HOLY TRINITY SEMINAR 2011-2012

                               AGING WELL-LIVING ENTHUSIASTICALLY      

                            Encouraging Wisdom With Lifelong Learning

                     Extended Longevity calls for Extended Consciousness

                                 Discovering New Purpose as We Age

Come and explore God’s presence in our lives and in our world.  See how God’s Spirit leads us to live out that presence in all aspects of our lives.  This “Aging Well” Seminar is for those in their 30s and 40s to prepare themselves for caring for aging parents, for those in their 50s and 60s to prepare them to handle their mid-life issues and for their own aging, and for the rest of us who have “arrived.”  All are invited to reflect, question, and share.

“At night, looking at myself in the mirror in unguarded moments, I realized that I was growing older.  Feeling alone and vulnerable, I feared becoming a geriatric case who follows the predictable pattern of retirement, painful physical diminishment, a rocking-chair existence in a nursing home, and the eventual dark and inevitable end of my life.”  --“From Age-ing to Sage-ing” by Rabbi Zalman Schechter-Shalomi

Reflective people, with tools like prayer, meditation and contemplation, can rid themselves of negative images and expectations that sentence the older person to the junk heap as social outcasts.  In its place, one can hoist the banner of what might be called successful aging, an activity-oriented approach that promises increased physical vigor, continued intellectual growth, and meaningful work during the elder years.

“Looking down and seeing a people carrying burdens they have invented and created themselves, God must think, ‘How foolish they are to think that it has anything to do with my destiny for them.  It has more to do with their own negative use of the freedom and possibility that I gave them.’  False burdens can fall away as you grow older.  One possible way to begin would be to ask yourself, ‘What are the lonely burdens that you carry?’  Some of them would definitely belong to you, but more of them you have just picked up and made for yourself.  To begin to let them go is to lighten the pressure and weight on your life.  You will then experience a lightness and a great inner freedom.”  --“Anam Cara” by John O’Donohue

When we share and listen, together, with the Holy Spirit, when we move into the flow of the chrism of contemplation, we experience a change in Christian consciousness (mind and heart).  Everything flowing out of this Emerging Christianity needs to be inclusive rather than exclusive, “both/and” rather than “either/or”, and come from a contemplative mind and heart.  Emerging Christianity, which leads us to more completely be a “Beatitude” people, is both longing for and moving toward a following of Jesus that has much more to do with an actual daily lifestyle than with believing things.

Schedule

Dates: The 3rd Saturday of each month, beginning September 17, 2011

Time: 8:30AM (coffee) & 9-10:30AM Seminar

Place: Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Faber Room

Facilitator: Bill Hocking

To Register: Call Bill at 410-349-0329 or email at billhocking100@comcast.net

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READINGS

The primary reading for this Seminar will be from “Age-ing to Sage-ing” by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.  The readings will be used as gentle guides for our reflection.  The ideas, pictures and stories from our readings are used to tease out our own notions of how best to age well and to strengthen our desire for God in all we do and all we are in this time of our lives. 

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

Reading: Introduction and Chapter 1, “The Vision of Spiritual Eldering”

The elder uses the tools for inner growth, such as meditation, journal writing, and life review.  Elders come to terms with their mortality, harvest the wisdom of their years, and transmit a legacy to future generations.  Serving as mentors, they pass on the distilled essence of their life experience to others.  The joy of passing on wisdom to younger people not only seeds the future, but crowns an elder’s life with worth and nobility.

OCTOBER 15, 2011

Reading: Chapter 2, “Becoming the Possible Sage”

Why do we call this work “spiritual eldering” and not “religious eldering”?  Religious eldering points to a sectarian approach.  It provides people with beliefs, practices, and rituals that all too easily separate some believers from others.  Spiritual eldering implies an inner search for God, a self-directed flowering of the spirit that unites all people in a common quest, no matter what their affiliation.

NOVEMBER 19, 2011

Reading:  Chapter 3, “Eldering: Past, Present, and Future”

In “The Turning Point”, physicist Fritjof Capra asserts that our one-sided scientific culture is going through a period of rebalancing.  A more holistic perspective is emerging that stresses cooperation rather than competition, ecological awareness rather than mindless consumerism, and intuition to complement our obsession with rationalism.

DECEMBER 17, 2011

Reading: Chapter 5, “Tools for Harvesting Life”

A modest, undramatic act of forgiveness has the power to transform an adversary into a friend.  The elder, unlike the guru who lays down a set of undisputed truths and practices, functions as a trusted teacher, guide, and friend who through long-term, sometimes one-on-one relationships, is a patient midwife to their students in discovering their own authentic religious paths and vocations.

JANUARY 21, 2012

Reading:  Chapter 4, “The Art of Life Completion”

In its deepest sense, spiritual eldering enables us to complete our lives triumphantly.  As our spiritual vision widens, we perceive our interconnectedness with the earth and all of nature.  Relieved of the anxiety that comes from perceiving ourselves as separate, isolated individuals, we are supported by life, rooted in an organic process of which we are integral parts.  From this perspective of global awareness, we release feelings of failure and depression.  We say gratefully, “I have done my job.”

FEBRUARY 18, 2012

Reading:  Chapter 6, “The Eternity Factor”

Elders serve the larger world not from mystic sentimentalism, but rather a felt experience, matured through contemplation, that the world is one family that they feel connected to through bonds of love.  Their deepened sense of time, and the sense of responsibility it calls forth, heighten the intimate care they extend to all of creation.

MARCH 17, 2012

Reading:  Chapter 7, “The Conscious Transit at Death”

“Peaceful death is really an essential human right more essential perhaps even than the right to vote or the right to justice; it is a right on which, all religious traditions tell us, a great deal depends for the well-being and spiritual future of the dying person….There is no greater gift of charity you can give than helping a person to die well.”   --Sogyal Rinpoche

APRIL 21, 2012

Reading:  Chapter 8, “Mentoring: Seeding the Future with Wisdom”

Listen with great spaciousness of heart and mind to your mentee’s genuine concerns before attempting to share your wisdom.  Don’t impose but evoke your mentee’s innate knowing.

Don’t try to impress your mentee by claiming to be perfect; be your searching, tentative, very human self instead.  Respect and call forth your mentee’s uniqueness.  Recognize that like everything else under the sun, mentoring has its seasons.

MAY 19, 2012

Reading:  Chapter 9, “Elders as Healers of Family, Community, and Gaia”

To preserve the economic viability of the planet must be the first law of economics.  To preserve the health of the planet must be the first commitment of the medical profession.  To preserve the natural world as the primary revelation of the divine must be the basic concern of religion.   –Fr. Thomas Berry

JUNE 16, 2012

Reading:  Chapter 10, “Spiritual Eldering Comes of Age”

This Seminar addresses the new paradigm shift including aging, retirement planning, second career opportunities, community service options, eldering in the modern family, mentoring, death and dying, bereavement, exercise and nutrition, meditation, journal writing, and life review.

Seminar Closure: Lunch at The Tombs