March 8, 2020
Texts: Genesis 12:1-7
John 3:1-17
There is a specific mention in the Genesis story that Abram was 75 years old when he responded to God’s call to leave Haran where his father had been buried. It was clearly unusual for an elderly patriarch to uproot his extended family and take off for a destination 500 miles away.
I have been trying to picture how God talked to Abram. His conviction that God was calling him probably grew over a period of time. Life in Haran may have been difficult because one of the meanings of the Hebrew word haran is “parched.” Earlier, Abram’s father had actually planned to move his people to Canaan, but for some reason he had stopped at the city of Haran, which is now in modern Turkey. It seems likely that Abram would have heard God calling him to complete his father’s journey to Canaan while he still had some strength left. Canaan was also on a trade route and known as a more fertile area. Abram was buoyed by God’s promises of an amazing legacy, “I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you… and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” He knew he had to go.
At first the gospel scripture about Nicodemus seems very different from Abram’s story. We don’t know Nicodemus’s age, but we are told that he was a Pharisee, an educated and dedicated practitioner of the Jewish faith. He was also a member of the Jewish ruling council, so he was likely a mature man, well established in society. It is touching that he visits Jesus in private late at night because he wants to talk to Jesus but is afraid of being seen with him in public. Nicodemus makes no attempt to impress Jesus with his learning or cleverness. On the contrary, his questions are full of childlike wonder: “How can a man be born when he is old. He can’t go back into his mother’s womb, can he?” And Jesus gives him that very intriguing verse, “The wind blows wherever it pleases, you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” And Nicodemus is practically speechless. “How can these things be?” he questions in humble amazement. He is clearly a secret disciple who later asked the council for restraint in judging Jesus and brought an extravagant gift of herbs to Jesus’ burial.
My friend Eve was quick to point out that what the story of Abram and the story of Nicodemus have in common is that both Abram and Nicodemus are opening themselves to something new. The Holy Spirit is stirring them up, and God is calling them to make a move. For Abram it required an outward journey of 500 miles, while for Nicodemus the call was more of an inward journey into the truth of Jesus’ good news.
Regardless of our age, God is always calling us to something new through the work of the Holy Spirit. What does that mean to us in the midst of our 21st century life?
Our topic today is old-age diminishment. It’s not mentioned in the Bible much because at that time most people died before they got much diminished. In our country, in 1790, only 2% of the population was over 65 years old. Today that figure is about 15%. Modern medicine has made the difference. For instance, my father was given 15 more years by a powerful antibiotic regimen that cured his heart infection. David’s father had two cardiac arrests while I was carrying his first grandchild, but because of medical care and later it’s bypass surgery, he was able to officiate at that grandchild’s wedding thirty years later.
I would have missed some of my old-age if I hadn’t had emergency surgery two years ago. I remember saying to the surgeon afterwards, “Thank you! Without you I would now be dead.” He paused for a moment and said, “Yes, that is true.” In fact, I was not as grateful and joyful as one might expect. I was still struggling to learn how to eat again until Dixcy’s delicious soups piqued my appetite. I was sleeping a lot and reading some, but my day was really anchored by my visit to see my friend Eve. The walk to her house helped me regain my strength, and even more importantly, Eve was always happy to see me. My relationship with her gave me the purpose and the challenge I needed. And the prayers and the warm welcome from the whole 8th Day community beckoned me to re-enter life.
So thank you, Everybody.
I read on the Internet that our speed of processing information peaks at 18 or 19 years of age. Physically we reach our top strength at 25, and with training, can maintain it maybe up to 40. Our emotional intelligence continues to improve in the 40’s and 50’s. Only the vocabulary is still improving in the 60’s and 70’s. (Maybe that’s why old ladies like Eve and me like to play Scrabble.)
As a result, by our 70’s we should be pretty used to the idea of diminishment. However, the later journey is fraught with some rude surprises. An early warning I got was in my sixties. In the course of years, I had personally framed and mounted about 250 graduate portraits on the walls of Academy of Hope, and I knew almost all of our beautiful graduates by name. And then all of a sudden, I didn’t. I still knew the faces; I knew the people but not their names. They had been taken away from me in one fell swoop.
Well, that was just a curious little incident and not very consequential. I just mention it because it made me realize how little control I had.
My husband David had a much more painful experience in his 60’s. He had been an avid cross-country skier in Minnesota, so whenever we did get a blanket of snow in Rock Creek Park, he was quick to head there to ski. But one day in his sixties, his skiing was simply taken away from him. He kept trying for about an hour to stand up on his skis, but he couldn’t, and finally he ended up miserably trudging back home in deep snow. And he bitterly missed skiing.
And, of course, those were just the beginning of a long string of unwelcome incidents. When my very talented childhood friend from Finland wrote that, for some inexplicable reason, she had microwaved a plastic container full of margarine, I at least felt I was in very good company.
Eve and I read together this little Quaker booklet that Gordon once recommended Hallowing One’s Diminishments. Then one morning last summer, when I went to see Eve, she was clearly frustrated and embarrassed. “I can’t remember how to put my teeth in. Can you help me?” she said. Working together, we finally managed to get the teeth to fit. “Now, how am I supposed to hallow this diminishment?” Eve asked as we settled back into the couch. “I think we are supposed to go to our spiritual resources,” I said without knowing what I was talking about. How indeed can we honor our losses?
So what are those spiritual resources? How are we to live with this going toward death little bit by little bit? We can’t just turn to our doctor because, as the author of Being Mortal aptly puts it, “Medicine’s focus is narrow. Medical professionals concentrate on repair of the health, not sustenance of the soul.”
Hallowing One’s Diminishments offers some helpful concepts here, “an intentional letting go of one’s waning gifts” and “a rededication of what creative potential remains.” My father actually did it very well. He worked part-time as a teacher until the age of 71. Every night he practiced his violin and sometimes performed. He was also an assistant teacher at a ballroom dance class. Then one day a minor stroke impaired him just enough so that he lost all three of those activities. His handwriting became illegible; he couldn’t get a good sound out of his violin, and his balance (that he had liked to show off) was now poor. I saw him a few weeks after the stroke, and he said, “From now on, I will just help your mother.” My mother was a businesswoman and a gardener but not much of a homemaker, so that left my father to do the shopping and cooking and running errands, and for nine years he put his heart and mind to his new calling, until his second stroke took it from him. He came to the point of needing constant supervision, which we discovered when he turned all the burners on the cook stove high and left the room.
I remember an awkward moment with all of us sitting in the car, and my father spoke up from the backseat and said, “I used to be the head of this family, and now I can do nothing.” It’s painful to think that, at the time, none of us could think of a truthful and comforting response. My father lived meekly at home 15 more months and finally died in his sleep. We the family fell short in many ways, but we cared for him the best we knew how.
I believe that God keeps calling us to the end, and the true quality of our life depends on responding to that call. Remember that phrase “rededication of whatever creative potential is left.” Some people in our community have pointed the way. Jimmy said to me the other day, “I want to do things, but I can’t.” However, he is doing what he can, and that is praying. Both he and Barbara are faithful prayer warriors who give a lot of life to our community. I can also tell that they are a blessing to others in the nursing home where they live. And I remember our fellow church member Dottie Bockstiegel at 89 saying, “I show up”, and that she did at meetings, celebrations and especially at game nights. She was a community builder to the end.
How about the very end when one is under total intimate care? One of the leaders of our community, Carol Fitch, needed a lot help in her last years. Her son Kirk told me that Carol felt God calling her to allow her children to care for her. There is a challenge for the whole family to respond to.
That pamphlet Hallowing One’s Diminishments points us toward contemplative prayer to guide us on this path of rededicating ourselves as our abilities decline. Journaling and learning from others in the community have been even more meaningful to me. And much healing and clarity can come from just taking a walk.
Finally, there is grace in aging. We can take more time to enjoy art, music, museums, books and beautiful days in the park. And then there is the healing power of humor and laughter. David and I are working extremely hard to have more laughter in our home. (That’s meant to be funny.) Anyway, I think the two of us have a little more humor in our days now than we did when our lives were more compressed. One time when Eve fell, she burst out laughing. I don’t think I have ever laughed at my own falling, but she proved that it is possible. There is a saying in Finnish, “Laughter lengthens your life.” I’m not sure laughter adds to the number of our days, but it surely gives more life to our days. It’s such a free gift from our Maker.
Recently I learned that dementia can be an opportunity to learn about having fun. I had a chance to dance with my favorite Alzheimer’s patient, and it was a revelation to see her put her heart and body into it. Another remarkable thing was that, although my friend can’t remember her own last name, she was able to sing some of the lyrics to the songs that we were dancing to. On another visit, a Little Sister of Jesus showed me how to have an enjoyable conversation with an Alzheimer’s patient. It’s a different mode of being, with plenty of laughter and goofing around. My friend loved it, and I loved the new and unexpected experience! It reminded me of one of the Lenten thoughts that Sito recently sent around. It’s from Thomas Merton: “We are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.” Who knew that God’s calling may be an invitation to dance? Can it be one of the surprises of the Holy Spirit?