Seeking an integration of life narratives and faith:
Towards Transcendence
In the eyes of one coming from an Asian or African background, in the churches in Europe young people are conspicuously absent. This situation, of course, has to be considered in the light of the demographic details that I mentioned in an earlier talk. However, the situation does raise some questions. Do the elderly go to church just because they belong to a generation to which religion was important? Or, is it because young people do not simply have the time to go church? Or still, people generally become more interested in religion in later years of life?
One of my lecturers, an Anglican priest herself, has a very interesting explanation: the presence of the elderly in the churches may not be a sign that Christianity has become irrelevant in Europe. The capitalist society puts too much pressure on the young people and the working age-group. They are too busy. The consumerist, materialist thinking sways away the young. But at a particular age many people might begin to rediscover their faith, and come back to church. And I would like to add that, if priests do not appreciate this phenomenon and end up just mourning about the present and not care for the congregation that is in front of them, this could have its impact in the church of the future.
The later years are a time of being alone, as we said earlier, with difficulties in physical movement, with fading memories, and decreasing contact with people. This could be perceived as a pain or as a privilege. After a hectic life of youth and adulthood, after the hustle and bustle of searching for wealth, love and pleasure, the later years give way to quietness, silence and aloneness. If our early adult life was like climbing a mountain, the later adult life is like being on top of the mountain, which symbolically is the locus for God-experience. We can consider this stage as an opportunity to search for transcendence in an experience of God. From the vantage point of the mountain top we also look at our life narratives and faith in a different perspective.
Universalizing faith
James Fowler, in his book: Stages of Faith (1981), spoke about seven stages that mark the development of believers. The last two stages of this development are more meaningful to our reflection. Fowler calls the sixth stage: the stage of ‘conjunctive faith’, and the final stage as ‘universalizing faith’. With due regard for our remarks in the introductory talk, about the limitation of stage models of understanding human development, we explore these two stages. The stage of conjunctive faith is marked by the choice to accept one’s belief with its apparent paradoxes. After all, religious truth-claims are about the mysteries of life: who made me? Why am I here? What does the future hold for me? Why suffering? What is the meaning of birth and death? Mysteries do not have clear cut solutions. They only have meaningful explanations. This serene acceptance of one’s faith is also reflected in their attitude towards the mystery that the self itself is. In the words of Fowler:
This stage involves the embrace and integration of opposites and polarities in one’s life. It means realizing in one’s late thirties, forties, or beyond that one is both young and old, and that youth and age are held together in the same life…. It means coming to terms with the fact that we are both constructive people and, inadvertently destructive people. Paul captured this in Romans 7 when he said, “For I do not the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do’” (Rom 7:19; p.111).
This stage of conjunctive faith is not just a compromise or an uneasy accommodation. It is the serene acceptance of the sense of mystery that permeates human life. Eventually this stage leads us to the next stage of universalizing faith. In this more developed stage there is a genuine openness towards others that is an outcome of breaking up of ‘selfhood’ brought about by being one with God. Fowler continues, “Beyond paradox and polarities, persons in the Universalizing Faith stage are grounded in an oneness with the power of being or God. Their visions and commitments seem to free them for a passionate yet detached spending of the self in love” (p. 113). According to me, in later years, this love is not necessarily expressed in activity – since physical movements are restricted – but in a compassionate attitude toward humanity.
Gero-transcendence
It is important to note that Fowler does not associate these stages with any particular age. But the spiritual aspects that are peculiar to later years are better captured in the concept of ‘gero-transcendence’. Joan Erikson, the wife of Erik Erikson, had worked with her husband in previous academic work. As she was living through her own later years as a widow, and going through the diary kept by her aged husband prior to his death, Joan Erikson (1997) proposed a ninth stage in addition to the eight proposed by her husband. She claimed that the psychosocial development through lifespan is completed with the achievement of gero-transcendence.
This concept was further developed and empirically supported by the Swedish psychologist Tornstam (1989). Let us consider what this could mean for us. What is gero-transcendence? ‘Gero’ means ‘old man’ or ‘old age’ and ‘transcendence’ can mean ‘rising above’. More specifically, it is an attitude or a ‘meta-perspective’ that people in their later years attempt to build. This process is marked by a transition from a material and rational way of looking at themselves and reality around them to a larger uplifting vision (‘cosmic and transcendent’). In other words, there is a shift from an outlook on life that is concerned with mundane issues to a concern with universal values. The attainment of this vision is generally associated with life satisfaction.
Tornstam elaborates this outlook further, pointing out to changes that take place in three levels:
- Cosmic Level: this level is marked by changes in the definition of time and space, and includes, new comprehension of life and death, less interest in material things, and acceptance of the mystery dimension of life.
- The Self: this level includes, decrease in self-centeredness; increase in self awareness and acceptance, ‘body transcendence’ – that is, taking care of the body but not being obsessed by it; ego-integrity – putting together the jigsaw puzzle of the self to form a wholeness.
- Social and individual relations: this level is marked by a movement towards a selective deeper relationships, a new understanding of the difference between self and roles that we were called to play in active life; an addition of innocence (freedom from malice); free and detached attitude towards wealth, and the transcendence of right-wrong duality (that we mentioned in the previous talk).
This journey towards gero-transcendence involves a whole new of rendering our life narratives – the memories of our personal history. The outcome of this process is a personal spirituality.
Integration of the memory of the past: towards a spirituality of the elderly
One thing that we can assume listening to elderly people is that they are constantly and even repeatedly processing the past. Perhaps my elderly listeners know this better. But what we do know is that younger people get frustrated with the stories of the elderly because they are repeated over and over again. Even amidst the frustration, what young people perhaps have to learn is that memories of our past form part of our present personalities. McAdams, a much quoted author in the psychology of personality, considers individual narratives as one of the components of personality, together with traits and functionings which include roles that individuals play. In other words, our personal histories – the extent to which we remember them and the way we narrate them – form part of our personalities. They influence our behaviour. And as we integrate these narratives and re-render them our personalities too mature.
No wonder then when people in later years talk about their faith, they refer to their past, and often to childhood experiences: “the nun in the Sunday school told me this…; the priest who blessed our wedding said this to us…; and when I went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land….” I heard my late father – often several times in the same day – talk about his pilgrimage to visit the remains of St Francis Xavier.
Yes, our spirituality is based on our memory. It has emerged from several studies among the elderly that people who suffer from dementia tend to exhibit decreased interest in prayer and religiosity. This finding is particularly interesting to consider in the light of Judeo-Christian tradition.
The Judeo-Christian traditions revolve around memory. A search on ‘remember’ in my digital Bible yields 177 hits. The Jewish faith tradition revolves around the memory of one important event: The Exodus. “Moses said to the people, ‘Remember this day, on which you came out of Egypt, from the place of slave-labour, for by the strength of his hand Yahweh brought you out of it…” (Ex 13:3, NJB). There is a constant call to the people of Israel to “remember the covenant the Lord made with our fathers.” The Christian faith is centred on the memory of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is most powerfully preserved in the celebration of the Eucharist: “Do this as a memorial of me” (1Cor 11:25).
These religious traditions refer to collective memories, but it is much the same in dealing with our own personal narratives. Our personal spirituality is nothing but the memory of the milestones that marked our faith journey. It becomes so important then to keep our spiritual experiences in memory and to repeat it to others, particularly we reach the twilight of our lives. This is also the greatest lesson that young people can learn from the spirituality of the elderly.
In the patriarchal tradition of the book of Genesis, when Jacob (Gen 28:12-22) had his first encounter with the Lord God during his sojourn in the desert, in the dream of the ladder, he wakes up and declares, “Truly, Yahweh is in this place and I did not know.” Next morning, “Jacob took the stone he had used for his pillow, and set it up as a pillar, pouring oil over the top of it.” The stone becomes a memorial of his first encounter with the Lord God. Similarly we need to build memorials of our God-experiences, through journaling, writing poems, creating symbols, and by faith-sharing. In this way the experiences get embedded in our mind and heart. And out of this contemplation flows our spirituality.
(c) Sahaya G. Selvam, December 2009
Acknowledgements:
These talks are dedicated to the loving memory of my dad: Antony Fernando (1925-2009)
Thanks to Sr Isabel, St. Teresa’s Home, 42 Roland Gardens, London, SW7 3PW