I Am Now Alone

One of the great meanings of being old is we are often left alone.  The crowd at work, the people flowing in and out of our lives minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day have all gone away.  We find ourselves increasingly alone, our minutes, hours, and days filled with just our own company.  What follows is a deep and intimate examination of all things beginning with ourselves but in my case also the natural world and all its makings, rivers, clouds, sunshine, dirt, trees, and all that inhabit my new world.  It is a coming to grasp the vapor of life, its brevity and quick decaying of your body but also the ancientness of the stars, the mountains, the waters.  Alone, standing alone, you must accept the ultimate reality of times passing and the infinitesimally small role you played in it.  You are also aware of the great power of your life to force change in the world and the ultimate loss of that power as you sit quietly alone, old, mostly spent out, used up, exhausted.  It is not a sadness but an awareness of life's great presence for being and a gradual knowing of the profound nature of faith, religious faith, that alone matters in the waning years of your life.  Faith alone can give meaning to your life, can cradle you when your body is rapidly moving back to the cradle of the earth.  Faith alone allows me to transcend the great aloneness of aging, to cast upon my heart meaning, the ecstasy of being alive, of the enormity of knowing what only comes when you sit aged alone, the meaning of your past, the realness of your present, and the great adventures of life to come.  Oh the joy of knowing self old, to have The Spirit prompting your imaginings, to have stored up enough years to think wisely of eternity.  Here at Fair Haven, I have a strong Counselor who speaks to me thus, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him…”.