She explained that Psalm 90 describes the human lifespan as
“threescore years and ten” (seventy years) and if “by reason of strength” we
are granted more, it is an added blessing. She called that additional time “living
in the more.”
When she said “living in the more” I thought I heard “living in the moor.” I immediately imagined the moorland of Britain. Sherlock Holmes’ case of The Hound of the Baskervilles came to mind. In that tale a demonic hound was said to inhabit the moors.
Dr. Watson
describes the moor as “gloomy,” “sinister,” “so vast, and so barren, and so
mysterious,” “like some fantastic landscape in a dream.” It is an “enormous
wilderness of peat and granite,” where squalls drift across the russet face of
“the melancholy downs” and “heavy, slate-coloured clouds” trail “in grey
wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills.”
Brrrr! I feel like pulling up my collar and turning down my deerstalker
cap just reading about it! In a personal letter to his mother, Arthur Conan Doyle
called the moor “a great place, very sad & wild.” In Wuthering Heights the moor is described as “unleashed, mad and
dangerous.” Hmm! Perhaps I better go back to the Shire.
When I looked to the dictionary, it defined a moor as “a tract
of open uncultivated upland; a heath.” That sounds a bit better. My experience
of my seventies is very much like that. It is an uncultivated land filled with
possibilities and pitfalls. There are not many roadmaps for this territory. Everyone
seems to blaze their own trail. My type of place.
When they age, some people seek to relive their earlier decades, warding off old age by trying to recover their youth. It is the senior equivalent of a midlife crisis, except in our seventies we are not midway to anywhere. No one lives to be 140.
Others retreat into the past, reliving old memories. Still
others spend their later years entertaining themselves with television and
small talk until the undertaker arrives. A few reinvent themselves with a
“second act” or perhaps a “third act.” Good for them!
The seventies are not without their physical limitations as the body ages. Instead of going to the doctor for cures, more often we go to manage symptoms. Either that or opt for new bionic joints, which are not without their problems.
So far I have found my seventies to be a time of
spiritual adventure and discovery. In retirement the restraints of theological norms
and ecclesiastical pressures are gone. I am free to be “unleashed, mad and
dangerous.”
Classical India understood the latter part of life to be a
time to put aside the concerns of earlier stages of life and dedicate oneself
to spiritual concerns. Having spent my whole adult life in religious concerns,
I find this stage to be doubly spiritual. Old dogmas fall away in the light of direct
spiritual awareness. Prejudices and divisions are seen as petty exercises in
egotism. There is no longer any time to waste in fear and anger. The psalmist
sang:
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away…. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
It is important to number our days. Whether our years be threescore years and ten or “by reason of strength” fourscore years or more, one day they will be cut off, and we will fly away. As the gospel hymn reminds us: “One glad morning, when this life is over, I'll fly away.” In the meantime I am “living in the moor,” and I have found it to be the Kingdom of God.
I love all your posts, and with this one I was caught by your friend's mother's notion of the stage of life beyond the seventh decade as "living in the more." How lovely. I'm there myself. In my case, though, I did not associate this "more" with Sherlock Holmes' moor -- whether gloomy or not -- but with William James' "MORE". As James writes, "To quote words which I have used elsewhere, the believer finds that the tender parts of his personal life are are continuous with a MORE of the same quality which is operative in the universe outside him and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself, when all of his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck. In a word, the believer is continuous, to his own consciousness, at any rate, with a wider self from which saving experiences flow in." (James, "Pluralistic Universe," p.131)
ReplyDeleteFor years I've associated what I think of as THE MORE with all that is mysterious, enriching, spiritual, and fulfilling in life, that is, with God. You can imagine, then, how satisfying I find it to think of this period of my life as "living in the more." And the fact is, it's true. My life has grown far more focused, much more concentrated, and I never feel very far at all from THE MORE in the Jamesian sense. It feels very rich and meaningful.
I manage this even though I am not yet retired although I am technically "part-time" (a rather ridiculous fiction). I am the Rector of a small, struggling Episcopal Church (is there any other kind?) in Gilroy California, which is a bit of a commute from my home in Mountain View California. It's a lovely little congregation, but fairly simple in their theology. In my case, my Christianity has been feed by many sources, primarily Buddhist, Taoist, and Sufi -- not to mention philosophy. I sometimes struggle to translate all this into terms that these wonderful people can hear and accept. I admire your ability to draw so many meaningful elements into your theology and make it all work so well.
Keep writing. I'll keep reading.