What is the ideal, according to Paul Tournier? “Growing old together, husband and wife can come to know a love which is, in a way, a prefiguration of heaven, for it is less tumultuous than the love of youth, being less directed towards selfish pleasure-seeking, and because a slow advance in mutual comprehension permits more authentic communication.” […]
George Sweeting writes: “Age adds maturity and richness to life. Age smooths the rough edges of life and adds gentleness and compassion. They say: ‘The older the violin, the sweeter the music.’ Some speak of seniors as ancient, faded, frail, shriveled, senile, withered, wrinkled, and worthless!” I prefer to say seniors are “experienced, dependable, mature, patient, seasoned, steady, wise, tested, survivor, and veteran!” […]
Is it wise to complain? Epictetus observes: “If someone dies young, he blames the gods because he is being taken before his time. If someone lingers on into extreme old age, he too blames the gods.” “Despite this, at the approach of death, he wants to stay alive; he sends for the doctors and begs him to do all he can.” “It is quite remarkable to see how people want neither to live nor to die.”
“Is health good and illness bad? No, man. What, then? Health managed well is good, but when badly managed, it is bad.”
Epictetus points out: “If you look at yourself in isolation, it is natural for you to live to an old age, to be rich, to be healthy. But if you look at yourself as a human being and as part of some whole, for the sake of that whole, it may be appropriate for you to be ill, or risk your life at sea, or be poor, or die young. Why get angry then?” “What is a human being? A part of a city made up of gods and human beings,” “a small copy of the universal city.” […]
Cicero advises us: “Enjoy the blessing of strength while you have it, and have no regrets when it has gone, any more than young men should regret the end of boyhood, or those approaching middle age lament the passing of youth. Life’s course is invariable: nature has one path only, and you cannot travel along it more than once. Every stage of life has its own characteristics: boys are feeble, youths in their prime are aggressive, middle-aged men are dignified, while the elderly are mature. Each of these qualities is ordained by nature for harvesting in due season.”
Cicero continues: “Age must be overcome; its faults need vigilant resistance. We must combat them as we should fight a disease: following a fixed regime, exercising in moderation, and consuming enough food and drink to strengthen” but not too much. “The mind and spirit need even more attention than the body, for old age easily extinguishes them, like lamps” with too little oil. […]
Paul Tournier notes: “Freud defined psychological health under the double heading of aptitude for love and for work.” But Paul Tournier cautions that “the superficial relationships of working life and of sexual attraction must lead to a deeper personal commitment. And I believe that no commitment can be truly personal unless it takes on a transcendent dimension and become love, in the biblical meaning of the word.”
Paul Tournier is grateful: “As an intellectual, I am specially privileged. It is true that the better educated people are, the more chance they have to enjoy their retirement. First, intellectual work” is not physically taxing. “Second, the capacity for intellectual work is retained longer than physical ability. It can even increase in old age as long as disease does not affect the mental faculties. But most of all, the more one exercises one’s mind, the more pleasure it gives to exercise it. The more one learns, the more one wants to learn, and the easier study becomes.” […]
James Boice teaches us: “It is true that the rich man’s riches worked to his hurt, for he lived for those and nothing else. It is hard for the rich to enter heaven, as Jesus said elsewhere in Luke. It is also true that Lazarus’ poverty worked to his spiritual good, for lacking earthly joys and comfort he turned his eyes to heaven and sought divine consolation.”
James Boice remarks on the contrasts in the parable. Spiritually, “the rich man was actually poor, and the poor man was actually rich. This contrast continues after their death: the poor rich man grew poorer, and the rich poor man grew richer.” “The final contrast is between the hopelessness of the rich man’s condition after death and the hopefulness of his condition before. After death there is no possibility of change, but in this life there is.” […]
Avarice is the worst kind of drought and famine, for it is drought and famine in the midst of plenty. A Jewish story tells of a man taken on a tour of Hell, where he sees a huge banquet hall, with long tables lined with souls, each one ogling their plate heaped with roast beef, sausage, breads, fruits and pies. This sumptuous meal tormented each one, all were starving, for they had no elbows to feed themselves. Then he was shown the banquet hall in Heaven, same type of banquet hall, same meats, breads, fruits and pies, but here the mood was joyous. Like those souls in Hell, they had no elbows, but they were joyous because they were feeding each other. […]
Although both blacks and whites experienced health and hygiene challenges during the Depression, poor health was more prevalent among black laborers and sharecroppers. Jimmy Carter remembers: “The life expectancy of black men and women was less than fifty years.” “During most of the year, they ate only two meals a day, usually cornmeal, fatback, molasses, and perhaps sweet potatoes. The more industrious families also had small gardens that provided some seasonal corn, Irish potatoes, collards, turnips, and cabbage, with a few rows of peas and beans planted alongside the garden fence. The combination of constant and heavy work, inadequate diet, and excessive use of tobacco was devastating to the health of our poorer neighbors.” His mother encouraged her black neighbors to grow vegetables in their own gardens, and shared with them the vegetables from the Carter family garden. […]
“There was an issue that troubled my mother during my political years, when the news media began to probe our family’s history. One day she said to me, “Jimmy, one thing bothers me. Reporters have criticized your daddy lately about not being for racial integration. What they don’t recognize is that he died in 1953, when there was no such thing as integration, and nobody had ever heard of Martin Luther King or any civil rights movement. Your daddy always rejected all the racist organizations that degraded or persecuted black people, and both races always knew him to be fair and helpful. I was real controversial in the community sometimes, but he supported everything I did to help black people and to treat them well.” […]
Jimmy Carter grew up on his family farm in Archery, Georgia, several miles from Plains. He remembers: “In those earlier days, all my close neighbors were black families.” Their children “were my intimate friends with whom I played, fought, fished, hunted, and worked with in the cotton and peanut fields that were owned by my father.” When he went into town to sell peanuts, and when he started school, he felt that he “was in an alien environment in Plains, away from my black friends.”
Jimmy Carter continues: “The Great Depression was a time of almost incredible poverty, not only in rural Georgia but all over the country. Although my father was a landowner, cash money was scarce for us and for everyone else. Land seemed to have the only permanent economic value, and hard work was the key to survival. The celebration of Christmas during these times was quite different from what we know today: much more frugal, but with a degree of personal intimacy that brings back warm recollections.” […]
Copyright 2017
