Regret: The Ghost of Aging
First Week of May: Spiritual Aging Study Guide
Welcome to this week’s study guide. For more about our study and support groupand the Spiritual Aging Study Guide, click HERE.
This Week’s Excerpt
Spiritual maturity is requiring growth on your part as you muster the courage to
prepare for the future even while confronting aspects of your past that you wished you'd handled better. Of course you have done your best to make appropriate amends. Celebrate that in doing so, some relationships have been repaired, some poor life choices remedied. But not all.
Our actions have consequences, some of which are unintended. You can only control your part in things, apologize for what is truly yours to own and rectify things to the appropriate degree. But after you’ve done what you can to make things right, there comes the time to move on.
As Joan Chittister writes: “Regret, one of the ghosts of aging, comes upon us one day dressed up like wisdom, looking profound and serious…But how can it be spiritual insight to deny the good for the sake of what was not? No, regret is not insight. It is a sand trap of the soul.”
You have arrived at this age and stage of your life seeking a spiritual life, a simple life. But there's an irony here as well. Rather than singing with angels, you often find yourself wrestling with them. But it is a divine wrestle, like Jacob on the banks of the Jabbok giving everything he’s got to win a blessing.”
—Excerpt Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life
Questions for Journaling and Discussion