Editorial
Staying fresh and green
About this issue
____________________________________________________________________
Staying fresh and green
I was showing my wedding picture to my four-year-old granddaughter. I told her that her grandpa was that handsome young man in the photo and I was that slender young woman with the long, dark hair.
She stared at the photograph and then she looked at me. “Grandma,” she asked, “did you turn into a different person?”
I can’t remember my reply but I know I laughed and gave her a hug, and I imagine she danced off to play. I’ve wondered since, however, what the right answer to her question would be.
Yes? Any chronology of photographs will show that we age, yes, and turn into different people.
No? The same pictures provoke an overwhelming awareness that the smiling preschooler, teen, or parent we see there is the person we are still. No, we insist, looking back, the self is continuous.
In bodies
What aging doesn’t let us forget – and it seems almost too obvious to mention – is that we live in bodies. Thus we learn to be a child, a youth, an adult, an elder. Thus we fulfill our purpose and do our work.
And bodies, though impermanent as tents, are not to be sneered at. God in Christ took on a body too. “When Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me’” (Hebrews 10:5). “In his body” Jesus suffered (I Peter 4:1); “in his body” bore our sins (I Peter 2:24).
It’s good, and necessary, then, to come to terms with the bodies that house us, and express our faith in them, this day, whether we are writing an exam, tucking a baby into bed, shingling a roof, or sitting in a wheelchair.
“The daily practice of incarnation – of being in the body with full confidence that God speaks the language of flesh – is to discover a pedagogy that is as old as the Gospels,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor. “Why else did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash feet and share supper?”
Stimulus to grow
If aging – and I mean the whole process of development and decline from infancy through adult-and-elderhood – reminds us that the body is home, it also keeps us under steady renovation. Every stage brings changes and challenges – sometimes greater strength, sometimes limitation – but if we’re willing, these can be powerful stimuli for spiritual renewal and transformation as well.
So perhaps the answer I really want for my granddaughter’s question is: Oh, I certainly hope so!
Although wisdom is often associated with being old, the link is far from inevitable, however. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which followed several cohorts of people over six to eight decades, found no evidence that the majority of older adults were wiser than the young.
The psalmist must have realized this, for he prayed, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). There’s a sense of deliberation in that prayer, a quest to be thoughtful and assessing of where one’s at, especially relative to death, and then receiving the wisdom of God for it. As much as we might like to become really nice old people without trying, we’ll have to pray and practice as we go, gulping grace like the air we breathe.
I recently read the wonderful new autobiography of Mennonite Brethren author Katie Funk Wiebe (You Never Gave Me a Name, forthcoming, DreamSeeker Books) and was struck by the diligence with which she worked her way – theologically – through each role, each stage, of her life. Nor did it end with retirement. Now in her 80s, Wiebe writes of elders seeing themselves “not just as people being maintained but as God’s people with a vision of God’s life for us.”
Neither Wiebe nor the voices we hear in this issue on the theme of aging imagine some kind of every-day-in-every-way-I’m-getting-better-and-better progression. Rather, they invite us to human tasks of life-long learning, God’s presence, and the possibility of living as “the righteous…planted in the house of the Lord,” who “still bear fruit in old age, [who] stay fresh and green” (Psalm 92:13-14).
We can’t stay fresh and green alone. The church helps us by accepting we live in bodies. It helps by fostering an atmosphere of growth for everyone within the congregation. It helps by discerning gifts and training leaders to meet the spiritual needs of people at particular stages of life. It helps by never ceasing to preach God’s unchanging and persistent love for people of all ages, whether they’re clever little four-year-olds or those who are learning to be elders. —DD
____________________________________________________________________
About this issue
With people’s increasing life span, seniors can now be categorized as “young old” and “old old.” The articles in this issue ended up focusing more on the latter group than the former, though Robert Suderman has some good words for us boomers (getting older, but imagining we’ll always be young). Thanks to him, to the chaplains who shared their enthusiasm about their work and elderly friends, and to John Regehr, an elder both realistic and grace-filled.
At the Herald, spring means provincial convention season. Last month led off with a report of Ontario’s gathering; this month, Karla Braun, who attended both the Manitoba and Saskatchewan conventions, tells what happened at those. Next month, we’ll carry reports from B.C., Quebec, and Alberta. The June issue will also feature writing on Christology by Tom Yoder Neufeld and the atonement by Timothy Geddert.
About this issue
____________________________________________________________________
Staying fresh and green
I was showing my wedding picture to my four-year-old granddaughter. I told her that her grandpa was that handsome young man in the photo and I was that slender young woman with the long, dark hair.
She stared at the photograph and then she looked at me. “Grandma,” she asked, “did you turn into a different person?”
I can’t remember my reply but I know I laughed and gave her a hug, and I imagine she danced off to play. I’ve wondered since, however, what the right answer to her question would be.
Yes? Any chronology of photographs will show that we age, yes, and turn into different people.
No? The same pictures provoke an overwhelming awareness that the smiling preschooler, teen, or parent we see there is the person we are still. No, we insist, looking back, the self is continuous.
In bodies
What aging doesn’t let us forget – and it seems almost too obvious to mention – is that we live in bodies. Thus we learn to be a child, a youth, an adult, an elder. Thus we fulfill our purpose and do our work.
And bodies, though impermanent as tents, are not to be sneered at. God in Christ took on a body too. “When Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me’” (Hebrews 10:5). “In his body” Jesus suffered (I Peter 4:1); “in his body” bore our sins (I Peter 2:24).
It’s good, and necessary, then, to come to terms with the bodies that house us, and express our faith in them, this day, whether we are writing an exam, tucking a baby into bed, shingling a roof, or sitting in a wheelchair.
“The daily practice of incarnation – of being in the body with full confidence that God speaks the language of flesh – is to discover a pedagogy that is as old as the Gospels,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor. “Why else did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash feet and share supper?”
Stimulus to grow
If aging – and I mean the whole process of development and decline from infancy through adult-and-elderhood – reminds us that the body is home, it also keeps us under steady renovation. Every stage brings changes and challenges – sometimes greater strength, sometimes limitation – but if we’re willing, these can be powerful stimuli for spiritual renewal and transformation as well.
So perhaps the answer I really want for my granddaughter’s question is: Oh, I certainly hope so!
Although wisdom is often associated with being old, the link is far from inevitable, however. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which followed several cohorts of people over six to eight decades, found no evidence that the majority of older adults were wiser than the young.
The psalmist must have realized this, for he prayed, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). There’s a sense of deliberation in that prayer, a quest to be thoughtful and assessing of where one’s at, especially relative to death, and then receiving the wisdom of God for it. As much as we might like to become really nice old people without trying, we’ll have to pray and practice as we go, gulping grace like the air we breathe.
I recently read the wonderful new autobiography of Mennonite Brethren author Katie Funk Wiebe (You Never Gave Me a Name, forthcoming, DreamSeeker Books) and was struck by the diligence with which she worked her way – theologically – through each role, each stage, of her life. Nor did it end with retirement. Now in her 80s, Wiebe writes of elders seeing themselves “not just as people being maintained but as God’s people with a vision of God’s life for us.”
Neither Wiebe nor the voices we hear in this issue on the theme of aging imagine some kind of every-day-in-every-way-I’m-getting-better-and-better progression. Rather, they invite us to human tasks of life-long learning, God’s presence, and the possibility of living as “the righteous…planted in the house of the Lord,” who “still bear fruit in old age, [who] stay fresh and green” (Psalm 92:13-14).
We can’t stay fresh and green alone. The church helps us by accepting we live in bodies. It helps by fostering an atmosphere of growth for everyone within the congregation. It helps by discerning gifts and training leaders to meet the spiritual needs of people at particular stages of life. It helps by never ceasing to preach God’s unchanging and persistent love for people of all ages, whether they’re clever little four-year-olds or those who are learning to be elders. —DD
____________________________________________________________________
About this issue
With people’s increasing life span, seniors can now be categorized as “young old” and “old old.” The articles in this issue ended up focusing more on the latter group than the former, though Robert Suderman has some good words for us boomers (getting older, but imagining we’ll always be young). Thanks to him, to the chaplains who shared their enthusiasm about their work and elderly friends, and to John Regehr, an elder both realistic and grace-filled.
At the Herald, spring means provincial convention season. Last month led off with a report of Ontario’s gathering; this month, Karla Braun, who attended both the Manitoba and Saskatchewan conventions, tells what happened at those. Next month, we’ll carry reports from B.C., Quebec, and Alberta. The June issue will also feature writing on Christology by Tom Yoder Neufeld and the atonement by Timothy Geddert.
Dora Dueck, 