Dear folks,

Soon I will turn seventy five and I am just longing to hear positive things
about ageing. What I am interested in are the visions and realisations
that happen in one’s spirit along with the aches and pains of ageing. I
have heard these moments of light we all experience called ‘Glimmers’.
My mind is going over the past and seeing patterns and meanings and so I
am writing about these ‘glimmers’ so that for me they become moments of
light.

Recently I was studying a unit with Associate Professor Finex Ndhlovu
who was teaching out of Armidale University. I was bungling around
with the technology required for zoom study and I sent him an e mail
phrased in a rather apologetic tone. The e mail shared that I was from the
older generation and finding the requirements for expertise in technology
such a struggle. The next zoom lecture he appeared on screen and said in
a booming voice ‘Christine do not call yourself old! You are not old. You
are an elder. You are our elder and we love you’ Here he was giving me a
role within the class which was comprised of generally much younger
people.

I was familiar with the idea of elder from experiencing Australian
Indigenous culture and for having outlived so many people in the
community living around Wilcannia. Had they lived a full lifespan they
would be the elders in the lands of the Paakantji people of the Darling
River. People. Living with this community I had been called an Elder
which feels like a great honour.

The Western culture does not seem very focused on valuing the Aged
and it seems that the good news comes through other cultures who value
age and experience. This last few years I have had this feeling of
expectation and a sense of coming to fruition. All the bits and pieces of
my past seem to have lead me in a direction which was not apparent as it
unfolded.

Soren Kierkegaard says ‘Life can only be understood backwards but it can
only be lived forwards’. It is amazing what we can see in retrospect.
James Hillman was a psychologist and author and in one of his books on
ageing he says that the last year of our lives are for the weaving of
memories into coherent stories. The complex process of diminishment of
body yet embellishment of spirit I try to express in the following verse

Though my body grows old
I at my core feel new life,
buds within emerging, swelling
about to burst
and this I know
that I am going to blossom
A brew of light and hope
pain and darkness
age is now a sun
to warm my earth
I know deep within
that my best is yet to come
The best of me. .Christine Smith

Some of the good news I am seeking regarding age I hear on Radio
National and the other day there was an interview with Maggie Kirkman
regarding her book “The time of our Lives’ Celebrating Older Woman’
This is full of stories about fruitful ageing and I look forward to all the
stories. If anyone has any other positive spins on ageing, articles, sayings
and books please let me know on smithana7@bigpond.com
A friend (Joan Saboisky) recommended this book:- Joan Chittister
‘The Gift of Years’

Thanks Chris Smith Snapshots and Vistas