Elders.🌠

When asked if she planned to get a face lift, the great actress Anna Magnani replied - ‘No, I do not want to, it took me a lifetime to acquire these wrinkles’. Sage words indeed.

Autumn has arrived, pretty soon it will be winter. The once vibrant green leaves are changing colour. They are coming of age. Yes, they were beautiful in their prime, but now they are exquisite. Weaker too, more fragile but that just adds to their loveliness. They embrace change, go with the flow, such is life.

What a shame that we, spiritual beings having a human experience, do not conduct ourselves in likewise fashion. Ageing is mostly frowned upon, staying young is the preferred state. 

Not me though, ageing is a joy, precious privilege privilege, which is not the same thing at all as ‘growing old’. We must all of us ‘age’, we must never ‘grow old’, goes the axiom. As in all of Life’s seasons, many Blessings reveal themselves in this time, like having time to stand and stare. In these autumnal days, there is plenty on which to gaze, food for the soul.

‘What is this life, full of care, if we have no time to stand and stare’. (W.H. Davies).

Being an elder is no mean feat, with it comes a very important assignment. Our responsibility to pass on what wisdom we have gleaned through the years. If we do not, then we will be doing the next generation a great disservice. They have no need of us as their best friends, plenty of their own, but they do need our mentoring, how else are they going to learn. 

Priceless wisdom gleaned from walking the walk will not be found in text books. When I told a young man recently, that never once has a young person refused one of my prayers, he replied with gravity: ‘That’s because we need them’. 

‘So that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God’.  (2Corinthians: 1:3)

Let us learn from Nature. Let us embrace our time of life, enjoy being telders. Faith is caught much more than taught. God is everywhere by nature but He is only present by Grace where His children bring Him.

‘Even if my knees knock, it doesn’t matter. Hope in the power of love, and the strength to help everyone with great joy, brings the dead back to life and makes seventy-year-olds become children again’.    (Mother Elvira, Comunita Cenacolo)