At 78, I am an elder … or at least I should be .. wannabe.
Like most of us of any age, I see a wobbling world where an unholy man sells Bibles, housing is becoming a rich man’s luxury, and our young people face a future clouded with problems those of us born in the bubble of the 50s-60s passed along to them.
In 1937, in an already desperate time for people in the US, a great flood came to the Ohio River Valley. Precipitation that year was four times normal and the river rose 37 feet above flood level. It killed 400 people.
Flooding was a common threat, especially for poor people who lived along the flood plains. A young poet living in Arkansas experienced one of those floods and wrote about it. Years later, while serving in the Air Force in Germany, he spent his last $5 for an unbranded guitar and began singing his poems. Among them was this one:
I strikes me now, in our over-populated, beleaguered world, that we’re so over-whelmed by the flood of issues, that we’re hypnotized and immobilized, doing little except measuring the rising waters. Most of us elders live in homes no longer affordable by the young, retired from jobs built on an education no longer widely available to the young without crippling debt, protected by a safety net of services currently under threat of being eliminated.
Meeting Stephen Jenkinson
While on my recent trip to the desert, a friend introduced me to Stephen Jenkinson’s work. He is an Elder practitioner who now disturbs my sleep as I read his books and listen to his words and wonder how I can do more than just watch the water rise.
Jenkinson is not easy to read nor listen to. He’s not a happy-face nor an all-will-be-well guy. He talks about death and the responsibility of being an elder. He makes my optimistic self wince. But there is depth and musical rhythm in his words and wiffs of wisdom I want to understand. Here’s a sample of his words:
“If you wrestle an angel, you will grow muscle. There’s no doubt of that. You will also hurt in places that you didn’t know you had. There’s no doubt of that either. And you will lose, by the normal calculus of trying to engineer the life that you’re sure you deserve. It will not come out as you planned, wrestling angels. Your plans are usually the first casualty of the match.
But here is that great secret of it: you will be able to boast of your defeat. You will be able to stand in the wreckage of what used to be your certainty, your creed, your way of doing life’s business, and you can tell wild, true stories about how it all came to ruin. Whatever is left standing - and there is always something left standing when you wrestle angels - is the thing that was true about you and your life all along, as faithful a companion as the Earth that will one day cradle you again.”
― Stephen Jenkinson
Jenkinson’s website describes him as: a worker, author, storyteller, musician and culture activist. In 2010, he founded Orphan Wisdom, a house for learning skills of deep living and making human culture that are mandatory in endangered, endangering times. It is a redemptive project that comes from where he comes from. It is rooted in knowing history, being claimed by ancestry, working for a time he won’t live to see. When not on the road, he makes books, succumbs to interviews, tends to labours on a small farm, mends broken handles and fences, and bends towards lifeways dictated by the seasons of the boreal borderlands.
I would love to have more conversations with other elders contemplating what it means to be an Elder in today’s world.
Hi Joyce,
I remember hearing about that '37 flood. My grandparents owned a drug store in Paducah, KY. The flood didn't quite reach them, so they were the only pharmacy open for a while there. My mother said one of her first jobs was for a photographer who came to the store wanting to sell postcards from his photos of the flood around town. I don't remember how much she got for selling them. One of those "How did you grow up, Mom?" kind of stories. She lived to 100.
How the U.S. has changed. She told me a million years ago, "If you're good to the company, the company will be good to you." Not any more, Mom. Those days up and left a long time ago.
So now, I'm the "elder" of the family (actually the last one who's left). Haven't lived in the states for almost 40 years. That's fine. I like "eldering" from this side of our tiny planet. Different challenges and different rewards, I guess.
Thanks for writing this post, Joyce.
Thanks so much for this post - for Johnny Cash, who wrote a lot about the plight of the poor and various rising waters he saw and its effect on people. There are so much more of them now, and the dams built to hold them back aren't holding. Love how you think in metaphors.
And thanks for Stephen Jenkison and that passage about wrestling angels; made me want to read him. Thanks for your articulate, artistic, poetic, caring, adventurous soul - you bring us all enrichment with your posts. Your thoughts, who you're reading and meeting, what you're seeing in your travels and right there in your back yard, resonate.
When can I consider myself an elder? I'll be 71 - but sometimes I feel like I'm hundreds of years old and so, so tired - at the same time, standing in wonder at life and its lessons everywhere with the eyes of a child.. Do I qualify for those eldering chats?