Growing Older Can Become A Spiritual Practice

Vesper Time: The Spiritual Practice of Growing Older by Frank Cunningham.

Can our experience of aging become, in itself, a spiritual practice? According to Frank Cunningham, author of Vesper Time: The Spiritual Practice of Growing Older, it can.

Cunningham encourages readers to look at five facets of this integral spirituality: memory, intimacy, diminishment, gratitude, and acceptance - as lenses through which to review one’s life, both past and present day reality.

“Aging is about living into our memories, about seeking their meaning, about accepting and being kind to them,” writes Cunningham. He concludes the chapter on Memory with the following: “This spiritual practice called growing older means listening to what our lives have to tell us, sifting out the chaff, watching for that quick flint of flame, and clinging to what has nurtured our growth. The reward? I believe that as we age - if we listen to life - our capacity for empathy increases. And that’s the source of wisdom.” (p.24)

The chapter that resonated deeply for me as Sister of St. Joseph was the one on Intimacy, which Cunningham relates to love. He cites a Jewish proverb that says God didn’t create us to be happy; rather, God made us to love. He connects loving with our human search for meaning.

Coastal wading birds in St. Augustine. 

“As far as we know, humans are the only species that searches for meaning. Without meaning our lives are empty, and emptiness sometimes addressed by repeated acquisition of things, a pursuit of satisfaction that only demands more acquisition. Yet the highly contrarian secret is that we find our richest meaning in loving, caring for, and doing for others. We are most fully alive when we open ourselves to others.” (p. 29)

Cunningham relates examples from his own life experiences that witness powerfully also to the roles of diminishment, gratitude and acceptance in the spiritual practice of growing older. He concludes his book with the following quote by French paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

“When the signs of age begin to mark my body

(and still more when they touch my mind);

when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off is born within me…

O God, grant that I may understand that it is you…

who are painfully parting the fibers of my being

in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance

and bear me away within yourself.” (p. 138)

Cunningham concludes the book with the following reflection on the above prayer:

“What a promise to ponder. What a beautiful image to wait with - one day we will become one with God.” (p. 138)

Lake Maria Sanchez in St. Augustine on a still summer morning.