I have mentioned Lauren Winner’s Mudhouse Sabbath before. The book has a number of poignant and insightful observations. The following is appropriate for our community because many of us share the reality of being older than the average American. In the chapter on aging, Winner writes this: The elderly are asked to age well, and the communities that support them are asked to help them do just that. (Rabbi Zalman Schecter-Shalomi has dispensed with the gerund “aging.” He speaks instead of “eldering.” I’ll admit a certain squeamishness with the term—it strikes me as a little twee, and every time I think of it, I have to adjust. But there is something vigorous about it too. To age is to be passive, to sit like a bottle of wine—you just sit there and time passes and age happens over you. To elder—or, in another of Reb Zalman’s clever infinitives, “to sage”—is to try to shape the last years of one’s life with intention.) Aging is not just a process of physical decline. It can also be a
Ramblings and observations