The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully by Joan Chittister
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Book Reviews of The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully
Book Review: Lessons in How to Live for Any Age!
Summary: 5 Stars
When "The Gift of Years" by Joan Chittister made its way to my mailbox for me to review, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Was I really the right person to be reviewing this? After all, I am in my thirties, transitioning from youth to middle age. I'm not quite ready for senior citizen status yet. As it turned out, "The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully" is a wonderful lesson in how to live, regardless of our chronological age.
Chittister, a Benedictine sister, is 70 years old. She suggests that she may actually be too young to write this book because life still has lessons left to offer. She "reserves the right to revise this edition when she is ninety." Chittister views how we life at any age to be a choice. We are each given the gift of today. It is up to us what we do with it. She counters the idea that old age need be a time of isolation and loneliness and uselessness. Rather, it can be a time of great connectedness and joy and purpose. It is a time for looking back, not with the pain of regret for opportunities lost, but with understanding of how the life that has been lived has meaning for who we are right now and what our future holds.
Chittister maintains that senior citizens have so much to offer to the world at large. Their wisdom and their stories and their experience are a great gift. They also have the time to get involved. Without the pressures of a 9-to-5 job or raising a family, they can volunteer more, make more of a difference. They have the chance to do all the things that they always wanted to do that there was never time for before. "Age does not forgive us our responsibility to give the world back to God a bit better than it was because we were here."
Of course, there are special challenges that come with the transition to later adulthood and Chittister does acknowledge that fact. It can be difficult to be older in a world that so values youth. It can be hard to reclaim a sense of self with everything that defined that self is now gone. It can be a struggle to cope with physical ailments and disabilities. As Chittister states, however, "there is no such thing as not coping. . . The only issue is whether we will choose to cope well or poorly." We do have a choice. We can adjust our way of thinking and our way of being or we can give up.
Mostly, though, being older brings freedom. "We are free now to choose the way we live in the world, the way we relate to the world around us, the attitudes we take to life, the meaning we get out of it, the gifts we put into it. And all of them can change." "The Gift of Years" is a gift in itself. It provides the opportunity to reflect on what it means to grow older and provides hope for a time of life that holds great promise.
Book Review: The Life That is Waiting for Us
Summary: 5 Stars
"The thing most wrong about this book," Joan Chittister tells us in this vibrant collection of essays on growing old, "is that I may be too young to write it. I am, after all, only seventy." She is, she tells us, among those whom gerontologists call the "young old," those who are sixty-five to seventy-four and may not yet have attained the ripest wisdom.
We are indeed fortunate that Chittister decided not to postpone the writing of The Gift of Years, for it is full of the grace of decades of thought and meditation. It is written not only for those of us who are among the old, but for everyone: we are all growing older, and all of us may eventually undertake the search for meaning and fulfillment that lies at the deepest heart of the aging process.
The Gift of Years is a full basket of rich gifts: forty-plus short essays on the many dimensions of eldering, "its purpose and its challenges, its struggles and its surprises." Each essay begins with words of wisdom from someone who has considered the meaning of growing old, then tells a brief story or an anecdote, offers a reflection, and invites us to participate in a meditation on the burden and blessing of the years.
In "Time," for instance, Chittister quotes Pablo Picasso: "It takes a long time to become young." There is an anecdote about a potter named Thomas, who at eighty had lived long enough "to release the beginner in himself again and again." There are reflections: time ages things; time deepens things; time ripens things. And then there is the meditation. The burden of years is allowing time to "hang heavy on my hands," Chittister writes; a blessing of years is to "realize what an important and lively time this final period is."
Chittister's essays are rich in variety, nimble in thought, and resonantly prophetic in voice. She writes about regret, relationships, religion; about fulfillment and freedom; about limitations. This is a book to be kept beside a favorite chair and savored slowly, thoughtfully--no gulping here--and to be reread as we move into "the twilight time," the last years in which we must find the strength to trust others, bear weakness well, and surrender to acceptance. These are the years, she says, quoting E.M. Forster, when we must be "willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully is not just for elders. It is for all those who are searching for ways to learn, grow, and make the best of our gifts in deeply troubled times.
by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Book Review: A gift of wisdom gleaned through the years
Summary: 5 Stars
Joan Chittister's: "The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully" is full of wisdom about aging, which all of us are doing right now, no matter the age. Her book deals with many of the topics elders and boomers are discussing with each other and discovering for themselves.
Much of her information seems to come from her years of living within a Benedictine women's community and observing the aging process intimately with friends and other sisters. The intentionally brief chapters invite thoughtful consideration of such topics as Possibility, Fulfillment, Relationships, and Tale-Telling.
Sister Chittister uses quotes about the aging human experience we share from many sources to spur her reflections. I find the way she has organized and presented these reflections both inspiring and refreshing. She draws from a wide range of people to begin her chapters. For instance, this one by Carl Jung begins her chapter on Solitude.
"For a younger person it is almost a sin--and certainly a danger--to be too much occupied with himself. But for the aging person it is a duty and a necessity to give serious attention to himself (sic). After having lavished its light upon the world, the sun withdraws its rays in order to illumine itself."
There is so much simplicity and depth of thought available in The Gift of Years that I recommend The Gift of Years to discussion groups, especially those who might be discussing spirituality of aging topics.
Book Review: One of the best books written!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Seldom would I rate a book so highly as "one of the best books written!!!" But this is no ordinary book, or for that matter, ordinary nun. In fact, you cannot figure out what religious background the writer has until she tells you at the very end, in the Acknowledgements section.
Why is this book so good? It is littered with pearls of wisdom all over the place. Such insight! Since I read it on my Kindle DX, at least I didn't run out of ink underlining those pearls. That is how much I marked this book up! And this book will be good for a reading again every five years.
If you are interested in making your "senior" years spiritually productive, there is no better way than reading this book, one chapter a day, to remind you as to how thankful you should be for your years of experience, and how wonderful these "senior" years must be for the benefit of those around you, and the world.
This book is so good that it has become a book I gift to others who wish it. [And that is why I posted it here, rather than under the Kindle section.]
Book Review: A very thought-provoking book on aging
Summary: 5 Stars
Joan Chittister writes that there are plenty of guidelines for how to live the early and middle years of our lives, but the road for the older population is largely uncharted. She helps to rectify that by tackling a series of subjects in short chapters relating to growing old gracefully. Her subjects include topics such as Regret, Fear, Fulfillment, Letting Go, Loneliness, and Productivity. For every disadvantage of age, Chittister argues that there is a corresponding advantage. Without the tyranny of a day dominated by gainful employment, the elderly person is able to reflect on life, smell the roses, and use their time to help others. This is an inspiring book in which the author shows the advantages of aging and the active life that is possible during one's later years.