About fifty people spent three days in September at the Evangelical Church of the Amandiers in Lavigny, in the Swiss canton of Vaud, exploring a question that churches rarely address head-on: what does spiritual life look like when you are old? The course, held from 15 to 17 September under the title "Growing Old: What Spirituality?", was led by the theologians Linda Oyer and Louis Schweitzer, the founders of Compagnons de route Suisse and of the ISCAS programme in Christian spirituality and spiritual accompaniment. It was organised for the French-speaking Free Evangelical churches of Switzerland.
The starting premise was that ageing brings a series of losses that most people are left to negotiate without a vocabulary. The two leaders began by naming them, then identified the pitfalls that follow: denial of ageing, anger at an inexorable decline, fear of a precarious existence and of death, and depression. Linda Oyer invited participants to recognise a shift that happens with age in a society that prizes activity — from being an active "subject" who decides, to becoming an "object", vulnerable to the actions of others and increasingly dependent on them. She pointed to the apostle Paul, who wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians of insults, hardships and persecutions, and of carrying "the death of Jesus" in his body; and to Jesus himself, who begins his ministry as the active subject of the Gospel narratives and becomes, as his Passion approaches, ever more the object — handed over, vulnerable, suffering to the death of the cross. Oyer divided old age into stages — the "young old" of 65 to 75, the "old" of 75 to 85, and the "old old" beyond 85 — and suggested that recalling how Jesus entered his own Passion, and in doing so showed the glory of God, can open a path towards what she called a "fruitful serenity".
Much of the course turned on the practical. Oyer encouraged participants to grieve well: to name their losses, to give their consent to them in a ritual way by entrusting them to the Lord, and to watch for new shoots that might grow from what has been lost. Louis Schweitzer, an ethicist and author of "The Paths of the Spiritual Life", noted that the Christian faith carries a human wisdom which early theologians compared to stoicism — to Epictetus and to Cicero's "On Old Age" — but with the addition of trust in a God who cares for his children as he cares for the birds of the sky. "Accepting the reality of age is the beginning of wisdom," he said. "Doing so with gratitude before the God who is love allows one to enter a path of trust because of Jesus." The course closed with contemplative prayer, which Schweitzer described as a way of moving beyond a certain superficiality in the spiritual life — sitting comfortably, he added, but not too comfortably, since the goal is not a nap.
(Originally published in French. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: LaFree — Free Evangelical Churches of French-speaking Switzerland — lafree.ch
