What is Aging and Our Movement Toward God?

So many pundits and revered political commentators have been bemused by the recent polls that show that President Biden is low in the polls—now get this—due to age. They gloss over his achievements and his constant traveling to meet other national leaders on the global scene, some in dire circumstances such as President Volensky of the Ukraine who met him in extreme security, or his long all-night hours hammering out the debt ceiling decision among other issues of late. You don’t have to agree with his politics or style of governing, but it sure seems he has the stamina to perform in the job. I realize that Congress is an aging conglomeration of leaders in our government but when it becomes the sledgehammer to use against a senior or elder statesperson, effectively drowning out his or her accomplishments, it is mean-spirited and a form of age discrimination.

Okay, maybe I’m sensitive because I am older than Biden by several years, but I still get to work everyday and carry a fair share of outlying responsibilities. I consider myself very blest.

So, I decided to look into this age thing relative to our government, and here is what I found. The present Congress is the third oldest one since 1789. Roughly 195 members of the Senate and the House combined are over 65 years of age. The Senate median age is 65.3 and the House median is 57.9. While some media criticize Biden’s age, very little, if any, report on the ages of others who are divided between Republicans and Democrats. Biden is 80 but when did you last read that five Republicans are much older: Rogers at 85, Young at 88, Grassley at 88, Shelby at 87, McConnell at 81, and Inhofe at 86? Diane Feinstein, Democrat from CA is 89. Other Democrats include Napolitano, 86, Norton, 85. Yes, Feinstein is the oldest of the senators, yet I can’t help but wonder that the sudden attention on her age is part age discrimination and part gender discrimination. Both she and McConnell were hospitalized at the same time–she for debilitating shingles and he for an accidental fall. Who got more unflattering coverage? I think you know.

Almost the same week when these stories were popping up like campfires at a jamboree, we heard of Martha Stewart’s 81-year-old image on the cover of Playboy magazine and the amazing likeness of Apo Whang-Od, the oldest person to appear on Vogue magazine’s April beauty issue. She appeared, wrinkles and all, but deliriously happy with her 106 years of life. Stewart appears to have endured a facial update but none of that for Apo Whang-Od; she was proud of the lines her years have etched on her regal, happy face. Then comes Margaret Attwood, the Canadian born novelist and poet, who at 83 tells her interviewer for Wired magazine that getting old is a freeing experience. She walks to every appointment despite the sharp winds of Quebec. She is content and very productive at her age. She has written 17 novels and 18 books of poetry and she recently invented LongPen, a device that allows her to sign books at book promotions without being present. The device is now being used in the medical and business professions. When you’re old, says Atwood, “you have a lot less to lose! And it’s more fun than you think.” Young people, she avers, have not been “hardened in the fire.  If you’ve been hardened, you can let it rip!”

Reflection 

It might be a good idea to reflect on senior people you know personally or through reading and cultural experiences. Can they be models for you on how to age gently and accept the life you have? I have always thought that Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, was just such a mentor for her before both women bore their sons in the narrative of the New Testament. Look for the virtue you see in people who refuse to allow their growing discomforts and diminishing abilities to weaken their commitment to serving the needs of others.

Ageing is the movement toward God. All that got us through life is no longer necessary as we move toward our final years. We are being stripped to recognize the important gifts of life that now have greater significance and will accompany us on what is left in our beautiful universe.   

Good persons who age gracefully acknowledge that they are not what they used to be; they are better than what they used to be. From out the layers of youthful quickness and muscular derring-do, emerges a softer, gentler person of wisdom who is, in a sense, born again with fresh insights steeped from the ‘hardened experiences of life.’ Listen to these wisdom figures. You dismiss them at your own peril. They have put everything they have learned toward making a better world. It seems that their acceptance of change, their openness to a brave new world is so much better than cowering in a corner out of fear as most of us do when things are tough, when we fear the unknown. The Islamic saint, Rab’ia, came to such a point after a cruel childhood and like Margaret Attwood, she let it rip, writing at the end of a poem, 

“I was born when all I once

feared—I could

love.”

References quoted from 

Wired, article on Margaret Attwood, by Kate Knibbs, March 7, 2023.  Love Poems from God, “Die before you Die.” by Rab’ia, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, Penguin Books, 2002, p. 7.