecution of heresies. With age and change in times it has elected to not worry about excluding those who have divergent thoughts and experiences. Should all churches act accordingly. Of course not. I also acknowledge as children of Mine, many who hold to certain truths, seeing variants of these as undesirable… even dangerous.

My title, remember, suggests something unique about old age experiences. Noting that numbers don’t seem important to Me, in this case, I’ll say that there are some elderly who have become more rigid and one-way in their elderliness, after some adult years of more moderation. There are others who establish a pattern as a young adult (even as an adolescent, occasionally) and carry this throughout earth life consistently and with commitment. Finally, there are some more like you, who become comfortable both/and folk, seeing value in competent ways and results.