Healing Ministry 1
Volume 14, Number 2, Spring 2007
For such a time
as this
Father Dn. Thomas Johnson-Medland, CSJ
The desire for meaning that
accompanies all our days does
not diminish at the end of life or
in the twilight of our time on this
earth. We still find great signifi-
cance in feeling useful and valu-
able in our mature years. In fact,
it is at such a time that we would
be best served by finding a cause
and making ourselves available
to its work.
In the next few decades, as the
“hippies” begin to approach
retirement and start pondering
the notion of adult communities,
whether gated, senior housing,
retirement, assisted living, or
long-term care, they may feel an
emptiness without work in their
lives. This may be a time to
enable them to rekindle their
activist hearts and inspire them
to take on a cause. So many
seniors have faded away in insti-
tutional settings because a lack of
stimulation accompanied them
into their autumn years. There is
really no need for this to occur,
Father Dn. Thomas Johnson-Medland, CSJ,
Lighthouse Hospice, Cherry Hill, New
Jersey.
and there is no reason that we
should lose the voice of our val-
ued elders.
For too long we have allowed
institutions to get away with
wholesale care, as if our seniors
were in an “elder-max” or a
“senior warehouse.” Care facili-
ties have mistakenly believed
that it would be challenging
enough for mature adults to
make pot holders, placemats,
and things out of old match-
sticks.
What has happened is that
whole facilities have resorted to
the lowest common denomina-
tor. The entire in-facility popula-
tion is being treated like the low-
est-functioning individuals. We
do not need to allow this to con-
tinue. While it may be true that
facilities can not offer individual-
ized care for every resident in
every area of life, it is not too
much to begin to think about
offering several layers of activi-
ties in activities departments.
Along with bingo, crafts,
“name that tune,” and nail pol-
ishing, facilities could organize
activist groups. Why would we
not want our wise elders to be
making contacts with local, state,
and federal officials to raise dis-
cussion about the effects of glob-
al warming; the dumping of plas-
tics in the ocean; toxic emissions;
deforestation; fossil fuel con-
sumption; wind, solar, and
hydrogen power; and peace in
the Middle East?
This population of Americans
has seen more than have the policy
makers who are their juniors. They
have witnessed cataclysmic
change on many frontiers through-
out their lives. They have sound
advice and critical assessments to
offer. We need to ensure that the
key players in worldwide stabiliza-
tion are not locked away behind
soundproof walls, being spoon-fed
pudding with their meds in it. We
must begin to challenge facilities to
make more relevant and interac-
tive programs available.
Part of having a sense of digni-
ty is feeling wanted, valued, and
essential. In a senior-care context,
this could easily be accomplished
by, for example, having four
seniors from a religious commu-
nity (along with four younger
2 Healing Ministry
Volume 14, Number 2, Spring 2007
people) get permission from the
activities director at a nearby
facility to come in once a month
and work on a community ser-
vice project with interested resi-
dents. It would take time to build
consensus in communities and
facilities before we could expect
to see some serious changes, but
there is nothing worthwhile in
life that does not require ongoing
and concerted effort in order to
produce beauty and a bountiful
harvest.
Think of the power we could
amass in movements for social
change. Imagine people who are
hungry to find meaning and
import doing the work that is
most urgent. Imagine people
who were drawn to the antiwar
movement of the 1960s being
given a voice today. “Imagine all
the people living life in peace.” It
is a grand dream and a powerful
vision. If you have seen the
despair in the eyes of the elderly
who are corralled behind walls
and strapped in wheelchairs, you
will recognize the profusion of
potential that is waiting to be
unleashed on the world.
As we all know, a star burns
with intense brightness before it
is extinguished. All of the fuel it
has left is ignited for one final
display as it contracts and then
explodes outward. Those of us
who have worked with the elder-
ly know that this same potential
exists within our wise ones. We
have seen it in the final days of
the lives of the dying. We have
felt it in the final words and
actions of our older citizens. We
must give them space to recon-
cile who they are with who they
have been in days gone by and to
summon a cumulative energy,
and we must support them in
attempts to apply that energy to
greater and more worthy causes.
We must partner with people to
bring about change.
We should be ashamed as a
society for having allowed our
elders to die as diminished
adults, without giving credence
to the impressive people they
have become after living full
lives. We should be horrified at
the realization that we can be
aware of this wholesale human
reductionism and still sleep at
night without some serious night
terrors.
The current state of things is
not acceptable. We have lowered
the standards for what we expect
human life to amount to, and as a
result elderly people have been
forced to exist as less than they
really are. By keeping our stan-
dards low, we erode their hope.
Facilities can not be expected to
implement vast changes of their
own volition and without assis-
tance. Religious communities love
to tout their “ethical positions” on
agenda items that are near and
dear to them. This issue is a pre-
cursor to euthanasia; why can we
not address it as well?
There are cancer patients in
need of knitted hats. There are
babies dying without blankets.
There is plastic being dumped
into the ocean. There are CEOs
comfortable with the massive
amount of pollution being creat-
ed by their corporations. There
are homeless individuals who
have no friends. There are pris-
oners in jail for relatively minor
offenses who get no mail. There
are soldiers with no grandpar-
ents. There are minorities who
have no support. There are
schoolchildren living in fear of
shootings. There are politicians
who have forgotten how to serve.
There are communities using up
their last acres of open, green
space. There are guns being sold
to just about anyone.
The list of areas in which our
wise ones could concertedly apply
force goes on and on. We have
paid a deep price by warehousing
those holding wisdom. The collec-
tive knowledge of the most expe-
rienced individuals on the planet
should not be shut away. We must
give them a voice.
It is for such a time as this that
they have been amassing the wis-
dom of their lives. Let us not miss
the chance to enable them to use
their “hammer of justice,” to ring
their “bell of freedom,” and to
sing their “song about love
between their brothers and their
sisters, all over this land.”