“WANING” (?)

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, “Dwelling in Presence,” January 6, 2024

A pretty quarter moon hovers over me as I write this morning. It is a waning moon, raising the question: What things are waning in my life these days? When I write this blog, I tend to focus on growth and addition, not contraction and diminishment. Perhaps that word, diminishment, is part of the problem. It hints at a lessening, a negative event, when maybe there are many ways that our lives enhanced by becoming somehow less, smaller, more circumscribed.

I am finding that growing older is an experience of waning, at least for me. The most obvious evidence of this is in comparing my appointment calendar of 2022 to the one of 2023. Now the first year of retirement is bound to have fewer engagements than the one before, having little to do with the reality of aging. Also, having major surgery in a year is bound to slow one down. But I did spend whole weeks without seeing anyone at all, except Joel of course. To be honest, that slower pace, having many periods of wide open days, seemed to suit me. It may be that growing older is allowing me to settle into my introverted nature a bit more, withhout an ounce of guilt! I could have been more actively engaged with others, but chose not to.

Accompanying the longer stretches of solitude, came more mindfulness in conversation, and thus the waning of idle chatter, perhaps a more judicious use of words. I have experienced conversation to be more intentional, with a larger purpose than just “talk”. It may be as we age we are less likely to want to stay on the surface with people. Teenage gabfests with friends were very enjoyable as were grad school “debates” about anything, but I really have no interest in repeating them. I feel a deeper urgency to get to the heart of things, to the heart of myself and others, and this seems to require less verbiage and more silences. Does this mean my social self is waning while something else is waxing? I don’t really know.

What else is waning thse days? I wish I could say it is my need to “please” people, but sady that seems to be hanging on. All wrapped up with caring about what others think of me, I’m afraid these will be two of my last ego traits to fall! But the good news is the more I can observe my thought patterns in the silence and solitude, the more I recognize it when these habits take over. I can, if I will it, stop!

One thing that has surprised me as I turn sixty-eight this week is that I have lost none of my drive to grow and perhaps have even increased in my ability to make personal changes. I am learning that the older I become, the less adamant I am to hold on to the old ways I used to think. Growing up I heard a lot about old people supposedly “stuck in their ways.” In my pastoral work I have found this to be more true of the young and the middle-aged than it is of their elders. Now, I am ready to learn new ways of being and thinking, my insistence on former ways is waning. Growing older is much more exciting than I thought!