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CAST ME NOT AWAY

by the Reverend Phyllis L. Hubbell
at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
on the 25th of March 2001

Shortly after my mother entered a nursing home last year, I spoke to her on the phone. My mother was then 86 years old. Her hair had turned white a decade or more earlier. For years, she had been increasingly frail and unsteady on her feet. She had Parkinsons Disease, Alzeimers Disease, and Shy Dragers Syndrome. These were her last months.

I asked my mother about what she was doing at the home. Oh, she said, I went down to the lounge last night where all the people gather to watch television and talk. Phyllis, theyre all old people.

My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all day long. Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength is spent. Psalm 71: 8-9.

Response to aging is an issue addressed by many religions and perhaps all societies. Some societies respond to economic hardship by reducing health resources for the old, or even encouraging them to take their own lives. On the other hand, Walter Burghardt, a Jesuit theologian, reminds us in a recent issue of The Living Pulpit that many others venerate the old. Southern Ghanas Akans, though they acknowledge the power that comes with knowledge at any age, revere the wisdom that accompanies aging. The Chinese have traditionally accorded their elders high status. These values are seen in Confucianism, whose supreme principle of morality, Burghardt writes, is respect for elders. Such respect, Confucians believe, can define the very meaning of our being in the world. This respect is also a powerful binding force for a stable society [and] is a source of world peace and order. Similarly, Hindus stress the spiritual maturity and wisdom of the aged, who provide models of an authentic human life serving all humanity disinterestedly. Buddhists regard aging as a time of movement to a fuller life.

But we dont like old people in our own society. That is a gross generalization, of course. But I think most of us would agree that there is much truth in it. Many of us, for example, like living in an area where most of our neighbors are our own age. If we are young parents, our children will have playmates, and we can share babysitters and experiences with others like ourselves. Similarly, when we are middle-aged, we often like being surrounded by others around our age. It means less noise competing for our attention. Were less likely to find children and their pets tearing through our gardens. But when we ourselves grow old, this preference for our own kind often changes. Suddenly, we no longer want all of our neighbors to be our age. As my mother said, they are old. They are depressing. They are stooped and wrinkled. They need wheelchairs and walkers. They cant hear too well and their eyesight is shot. Their memory is spotty or worse, and they may not be able to control their bladders. Never mind our own infirmities. They remind us of our own frailty, our own mortality.

Its also distasteful. Somehow we do not mind changing diapers on babies, but it is disturbing taking on that task for our parents. We accept that a 6-month-old cannot speak to us, or dress itself, or walk on its own, or feed itself, but we find it difficult when our grandparents and then our parents begin to fail. How much harder it is to see the face of the divine in aged strangers. Strangers who lived lives we will never know: who have traveled to Mozambique; partied in Paris; opened their houses to the neighbors children; danced in summer stock; had a 4-year-old who was run over by a car; owned an entire collection of Mad comic books; once won

$ 25,000 in a lottery and donated it all anonymously to a domestic violence center; painted a bedroom purple; wore purple; wandered the parks leaving bread for the pigeons; quit smoking after a parent died of cancer. All the wonderful, insane, good, and foolish things that each one of us does sometime in a lifetime.

If we look with distaste on strangers who are old, even have trouble with our own parents, how do we look at ourselves? How do we feel about ourselves when we begin to see the inevitable signs? A gray hair. Varicose veins. Support hose. We cant get up those steps anymore. Have to give in and take the elevator. Cant remember words anymore. The words are there on the tip of our tongues, but they just wont come.

I remember a number of years ago when I was precandidating for minister somewhere. I was getting over a cold, a bad one. We started to walk somewhere and I couldnt keep up. I was out of breath. I crawled down the street. I didnt realize it then, but it was asthma. I remember feeling mortified. I felt like a little old lady. For me that was not a nice feeling. I wanted to feel if not young, then definitely not old. I wanted to be keep up with the rest. Do everything they could do. At least as well as they did.

It is hard enough getting old, dealing with aches and pains, illness, surgery, diminished incomes, the deaths of friends and loved ones. But how do we keep the sense that we still have value? How do we continue to see that value in others?

One of the spiritual tasks of growing old is letting go. Accepting that we must use that elevator if we want to able to get to church. Turning in our drivers licenses and becoming dependent on others. Letting go, perhapsfinallyeven of reading. Of hearing and seeing much of the conversations that go on around us. I will never forget my conversation in the hospital with Susan Parrs mother Roberta Julian, when she found herself no longer able to read. We talked about letting go even of this. Suddenly she smiled. Yes, she said, Ive been reciting poetry to myself. Then she proceeded to recite a poem for me. There is a time for letting go of independence, of control, of our intellectual and physical achievements. Even the best hearing aids and glasses eventually fail some of us.

Those of us who are warned that death is coming face the ultimate letting go. The recognition that it is time for us to let go of life itself. That is not a bad thing. It is not that we must value life so much that we reject death. There is a time to live. A time to die.

But how even as we face death do we hang on to the feeling that we ourselves are of value? Or that our aging parents are value. That the old men and women in nursing homes who have had to let go of much that we think makes life worth living are worthy of some deep respect. That even as we move toward death we are worthy.

The second time I went home to see my mother, two of her brothers and their wives came to see her. My mother was gaunt. She had lost 40 pounds or more. Mom was losing her ability to speak. She didnt say much. But I watched her lie there and smile at all of us. She was a person who had always thought of others. She had given much and forgiven much. She had an inner happiness that kept her singing through much sadness. Her smile that day was a blessing and a benediction. It held in it all the times she had done my chores so I could practice piano, the time she let me ride three times on the merry go round, the times she had tutored her younger brothers in school work, the Sunday School classes she taught, the poor women she had visited when she was a visiting nurse, the orange sherbet she had made me when I was sick, the cakes she had made for all of our birthdays, the sacrifices she had made so that we children could have nice clothes and I could go away to college.

She could hardly speak. She couldnt even look at the postcards I sent her anymore. She couldnt figure out where to put her spoon to pick up the peas on her plate. She thought she was a burden. But she was such a blessing. I cherished every day, every minute I had with her. Even that last day, when she was near death. She was unconscious. She gave no sign that she knew me. Even that day, I told her that we wanted her to stay with us if she still wanted to fight on. Not to feel she was a burden. I told her how wonderful she was. The best mother ever. She was still beautiful in my eyes.

Long ago, Unitarians and Universalists rejected belief in original sin and predestination. At the heart of our faith is a belief that we each have the potential for goodness. Whatever our lifetime is, short or longwhether we are rich or poor: brilliant or illiterateto the extent that we choose the good, choose to create, choose truth, choose beauty, choose love, choose lifewe develop that transcendent beauty, wisdom, and peace that no longer depends on the body we inhabit. Just our presence in a room brings joy. We dont need to say or do anything. All we need to do is be.

We dont need to have been perfect.

But ours is very much a theology of works. We dont have a creed. What we do with our lives is more important than our beliefs. As John said last week, each of us has the potential to live a life whose shadow makes grass turn green, makes children thrive, gives the sick hope, gives the oppressed courage. When we grow old, that shadow is long and wide. We may not see it. But all those who pass us do.

But what of the stranger? The stranger we see as we visit our parent in the nursing home. The stranger who sits and stares into nothingness? Or perhaps mutters away to himself, lost in a world we cannot enter? How can we find beauty there?

Harder even than the stranger, what of those we know who have consistently squandered their potential? Who time after time choose the path of self at the expense of others? Who destroy instead of create? Who prey on the weak? What of those who have hurt us? How do we see beauty in their faces as the end draws near?

Our Universalist ancestors believed that God was too good to send anyone to eternal damnation. Even Hitler or Pol Pot, or the slavers, were not so evil as to deserve that. Today, we believe that even in the worst of all us remains some possibility for redemption, some potential for choosing another way. It is that universal morsel of hope that gives worth and dignity to the stranger. It is that universal morsel of humanity that gives worth and dignity to oppressor. If only we can see it. If only we know to look.

John and I are privileged to do memorial services, often for people we do not know well. How often after we have heard the stories of their lives have we longed to have known them. Not that they were perfect people. Not that they made all the right choices. But, like all of us, they left legacies of goodness and beauty. They made a difference in the world. Their shadows nurtured the world.

Ram Dass includes a story in his book How Can I Help of a not particularly religious woman who went to see her father as he lay dying in a nursing home. She hadnt seen him for awhile and she didnt recognize him when she entered the room. She was shocked by his appearance, so gaunt and ill. They spoke for awhile, but they were both uncomfortable with one another. Her father fell asleep. While he slept, the woman remembered the words of Mother Teresa, describing lepers she cared for as Christ in all of his distressing disguises.

The woman says she had never had a close relationship to Christ and didnt at that moment. Still, she suddenly recognized in the shadow of her father a child of God. The face of the holy. That was who he really was. Blessing her. Blessing the world. And that was who she was, too. In that moment, she felt a great bond with him that never left her in his remaining months. Just the blessing of being there, taking care of him. Just the blessing of seeing the common identity of spirit [they] both shared.

It is so easy to look at a baby and see the face of the holy. The miracle that each one of us is.

May we look for that miracle in the face of age. May we see through our own weakened bodies the light still glowing, still waiting. May we see it in our neighbor. May we see it in ourselves.