Early this morning well before sunrise, I had a period of sleeplessness. I had time to reflect on how I have been feeling, on upcoming appointments with my cardiologist, my urological oncologist, podiatrist, physical therapist and so on. I should mention that I’m six months beyond my seventy-fourth birthday. Or, as Jack Benny might have said, “I just celebrated the fortieth anniversary of my thirty-fourth birthday.” This post will examine your spiriual needs as you get older.
Knowing when you have arrived
This past month, I’ve met people younger than I who have considerably less stamina than I have, and I’ve met people five years or more older than I am with much higher scores in terms of health metrics. That made me wonder how someone my age should be in terms of physical abilities, cognitive skills, general health overall. I found many, many “hits” on Google concerning physical and mental health as they apply to the “elderly,” but very little on spiritual health. Doctors will tell their patients (when asked or when prompted) that spiritual health is very important, too. But there is almost nothing about spiritual health in the literature for seniors except perhaps references to yoga and meditation.
So, who is a senior citizen? When I was much younger, I thought it was anyone over sixty. Now, I think it’s anyone over eighty. But here’s a quick test. Look at the bright blue design on the right. If you know immediately what that is, then you are definitely a senior. Being a septuagenarian, myself, probably qualifies me to be classified as a “senior citizen” though not necessarily “mature” as my wife Deena can attest. I know from my personal experiences in life how important our spiritual needs are, so I hope that this post fills that Google search vacancy in some small way.
Our present circumstances
Many of us “Baby Boomers” who are seventy-plus years of age live alone with our spouses, or we just plain live alone. We may have adult children, but our children live elsewhere (my children live in Texas and Oklahoma, a good 1,500 miles from where I live now. Deena has a son whose family also lives in Texas, and another in the same town as us, but he has a large family with nine children if you include foster kids.) And even if our children live just “down the road” from where we do, few of us really want to trouble them when we need help. Many times our adult children aren’t available when we need them at, perhaps, 2:25 a.m.
Others of us have mobility issues, even if it is only for a short period while recovering from some procedure. I remember when at the age of fifty, I broke the head of my humerous into three pieces. Nothing “humorous” about that! For the six weeks or so that it took for function to be restored to my upper arm, I could do some tasks but not others. I could not thread a belt through the loops of my trousers if I was wearing the pants while I tried. I had to loop the belt before I put the trousers on. Nor could I button my shirt. And I could not completely dry myself off after a shower. Fortunately, my wife could assist me, but I wondered more than a few times “What would a young, single man or woman at half my age do with this same injury? Would you knock on your neighbor’s door across the hall for help putting on your socks?
And have you ever noticed how much your back starts to itch whenever you can’t reach it and there is no one to scratch it for you?
Rocky roads
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Church has more to say about seniors:
“Many are without financial resources to pay for the care they need. These long-retired citizens, moms, dads, teachers, service men and women, nurses, secretaries, engineers, and more all find themselves in need of help with no one to give it.”
Living alone under the best of circumstances is tough enough. Living with pain, a significant handicap or a terminal diagnosis creates a sense of helplessness which soon leads to hopelessness. And owing a king’s ransom worth of medical debt to hospitals and providers isn’t helpful, either. Almost everyone reaches a point in their pain and isolation to ask aloud aloud “Why me?!” If you have fallen at home and you spent the last five hours on the floor because you couldn’t get up, a lot must have gone through your mind.
I used to focus on the news and sports sections of our morning newspaper. Now, assuming I can still bend over to pick up the morning paper from the grass or the porch and straighten myself back up to a standing position without a stab of back pain or bout of dizziness, I focus on other parts of the paper, like the obituaries. Who in their right mind would start their day reading the obituary column?! Well, if I found another Boomer in their right mind, I’d ask them. There’s the rub. I’m not poking fun at you! I’m thinking about close friends and relatives of my age and what their daily regimen is for them. Sometimes we have to laugh at life and ourselves and what comes our way in order to cope. If I wasn’t laughing, I’d probably be crying.
King David of ancient Israel once wrote:
“Do not cast me away when I am old;
do not forsake me when my strength is gone.
Do not be far from me, my God;
come quickly, God, to help me.As for me, I will always have hope;
Psalm 71:9, 12, 14, 18, 20.
I will praise you more and more.
Even when I am old and gray,
do not forsake me, my God,
Though you have made me see troubles,
many and bitter,
you will restore my life again;
from the depths of the earth
you will again bring me up.“
David had a source of hope that he could depend on. It’s sort of what the Alcoholics Anonymous call a “higher power” but it’s much, much more than that. This higher power is very personal. When you first started dating as a teenager and your date wanted to meet your mom or your dad, you would not introduce them to your date by saying “This is my higher power.” You would say “This is my mom” or “This is my dad.” So it is with God if He lives in your life. And He does if you have invited Him in. He is not your higher power. He is your Heavenly Father!
Life is a voyage
I have not travelled very far in life. While in the military, I’ve been to Vietnam, stopping at Okinawa (Japan) to refuel. Then, I went to Greenland (Denmark) stopping in Labrador (Canada) to refuel. Deena has been to China, Germany, Romania, Kenya, England, France, Italy and Ireland and probably a few other countries as well. However, I know there are people our age who never left the U.S. But everyone has made a trip somewhere for some reason at some point in their life. And we know the drill. We plan and then we pack. If we’re going to be gone for more than a few days, we make provisions for our pets to be cared for or our mail to be picked up. We make sure we have enough medicine for our trip, plus a bit more in case of an unforeseen emergency. As we gather our things to take with us, we have to be sure we are TSA (Transportation Security Administration) compliant if we plan on flying. We have travel reservations, hotel reservations, an itinerary and so on. Planning is vital. Imagine trying to leave on a trip abroad without your passport. What if you lost your passport in some country abroad? You could not return or enter another country.
More to follow
But this present life, this reality that we live in and which is the only one we know is just the beginning. If our soul indeed survives the grave, then there is something beyond. Have you planned for that eventuality as well?
You’ve likely planned for retirement most of your life. You want financial independence so as not to be a burden on your children. You’ve considered your options in terms of assisted living and you have Advance Directives, medical power of attorney and a will on file. But else what have you done or left undone for what happens after your heart stops beating? Do you need to tell someone you’re sorry for something? Is there someone who needs to know that you love them? Is there anything you need to speak to your Creator about?
And on what authority can we speculate on what we might personally encounter when we die? Some of us have heard of people who supposedly died and “came back.” Can we build our hope around their experiences? I knew one such person who claimed to have returned from the “Great Beyond.”
Near death experiences (NDEs)
Near deaths experiences are fascinating to read about. There was a person in a church I once went to and his name was Grady. Grady was a wonderful man, and had what some people would call a “sweet spirit.” He was both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. He wore off-the-rack clothing with short sleeve button down shirts and loafers as I recall. But there was something about him that drew people to him. It was as if he had something that they hungered for. Was it peace of mind? An unshakeable faith? A quiet confidence? In fact, he might have had something. Because Grady believed he had a glimpse of what lies beyond the grave.
In his forties or fifties, Grady checked in to a local hospital for a laminectomy or some other sort of routine surgery for a bad spine. But something went wrong during the procedure, and his heart stopped. It stopped for about two minutes–two long minutes–before the doctors restored function. But during those two fateful minutes, Grady had a tour of heaven and hell, like something right out of Virgil or Dante! In the weeks and months that followed while he was recovering and his memory was still fresh, he put together a manuscript of eighty or more pages in length worth of detail from his one hundred and twenty second trip.
I understand Grady was a changed man afterwards (thought I had not known him before the incident.) Life was even sweeter than ever for him now. Relationships took on new meanings. He lived the rest of his days in humility and love for those around him, appreciative for his “second chance.”
We must remind ourselves that near death experiences are subjective, and there is no “one size fits all.” Yet, there may be something going on. Certain hallmarks of NDEs are common to people around the world and there is a very general sequence of events reported by the patient afterwards (assuming the patient’s vital signs are restored, of course.) But while many people of my generation have read Raymond Moody or perhaps Kübler-Ross and felt “warm and fuzzy,” and generally hopeful afterwards, this is not a basket in which to place all of your eggs. At best, it’s unpredictable with inconsistencies among people of different faiths. At worst, it’s just confirmation bias to the patient and the reader. Also, it’s well known that hypoxia can cause hallucinations. The major effect of an NDE according to Missouri Medicine, a professional medical journal is a:
“. . . powerful and enduring awareness that the physical world is not the full extent of reality. Because this perception runs so deeply counter to Western materialism, and conversely because its implications affect some dogmatic theological teachings, the new conviction commonly overturns experiencers’ personal life and social relationships abruptly and permanently.”
But in the event that you are interested in learing more, here is an interesting Youtube video presented by Jim Tucker, MD and Kim Penberthy, PhD from the University of Virginia. They presented their findings to the SouthxSouthwest (SXSW) conference in 2022.
Is there even an afterlife at all?
There are people who are called “nihilists.” The social journalism platform Medium describes what nihilists believe happens when we die:
“Nihilists don’t believe in any religion or spiritual path because they don’t think anything exists other than natural phenomena like atoms and molecules. They don’t believe in the afterlife either because they think death is the end of consciousness and personal identity.”
Do nihilists have NDEs. I don’t know. My German grandfather on my mother’s side was a socialist who came to the U.S. from Germany right after the first world war ended. Socialists often do not believe in God, so they don’t believe in an afterlife, either. Nor do atheists.
Let’s look for a moment at the utility of belief.
Pascal’s wager
One famous person tried to explain why ordinary, rational people should believe in God. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was a famous philosopher and mathematician. He was also a man of faith, in his case, a Roman Catholic. He stated a wager once which can be summed up as follows:
“If God exists and I believe in God, I’ll go to heaven, which is infinitely good. If God exists and I don’t believe in God, I may go to hell, which is infinitely bad. If God does not exist, then whether I believe in God or not, whatever I’d gain or lose would be finite. So, I should believe in God.”
Some people believe in God but not necessarily in Hell. They believe that eventually, everyone is saved, so there is no need for Hell. It just takes more time, more permutations to achieve this. This notion is called “progressive sanctification” and it is not considered kosher among Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox.
I don’t want to go into what Jews believe, or Muslims, or Hindus, or Celts, Buddhists, Indigenous Americans. etc. Because I do not follow their beliefs, I cannot even begin to describe them for you. And to attempt that would turn this post into a menu of various religious belief systems. Instead, I intend to shape this post into a recommendation based on what I’ve discovered personally and what I recommend to others. Think of it as a personal endorsement.
Your spiritual needs as you get older
Because I am a Christian, I see the Bible as the authoratative and definitive work. Sort of a contract or covenant between the King and his subjects. God doesn’t expect perfection from us, because He knows we are not capable of it. He does want us to try our very best, however, and to ask Him to forgive us when we’ve failed in some way.
We become Christians by surrendering our lives to Him and inviting Him to take charge of our lives. Through reading the Bible, prayer, fellowship with other Christians and worship, we develop wholesome lives as Christians. God wants us to freely love him, but that does not mean there is no place for fear. When I disobeyed my parents as a child, I knew they loved me, but I also expected (feared) that there might be a conseqence for my disobedience.
We should not be squandering our resources, because our resources are limited. My parents used to tell me that “money does not grow on trees.” But time is a resources, too. A very precious one which at some point, perhaps when we least expect it, runs out.