I write this blog post with a heavy heart. Moments ago, I was informed that two very dear people to me are moving away from the area where I live. While I am not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, I have had the wonderful privilege of being a part of the community that surrounds and supports and loves Benet Hill Monastery in the Black Forest of the Colorado Springs area. I first found out about the community after I returned from living overseas in Germany and was looking for something to replace the rootedness, yet simplicity of living, that I found in the cathedrals and small towns that dot the landscape across Europe.

God was to bless me with finding that replacement in the Benedictine way of life at Benet Hill Monastery, which I researched after one day driving by the main road that led to the monastery. After learning about the monastery on their website, I would end up enrolling in their Benedictine Spiritual Formation Program, which led, over the course of two years, to me becoming a certified spiritual director. I have continued to be involved in the community in small ways here and there over the past 10+ years and I count the nuns there, lovingly called sisters, to be like an extended family. Coming from a military family that moved around growing up, I feel I have never really had the pleasure of living with extended family.

This afternoon, I learned that three of the dear sisters in the faith are moving to another monastery where they can receive closer care in their retirement from their monastic vocation. Due to privacy concerns, I will not elaborate on their health or where they are moving to, but suffice it to say that one of the sisters was my spiritual director for a time and another of them was one of my supervision counselors in the spiritual direction program. So, to learn that both of them are leaving at the same time leaves me feeling a profound loss. It is a sad, yet inevitable, truth that, if we are blessed to live long enough, we will grow older and eventually experience health related problems before passing this world into the next life. After learning the news of their moving, I turned to Emilie Griffin’s beautifully written memoir about growing older titled, Souls in Full Sail.

For me, as someone who has just recently turned 40 earlier this year, I feel as though the way she begins the first chapter still describes where I am at in life regarding my mental perspective on aging. She writes, “We do not set out to become old. Far from it. We hardly intend even to become middle-aged. Instead we plan to live in some eternal now which will lead on to something better, something more complete than what we had before.”¹ Indeed, despite having been referred to as old by some well-meaning individual (actually, I’m not sure that person really did mean well and the comment wasn’t meant in a complimentary “old-soul” sort of way), I do not feel old and, as the saying goes, “you are only as old as you feel”. In a society that values and worships youth and anti-aging techniques, is it any wonder that so many people experience unhappiness and depression, knowing that time is inexorably slipping away on them, aging them despite all attempts to the contrary and despite all attempts to ignore the inevitable?

I believe our society, and younger generations in particular, have much to learn about aging (and dying) well, from Judeo-Christian Scriptures and from the Christian tradition. Psalm 90:12 exhorts God to “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” and Proverbs 16:31 declares that “Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness”. Later on in her book, Emilie Griffin refers to C.S. Lewis and the “far country” that we all long for and were ultimately made for, which is ultimately the Kingdom of God, whether we experience it in heaven after death or whether we receive a foretaste of it’s slow unveiling here on earth as we await its ultimate consummation when Jesus Christ returns to earth, which is something Christians long for in this time between times.

It’s why, as sad as I am about the prospect of losing two dear friends, I am at the same time grateful for their lives and the time that I’ve had to know them and spend time with them. I don’t know, after they move away, whether I will see them again or not, but I will cherish my memories with them. I feel, in some way, like Sam and Frodo at the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In moving away, I feel my former spiritual director and one of my supervision guides, are journeying to the Grey Havens, before some day crossing the Sea to the undying lands. And so, as much as their leaving brings tears to my eyes even as I write this post, I am grateful for Gandalf’s words, which are a balm to me, “Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”²

I lift up my former spiritual director and supervision counselor to God’s care and am grateful for they ways they have mentored me over this past decade on what it means to grow older, wiser, and more graceful and grace-filled in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. For you see, “Transformation isn’t just a promise for the later years but for the whole of life. Even so, as we come into the later years, we may be more conscious of our need for change, our desire for change. We long for God and we want to become the people he has called us to be. We open ourselves up to the rich possibilities of the Christian life. Yes, we must live in the present moment, knowing that God will be fully present to us there. But also we set our sights on the far horizon.”³

To Sisters Ann and Deb: may you journey toward the far horizon in peace, knowing that you have taught and modeled for us all at Benet Hill Monastery what it means to live with our hearts and souls “in full sail”.

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¹ Emilie Griffin, Souls in Full Sail: A Christian Spirituality for the Later Years (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2011), 19.

² J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (New York: Ballantine Books, 1965), 347.

³ Griffin, Souls in Full Sail, 53-54.