Reflection “Living Fully at Every Age” The Rev. Rali Weaver

First Church and Parish in Dedham

March 1, 2009

C.S. Lewis once wrote that “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour.” So true.

I would add only that ageing works in the same way.

Unless you are Benjamin Button and you age backwards we are all born young and we slowly or not so slowly age and eventually die. This is the natural cycle of life- true for each and every one of us.

In contrast we live in a time and culture, which glorifies youth. The young behave as though they have the only answers. The media behaves as though looking young and acting young is more important than looking and acting our age. Consciously or unconsciously we all hold judgments about people older or younger than ourselves which influence how we treat each other and our even our expectations of self.’

As I have been meditating this week on how to live our lives fully at any age and stage three lives have entered my mind.

The first is Francis Grilley a long time member of this congregation who passed away on the first of February one year ago. For those of you who didn’t know Fran she described herself as a “different” socially. Her behavior was somewhat challenging at times but one thing everyone who knew her agrees is that is that Fran was at all times and in all places absolutely genuinely and always herself. While I am sure that our answers to the question of being ourselves would always be different I do believe that to live life fully at any age requires us to be genuinely and truly ourselves at all times.

I was able to sit with Fran during the last month of her life and can attest that in her last days she absolutely refused pain medication. This is not a course I would recommend to everyone but as I mentioned Fran was a singular person with a singular life. What she believed was that her brain would find its own ways to compensate for the pain if it were allowed to do so and that until that happened she wanted to be alert and aware of the process of her dying. To her Doctor and Nurses’ chagrin she was not afraid of the pain but instead reported that she wanted to feel the pain because it reminded her that she was still alive. I bring this up to you today not because I want to advocate anyone avoiding pain medication but instead because I am quite certain that living our lives fully at every age and stage of life does in fact require that we feel some pain. In our culture that expects us to be young there is also this expectation that we should never feel pain. I am here to remind you that all kinds of pain are a natural part of living. Joan Wislocki made a good point to me this week and I must add that not every ache and every sorrow that we feel has something to teach us but instead if we allow them our afflictions will serve as an awakener to life. Having something to bear is a natural part of our being alive, bearing it does not always teach us something or make us stronger but it is a natural part of the human condition and our hurts and pains and frustrations serve as the reminders that we are still alive. Staying awake and aware of what we are going through no matter what comes our way is a part of living life to its fullest.

The second person I have been thinking about this week has been Mary Fisher. Mary Fisher was a long time member of this congregation who died at the age of 93 just this past Wednesday afternoon. I apologize if you are hearing about this for the first time. It is difficult to know who to tell when a parishioner of 93 passes. Mary has been at the Clark House in Needham for more than a decade and it I has been longer than that still since she has been able to come to church. During my short time in Dedham I have had the pleasure of visiting Mary who has been both non-verbal and non communicative on all of my visits. As I have been speaking with her family this week I have learned that for many of the past ten years or more Mary had been in a similar state. As I have been wrestling with what that would have been like for her and what it could possibly teach us about living life more fully at every stage and age I have been aware of how difficult that would be to slowly loose all of your faculties and to be unable to communicate for years on end. I watched this happen with my own grandmother and even my own mother in her final days and the truth I believe this points to is that to live fully at every age and stage requires us to relax into our bodies as they are. This is not permission to avoid exercise or eating right, but only an encouragement to exercise in harmony with your body. And when our bodies come to relax and to stop working in the ways they once did to strive to relax into our new ways of being. When I was on Hurricane Mountain last spring the only stress I felt in my body was when I wanted it to do more than a 43 year-old woman should do. Paying attention and accepting the strengths and limitations of our bodies as they grow and then age is a necessary part of living life to the fullest.

My final inspiration on the concept living life fully at any age came just yesterday from the example set by Paul Harvey the Radio Announcer who died at the age of 90 years old. For over 45 years he has told listeners “the rest of the story” and his voice is a living legacy that will carry on long after he is no longer on this earth to speak. As I have reflected upon his life I have realized that I don’t remember one anecdote he shared over the radio waves during his over 70 years of broadcasting but what I do remember is the spirit in which he shared his ideas. Paul Harvey obviously loved what he did and that was expressed in his words. Paul Harvey’s death and his legacy reminds me that living fully at every age and stage has very little to do with what we say or do not say or what we do or do not do to preserve our legacy. Instead living fully has absolutely everything to do with doing things we love and loving what we do. To live life fully at every stage and age requires our enthusiasm and our verve for living.

I want to thank all of our speakers today. It takes all of our voices to make sense of the truth and I imagine the real answer to living fully no matter our age or stage of life would include not only these voices but at the very least each and every voice in this room.

What I can say for sure is that whatever age or stage you are in, all of life is a precious gift. May we be reminded of that every waking day of our lives and go from this place fully awake to our bodies, to our spirits and to the possibility within each of us for new life and new living. Let us be in tune with our spirits every moment of our lives and therefore live fully at our stage and in our time.

May it be so, amen.