The Gift of Years- Growing Older Gracefully

The Gift of Years- Growing Older Gracefully

Joan Chittister, one of our most celebrated spiritual writers, invites us to embrace older age as a natural part of life that is both active and contemplative, productive and reflective, and deeply rewarding. She encourages us to cherish the blessings of aging and to overcome its challenges. And she shows us clearly that this is a special of them all. Older age gives us wisdom, freedom, and prosperity of another kind. Older age enlightens-not simply ourselves, but also those around us. To live these years well, we need to look at every one of them head up and alive. Life is not about age, about the lenght of years we manage to eke out of it. It is about living into the values offered every day, about growing older with grace.

TheGift of years looks at the many dimensions of aging, the purposes and concerns, struggles and surprices, the potential and joys. It deals with the sence of rejection that comes from feeling out of it. It reflects on the temptation to isolate oneself from the changes taking place, and on the need to stay involved. It discusses issues of health and well-being and the need to put one's affairs in order. It describes what happens as old relationships end and shift, change and disappear in favor of the many new people and new challenges that come to take their place. It talks about the fear of tommorrow and the mystery of forever-and how to cope with it all. It is a panoply of central issues that emerge with age to bring us to the fullness of life, to make us new again