The Gift of Years - Growing Older Gracefully by Joan Chittister, OSB (BlueBridge Books, NY, 2008)
This is not just a book about ageing. It is about life, lived fully and throughout life becoming more than we are and embracing all that we can be.
Life is a mosaic, a gift. Throughout that life, claiming the significance of hope and despair, joy and fullness of life behind us and before us and evaluating what life has been for us and what is yet to come, makes for a deep sense of wholeness and challenge.
Joan Chittister enumerates the stepping stones throughout life such as fear, ageism, joy, transformation and much more. Throughout her book, she balances the burden of an age with the blessing of that age.
Life is seen as both struggle and delight and here are the tools to work within, seeking the fulfilment of every age.
Sometimes I felt that the balances of burden and the hope of being fully alive may seem a little contrived, yet always there is the challenge to take hold of what is redeeming in life.
This is not a book to hurry through but one to ponder, be arrested in one’s own journey and to embrace the truth for our own personality and then to choose what has meaning for you in the challenge of the life of blessedness.
Uncommon Gratitude: Alleluia for all that is by Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams, 2010 Liturgical Press
This little book, for me, recalls some words from Laurence Freeman, OSB about the unexpected expression of the goodness and generosity of human nature. We have recently seen this demonstrated during floods and cyclone close to home and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Joan Chittister realised as an adult the significance of how to be able "to sing alleluia all day long, every day of your life."
Her first challenges, together with Rowan Williams, are in Discovering what we are
Becoming who we are
Growing into the unknown
I loved her early challenge when she asks "Is life an obstacle course, designed to meet only the perfect, only the docile? Or is the human condition a bundle of gifts wrapped in darkness, the life task of which is to learn to recognise Goodness/Godness in all its misty forms?"
Both writers explore the misty forms of life.....Rowan Williams is quoted as saying
"I find myself coming back again and again, to the meaning of ~alleluia~"