This pleasant figure, his handsome face, that bodily strength, these and more aspects of our bodies that we identified with and defined ourselves by when young, all wither and disappear in the last phase of our lives. By the time we reach our 80s, few of us retain the beautiful, muscular bodies or quick minds we had when we were younger. And it’s not just the body’s features that fade: our memory declines, our voice weakens, and our hearing and eyesight fail. Age is the demolisher of our external form.
To many seniors, this ruination of our physical selves is a tragedy. We feel devastated. How can we enjoy life anymore, we wonder, when our bodies can no longer engage in the activities we formerly loved? At this point, it's easy to believe the agist ideas of our culture that older adults have nothing to offer, are over the hill, and are fit for nothing but to quietly await death.
But as unbearable as the decline of age seems, it’s not true that seniors are finished. Despite the deterioration of the body, the spirit remains strong. Because of this, it is possible to make something extraordinary of your later years. This is the thesis of an excellent book titled From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Miller.
I discovered this delightful book when, in my late 60s, I began to see the inevitable shortening of the road ahead. Suddenly, I had to use hearing aids and glasses and curtail activities I loved, like Alpine Skiing, because they were now too dangerous. Now, I could see the inevitable end of my life approaching, and it was depressing.
Rabbi Zalman’s book taught me how to reconceive my life and see my aging body as a gift rather than a catastrophe. My aging body forces me to open to what lives within it, my mind and soul, and find fulfillment there.
Rabbi Zalman was a highly accomplished visionary who founded the Jewish Renewal movement. This movement added beautifully to the broad Jewish religious tradition and attracted many younger people.
He had faced the same crisis as I was facing. Here are his words: “I was approaching my sixtieth birthday, and a feeling of futility had invaded my soul, plunging me into a state of depression that no amount of busyness or diversion could dispel. On the surface, I had much to be thankful for. During the preceding decade, I had worked tirelessly and joyously in a pioneering movement to renew Jewish spirituality in the contemporary world…I was speaking at national conferences and giving retreats at leading growth centers…Yet, while my public life was bustling with activity, beneath the surface…something unknown was stirring in my depths that left me feeling anxious and out of sorts whenever I was alone. To avoid these upsetting feelings, I threw myself back into my work with a renewed resolve not to yield to the depression. But despite my best efforts, I could not keep up the hectic pace that had marked my previous decades of work. ..At night, looking at myself in the mirror in unguarded moments, I realized that I was growing old. Feeling alone and vulnerable, I feared becoming a geriatric case who follows the predictable pattern of retirement, painful physical diminishment, a rocking-chair existence in a nursing home, and the eventual dark and inevitable end to my life.” (Pp. 1-2, From Age-ing to Sage-ing).
After struggling with these questions for some time, Rabbi Zalman took a forty-day retreat in solitude to pray, meditate, write, and contemplate his situation. During this retreat, he received the intuitive wisdom that led to the work he called Spiritual Eldering or Sage-ing.
The book recounts Rabbi Zalman’s insights from that retreat and the method he developed to become a Spiritual Elder, first for himself and then for others. This became his work for the rest of his life.
Rabbi Zalman’s method has several components, including becoming aware of and letting go of inaccurate ideas of what it means to be a senior, reviewing our lives, reframing negative experiences based on our current perspective, forgiveness, and harvesting the lessons learned in life. The Sage-ing process also involves facing our mortality so we can move forward courageously. Finally, we examine how we, as individuals, can serve as elders. This is a spiritual method in which we look within ourselves and call on our inner wisdom to guide and strengthen us.
I’ve personally gained significantly from the Sage-ing method. I was so taken by it that I joined a year-long training program offered by Sage-ing International, which continues Rabbi Zalman’s Sage-ing work. I was then certified to lead groups in learning the method. Since then, I've led many groups and workshops in this work. I highly recommend this book.
Let me conclude with an invitation from Rabbi Zalman: “This book affirms, despite all the invalidations of our youth culture, that elderhood is a time of unparalleled inner growth having evolutionary significance in this era of world-wide cultural transformation. Because spiritual eldering is a call from the future, I invite you to accompany me on this pioneering journey into our unmapped potential.” (Age-ing to Sage-ing, Pp. 8.)
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