February Week 1: Spiritual Aging Study Guide

Broken Heart or Heart Growing Whole?

Dear Old Souls,

Welcome to this week’s study guide! Looking forward to our conversation in the comments below and in the Zoom SASS groups hosted by our organizational partners Sage-ing International and Spirit of Sophia! In addition to meeting up 24/7 with our online SASS here on Substack, it’s not too late to find a live group to join or grab a couple of friends and start your own. .

Here is the calendar listing for Sage-ing’s next Zoom event:

Upcoming Event:

BROKEN HEART OR HEART GROWING WHOLE? (February 4, 11 am to 12:30 pm, EST) Zoom webinar on Transforming setbacks, losses and disappointments into spiritual growth. with Carol Orsborn, author of Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life Sponsored by Sage-ing International: https://conta.cc/4gehvHw

This week’s study guide follows:

Carol:)

This Week’s Excerpt

Over time it becomes increasingly possible to remember—in both the heights and the troughs—that challenges, loss, and the many sad, bitter, and sometimes cruel faces of crises are, in fact, not impediments to the spiritual path, but the stepping stones.

Leon Weiselter writes: “There are circumstances that must shatter you; and if you are not shattered, then you have not understood your circumstances… it is pointless to put up a fight, for a fight will blind you to the opportunity that has been presented by your misfortune.”

Of course, your immediate response is to steel yourself against feeling the brunt of the pain with its capacity to disassemble. No matter how many tears you shed, you can’t always make things go back the way they were, or you wished they could be. When you find yourself neck-deep in the rubble of your broken heart, how could you feel any way other than you’ve failed? But the real failure, Weiselter teaches, would be “for your heart not to break.”

Questions for Journaling and Discussion