Itineraries Fall 2007 | Partnerships In Aging

Contents:

December Reflections by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Stepping Toward the Sunrise by Trebbe Johnson

Hoping for Hope by Linda Albert

Journey to Becoming an Elder by Fred Lanphear

Epiphany of a Corporate Warrior by Ken Pyburn

Spirituality and Service in the Third Age by John G. Sullivan

Books of Interest: Books from Authors on a Second Journey

From the Guest Editor, Barbara Kammerlohr

Those of us recently embarked upon our Second Journey are lucky to find guidance about how to make that trip happily and with grace. Our grandparents, not blessed with the added years longevity gives us, died shortly after retiring. Society viewed retirement as the end of the journey, a time to die or at least contemplate death’s inevitability. Our generation, the first to have 20-plus years after saying goodbye to child rearing and/or the workplace, had few models to point the way.

This issue of Itineraries celebrates that changing landscape. The number of those reaching retirement years has grown. With more free time to contemplate their lives, many are now ready to share their journeys—the successes and the lessons. These articles are written by those who have found both contentment and adventure during the Fall of life. Readers will find models of success and hints of ways to make their own lives fuller and more exciting.

Reb Zalman, visionary, author of From Age-ing to Sage-ing, inspiration for the work of Second Journey, and a fountainhead of the conscious aging movement, describes the challenges and adventures of his own journey in his “December Reflections.” For those still in the Autumn of life, he gives a glimpse of what is to come.

Trebbe Johnson, author, vision quest guide, and expert in personal development tells us how she constantly — and consciously — moves toward “the sunrise” with “curiosity, playfulness and the willingness to stand for a while in darkness and cold before the light appears.”

Linda Albert and her husband encountered one of the path’s frightening monsters —Parkinson’s Disease. “Hoping for Hope” is the story of their journey to new possibilities, sweetness, warmth, and light.

Fred Lamphear, Earthkeeper and Elder-in-Residence at Songaia Cohousing Community in Washington, exudes an air of contentment that is the envy of those who know him. In “Journey to Becoming an Elder,” he explains the conscious decisions, ceremonies, and support of friends that led to this happiness.

Ken Pyburn, past president of Second Journey and current co-chair of its Advisory Council, shares his adventurous search for meaning and self understanding in “Epiphany of A Corporate Warrior.”

Philosopher John Sullivan explores the “Deeper Work” of spirituality and service that we are called to in later life and the shift in awareness that can take us from separateness to a sense of what deeply unites us.

The Fall issue closes with my review of three “travel guides” — reports from the field by authors on their own second journeys, including Sara Davidson’s recent bestseller, Leap!

— Barbara Kammerlohr, Guest Editor

With this edition of Itineraries Barbara Kammerlohr expands her duties from Book Page editor to Guest Editor for the Fall issue.

December Reflections by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

My co-writer, Ron Miller, is now turning 60 — and when I spoke with him recently, he had just reread our book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing. He told me how much more the book meant to him now than when we first wrote it. I like the way he said it: “Gee, it’s all true!” We discussed the vicissitudes of our book: how it could make such a great contribution and yet its sales still not match the advance the publisher gave to us. At the same time, while the book wasn’t flying off shelves when it was first published, its sales have been steady. We are both proud of the book.

We are even prouder of the number of people who became seminar leaders and created the Elders Guild — the many who took the words off the pages of the book and made them into a reality. I feel such gratitude for the many people who now work in this field and are equipping others to become sage-ing helpers.

I feel it would be worthwhile to organize a cadre of elders who have retired to serve as a clearinghouse for political and social action, as advocates for a better life on this planet to create a web of elder mind and elder caring. Such experienced voices could help us hear what the issues are, which ones to support, what rationale and stance to take.

He is right — there is a more somber side which I am now experiencing. I find myself now in my December days. In the book I dwelt a lot longer on October — on becoming an elder — and on November — on serving as an elder and how our mother the earth needs us.

I was much more skimpy on December. The reason is clear: I wasn’t there yet. Now I am. There is this American habit to always claim to be all right, never to admit that there are some things that do not feel so right. So when people ask me how I am, I say “mostly good.” It’s true; yes, in many ways it’s true. Now is one of the best periods of my life. I’m harvesting so much of what I sowed in the world for my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, for my students and their students and now their students. There are the many books and articles, as well as audio and video materials, that I’ve been able to produce, and many wonderful memories I have of encounters with beautiful human beings, each one of them precious, teaching me something deeper about what is beautiful, what is true, what is good, and how God operates in our lives. That’s why I say, “mostly good”, but there still is an area which isn’t covered by “mostly.”

My body has become even more bionic than before — from new cataract replacement lenses beneath my cornea to dentures, orthotics, hearing aids, and eyeglasses, as well as a piece of Gore-Tex keeping my intestines from creeping up below the diaphragm. However, after a bout with cancer, cellulitis, and infections, I am, thank God, still here. I’m very grateful to Eve, my wife, and to the health professionals who’ve made the extension of my life pleasant and possible.

So what I’m about to tell you isn’t to complain, but to give you a richer sense of the current reality of my life. Sleep is no longer as deep as it was before. I wake several times a night to relieve my bladder, and I find it not so easy to fall asleep again. The thoughts — some of them troubling ones — that come into my awareness are leftovers from my life review work. After some tossing and turning I wake up achy and creaky. When I look in the mirror before I put on my public face, I view this slightly stooped old man with wrinkles. The business which I describe as coming to terms with one’s mortality has since become coming to terms with actually dying. It is not a scary notion that moves me to want to avoid it at any cost. Yes, there is a tiredness that feels chronic. Thank God sometimes I feel less tired and more ready to anticipate and enjoy the good things in my life. Still, it’s only a distraction from the pervasive tiredness.

I’m sharing these things with you, not because I want to discourage you — on the contrary.

Just in case you have cynical thoughts about the glories of moving from aging to sage-ing and occasionally question the claim that it is all positive, optimistic, and full of sunshine, I want to say you are right. I want to correct a bit the beautiful high notes by playing some somber bass notes to balance and strengthen the truth of what we present.

In the process that began with my own work of eldering I have often said that what Freud said about the death instinct is to my mind a misnomer. Thanatos helps us to bring to completion and satisfaction all the details of one’s life. I do not feel a pang of unlived life. I handled my life repair for much that needed healing, for much that needed Tikkun. I bear witness to you that the eldering work is real.

Dear friends, I’m not yet saying goodbye. I still have some mileage left, and the opportunity awaits to write more about the December work that I couldn’t have written before I experienced it myself.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi was an internationally recognized loving teacher who drew from many disciplines and cultures. He has was at the forefront of ecumenical discussions, enjoying close friendships with the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, and many other leading sages of our time and was the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement which laid out the foundations for 21st-century Judaism.

He was instrumental in inspiring the convergence of ecology, spirituality, and religion and in his later years put special emphasis on Spiritual Eldering, or “Sage-ing” as he called it in his seminal book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older. Reb Zalman’s “Sage-ing” work — work which commenced after he was 60 — was seminal in the emergence of a conscious aging movement in America and the inspiration of our own efforts with Second Journey. He died on July 8, 2014, at the age of 89. For more about this remarkable, gentle soul, visit the Reb Zalman Legacy Project.

Stepping Toward the Sunrise by Trebbe Johnson

Trebbe Johnson is the author of The World is a Waiting Lover and the director of Vision Arrow, an organization offering journeys to explore wildness and allurement in nature and self. She leads vision quests, workshops, and ceremonies worldwide, from Ground Zero in New York City to the Sahara Desert. A passionate explorer of outer as well as inner frontiers, Trebbe has camped alone in the Arctic Circle, written a speech for Russian cosmonauts to broadcast to the U.N. from Mir on Earth Day, and hiked through Greece. She teaches workshops on desire, allurement, and the figure of the beloved throughout the United States, Canada, and overseas, and has written on a wide variety of topics for numerous national publications. She lives with her husband in rural northeastern Pennsylvania. Visit her website at trebbejohnson.com.

Several years ago, while leading a wilderness rites-of-passage journey in the Utah Canyonlands, I made up a game with the sun. One chilly dawn, while the participants were out on a three-day solo, I walked to the edge of a grassy plateau, now covered with light frost, to watch the sun rise over the top of a slick rock canyon wall. So exhilarating was the spectacle — the great red globe emerging with startling speed over the top of the rim, the accompanying heat that warmed me and melted the frost, the infusion of optimism that comes with a new day — that I wanted to experience it all over again. And I realized that this was actually possible. If I just moved a few yards closer to the canyon wall, into an expanse of scrub still in shadow, I could watch the sun rise a second time. And so I did, waiting with the same bated breath for the dawn of the new day. That morning, just by stepping closer and closer to the darkness, I was able to attend four sunrises.

I see the aging process the same way. Elderhood, the Second Journey, does not come at me like a train. Rather, I must constantly — and consciously — move toward it with curiosity, playfulness, and the willingness to stand for a while in darkness and cold before the light appears.

Of course, certain events do push us toward the sunrise more forcefully than others. For me the big turning points were an early menopause and a late and life-altering falling-in-love.

I was post-menopausal by age 45. I wanted to commemorate the occasion in some way, but the obvious approaches did not seem to fit. At that age, I was certainly not ready to declare myself an elder. And, since I had decided long before not to have children, the passing of that biological phase was not relevant. Instead I took as my guide a line from W.B. Yeats’s poem, “The Phases of the Moon”:

Before the full
It sought itself and afterwards the world.

Similarly, the first half of my life had been devoted to gathering in as much of the world as I could: knowledge, inspiration, experience, wisdom. The second half I would devote to giving away what I had learned. I had already started the process that year. After having spent my entire life thinking of myself as a solitary, introverted writer, I had begun training to lead vision quests, wilderness journeys of transformation that combine adventure travel and soul-searching. To my amazement I was discovering that an exuberant, playful, extroverted part of me was eager to burst forth.

To celebrate my transition into “After the Full,” I held a weekend event at my home to which I invited women from all phases of my life. Seven appeared in person, and the rest sent photos and letters. Part circle of sharing, part slumber party, part ceremony, the occasion culminated in a ritual procession from the back yard into the meadow, representing the journey into the wide unknown. There, I ritually gave away what I had gained “before the full” by taking off the scarves and necklaces my friends had adorned me with and draping these gifts on them and on the apple trees that rimmed the meadow.1

Five years later came the second big event to shove me toward a new sunrise. At the age of 50, happily married for twelve years, fulfilled in my work of leading vision quests in beautiful places, and writing about myth, nature and spirit, I lost my heart forcefully and unexpectedly to a younger man. Because I truly loved my husband, this sudden passion presented a terrible dilemma. Should I run off and have an affair with this man? Should I view my feelings as inappropriate and immoral and turn my back on them? Should I go into therapy? Instead I decided to follow a fourth path: I would explore desire from several perspectives and try to learn what was happening to me.

What I discovered was the universal archetype of the Beloved, the personification of passion that seduces us into the beckoning unknown that we yearn (despite our fears) to be more intimate with and, in the process, invites us to embody our greater selves. This journey, which I recount in my book, The World Is a Waiting Lover: Desire and the Quest for the Beloved, has changed my life in many ways, probably the most significant of which is that I now feel truly at home in the world, and I have the sense of being constantly engaged in deep play with life, alone and with others, in small ways and large, in times of celebration and times of sorrow and doubt.

Tuning my attention, my hours so that I bring myself into mindful, creative, bold relationship with the Beloved, the inner fire that heats and illuminates the life path, has become the most important practice of my life, the essence of my vision quests and workshops, and what I hope to leave as a legacy for others. I feel very fortunate to be able to do this work through my writing and my Vision Arrow programs, but I also find that I am always on the lookout for the flaring-forth of the Beloved in other people. Having spent so much of my life as an introvert, I now feel like an explorer in search of buried treasure — in friends, clients, and strangers.

I often tell people that the single most important challenge and subsequent reward that we can give ourselves is to do one thing every day that we are afraid to do — and know we must do. In this way we keep stepping beyond the limiting boundaries we set for ourselves and move out into ever-widening circles of creativity, community, learning, teaching, giving, loving. Last year, for example, I, who had never imagined myself as a community leader and organizer, was moved to apply for a grant to plant 75 trees in our small, rural village in northeastern Pennsylvania. This effort is not only beautifying a formerly neglected town, but is bringing together a group of enthusiastic people I would previously never have gotten to know and hence deeply appreciate, for example, a logger, young people from the 4-H, and the Baptist minister.

I am blessed to have been married for twenty-one years to a man with whom I still fall in love several times a day. An artist and craftsman, he has abundant interests and activities of his own and is unfailingly supportive of my pursuits, even when he can’t understand them (even, amazingly, when one of them was launched by my infatuation with another man). We have a tacit rule that we will not hold grudges for even a minute, that we can stop a fight at any time and start all over, that we will never expect the other person to read our mind, and that some things about each of us just won’t change.

Relationships with my friends are essential, too. I realized many years ago that I could either get a resentment if some cherished friend failed to get in touch regularly or else I could keep the friendship alive by maintaining contact myself. My friends stretch through several countries and through all the phases of my life, from the woman who was my best friend since seventh grade in Omaha to a woman I met recently on one of my vision quests in the Sahara Desert. Last weekend, five of my college friends came together for a weekend reunion at my home. On Saturday the six of us talked non-stop from 8:00 in the morning until 1:00 a.m. the following morning, covering every conceivable subject. My friends and I know the depths of each other and the shallows and love it all.

Constantly I must ask myself: How can I live in a way that is true? What is the existential gesture I need to take, the act that, although it may have no outward consequences whatsoever, is something that I absolutely must take to follow the Beloved and be me? What’s seducing me next — not to grab and possess, but to connect, transform, create, discover, unearth more beauty and meaning?

I think I have always had the sense that pieces of my soul were scattered all over the world — in places, books, other people, ideas — and that I must constantly be on the lookout for them, so that I can piece together my full being. What I realize now that I am almost 60 is that I am just as likely to find part of that essential puzzle in a long line of frustrated passengers at O’Hare airport, when storms have shut down the friendly skies, as I am at a full moon ceremony in a Hindu temple in Bali. The trick is being observant at all times, keeping an eye out for the miracle, and trying, so far as I am able, to keep on stepping in the direction of the sunrise.

Notes

1 My article about this ceremony, “After the Full,” was published in the Spring 1996 issue of Sage Woman.

Hoping for Hope by Linda Albert

Linda Lee Albert is a corporate trainer and a personal communication and life coach with a Master Certification in Neuro-Linguistics. An author and poet, Linda’s work has appeared in many journals and magazines, including McCalls Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. Among her awards are the Olivet and Dyer-Ives Foundation Poetry Prizes. Linda resides in Longboat Key, Florida with her husband, Jim. Visit the author’s website at www.lindaalbert.net.

My husband, Jim, had no intention of retiring. He was never a man who longed to replace his office for the golf course — who pictured himself leaving his native Michigan for warmer climates. He was a man who considered it a worthy challenge to maneuver his car without mishap in the kind of lake-effect snow and ice for which we were famous, and who never looked out the window during our very long winters and fretted over the gloom and absence of sun for which we were also well known.

For the first seven years after his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease at the age of 58, Jim barely turned a hair. He had climbed to a successful enough place in life to satisfy himself; found a comfortable plateau in his profession managing a small stable of real estate holdings he had developed, and was content to stay there for the rest of his life. Then one day, things changed. He felt stiff and lethargic in a way he had not previously experienced. His optimism was suddenly no longer in evidence. His belief in his ability to make good decisions disappeared. Trips to his neurologist did nothing to reassure him, even though the doctor was convinced there was no particular change for the worse in the progression of his disease. We were bewildered, and Jim was beginning to be frightened.

Fortunately, our son-in-law, Andy, a clinical social worker, took it upon himself to do a search for us on the Internet. According to what he found, 50 % of Parkinson’s patients will be fated to undergo a clinical depression at some point in the course of their illness, with the symptoms imitating the Parkinson’s symptoms themselves, so that a diagnosis is very difficult to ascertain. No fault or failing on the part of the person suffering through this is to blame, we discovered — not even the pain and disappointment of having to deal with a progressive physical disease — but rather, the compromised brain chemistry itself was both the primary cause and the potential remedy.

Neither my husband’s internist nor neurologist had alerted us to this possibility, but once armed with information we were ultimately able to find a neuropsychiatrist who aided us in understanding what my husband was going through, and who reassured us that Jim could be helped. The doctor prescribed Wellbutrin, an antidepressant, to give my husband what he called “a floor” on which to stand emotionally and encouraged him to get back into living his life as fully as possible.

But there were challenges ahead. Jim had retired abruptly from his work, leaving me to handle our personal affairs in order to save him from stress, and leaving his long-time trusted assistant to carry on in his behalf until we could figure out how to sell our investments and close down the business. He no longer went to the office and with no retirement plans in place, life appeared to be over as far as he was concerned. He spent long days sitting around the house in his bathrobe. I would try to perk him up by encouraging him to think of what still lay ahead for us — some of our children yet to marry — weddings to plan or attend — grandchildren to look forward to — new places to explore. But this only appeared to make him feel worse. He felt hopeless and was ashamed of his inability to improve his spirits.

Then I learned from a nun who was teaching a course for Spiritual Directors which I was taking at the time that, in Catholic tradition, hope is not considered something you can force into being through your own will power, but rather is a gift from God that comes through Grace. I was stunned to hear this.

Having grown up with the notion that “God helps those who help themselves,” I was a strong believer in action, in the idea that we have to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps in order for anything worthwhile to happen. But things were not good at home and I was willing, as I usually am, to consider any idea that might be helpful. Sometimes the best gifts come when our backs are against the wall or from worlds different than our own.

If it was true that we humans cannot actually will hope, then my efforts to persuade Jim to feel more hopeful were clearly failing for good reason. Not only that, they were undoubtedly exacerbating the pressure he was under to find his way when the path he planned to be on had clearly closed down on him. I returned home, told him about what I had learned that day in class, and apologized.

If hope could only come as a gift, then there was nothing my husband could do to be hopeful when hope had disappeared. There was no point wasting energy beating himself up about his lack of success in trying to do the impossible. It was hard enough to be without hope. What he could do instead, we reasoned, what was still within his power, was to begin to hope for hope. It was a gentle recognition and a feasible one.

It was something, in fact, the two of us could do together. That was the beginning of a turning point in our lives: the start of a remarkable journey that has led us to Florida — a place we never expected to be — to a beautiful condominium overlooking a beautiful bay, to warmth and sunlight, and improved health and energy for my husband. These past 10 years have brought all kinds of amazing synchronicities and new possibilities our way, and the sweetest 10 years of our almost 50-year marriage.

What challenges the future will bring, we do not know. Nor can we control that future, much as we might like to. But it is a gift to know that good things can often come out of bad, that surprises and adventures of the best sort may be around a dark and frightening corner, and that even when things seem hopeless, we can always hope for hope.

Journey to Becoming an Elder by Fred Lanphear

Septuagenarian Fred Lanphear — co-founder of Songaia Cohousing Community in Bothell, WA, where he has lived for over a decade — is actively involved in the intentional communities movement both locally, as co-founder of the Northwest Intentional Communities Association, and nationally, as board member of the Fellowship for Intentional Communities. Fred pursues his passionate commitment to Earth through the website, EarthElders.org, which he maintains. Fred is also a member of the Second Journey Advisory Council.

I embarked on a one-year rite of passage when I turned 60. The year was envisioned to have three dimensions of reflection and celebration: past, present, and future. It began with a grand celebration of my 60th birthday with reflections of my 60-year journey from family, friends, and colleagues who were either present or sent letters. It was a time of naming and letting go of the past.

The primary work was in designing a mythological quilt that depicted the community of reference and the two primary cultural or vocational images for each decade. I used this design and added another decade of images for my 70th birthday. The other focus or work on the past was in honoring my roots. This was accomplished during a trip to Rhode Island, where I walked the sacred land where I grew up, participated in a family reunion, and reconnected with my two older brothers who helped me construct our family timeline. I also connected with a 95-year-old boyhood pal of my father who spun many stories about my father I had never heard. It was awesome.

The work of the present was acknowledging that 60 years had taken its toll on my body, mind, and spirit, and that some repair, renovation, and re-patterning was needed. Care of the body included being fitted for hearing aids, after being in denial for at least 10 years that I had a hearing impairment, and some major dental work along with some attention to nutrition. Care of the mind and spirit included a year of reading some great books and facilitating an Institute of Noetic Science study group focused on the “Spiritual Aspects of Healing.” Integrating daily practices of meditation and Tai Chi was high on the list of intents.

The future work involved opening myself to the universe. It began with an astrological reading provided by my colleagues, a reading of the I Ching, and culminated with a four-day visioning retreat. The retreat site was a cabin on Lopez Island. The daily protocol included fasting, yoga, meditation, journal writing, reading, and communing with the natural world.

The intent was to bring vocational focus to the new phase of life I was entering…and it happened. Synchronicity was the tone of the retreat. Awakening to a destinal calling of being a midwife in the rebirth of communities as a vehicle to reconnect people with the natural world became the vision.

In addition to the visioning, I reflected on how to achieve balance in my primary relationships: individual, family, community, and planet. I created a model as a way of putting rational form to the continual juggling or balancing that I find myself doing (see model below). I use these values in setting my priorities quarterly under the categories of vocational focus, community needs, and individual/family needs. My vocational focus currently includes my landscape work in creating sacred space, earth elder activities, and involvement in the intentional communities movement. Community needs are related to my engagement in Songaia Cohousing Community doing gardening and landscaping, but also in many of the social and cultural activities. My individual and family needs include how I honor and nurture my 48-year relationship with my wife Nancy, stay connected and care for my three adult children, and how I enjoy and mentor my eight grandchildren in the ways of the natural world, all the while maintaining an integrated approach to mind, body, and spirit care of myself.

The rite of passage I completed in my 60th year launched me on a new path of reconnecting with nature for the fourth phase of my life. This path ultimately took the form of declaring my new role as an Earth Elder on my 70th birthday. In preparation for this new role, I participated in a 3-day vision quest on the sacred land of our community, Songaia. The day after the quest the men of Songaia escorted me to a fire circle in our woods and initiated me as the first elder of our community. I shared my vision of initiating an Earth Elder organization with Songaia as a base and helping to catalyze a movement of earth elders across the country. This work is underway and can be tracked at www.earthelders.org. We meet monthly for reflection, study, and planning. One of the initial topics we looked at was the preparation of an ethical will.

As a social activist and results-oriented person, my greatest challenge is how to maintain a sense of balance in this phase of my life, acknowledging that I do not have the same physical stamina that I had earlier in life.

Learning how to ask others to help is one of the ways I am working at accomplishing this. It cares for me at the same time it provides others a way of caring. The men in the community have committed their support to me as an elder, so it behooves me to yield to their wishes. It requires a sense of detachment that does not come easy to me. Aging is frequently described in terms of physical changes, which are very real, but perhaps the most rewarding and challenging changes are those associated with finding new ways of focusing the wisdom and experiences of my life’s journey into a fulfilling culmination of my life’s work.

Epiphany of a Corporate Warrior by Ken Pyburn

The author worked at IBM for 29 years in a variety of management capacities before moving to the nonprofit sector and work with Habitat for Humanity. Active with the Wilderness Guides Council, Ken has extensive experience with vision quests. He stewarded Second Journey’s strategic planning process, served as co-facilitator at the July 2006 Northwestern Visioning Council, and chaired the Board of Directors during the 2006-2007 term. Ken lives in Boise, ID.

During my “corporate warrior years,” I had been fortunate to work for a corporation that took its responsibility to the communities in which it operated very seriously and encouraged its managers and executives to become involved in whatever way they felt called. For me that meant various task force assignments: a United Way board membership and work with Rotary. I was even assigned as a Loaned Executive to a governor or two to work on government efficiency. As I approached a long anticipated early retirement (these were the days when pensions were still funded and honored!), it became crystal clear to me that my true pleasure came from work in various forms with the community rather than from success in moving up the corporate ladder.

So at age 54, finding myself with 30 years under my belt, I retired — for the first of three times. Over the next several years I made some forays into consulting, taking on several paid Habit for Humanity assignments. My satisfaction always came from building organizations, making their good work more visible to the public at large, and the psychic boost I received from the sense that I was contributing to the welfare of others. I was usually surrounded by selfless people who did volunteer work for pure and altruistic reasons. While some of the people I ran into were older and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves, by far the largest groups were younger or middle aged. I wondered why.

During this “consulting phase,” what I’d actually been searching for was that one community that called to me — a place to settle, a place to care about. But since this mode of searching wasn’t yielding results, I tried a second retirement and spent the next year traveling 26 states and five Canadian Provinces, finally settling in 2001 on the California coast.

The Dark Night of the Soul

It was a book with a simple question that caused me to rethink my life again on that fateful May evening in 2003, my 65th birthday approaching. The book was Stephen Levine’s One Year to Live; the question was “How could I live my life as if I only had only a short time remaining?”

The question forced me to see that my struggling marriage had been on life support for years. Life in our small town on the coast of Central California — populated by mostly successful upper-class retirees — was pleasant enough: I played tennis, had coffee with the “boys,” traveled occasionally in a small RV, and worked productively with the local affiliate of Habitat for Humanity as its board president. But all this simply wasn’t enough. There had to be more to life. My spirit and my soul needed to be fed. I left the comfort of that seemingly idyllic situation and started what I now look back on as my Second Journey.

I had lost track of many dear friends; I wanted to go visit them and either rekindle the old relationships or reach closure on them. Earlier in my life I’d done a lot of personal development work, including attendance at Esalen and other institutes. One of those experiences, a Vision Quest, which is a rite of passage activity, I remembered as particularly powerful. When a new offering by the School of Lost Borders, called “Dancing on the Ballcourt of Death,” came to my attention, I signed up.

And so — out there in the primal wilderness called Death Valley — I danced. And I died.

The Journey Continues

The challenge then became how to live this reborn self. I found direction from the marvelous little book, Too Young to Retire: 101 Ways To Start The Rest of Your Life. I took a workshop built on the notions raised by the book and supported by the Life Coach offering it. Then I happened on a notice that Second Journey was hosting a Visioning Council on Creating Community in Later Life in San Rafael later that year in August (2005).

To prepare for the experience of the Council, I began scouring the literature on aging. I found it usually concerned itself with the health or deterioration of the “elderly” or how to provide for their caregivers. I found it was the rare few book shops that even had sections on the subject of aging. Something was wrong with this picture, and slowly I was becoming aware of the scores of organizations that shared the same disconnect, though many were coming at it from myriad angles.

My experience at the Council was exhilarating. The group of “visionaries,” educators, activists, and just plain seekers that gathered in San Rafael — folks from diverse backgrounds in their 50’s to their 70’s — was full of exuberance for life and in their own way had a dozen different exciting ideas about how we should envision community in later life. Though none of these ideas quite fit my own view, the larger vision of the organization so excited me that I volunteered an old corporate skill I had used for years and offered to facilitate a planning retreat for Second Journey.

Since that time I have co-facilitated a Visioning Council on Whidbey Island in Washington state, shepherded a strategic planning process, served as board president of Second Journey and participated in countless conference calls, attended national aging conferences in Anaheim and Chicago, and devoured a long list of books on aging. I discover we are not alone: many wonderful organizations around the U.S. and overseas are equally concerned with changing the way we view and live as elders.

I welcomed the chance to move from board president of Second Journey — when my term as president ended last July and the organization was restructured — to co-chair of its national Advisory Council. My hopscotching across the country has ended in Boise, Idaho, where I find a local outlet for my passion by working with AARP and other organizations dedicated to improving the lives of “older adults.”

Insights from the Journey

So what have I learned about aging from all of my scurrying about the countryside, delving into the literature, and talking to many older Americans?

Aging after 50 — or even 65 — is different from the way gerontologists have viewed it for years. The gift of additional years that the revolution in longevity gives us has changed all of that. The “golden age,” the second journey, the Third Age, the encore (or any of the names given to the second half of our lives) is about changing the way we are viewed by changing the way we act, work, talk, behave, take care of ourselves, and contribute to society. We MUST take better care of our health and exercise even more vigorously than most of us did when we were younger; and we must DO something, even many things, with passion and dedication, even if it is not full time. We must not succumb to the selling of aging, which generally insists it is about leisurely pursuits or seeing the world — both good things, but not as a life force.

If we want to be seen as true ELDERS — and not as the elderly, the aged, or even older adults — we must move from being perceived as RECEIVERS and the PROBLEM to being perceived as PROVIDERS and at least part of the SOLUTION.

Spirituality and Service in the Third Age by John G. Sullivan

Suppose we look at life in thirds, seeing the First Age as youth and preparation (what in India was called the Student stage) and the Second Age as achievement in the world (what in India was called the Householder stage). The Third Age, then, is what in India was called the Forest Dweller and Sage stages, a phase of life that coincides with retirement in modern life. As the numbers of those entering the Third Age swell, many ask: “Who am I now? What is my calling in this last chapter of my life?”

I suggest that our “work” — our Third Age — has to do with both spirituality and service. That work weaves together a set of themes which my friend and colleague, Bolton Anthony, thinks of as four desires of the heart: (a) rediscovering self, (b) simplifying life, (c) reconnecting with nature and (d) reconstituting community.

Thus, the context is profoundly communal and world-regarding. In fact, we are called to the dual work of deepening and serving in the context of a Great Turning in world history.1 Thomas Berry says we are invited to participate in “the Great Work [of] relating the human venture to the larger destinies of the universe.”2 Very exciting. Highly appropriate.

Past generations saw the Elders as having a special role. We know something of that role instinctively when — instead of using the term “Elders” — we speak of Grandmothers and Grandfathers. Unlike parents whose “tough love” must include guidance and discipline, grandparents come closest to giving unconditional love. They see us in our unique core beauty, even when we do not. They see us in a much longer view, knowing the wisdom of “This too shall pass,” while we tend to stay stuck in the limited drama of the moment. They see us as deeper than our actions, and hence in their presence we often become our better selves.

The role of the Elders is strikingly similar to the mythic role assigned to the King or Queen, namely, to keep first things first, to encourage creativity, and to bless the young.3 And the welcome news is that we as elders-in-training can learn to inhabit more consistently this level of living, and we can learn to act from this level more skillfully.

A Deeper Work: Spirituality in the Third Age

Let me introduce an analogy as a way to understand the different levels of consciousness to which we have access.4

Imagine that a part of you detaches from your body and floats out over city, over countryside, over a primal forest until you see, in the midst of the trees, a lake glimmering in the morning sun, a lake whose surface has been stirred by a light wind. Imagine you touch down and become a ripple on the surface of the lake. Soon you are thinking ripple thoughts, feeling ripple emotions, engaging in ripple conversations with yourself and with others. Your ripple conversations, in large part, focus on you — on what you want now, on what you fear, here and now. Your ripple conversations, in large part, focus on how you compare with others. You are identifying with the small-minded person-in-you and living according to culturally conditioned scripts.

Imagine that without stopping your patterns of fear and desire, another part of you sinks below the surface to a midpoint in the lake. Magically, you are safe and can look up at your ripple self with soft eyes and compassionate heart. What is this part of us which watches without judgment, which observes from a compassionate heart? I have called it the large-minded person-in-us. Other traditions call it the Observing or Witness Self.5 The awakening of this large mind and compassionate heart is the first step in any spiritual path.

Now, imagine that another part of you detaches and moves to the very depth of the lake. Gradually, we hear and sense a deeper dimension — as if the lake is connected to the great ocean, and the longer rhythms of the tides provide a sense of timeless time. As we grow acclimated to this new way of being, we realize that all of the water is one — ripples and depth — and that we are that. At the deepest level of understanding, all is loving kindness and joy and gratitude and immense compassion. Here we are experiencing what mystics call unitive consciousness.

Of course, we must return — return to the observing self at the mid-point; yet when we do, we do so with a deeper sense of Oneness. And we must also return to the surface, but when we do so, we bring more of the Mysterious Source to our mindful living and more of the observing, compassionate heart into the everyday. So we return to the community, to the partnerships of our lives.

The Sufis say: “There is a polish for everything and the polish for the heart is the remembrance of God.”6 We might say the polish of the heart is remembrance of the Whole, of the One, of the Great Mystery manifesting in the earth in its unfolding. As we polish the heart, we not only come to live more in the present, we come to listen more deeply — to all that surrounds us and to the Ever-present Origin7 that wells up everywhere, if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

A Deeper Work: Service in the Third Age

With practice we can cultivate this new awareness with its wisdom, compassion, loving kindness and quiet humor. With practice, this new depth of living will bring a different quality to all we do in the field of service. The opportunity is to do whatever we do with a new simplicity and lightness of being, a new awareness of nature and the bonds that bind all beings together.

As we gain practice in the way of the Forest Dweller (with glimpses of the Sage), we will participate more readily in the Great Work. Our sense of time and space expands, as we find ourselves invited to move

from separateness to a sense of what deeply unites us,
from “seen only” to a simplicity open to seen and more subtle values,
from “short-term only” to intergenerational time, and
from “superiority over” to true collaboration or “partnership with.”8

I believe we can think of these shifts as based in what the gentle Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh calls “interbeing.” He writes:

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; without trees, we cannot make paper… So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.9

We might say: We are in the Great Mystery and the Great Mystery is in us. We are in the planetary web of all life and the web of all life is in us. We are in our ancestors and they are in us. We are in our children and they are in us.

As I see it, there are two steps to inhabiting this Universe of Interbeing.

The first involves expanding the circle: We expand the circle of care from ourselves to all humankind and then to all of us together — human and other than human. We move from a human-centered world to a creation-centered universe.

The second step involves changing our mode of response: We move from seeing the nested communities not as a collection of objects but as a communion of subjects — a communion in which we also have place.10 We are ready to listen and learn, to know and be known, to love and be loved. We let go of monologue and enter into dialogue.

Who better to do this than the grandmothers and grandfathers?

Mindfully and joyfully,
Simplifying and coming home to what is real,
Reconnecting with the natural world, and
Rediscovering the companionship of communities that link the living and the dead and join the ancestors and the children.

Those of us in the Third Age have some distance on the world of achievement (the Second Age). Those of us in the Third Age are ready to keep first things first, to encourage creativity and to bless the young (i.e., those in the First Age). We are ready to live more simply and more fully. And, if this is so, then perhaps the invitation of the Third Age is already laid out when Shakespeare has King Lear tell his daughter Cordelia:

…so we’ll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too, —
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out; —
And take upon’s the mystery of things,
as if we were God’s spies.

King Lear V, iii, 8-19

Notes

1 We might also see the history of humankind in three ages: the pre-modern (up to 1500 CE), the modern (1500 CE to present) and the trans-modern or Emerging Ecological Age (starting in the late 20th century and moving into the new millennium). See Appendices XVI and XVII in my book, Living Large: Transformative Work at the Intersection of Ethics and Spirituality.

2 Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York, Bell Tower, 1999), p. 1. See also Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (Gabriola Island, BC Canada: New Society Publishers, 1998) and David C. Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2006).

3 I learned these three functions from poet Robert Bly in one of his public presentations.

4 For more on this, see Chapter Three of Living Large.

5 I am thinking here of the Sufi tradition. For more, see Arthur Deikman, The Observing Self (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982).

6 A saying of the Prophet Muhammad, quoted in Kabir Edmund Helminski, Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Perigee Books, 1992), p. 67.

7 The phrase is from Jean Gebser. See his The Ever-Present Origin, trans. by Noel Barstad with Algis Mickunas (Athens, Ohio: University of Ohio Press, 1985).

8 For more on this, see Chapter Fifteen of Living Large.

9 Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step (New York: Bantam, 1991), p.95.

10 The contrast between seeing the world as a collection of objects and seeing the world as a communion of subjects comes from Thomas Berry. See, for example, Thomas Berry, The Great Work, p. 82.

Books of Interest: Books from Authors on a Second Journey

Every day, more of us choose the life-enhancing path of aging consciously. At least, that is the message we can take away from the recent surge in books on the topic. Below is a selection that came to our attention as we prepared for the fall issue of Itineraries. All of the books have models of vibrant individuals, finding happiness and their own authentic selves during the Autumn of life.

LEAP!: What Will We Do With the Rest of Our Lives,
Reflections from the Boomer Generation
by Sara Davidson
Random House, 2007

Like many who embark on their Second Journey, Sara Davidson began with a crisis. LEAP is both a chronicle of that journey and an entertaining source of information about issues related to aging. In her fifties, Davidson’s life seemed to unravel. Her partner of many years moved on; her children left for college; she could no longer find meaningful work. This was the time when the former television producer (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) and best-selling author (Loose Change, Cowboy, and Real Property) could not find her way. She explored ageism in the work place, but soon realized that deep inside her psyche, a call to embark on her Second Journey was asserting itself. This spokeswoman for the Boomer generation responded to the call by exploring ways to make the journey in style and good spirit.

LEAP! is a chronicle of that exploration. Following the path that served her so well during her professional life, Davidson does her own research on the aging process: interviewing others on the same journey, reading, consulting friends, traveling, and exploring her own inner process. Herself a member of the “boomer generation,” she sought insight into how the vanguard was “learning to walk down the ladder gracefully”. Some of her lessons included:

“There is a new stage of life after and before 80… Everyone must pass through this territory, through the narrows…and, if you don’t do it voluntarily, the world or your body will force you.”
“This stage of life requires a different approach, listening, surrendering and letting things unfold.” Davidson quotes Marion Woodman, the Jungian author who “believes the soul’s voice and urging become imperative as we get older.” It speaks in a voice with increasing volume, “I want, before I die, to find out who I am in my soul and who that soul is in relation to the Divine.”
A new relationship with work is required. “The imperative at this time is not to find the right job or a replacement job, but to align yourself with your purpose, with the truth you’ve come to recognize about yourself. These are the years of the creative process—creating solely for the joy and challenge of the process.
Living in communities “where we can take care of each other or have people take care of us…is bound to happen”.

These are indeed complex and perhaps heavy issues. However, the book also has an entertaining quality. By sharing her fun-filled and sometimes adventurous journey, Davidson gives us a hint that our own journey could also become more of an enjoyable adventure.

Her description of watching the surgical procedure known as “face lift” was compelling. Perhaps it was graphic enough to prevent some of us from even considering that avenue. Even the reasons many gave for undergoing, or not undergoing, the process (if not always rational) were worth reading.

Most readers will enjoy reading about the experiences she had while exploring housing options in Costa Rica. Her ride in pouring rain over the rough terrain of that country’s coastal mountains to look at property proved this woman was serious about learning everything she could. Both her adventure in Costa Rica and her exploration of the co-housing movement were not only humorous, but they evoked other ideas for living an interesting and creative life during “retirement” years. Most readers will not have the financial freedom Davidson and her friends enjoy, but her reporting stimulates thoughts about what could be done with less money.

Probably the most poignant part of the book was Davidson’s emotional response to her “vacation with purpose” in India. She and six other Americans paid $1,600 to donate their time to teach at the “Grace and Flower Home for Low Caste Children.” Mosquitoes, interpersonal problems with other volunteers, and living conditions far below the standard to which she was accustomed all conspired to bring this wealthy American author to her knees. In tears, she called a wise friend in New York. “”India doesn’t always give you what you want,” the friend counseled. “It gives you what you need.”

For looking for areas to explore during one’s own Second Journey, LEAP! is a good start. Davidson tells great stories, and her own journey was a genuine one. The book is full of resources one can explore, and perhaps use, to create an adventure of life. The “Notes” and “Resources” section in the back of the book provide contact information and web addresses for places she visited and individuals whom she quoted.

Some reviewers have noted that Davidson is a woman of monetary privilege and most of the people she interviewed fell into the same category. However, for readers who are just beginning the journey and whose basic economic needs are met, LEAP! suggests plenty of avenues of exploration that hold promise and are not financially prohibitive.

Old Age in a New Age: The Promise of Transformative Nursing Homes
by Beth Baker
Vanderbilt University Press, 2007

One of the most profound promises of change in the way we age in America is the transformation of nursing homes. To report on that transformation, Beth Baker visited more than two dozen places “where people with physical or mental frailties live not as wards, patients or inmates, but as contributing, creative human beings.” Through stories of the lives of both elders and caregivers, she demonstrates the profound effect the changing culture can have on the lives of both groups.

Baker’s call for radical change, which echoes that of several visionaries, advocates transformation by giving staff more responsibility and offering residents a say in what happens to them. It is an important call to all of us because hers is simply a vision of what can be. However, she cautions:

Visit Beth Baker’s website at bethbaker.net

Only a concerted push by society will undo half a century of institutional culture. The public must demand change—not only those whose loved ones move to a nursing home, but also, elders themselves in retirement communities and in advocacy groups; citizens, by becoming active in statewide culture-change coalitions; volunteers, by breaking down barriers and forming real relationships with elders.

This book is a call to action. If life is to be different for us in our final years, we must leave behind our denial of the aging process and act with “enlightened self-interest.”

Baker is a Baby Boomer, former hospital worker, a freelance journalist, and a regular contributor to the Washington Post Health Section and the AARP Bulletin. She is the winner of two Gold National Mature Media Awards for her reporting on aging.

Visit Beth Baker’s website at bethbaker.net.

Autumn Years: Taking The Contemplative Path
by Robert and Elizabeth M. King
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004

This is primarily the love story of two people who first met in childhood, but reconnected and fell in love as they entered life’s Autumn years. Both were already on a “spiritual journey,” meditating as well as doing Christian contemplative practices. The story of their lives as they grow old together is warm and inspiring. Their reflections on using contemplative practice to enhance intimacy, relationships (including friends and extended family), and the process of self discovery are helpful.

This story of romance and marriage is also interspersed with inspiration and advice about using contemplative practice to explore more deeply one’s own self. There are stories of visits to Zen monasteries in the Orient and Christian retreat centers in the United States. The authors refer to a number of helpful practices throughout the book, and there is one short section explaining four kinds of meditation: sitting meditation, centering prayer, walking meditation, and lovingkindness meditation.

This is the book for those seeking insight on the inner life that calls to most of us as we continue this Second Journey.

Visit the King’s website at autumnyears.org.