Reflection
Prior generations and other cultures have reverenced those who were recognized as “elders” in the community. They understood that although youth is energetic, strong, spontaneous and attractive, it takes time to develop experience, wisdom, and character. One has to live through loss and gain, success and failure, love and pain, joy and sorrow, to attain the integration that etches lines into one’s face. Sadly, we seem to have lost reverence for the wisdom elders can communicate. Our society fosters the notion that people become inferior because they have lived a specified number of years. Older people are often deemed irrelevant or dependent. Not looking one’s age is considered a compliment. We become entangled in the culture and try to cosmetically cover the signs of our aging. We tend to lose sight of the fact that, barring debilitating disease, our inner resources should become deeper and richer as we develop and experience more of life. Our capacity to share acquired wisdom and experience has value.
Prayer
Outdo one another in showing honor.
Romans 12:10
Action
Consider your feelings about aging. How do you relate to the older people in your circle? To older people with whom you may come in contact at work? Do you respect the wisdom you may find in “elders”? What example do you give to children?
Suggested Reading
Stand up in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God.
Leviticus 19:32
Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.
Proverbs 16:31
These elderly persons throughout society ought to be a reservoir of wisdom for our people. The elderly are the reservoir of wisdom for our people!
Pope Francis
We respect our elders. There is wisdom that comes from experience, and I am not going to stop learning from wise counsel.
Marcia Fu
Respecting every individual is very important. It starts with respecting elders regardless of profession.
Michael Clarke
White people don’t seem to have many Elders. They do have a lot of oldsters.
John Trudell
There are constant cycles in history. There is loss, but it is always followed by regeneration. The tales of our elders who remember such cycles are very important to us now.
Carmen Agra Deedy
You seek help from the elders. A society with elders is healthy. It’s not always that way in the West.
Bernard Lagat
Mentoring is an archetypal activity that has timeless elements which can connect us to the universal ground where nature renews itself and culture becomes reimagined. Youth and elder meet where the pressure of the future meets the presence of the past. Old and young are opposites that secretly identify with each other; for neither fits well into the mainstream of life.”
Michael Meade
The elders are the history and mirror of the living past. Study them to brighten your life and future.
Ehsan Sehgal
To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent – that is to triumph over old age.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
Les Brown
We’ve put more effort into helping folks reach old age than into helping them enjoy it.
Frank A. Clark
Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest.
Marilyn Ferguson
Old age is not a disease – it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.
Maggie Kuhn
Age is…wisdom, if one has lived one’s life properly.
Miriam Makeba
The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.
Frank Lloyd Wright