[/caption]Carol Forsloff - The trees were bright with autumn colors, but never were they more beautiful than during a visit with an elderly woman in a care facility in Oregon where once again came those special reminders of the spiritual benefits of aging.
How can one benefit from aging when faced with memory lapses, physical ailments, losing friends and relatives and suffering through long periods of being alone or locked inside a building without the freedom to leave without permission? How can others benefit from spending time with those who live without the sharp tongue of youth and the vigor of innovation? Indeed the spiritual benefits of aging far exceed the value of youth if we look beyond the material issues that ordinarily dominate our world.
Laura honors life with grace and joy despite confinement inside the walls of a care facility housing those with memory deficiencies that require ongoing care. She, like others for whom the details of the day before are rearranged or forgotten altogether, lives in that place of the Now that a modern writer tells us can give anyone an insight into spiritual treasures we otherwise may not find.
“Look at those colors,” Laura exclaimed. “ Nothing is more wonderful than these. And the fruit trees! All we have to do is walk around and pick up what has fallen to the ground. Isn’t this everything we need?”
With that she moved along the pathway into the gardens outside her residence, finding the pears and apples that had fallen from the trees. Her pleasure came in those simple things folks often talk about but seldom take the time to really savor as a 94-year-old woman can who looks at life with eyes that come from wisdom more than knowledge, from love of spiritual benefits more than love of material things.
She apologizes for her memory but explains it all like this. “My memory these days is like the old-style juke box where you never know what recording will come down and what song will play next.” And she laughs with pleasure as incidents recalled from her stack of memories triggers joy in the moment that she turns and shares with us.
Like many of advancing age, Laura’s life was full of children, travel, many things that sometimes merge and mingle and sometimes stray a bit. As details leave in moments, other bits return; but Laura’s outlines of her life remain for all to savor for the wisdom that she brings.
She hesitates a moment, then walking carefully and slowly along the grassy slope that fronts the building where she lives, she speaks again of life and love and looking up she smiles and says “I Love you,” in the ways she once could not. She shares the meaningful ideas, those instant joys that children bring as well from sifting instantly those things of lasting value from things that will not last. For with time and memories that have gone, the best of her is now. Her soul that came as an infant with its innocence and charm retains that simple essence that reflects the good in us. And that good is given as the gift to all who listen to the Lauras of the world, the ones who find in this wisdom of the elderly the spiritual benefits of life.
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." - Teilhard de Chardin
“Wisdom is with aged men, With long life is understanding.” Job 12:12 (NASB), the Bible
“Be content and let thy mind go like the river you see before thine eyes, which is always flowing onward, forever to the ocean and yet is untouched by anything.” Eckankar Stranger by the River, p. 23
“By good deeds, pure lives, humility and meekness be a lesson for others,” Abdul-Baha, Tablets of Abdul-Baha, v1, p. 22, Baha'i Faith