The following meditation was written by Dr. Bruce Main, President and Founder of Urban Promise Ministries in New Jersey.
“Look! I’m doing a new thing….” Isaiah 43:19a (Common English Bible)
“You gotta keep the door open.”
Evidently my body language suggested I wasn’t completely understanding her comment.
“You know,” she clarified. “It’s the heart. You’ve got to keep it open to new opportunities. Shut the door and you wither up.”
My new friend Kathy is figuring out retirement. She still consults a little, but at this stage of life she’s looking to give back as a volunteer.
So, she’s “keeping the door open” for opportunities to engage with her community. That’s why she was in my office. Our campus gardens need TLC and Kathy can’t wait to get started. “I love working outside and with my hands. Grew up on a farm. Never really leaves you.” Music to my ears.
But besides gardening, Kathy is thinking about aging. And since we’re all on that path, it might behoove us to spend a little time reflecting on how we can do it well. Like Kathy—who tries to keep her heart open to new challenges, expanding her circle of friends and intentionally hanging around younger people—we too choose how we meet our future.
Kathy’s onto something. And it’s no coincidence I stumbled across a prayer by James Finley:
“God, help me to be the kind of old person young people want old people to be. Help me not just to talk like this but help me to walk around like this and answer the phone like this and talk to my grandchildren like this.”[1]
Finley’s prayer raises a great question: What kind of old person do we want to be? We’ve all met our share of duds. Cranky. Bitter. Anxious. Controlling. Stuck. Miserable. But like you, we’ve met a few whose depth of wisdom, grace and generosity perfume the world with a beautiful fragrance. Never enough of these blossoming flowers.
So, what’s aging well got to do with prayer? Here’s a possible connection.
Ironically, despite advances in technology and accessibility to knowledge, humans have not evolved much in the past 2000 years. Our primal impulses of fear, control and power are still very much alive—roadblocks to growing into old people young people want old people to be.
In the Bible we meet numerous characters. Some age well. Others do not do so well. Aging well seems connected to the openness of one’s heart. Remember King Herod? Guess what? Door closed. No space in his heart for the presence of a child who brings light, hope and healing to those living in darkness. And we all have a little Herod in us—clinging to our small, temporal empires while forfeiting the new things God wants to do in our lives. Fortunately, the wise men Herod sent to reveal the location of the Christ child—so he can execute his sinister, murderous plan to rid Jesus—kept their hearts open, muster the courage to disobey his orders, protect the child and allow the Christmas story to take root.
“I think people who live their lives open to awe and wonder have a much greater chance of meeting the Holy than someone who goes to church but doesn’t live in an open way,” reflects Fr Richard Rohr. “I see people come to church day after day unprepared for anything new or different. Even if something new or different happens, they fit it into their old boxes.”[2]
We should all want to “meet the Holy.” And through prayer, solitude and meditation we open the door to God’s ever moving spirit and to a life of awe and wonder. Let’s protect and nurture the new things God is birthing in the world and in you and me. Let’s age well. Let’s become old people that young people want us to be.
[1] Finley, James, “Becoming Light for Others”, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/becoming-light-for-others/.
[2] Rohr, Richard, “Willing to Be Amazed”, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/willing-to-be-amazed/#:~:text=I%20think%20people%20who%20live%20their%20lives,Holy%20than%20someone%20who%20just%20goes%20to
Joy,
Nurture Faith with Dr. Doug Hood 