We all have reservoirs of fear, some large and some small and subtle, around entering this new terrain of unknown and mystery: our last years. What will aging to do me? To my body? To my mind?....If we are to claim the last years of life as years that hold the possibility of awakening into equanimity and lightness, into the very embodiment of grace, we need to bear witness to the ripening of that possibility. -- Kathleen Dowling Singh from Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, September 21, 2022
My sharing of my life's pains today then is my bearing witness to suffering the pains of aging...specifically, of my being 80+.
I am reminded of my blinding flash of sometime back: It is not enough to believe that we trust the Lord...by our actions we must prove our reliance on the Lord.
Never did I imagine that proving my reliance on the Lord would be all about the angst of aging. And according to the egoic me, nobody knows the angst of aging until their 80s. This is the time when the many wonderful sayings that have had our backs either mock us or comfort us in an entirely different dimension...I'm thinking, love and laugh.
What a surprise...to love and laugh not from our head but our Soul is a whole 'nother story.
I suspect this is my sharing my real suffering in grasping that love and laugh does not relieve us in the moment of our suffering...it just guides us through. Suffer we must or suffer we will...spiritually vs. mentally.
The good news: To suffer spiritually is to have anxiety, fear of fear, panic...and God at our back; to suffer mentally is to have all those fears with the devil of our choice at our back, i.e., old, new and imagined rues, regrets and remorses.
Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. -- from somewhere in the Bible
Thank you.
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