How Old Are You Really?
“Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form.” - Andre Maurois
In today’s program Reverend David Johnson provides a reading, followed by his sermon titled, “How Old Are You Really?” Our introductory hymn was number 12, “O Life That Maketh All Things New.” Our intermediary music was, “When Morning Breaks,” by Allan Robert Parker. Our closing music is hymn 51, “Lady of the Season’s Laughter,” and, “I Like the Fall,” by George Curtis. All music was performed by the UCMH choir and congregation under the direction of Marjorie Mitchell. This recording was produced by Ben Peck.
How old are you really?
Sermon, Nov. 12, 2006, Marlborough-Hudson UU Church
Rev. David A. Johnson
How old are you really? Mark Twain, years ago – about the time he visited this congregation – declared; “I woke up this morning and I was 73. I am hardly ever 73. Usually I am much younger.” We all know this experience or some variation of it. I look in the mirror and I say; “Is that dad in there? Sure looks like him!” But I don’t feel that old!
We all have a sense of our fit, proper, right age – many researchers say – the age when we fcel most ourselves, most at home with ourselves. May Sarton said that it was at 70 he felt most completely herself, most centered, at peace, in command of all her powers.
If we all have an age at which we feel grounded, at peace with ourselves – what is “your age?” It says a great deal about you – and if you understand it and relish it – it can nourish your life. Now some folks I have known will always be petulant 6 year olds – and some remain perpetual teenagers complaining that the world doesn’t give them what they want and deserve. There are – as we all know – the permanent 39 year olds (men and women) who never age another day, and struggle so very, very hard to look 39 year after year after year.
I’m very much aware on this Veteran’s Day weekend of the veterans whose formative moment was in the terror, danger, courage, fear, suffering on long ago battlefields. I have a friend who in some powerful way will always be back on Omaha Beach in WW II. My Intern Supervisor when I was a young theological student will always be on the fierce football fields of October – where he was a star player. Others define themselves by moments and persons in the popular culture – the Beatles, Elvis, so many others.
Ric Masten, an old friend who has been here too wrote years ago:
I turned forty awhile ago
and came dribbling out of the locker room
ready to start the second half
glancing at the scoreboard
I saw that we were behind
7 to 84
and it came to me then
we ain’t gonna win
and considering the score
i’m beginning to be damn glad
this particular game ain’t gonna go on
foreverbut don’t take this to mean i’m ready
for the showers
take it to mean i’m probably gonna play
one hellava second halfi told this to some kids in the court
next to mine and they laughed
but i don’t think they understood
how could they
playing in the first quarter only one point
behind
Recently Ric penned a very different poem about walking in the garden with his granddaughter Cara, “little Miss Slowpoke” always behind,
gathering specimens –
repeating after me the name
of every trailside shrub and tree
“eucalyptus – sticky monkey (to her)
lilac – sage – madrone
and “don’t touch that it’s poison oak”
then suddenly – “we’re home!”….
Cara and I collected
and polished these moments
scattering them along the path
like pebbles
to be used in the distant future
the way a whiff of cigar smoke
brings my grandfather back
to poke about in the garden
with his walking stick
the way
my grandmother’s face magically appears
at the taste of peppermint
her watchful presence close at hand
whenever I shake sand
from something that has been to the beach
We are ourselves, and we become the witnesses of those who have gone before. Now, it is us who transmit the passwords from generation to generation (as St Exupery said). We grow and change, and the challenges grow with us. Florida Scott Maxwell declared at 85; “It has taken me all the time I’ve had to become myself, yet now that I am old there are times when I feel (there is) no room for me at all.”
There are those who feel in full possession of themselves in the wonders, trials, joys of parenthood. I’ve hear more that one woman say she would love to be pregnant always, perpetually – so wondrous is the experience of carrying and birthing a life. There are women and men who grieve deeply when their children are launched and this amazing, magical time is past. A few lucky ones spread out their parenting so that they can move seamlessly into grandparenting. And I’ve known many whose full flowering was as grandparents, at last free of others expectations and needs, to be the loving, listening presences they always wished to be.
We all have a time of life that is especially central – defining – powerful – fulfilling in our souls. I’ve known many men and women for whom it is in the 40s when all their struggles, plans, talents, hopes, wisdom, public persona come together and they feel most completely whole. Ellen Glasgow declares a different view; “In the past few years, I have made a thrilling discovery… that until one is over sixty, one can never really learn the secret of living. One can then begin to live, not simply with the intense part of oneself, but with one’s entire being.” Some find themselves truly at home in more than one chapter of their lives, and that’s a great joy.
The tragedy of life is in getting stuck in a narrow place along the way and not being able to adjust, cope, move on. I saw a newspaper article some time ago written by a Mount Holyoke College student. She had just returned from her Junior Year in London. She was told this European year would “be the best year of my life and it was.” She took advantage of all the resources, opportunities and filled her days to overflowing. She had “the time of my life.” Mt. Holyoke, doubtless based on experience, sent her an article outlining what would be necessary to return, to reenter her former world, and offered psychiatric assistance. Home would seem, they predicted, grey and lifeless, without the fire and excitement of London. She would feel wild mood swings and feel adrift without control. Her response was delightful. She declared, “I will not sit back and be a Junior year-abroad postpartum statistic.” Quoting Mt. Holyoke founder Mary Lyon she said, I will “go where no one else will go, do what no one else will do” and have lots of “best” years!
It is easy to get stuck if we’re too wrapped up in ourselves, if we cannot connect, serve, assist, witness, respond to life as it pours on. Ourselves are often a narrow and confining place to be stuck. There is a delightful old tale of a holy man and his disciple. The man kept his disciple only because he was so devoted. He really seemed pretty dumb. One day a rumor spread that the disciple had walked on water, fording a river without getting soaked or drowned. The holy man called in his disciple and asked if the story was true. The disciple said, “It is thanks to you, O Blessed One, that I walked on water. At every step, I repeated your saintly name and that is what held me up.” The holy man reflected, if this lowly one can walk on water, surely I can as well. I must possess miraculous powers I did not suspect. He went to the water’s edge and stepped out, shouting, “Me, Me, Me.” He sank! Life is meant to be lived in community, connection, service.
Don Marquis, tongue planted firmly in cheek, declared; “Between the years of ninety two and a hundred and two, we shall be the old useless, drunken, outcast person we have always wished to be. We shall have a long white beard…, and recline in a wheelchair.” When we wish to turn out the lights we’ll pull out my 45 and “shall shoot the lights out… When we want air we shall throw a silver candlestick through the front window… We don’t wish to make anyone envious of the grand time that is coming to us… We look forward to a disreputable, vigorous, unhonored, and disorderly old age.” I once aspired to be such a contentious curmudgeon, but it sounds like too much work.
Sheldon Kopp tells a telling tale of a very conventional police chief with a strange holy man in his jail’s holding tank. The prisoner seemed at peace, praying regularly. The police chief asked the holy man how “are we to understand the line in the Scriptures that tells that the all knowing God had to ask Adam, ‘Where art thou?’” The prisoner replied, “in every era, God calls out to every one of us, ‘Where are you in your world?’” God might ask you, “Now that you have lived 46 years, how far along have you come?” When the police chief heard his own age mentioned he trembled. He realized that he was the one God was once again asking, “Where are you?” That is always our question too!
Long ago a minister shared this observation:
“Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips, and supple knees; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions. It is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in one of fifty more than one of twenty.
Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals.
Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair, these are the long, long years that bow the heart and turn the greening spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars and at starlike things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. You are as old as your doubt, as young as your faith; as old as your fear, as young as your self-confidence; as old as your despair, as young as your hope.
In the central place of your heart is an evergreen tree. Its name is love. So long as it flourishes you are young.”
There is always a strength beyond our own, giving strength to ours, strength to our weakness, courage to our fear, hope in any despair. May life rise for each of us new born each morning in beauty, strength and love.
