Itineraries Spring 2007 | Partnerships In Aging

Contents:

Grandma’s Teacups: The Legacy of Words by Christina Baldwin

Touching the Soul of Community by Roger Harrison, Ph.D.

Quiddler & Tap-dancing Clowns by Cynthia Trenshaw

From the Guest Editor

This issue of Itineraries had a mind of its own. Back in December I thought I knew where the issue was headed and what it would say. But it seems Itineraries had its own story to tell and would not be diverted by what I happened to have in mind.

I began to suspect as much when I interviewed Mary Brooks Tyler and Leo Baldwin and neither of them said what I expected. I got another big hint when two planned articles couldn’t be delivered, and then two unanticipated articles showed up. I knew for certain “what the issue had in mind” when the book reviews arrived, and then yet another unexpected article arrived in my email box.

This issue was determined to be — and is — about STORY and about storytelling.

In Chris Belding’s article, “The Gift of Story,” and in Barbara Kammerlohr’s review of Angeles Arrien’s Second Half of Life, we are encouraged to risk experiencing the depths of each unfolding part of our own story.

Christina Baldwin advocates preserving and passing forward our own story as our best, most lasting legacy in her article, “Grandma’s Teacups.”

Roger Harrison suggests that the soul of a group or an organization can be accessed, and reanimated, through the organization’s founding story in “Touching the Soul of Community.”

“Stories with role models for those growing old in a culture like ours are difficult to find,” says Barbara Kammerlohr in her review of Sister Age, by M.F.K. Fisher. But in Fisher’s book we find delightful models for our next steps in the journey.

And in my own interview with Mary Brooks Tyler and Leo Baldwin, I found that one should never have expectations about what a storyteller will say; it’s far better to settle back, enjoy the story, and allow oneself to be totally surprised.

So come now, enjoy the stories of STORY in the second half of life, as told by Itineraries, Spring 2007 issue.

— Cynthia Trenshaw, Guest Editor

The Gift in the Story by Chris Belding

The author, who lives near Grand Rapids, MI, is a Certified Sage-ing Leader and a Certified Crone with over 60 years of life experience. She finds spiritual sustenance in nature and in her circle of friends and family. She relishes sharing her gifts as coach, teacher, and holder of stories.

Family is at the center of my life. No matter how far I roam in my outer or inner landscape, my family history trails after me like a ghostly vapor. I spent years living in my family’s physical space and even more years away, trying to find the “me” apart from that first and most powerful community.

As often happens, life took me full circle and eventually I settled near my original homestead. I sensed I had work to do to realign myself with my family in a new form of community that included and expanded our original bond. Over the years my three sisters and I had created a tradition of visiting our mother in early June, near her birthday. Now I wanted new ways of being together; I wanted to create opportunities to risk more intimacy. In the last several years prior to my mother’s death, I became more intentional about my time with my mother and sisters. It was not without trepidation that I extended my first invitation to stretch our boundaries a bit: let’s make masks together. I was delighted by the positive response I received and we all thoroughly enjoyed the process, even my mother who chose not to participate. I watched her watching us and could see her joy in our creative process — she received the gifts of our stories.

My family became intrigued, wondering what I might propose next. With the confidence of my first success, I stepped a bit further outside our usual way of being together the next time we gathered: we created an altar, each of us adding items that had special significance to us. I called us into a circle near the end of our time together that year and invited everyone to speak about what they had added to the altar. This time my mother did participate, and it was clear to me that we had now moved into sacred space…that timeless place in which a person’s shy soul is coaxed to show her face.

There were many gifts in these family experiences. After our reunions I received notes or calls from one sister or another in which they said that being in that “sacred space” together was the most meaningful part of the time we shared. We all glimpsed aspects of one another we had not been privileged to see before, and we all expanded beyond the labels of our earlier years together. During our circle after creating the altar, I was spellbound by one sister’s eloquence in expressing her spirituality. In our traditional way of relating, she tended to be reserved, and I had not before seen that inner part of her so fully. Another sister, who had carried the label of the “funny one,” risked exposing her tender heart and her tears as she shared in the circle. We all marveled at seeing our different ways of being creative — in speaking, in writing, and in weaving together the strands of our lives.

During what would be our last June reunion with our mother, I facilitated a creative writing experience. Everyone eagerly accepted the invitation and we gathered on Mother’s tree-shaded deck on a beautiful early summer afternoon. Each of us wrote our own mythic journey based on a series of questions that were designed by a friend of mine. There were 20 questions in all, beginning with “What kind of journey will it be?” and including “Who is the main character — the hero or heroine?” and “How will your main character travel?” After each question, there was time for imagining the journey and writing it down. As I looked around the circle, I was delighted to see the involvement and focused concentration.

After responding to all 20 questions, each of us was invited to read her story. When it was my mother’s turn, she began to read and soon was unable to continue, due to the tears and emotions her story evoked. I finished reading it out loud on her behalf. She had written about foreseeing her death, or for her, “the call to come home.” Each one of us in the circle was deeply moved and there was a sense of reverence for the gift she gave us…a glimpse into her private musings, her desire to be reunited with her now-deceased loved ones, and a clear sense of her expectations after her death. For me, the gift was especially meaningful because it was the one and only time my mother alluded to her dying in my presence. She died in February of the following year. The story she had written on the deck that day helped me to accept more gracefully her death and her empty place in our circle.

After my mother’s death in 1998, my sisters and I all wanted to stay intentionally connected and agreed to continue the tradition of annual reunions with now just the four of us. We have been faithful to that agreement for the past 8 years, and each year we have gathered in different locations to share stories, food, games, and walks. But recently there was another shift in the circle: my oldest sister decided she no longer wants to be a part of our special annual gatherings. As my other two sisters and I grapple with this major change, I sift through my grief for an answer to the question, “Well, what is the gift in THIS story?”

Our community changes again, and I grieve again. Yet I’m also eager to learn anew — as my mother did, as each of her daughters has done — what sort of community are we becoming now?

What is the gift in THIS story?

Grandma’s Teacups: The Legacy of Words by Christina Baldwin

Christina Baldwin has focused her life work on the preservation and celebration of story. A founding voice in the journal writing movement, Baldwin has developed an original circle process so people can more readily sit down and hear each other’s stories. Her most recent book is Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives Through the Power and Practice of Story, which reignites readers’ devotion to this ancient art. Visit her website at PeerSpirit.com.

The teacups always rested at the back of the china cabinet, and I was twenty years old before I finally touched one. I knew these cups were special, but I didn’t know why. “Where did you get these?” I asked my grandmother.

“There’re from the farm,” she said, and the image of her Minnesota homestead sprang to mind. A big Norwegian family, stern-faced in their photographs, taciturn in their language, people Garrison Keillor tells stories about: people who didn’t tell stories of their own.

Grandma’s teacups went to my mother, who at eighty-five is now sorting the contents of her own china cabinet. “Who wants these?” she asks me, her fifty-something daughter just arrived to help her move into a condo. I know she is listing her granddaughters in her mind and dividing up the collection.

“No one wants them,” I tell her as gently as I can. “They are all hip, mod girls who haven’t started to settle down. The cups are not meaningful to them, at least not now.” I watch my mother’s eyes for sadness…

“Why?”

“Because the teacups have no story. To be valuable they have to be part of our family story, part of our childhood memories.”

Story is really all we leave each other. Even the most precious heirlooms, including the ones I tend in my own home, will not last: someday they’ll end up in an estate sale or a house will burn down or they will simply lose meaning. What has the most lasting value is the story of who we are, who we come from, where we aspire to go.

“You want to give your granddaughters something?” I ask, “Write your story. Tell them what it was like to grow up in the Depression, to marry during World War II, to raise children in the 1950’s, to wake up to feminism in the 1970’s… Write about that.” The cups sit around her on the carpet waiting to be filled, not with tea or coffee, but with my mother’s life.

Story gives objects meaning, and meaning increases value. When I turned fifty, my mother had a ring designed for me that incorporates my grandmother’s wedding band, a diamond from my father’s aunt, and birthstones representing three generations. Even diamonds and gold have value added by story.

Story is legacy. My mother is a talking history lesson of the twentieth century. And because she carries stories of her parents’ and grandparent’s lives, she carries a family memory that spans nearly 150 years. If I can help her save these stories, in writing, recorded on tape, transferring stories and photos in ever- changing technology, I will carry a family memory of about 200 years. And if I speak these stories to my grandchild generation, they will have memories of over 300 years.

What good this will do them, how stories of family will serve them in a future I won’t live to see, is a mystery. What I know is that seemingly insignificant stories of my parents’ parents’ parents have meaning to me that they could not suppose; and this leads me to believe that my stories will have meaning in the future that I cannot suppose. So I gather and preserve stories and trust the mystery.

Here are suggested ways to work with story as legacy:

When you look at the things around your house that you want to bequeath to family members, write down what makes the objects interesting and valuable in a personal way. Literally attach the story to the object. I have a Victorian loveseat that came to me because my aunt taped a card on the back that read, “For Christina, someday.” I put a card in the wooden box in the corner of the living room that explains this is the chest our Norwegian great-grandmother carried onto the boat that brought her to America.

A grandmother I know set aside a year to write a letter to each of her twelve grandchildren. The letters are not to be mailed, but when she is gone each young adult will have a loving statement of her special regard.

While cleaning out her parents’ estate, my sister-in-law discovered a box of old photos and swiftly went to visit a remaining elderly aunt. They spent hours with a magnifying glass and archivist pen, identifying people in the pictures.

A Jewish friend reports, “Celebrating Seder, the youngest person present asks the questions that elicit the story of the Passover. We adapted this tradition to help the children develop questions to elicit stories about our own family. When Aunt Esther broke her hip, she transcribed five years of intergenerational interviews, so now we’ve started a notebook for everybody.”

Story can also heal legacy. A seventy-five-year-old friend openly shares the story of five generations of alcoholism in her family because she sees the benefit of this work. “It took my grandfather his whole life to sober up, and if my father hadn’t gotten sober and shown me the way, I might not have been able to do it at forty-three… When my grandson showed up alcoholic at age twenty, he had a mom and uncle ready to intervene, and a grandma carrying everything I’d learned from his great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather. Understanding the story of his vulnerability helped him out of abuse in just a year.”

Even a few words can be precious. A little notebook in a purse or pocket in which you jot notes. Notations made on a calendar. Little anecdotes to accompany photos that expand or explain the scene. Something you wish you’d said in a moment long gone by can still be shared.

In our families and among our long-time friends there are people who want to know what we carry in our hearts, our histories, our philosophies of life. Our invitation is to sip tea from an antique cup and speak any way, write any way, contributing our stories to a never-ending tale.

Touching the Soul of Community by Roger Harrison, Ph.D.

The author’s long international career as an organizational development (OD) consultant includes designing programs on Positive Power and Influence; the book, A Consultant’s Journey; and much speaking and writing. The following material is taken from the workshop, Emergent Change: A Co-creative Approach, offered by Roger, together with Mitch Saunders and Craig Fleck.

In my forty-odd years as an organization development (OD) consultant, the word “soul” wasn’t often used in connection with organization. Yet for me there has often been a strong sense of being, of presence, within the most memorable of my client organizations.

One could ask, “If this organization were a person (or an animal), whom or what would it most resemble?” and people would be able to answer from their own experience. Groups, communities, and nations as well as organizations are all living systems, and an idea of the “soul” of a living system can aid us in assisting that system to move through the changes of its life cycle.

By the “soul” of a group or system, I mean its essence: its most fundamental qualities. A common source of soul is the founders’ vision, accessible through the “founding story” of the group and passed down through the reminiscences of members. An organization’s soul holds knowledge of its potential, and it may also hold a vision of how that potential may best be expressed and fulfilled.

What anecdotes are told of the “early days” of your group or organization, in which the founding genius may appear?

What parts of the vision and purpose of the early days continue strong and vital in the present day?

Which parts have weakened or faded away? How do you feel about this?

If we choose to work with an organization’s soul we can listen deeply to that soul, in order to make choices and decisions that will lead towards fulfillment of its animating purpose. We can think of organization soul as a metaphor, or we can give it the status of a real entity. Either way, we can develop a working relationship with an organization’s soul.

How does the idea of organization’s soul strike you? Can you imagine a being that holds the vision and purpose of a group or community, maintaining it through time? Does this idea work as a metaphor for you?

It is possible to enter into active dialogue with the being that is the living system of a group or organization. Instead of treating the group as an object or thing that we manipulate for our own ends, we can enter into a personal and intimate relationship with the system. Our role then becomes less that of a mechanic and much more that of a sensitive and receptive gardener, who endeavors to understand the unique growth patterns of each plant, shrub, or tree, through the full range of its life cycle or evolutionary path.

Exercise: Go within yourself in a brief meditation. See if you can connect with something that feels like the soul or spirit of an organization that you know.

Inquire of that being: What is your vision for this organization? What is your work to do in the world? What benefits are you meant to bring?

Ask: What interferes with this purpose? What is needed from us to support your evolution at this time?

Asking such questions has often brought group members to a new and deeper understanding of their organization’s purpose, and this understanding has enabled them to “come back on track.”

For example, in a recent Board retreat conducted by the author for a small non-profit, revisiting the founding moments of the organization resulted in the realization that both an educational and an activist thrust had been part of the founding vision. As the organization had evolved, however, the educational mission came to dominate the consciousness of its members, and the activist aspect was forgotten. Remembering the original vision brought new energy and understanding into the Board, out of which new initiatives are currently being undertaken.

The Board had touched, and been re-energized by, the living soul of their community.

Quiddler & Tap-dancing Clowns by Cynthia Trenshaw

What would be the alchemy between Leo Baldwin and Mary Brooks Tyler when they met for lunch with me in my Whidbey Island, WA, home?

We were scheduled to talk about “starting over” in later life, about creating community and tapping into personal and spiritual resources to make our own visions of aging a reality in totally new circumstances.

But for my part, I couldn’t wait to see how these two newcomers to the island, each very different from the other, would interact.

Leo is 86, stocky and strong, with welcoming eyes that always meet yours; a bred-in-the-bone gentleman who wears khaki slacks and a hat with a brown silk daisy. His license plate reads “GOIN4 9T”.

Mary Brooks is 52, has long, thick, untamed auburn hair; a woman determinedly creating her own rules, she wears boots, jeans, and handmade patchwork tops. Her bumper sticker reads “American by birth, Southern by the Grace of God.”

Leo is a professional fundraiser and an expert in the field of senior housing. Mary Brooks is a writer and folk artist, and an adjunct professor for Ole Miss. Leo arrived in the Pacific Northwest from Silver Spring, Maryland, Mary Brooks traveled here from Toccopola, Mississippi (emphases on the 1st and 3rd syllables of the town and the state).

Leo was divorced once and then widowed once, each after 30 years of marriage. Mary Brooks has been divorced “more than once.” Leo had traveled hundreds of thousands of business miles over the years before he sold most of his belongings in 2006 and packed what was left into a Ford Econoline van facing northwest. Mary Brooks had never in her life left a three-county area of Mississippi until 2004 when she headed toward Puget Sound in an overloaded rental moving truck with faulty brakes.

For reasons unique to each of them, both Mary Brooks and Leo came to Whidbey Island, WA, to establish a new life. Both have adapted to an environment quite different from what they left. Both have strong ideas about what kind of community serves, or does not serve, in the second half of life. Neither of them said what I expected them to say about new models of community, a new vision of aging, or “the second half of life” in general.

In our culture we usually describe who we are by what we’ve done and how we’ve earned a living. So we got that question out of the way first.

Mary Brooks taught writing at the University of Mississippi as part of a court-ordered program mandated by a racial discrimination case that was decided 30 years ago but was finally implemented only recently. The program was a support system for minorities, focused on writing and English, with an underlying mentoring aspect.

She’s also a folk artist, “actually a ‘found-object’ artist. Mississippi is great for that — the state is covered with junk, and there are no locked gates at the dumps. I did most of my best work in Toccopola, which means ‘Where the Roads Cross’ in Chickasaw.” She writes short stories about the characters that inhabit the South she loves. “Also, I’ve spent a lot of time being a grandmother from the time I was 45. But that doesn’t generate any income.”

Leo worked 14 years for AARP, developing programs that justified the organization’s nonprofit status, such as Widowed Persons Services and housing for elderly and disabled persons. He worked ten years in a private consulting firm in the field of senior housing, five years with the Enterprise Foundation which reconstructs distressed areas in cities, and four years as a fund raiser for a nonprofit organization serving the developmentally disabled.

“I lived most recently in Maryland, in suburban DC, 18 miles due north of the White House. I lived in a condo unit for 30 years with my second wife, Marion. The community started as senior housing, with no one under 55. There were 1,500 units. By the time I left in July of 2006 there were more than 10,000 people in that community, like a small city. I was active and busy outside that community, Marion was active and busy inside the community. My work required that I travel extensively. Then Marion had some strokes, was more and more immobilized, confined to our home. I became the caregiver, dressing, toileting, and bathing Marion, and preparing our food. She died in January of 2005. I headed west in July of 2006.”

I asked my guests, How are you creating new community for yourself?

MB: “I always WANTED to move away from the South. At 40 I began thinking about moving-away options — turns out Whidbey Island was the place. I’m a writer, and I discovered Whidbey Island by coming here to a writing workshop. I already knew five people here, mostly writers, when I arrived; that community is even stronger now. And I’ve grown close to my neighbors.

“I used to live on a farm, with lots of land and animals and a ‘kitchen garden’ where we grew all our own food. Grandfather was a blacksmith and he trained horses. Now I live where I can see the Olympic Mountains to the west and the Cascade Mountains to the east, and I can walk to the salt water of Puget Sound every day.

“Where I came from I had lots of space and privacy. Now I live in a mobile home park, so close to my neighbors I can hear their morning coffee perking. With everyone so nearby, it feels kinda like being off at ‘church camp’ in the South – albeit a very strange church camp!

“In the park we help each other a lot, like family. But it’s a different ‘family’ from what I’m used to.

“I’ve written from the age of 13, though often in secret. The South is a storytelling culture, so it is a natural for me to be a story writer. My heart community is mostly writers. But the way I talk is storytelling. My next door neighbor, Miss Vivian, is 81, and we swap stories all the time. From her I get the local stories of the island history. That makes this feel more like my ‘home’.”

LEO: “My daughter lives here, and she had such a workable network for me to fall into. I rented first, so I could explore the island. It helps to be able to drive.

“Soon after I arrived I got a call from a local church, welcoming me to the area. I ended up joining that church. My nonconformist religious background makes me nudge the pastor about changes. We’ve had conversations about housing, and I got an invitation to join a visioning committee around the topic of housing. That group introduced me to still other people, people involved with visioning for the future.

“In Minnesota I founded a life-care program, converting a 165-unit hotel into housing with a full range of care. Its mission was to ‘Do for people what they can’t do for themselves, but let them to everything else even if they make mistakes.’ I believe that’s crucially important in community.

“I’m skeptical of co-housing arrangements. It may look good today, but in three to five years things may not be nearly as compatible. People know too much about each other. Emotional responses generate problems to be solved, and then the relationships take a beating. I think senior housing should be managed, not self-supporting or self-governing. It’s best if individuals are not contractually locked into their living situations. To maintain their sense of being in control and independent, they have to have the right to leave.”

In this move, what did you leave behind that you can’t replace?

MB: “I left five generations of family behind – that’s the toughest part.”

LEO: “This past Christmas I sent out 80 Christmas letters, and had almost as many responses. It made me realize how big a separation this has been, how many people I left behind. I hadn’t known I’d had so many beautiful women in love with me!

“But I don’t really have relationships to go back to – I can’t reconstruct what I had there.”

What if you had to leave here and start over yet again?

LEO: “I’d do it the same way – get rid of my THINGS, pack my clothes and whatever else will fit in a family van, make connections when I arrive, borrow furniture, settle in.

“My father homesteaded in Montana in 1908; in the late 70’s, when he’d been widowed for 8 years, I asked him ‘How do you like living alone?’ He said, ‘You have to learn to live with yourself. If you can live WITH yourself you can live BY yourself.’ I think he was right. It’s not so much finding other people as deciding what is important for you. I value solitude, privacy, self-determination. I like challenges. We are problem-solvers, and if we can’t find a problem to be solved we’ll make one!”

MB: “If I moved again I’d first of all make damned sure that the rental truck had good brakes!

“I’d be more methodical, even in the midst of spontaneity. I don’t fear starting over again. I can find people with mutual interests no matter where I am. If nothing else, I can find the locals who are rich with the stories of their native place.

“Family matters to me. I hope some day to be geographically closer to my family again. Where I grew up, family WAS my community; we had a great time together. I’d like to be a grandmother close-up again, but I won’t force that to happen. I’d like to be surprised by it naturally. A strong sense of community just follows me, wherever I am.”

Mary Brooks looks thoughtful. “In a way, my move away from my family was FOR my family, as well as for me. The South is so communal, so rural, and poor, that families have had to stay together to survive. For family to move away is frightening. But today my daughters have nothing to look forward to in the South. My leaving has given them permission to leave as well.

“Some day I’d like to own property that by its very nature calls in community to itself. I’m always up for the next adventure – any permanence that there is, is inside me. I trust the Mystery.”

Tell me about your inner guidance, your wisdom.

LEO: “What I practice is to sit on the edge of my bed at night for a few minutes and think about that day, or the near past: What I have done or been involved in or pondered and am concerned about. I don’t exclude fun things like the movies or playing Quiddler [a game like Scrabble, played with cards, that is popular locally], but mostly it is more sober: what have I done or thought about; how have I brought ‘peace on earth,’ justice to the abused? How have I responded to environmental/climatic issues? Have I been kind and thoughtful and caring enough to feel pleased about my personal contacts? Or have I overlooked or brushed aside opportunities in pursuit of some temporary pleasure?

“In the morning I reverse the process: I spend a few minutes consciously thinking about what opportunities the day has in store, and what I need to do to be ready to respond and to open new doors in the future.”

MB: “For me, everything is language. I’m open to listening to everything. What does THIS have to teach me? How about THAT? I open doors; I close doors. I pay attention. I pay attention to resistances inside me, those physical places that I often try to overlook, those times when my inner dialogue shifts into argument.

“And I remind myself that nothing is an accident.”

Who do you want to be standing around your deathbed?

LEO: “I don’t ever want to be on a deathbed. I don’t want to need anyone around the bed. If cyanide is justified for CIA agents, why not for me when it’s time?

“But barring that, I’d want caring professionals around me, aware of their authority and also thoughtful, knowing that they often create pain as well as alleviate it. I’d want my daughter and other family close by, encouraging me to go in peace.”

MB: “My mother was horrified when she realized I was really leaving Mississippi. She said, ‘You’re going off all alone and you’re going to die! Where are you going to be buried?’

“But I go where my own personal guidance tells me. I’m living life fully, and the flesh is just flesh, not soul. I don’t want to be dependent on medical technology, but I’m not afraid of dying. I want to still be doing my art when I’m 97. My Mamaw [grandmother] is 97, and frustrated because she can’t wash dishes any longer. But she’s holding spiritual energy for my daughters – I can see that. So I trust that my aging and dying will be okay too.

“But if I can, I want to go out with a bang. When I’m on my deathbed I’d like to have lots of tap-dancing clowns around me. I want my death to be a celebration of my life.”

So what HAD I expected of two such different people as Mary Brooks and Leo? I had expected each to have a strong desire for structure, for permanence, after their uprooting moves. Whidbey Island is one large county floating in Puget Sound; the south end, where they have settled, is rural and comparatively isolated, reached by car ferries from the mainland. This past winter there were several extended power outages. There are two small incorporated towns, no shopping malls or big box stores, one small hospital, one nursing home, and no continuum-of-care campus. But neither of these two people, not even Leo with his lifetime of experience in creating communities for seniors, feels a need for a structured living community for themselves as elders. Each has found a way to create a supportive community but neither seeks a residential community.

Neither Mary Brooks nor Leo assumes they know what the future holds. However things play out, both recognize the inevitability of change and the impermanence of life. As Leo said, “It’s interesting how our culture used to seem very sedimentary, now it’s so transient.” And as Mary Brooks responded, “I carry my permanence inside me.”

Maybe that’s the very essence of wisdom. For that matter, maybe that’s the strength of any community made up of people in the second half of life: to know oneself, to enjoy one’s own company, to trust oneself, and from that position of strength to reach out to others.

Mary Brooks and Leo have that strength in common.

And it turns out they have another, unexpected, thing in common: A few days ago, when Leo went to pick up his mail, he was surprised to see a letter in his post office box addressed to “Mary Brooks Tyler.” He knew that in a couple of days he was going to meet someone with that name, and he wondered how on earth this letter had come to him.

It turns out that when Mary Brooks first moved to Whidbey Island she’d had PO Box #1425; she had moved a year later to an area with home postal delivery. Before he left Maryland, Leo’s daughter had “gotten the process of moving started” by renting a local post office box for him – and he was assigned to #1425!

So before they hugged goodbye, Leo delivered Mary Brooks’ mail to her, a symbol of the alchemy and synchronicity in which they both trust, in their second half of life.

Cynthia Trenshaw lives on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound and is a teaching colleague of PeerSpirit, Inc., specializing in issues of aging. She is certified by the State of Washington as a Professional Guardian for elders and a registered nursing assistant. She is nationally certified as a hospital chaplain and a massage therapist. For several years she was chaplain of a 200-bed nursing home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and later became a teaching practitioner at the Care Through Touch Institute in San Francisco, serving homeless people on the streets, under the viaducts, and in the shelters of the Bay Area. She earned her master’s degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in 1998 just before she turned 56. Her master’s thesis focused on Circle as a spiritual practice. A Harvest of Years, her short guide to working with circle groups, may be purchased through Amazon. Visit her website.

Book Reviews: Old & New Classics

The Second Half Of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom
by Angeles Arrien
Sounds True, 2005

Angeles Arrien is an anthropologist, educator, award-winning author, and consultant to many organizations. She is also on the faculty of two San Francisco Bay Area schools: The California Institute of Integral Studies and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Her research and teaching focus on values and beliefs shared by all of humanity, and on the integration and application of multi-cultural wisdom in contemporary settings. She is author of The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary and Signs of Life: the Five Universal Shapes and How to Use Them.

Sister Age
by M.F.K. Fisher
Vintage, 1984

During a career that spanned 60 years, M.F.K. Fisher (the initials stand for Mary Frances Kennedy) became one of the pillars of American literature. She is recognized for creating a genre by using essays on food and taste as metaphors for man’s three basic needs: food, security, and love. A prolific writer, she published hundreds of stories for The New Yorker, 15 books of essays, a novel, a screenplay, a children’s book and dozens of travelogues. Her more popular works included: Consider the Oyster, How to Cook a Wolf, The Art of Eating, A Considerable Town, and As They Were.

Fisher lived most of her life in California, Switzerland, and France. A ranch in northern California became her retirement home. There, after years of diminishing sight, crippling arthritis, and Parkinson Disease, she died in 1992 at the age of 83. It was during these years that she published Sister Age, a collection of short stories and her only book on aging.

Many of us long for a guide to help us deal with the psychological and spiritual issues that appear in the later years of our lives—especially those issues resulting from a deep inner shift in energy that calls us to some unknown, previously unrecognized path. In our twenties, thirties, and forties, we found magazine articles and books that coached us on how to successfully complete the developmental tasks of those stages, tasks such as: finding a mate, choosing a profession, raising children, climbing the career ladder. Now that we have arrived at the second half of life, few guides exist to tell us how to approach the tasks of the later years, tasks such as being, integrating, accepting, completing unfinished work, surrender, and saying good bye.

The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom by Angeles Arrien, is such a guide, poetic but practical. Published in 2005, it is fast becoming a classic in its field. In our own western culture where “old” has been held in disregard for generations, few researchers are interested in identifying factors that lead to a successful old age—a time when “being,” not “doing,” is the most prominent task to be addressed. Arrien’s research integrates information from both psychology and cultural anthropology. She brings into her work information from other cultures where old age is not a “curse” and it is possible to identify traits, behaviors, and activities that lead to success in old age.

This book is a guide for those seeking information about the specific developmental tasks and energies that emerge during the second half of life. Arrien refers to the process as “rites of passage.” She not only identifies tasks we must master in order to reap the harvest of wisdom, she also recommends specific practices and reflections that lead to mastery of the tasks. While doing the recommended reflection and practice takes much longer than reading the relatively short book, it is the practice that is essential. According to Arrien:

Spiritual traditions around the world teach that practice develops and transforms us, encourages discipline and enables us to focus, facilitating change and increased awareness. Whenever you want to learn something new or want change to occur, you must consciously and consistently engage in a practice (p. 28).

The book is organized around the concept of eight metaphorical gates — all archetypal symbols that can help shift perspectives to the tasks unique to the second half of life. Arrien explains the archetypal nature of gates in folk tales and literature. In the journey through life, each of us must pass through a series of gates in order to continue the journey. She says:

Deep archetypal feelings may surface when we are “at the gate.” Instinctively, we recognize that we are required to let go of what is familiar, and prepare to enter and open ourselves to the unknown. Our passage through the gate is irreversible. We cannot go back. After we open the gate and stand upon the threshold, we must do the work of transformation (pp. 9-10).

The challenges at each gate include:

The Silver Gate: facing new experiences and the unknown. It challenges us in later years to connect with our sources of spiritual renewal.

The White Picket Gate: changing identities; discovering one’s true face. “You will meet the masks you have worn previously in life and find ways to discover your true face.”

The Clay Gate: intimacy, sensuality, and sexuality. This gate urges us to care for and enjoy our bodies.

The Black and White Gate: relationships. Here, through the crucible of love, generosity, betrayal, and forgiveness, we learn to deepen our relationships in more intimate and mature ways.

The Rustic Gate: Urges us to use our creativity to enhance our lives, serve our community, and leave a lasting legacy.

The Bone Gate: authenticity, character, and wisdom. To pass through this gate, we must develop the courage to be authentically ourselves

The Natural Gate: The presence of grace. Calls us to replenish our soul in silence and in nature and take time for reflection.

The Gold Gate: Non-attachment, surrender, and letting go. This gate requires nothing less than befriending the death of our physical form by engaging in nonattachment and preparing for our passing from this world.

The Second Half of Life contains much in a short volume: a comprehensive description of the tasks of aging, a collection of metaphors and poetry about the aging process, a workbook of practices designed to help reap the wisdom of old age, and above all, a distillation of the passages through which people of all cultures pass in their journey through the end of life.

I shall always be grateful to Cynthia Trenshaw, our guest editor, for suggesting a review of Sister Age. First published in 1983, this collection of 15 short stories is the renowned author’s reflective work on growing old. Ironically, because of its age it could well have been lost to me. The media long ago lost interest in it, and the publisher no longer promotes it. Even so, Sister Age has the potential to be an important influence in the movement to improve the experience of aging in our country. A limited number of copies are still available from Amazon.com.

The stories in Sister Age evolved from the author’s early interest in aging. Planning to write a book on the art of growing old gracefully, Fisher penned character studies of old people; she collected clippings and articles in a file. Then, in a visit to a Zurich junk shop in 1936, she bought a dilapidated picture of an elderly woman, Ursula von Ott. Fisher gave her another name, Sister Age, as a term of endearment. For years, the picture hung above her desk or over her bed, silently teaching about life and death with their many complications. Fisher embraced Sister Age as an intimate, just as, many years earlier, Saint Frances had welcomed Brother Pain and the lessons he taught.

So deeply penetrating were the lessons from Sister Age that the planned book on the art of aging was never written. Instead, lessons of humility, compassion, regret, acceptance, dignity, living more simply, and befriending death incorporated themselves into stories and essays Fisher produced throughout her career. Some of the stories in Sister Age were first published as early as 1964. Others were not written until the early 1980s after the author’s retirement to northern California.

There is a great deal of variation among the stories—to be expected in a collection written at different periods during the author’s life. Some, like “The Unswept Emptiness” with the ancient Mr. Bee, are character studies. Others, like “Moment of Wisdom,” seem like autobiographical comment. My favorites had suspenseful plots with surprise endings. Two, “The Reunion” and “The Lost, Strayed and Stolen”, are the best “ghost stories” I’ve ever read. Their unusual endings rival the movie, The Sixth Sense. Fisher’s insight into the psyche of her characters is compassionate, kind, gentle, and understanding—a tribute to the lessons from Sister Age. It is so intimate and real that the reader identifies with the heroes and heroines, wishing for the ability to display the same strength, resiliency, and dignity when embracing loss, rejection, sorrow, and even death themselves.

Readers wanting more scholarly insight into Sister Age can find literary reviews by searching the New York Times Book Review Section and other online data sources. However, for those seeking a new experience of aging, Joseph Campbell articulated the true value of this kind of story when he talked of the importance of “the hero’s journey.” The hero enriches our lives when we identify with his noble traits, goals, and actions. Enchanted by a good story, we incorporate into our psyches and inner lives the positive ideas, emotions, and traits of the hero. In the process our character is strengthened; we have a role model for our next step in the journey. Stories with role models for those growing old in a culture like ours are difficult to find. The heroes in Sister Age, however, are such models. I encourage you to meet the friends and cohorts of Fisher’s lifelong companion, Sister Age.