Like many in their winter years, the brilliant red hawthorn berries are resplendent with a white crown. The tree that bears these brilliant berries is still young, growing stronger every year and even more radiant in every season. Nevertheless, it is wonderfully crowned in its seasonal winter, in our seasonal winter. Does not its beauty, so enhanced in its last season of this year, teach us to ponder what is awesome about aging?

As humans grow older, what is experienced differs in some ways from what earlier years held for them. There may be more, or different aches and pains, or concerns that are not were not part of life during younger years. There are blessings too, are there not?

More periods of solitude and silence, for reading a good book, for pondering, for praying. If so, a spirituality of eldering may emerge to help support, sustain, console and bless one’s life with deeper communion in God.

John O’Donohue wrote in Walking in Wonder, “So in old age, time slows a bit, the outer draw recedes, and you have time for the more contemplative side of things…. You have a chance to decipher what has happened to you, to see the hidden depths of experiences that have occurred in your life.”

Time for your-self in God, for a developing spirituality of the wisdom years.