The Old Church Yard
Stephen W Emerick PhD
Secluded in an old forgotten church yard –
Behind tarnished and peeling paint,
a gathering of voices from days now gone
proceeding from woodsmen, farmers, mothers, fathers – saints!
Words of time – their hallowed meaning –
(non reluctant, timid, nor shy) –
On the lips of this deceased crowd,
warning how quickly the years pass by!
Hear all, now, their pointed stories
of faith, sorrows, and things that mend –
Such golden threads between the meeting
of their beginning…and their end.
Between those two days of birth and death in each one’s life –
Though some cares mattered – many did not…
So let their headstones stress this point
concerning life’s mysterious lot:
What we can and do become
Is what gives us grace when life its course has run
The Old Church Yard Page 1 of 1
Touch of Grey
There is a sacred dimension to growing old. In the face of aging and dying, we can call upon practice to sustain and inspire us.
SHAMBHALA SUN ADMINISTRATOR18 NOVEMBER 2010
In the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, there lived a man in his eighties who had done little about his spiritual life, and so he set out to find the Buddha’s encampment, which he had heard was nearby. Looking like a beggar, old and hopeless, he arrived at the encampment and asked one of the senior monks if he could be accepted into the sangha.
After testing the old man’s attainment, the monk replied, “You are an old man and haven’t done any practice, so there’s no point in giving you teachings now.”
Completely dejected, the old man lay down in front of the door. …
The Wisdom of Aging with Grace
Norman Fischer describes the qualities of aging gracefully.
Do you see aging as an inconvenient truth?
Yes and no. Certainly aging isn’t easy and one sometimes wishes youth could somehow return. But then you remember how difficult it was when you were younger, when you had things to prove and projects to complete. You had mountains to climb. When you’re older, you worry less and have more confidence in the future. Life is easier. You know where you are going. You have nothing to prove. There are advantages to aging. When you are, say, 70, this means you are also 60, 50, 40, 30, and so on. That is to say, you know what it’s like to have been all those ages. They are still there, inside you. There is wisdom in this that younger people can’t possess.