One of our many poverties in the Western world- a deep one yet on the periphery of our awareness- remains our abject lack of Elders. Aging is everywhere, but actual elders are few to be found. By an large we have an extended adolescence, in which the messages to stay young, be financially secure, focus on liesure, tend to legacy as a way of immortalizing the ego, and many more, are still what most think of when it comes to "aging successfully". The barren dearth of elders on a wisdom journey stretches so far back, we can scarcely imagine what we’re missing.
By and large, Elders are the stuff of legend. Worse than extinct, more than lost to history, Elders have been gone so long, the absence threatens our hopes that they ever actually were.
Thank God, they did, and do yet live. Elders exist not only as archetypes of our collected aching, holding wisdom, wild love, and holy folly in characters we have loved since time immemorial. To be sure, Elders are these. And they are so much more…and less.
In the end, the fleshy humanness of a living breathing Elder, flawed, glorious, mundane, incarnate, fierce, tender, beautiful, and so much more, bests the imagined Elders of our mythic stories.
Until one has been around eldering energy, you may not be aware you were holding your breath. Once encountering an Elder, a great releasing of something you didn’t know you were holding comes over you. We are invited to a new way of breathing, of being, of living, of moving through our daily existence.
"Eldering is an active listening to the needs of the future descendants and creating space for them now... It is a shifting focus from transformative action to transformative presence, from doing to being."
Recovering Eldering
In a world greying with seniors, a growing awareness around our need for Elders, (an altogether different thing), is burgeoning up. Men and women are hearing the call to begin an eldering journey on behalf of the world; it is a recovery that offers great hope to the healing of the world.
Elders find that their conversation with life has lifted their eyes to a greater horizon. Their center of gravity has shifted from familial, national, religious and many other wonderful concerns to tend to a growing cosmic awareness that holds a place for absolutely everything.
Eldering is an active listening to the needs of future descendants and creating space for them now. It is a dance transcending all traditions while affirming the best in each and pushing us to celebrate our own. It is a shifting focus from transformative action to transformative presence, from doing to being, and maybe back again!
Eldering’s constant refrain of letting go, of releasing, of non-doing is not about withdrawal, but rather a step into radical and deeper engagement in the world in a different manner. It is a re-entrance into the conversation with a new slate of gifts to offer, a new song to sing, a new understanding to share.
