You can't tell about a book by its cover

My Congregation uses an electronic bulletin board, as do many, as a means of communications with and among the membership. Yesterday a Sister wrote that she had been told by a friend of a very good book that the Sisters might want to know about: 

A friend "sent a notice of a book she thought might interest us. It is 'Embracing Age: How Catholic Nuns Became Models of Aging Well' by Anna Corwin, published by Rutgers Press.

I felt compelled to respond, in the interests of the passion I have for getting the REAL facts of aging and later life to others, especially my Sisters around the world .What follows is my critique of this book.

I was asked by Rutgers University Press to review the book last Fall, pre-publication, and I was eager to do so as I heard just a few weeks earlier from a colleague that this professor at St. Mary’s in Moraga, CA was doing research related to Sisters and aging. (She writes from her lens and research methods as a linguistic anthropologist.) However, I was greatly disappointed by the book and told the editor I could not recommend it. This is what raises red flags for me about Corwin’s work and what I noted to Corwin’s editor. 

Corwin lived with a community of Franciscan Sisters here in the Midwest (Illinois or Indiana) for quite some time in doing her research with them. Anthropologists study cultures. Her research data comes from that one group, that one culture. However, she draws conclusions about the attitudes of Sisters across the country, lacking any data beyond one Midwestern Congregation. Overreach, clearly. 

My connections with many congregations over the past several years bears out the lack of validity in such sweeping conclusions, reaching far beyond Corwin’s limited scientific investigation. As much as we Sisters are called to be countercultural, we’re not, in many areas. LCWR’s focus on racism and its encouragement that member Congregations delve deeply into this injustice bears that out. The implicit, unconscious bias of ageism in our Western society blinds us to recognizing and thus addressing it. 

She comments on the meaning of the vows, community life, leaving home, etc. and how Sisters feel about this life-event without any real validity or research data. She does try to buttress her conclusions with referenced footnotes, but they are rather generic references and outdated. One of them is a reference to medieval monastic rules. Throughout, there is no sense, much less, any expression of a Vatican II understanding of the vows or of religious life. 

Then there are the young women in Mexico in initial formation that she writes about. She describes them as having being “woke” to a national political awarenesses and a subsequent new sense of “body” which brought them to speak of their vow of Chastity as “Jesus in our Wombs”. No commentary by the author. 

That kinda did it for me! 

We do need to know more about aging. I have come to know that we Sisters/women need TWO talks about the facts of life: the first one that explained the real facts about sex, dispelling crazy teenage myths like,’ you can’t get pregnant if you have sex standing up’. The second talk would be the real facts of aging, dispelling all the negative myths that we have absorbed since we were toddlers. There are much, much better books and other resources out there about the actual process of aging and all its potential. It would be wonderful to see a few of them in our library.

Aging and ________

What word are you inclined to pair with aging?

Some very common pairings may come to mind because we hear them frequently from retreat directors, university professors, noted writers and/or presenters, even consultants to religious communities. The following often-heard pairings come to mind quickly for me:

Aging and diminishment

Aging and loss

Aging and decline

Aging and illness

Aging and poor health

Aging and letting go

Just this morning I read an article by a Sister who stated her age as 57. The thesis of her piece was that as we age, we should acknowledge that we will be moving on from employment to retirement for one reason or another, and that we should do so "with grace".

The author gave several examples of signs that tell her, "I really am getting old." She notes trouble with her knee and hip; a loss in her hearing acuity; her need for trifocals. She ends that listing by noting, "I can still do everything I used to do, but I do notice I'm slowing a bit."

 Ageing is indisputably accompanied by physical decline. However, physical decline does not define us! Our personhood is not circumscribed by our physical decline. Additionally, physical changes are uniquely individual.  As Ashton Applewhite writes in her book, "This Chair Rocks", when you see one 80-year-old, you're seen one 80-year-old.

Our culture has oppressed us with the social construct of equating aging with decline. I would say to this Sister, "With your 57 years of life, 57 years of experience, what do you experience within yourself beyond the physical changes that you note?"  I can imagine Sister could tell me of her long-term, meaningful friendships she has garnered over the years, both inside her community and beyond, and how they have enriched her life. She would acknowledge the deepened skills, insights and nuances of navigating her ministerial role as a high school classroom teacher that only years and experience can provide.  She might be aware that because of her life experiences, she reads a novel, or the newspaper, or a biography with much more insight than she was capable of twenty or thirty years ago.

Gene Cohen, in his book, "The Mature Mind: The Power of the Aging Brain" depends on years of research around aging to reach his conclusion that we must turn our present paradigm of aging on its head! Cohen doesn't just give us a "positive" view of aging, in the sense that what he says is said to make us feel good.  Yes, it does make us feel good. The important factor is that his work and his conclusions are based on data!

Another Sister spoke about aging in my reading this morning. She sees with a different lens, not the social construct of aging and decline.  Sister Mercedes L. Casas Sanchez, FSpS , of Mexico, addressed the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in August and her comments included this:  The nuns (and it applies to every old person) "walk like trees loaded with fruit, bent over with fruitfulness."

 "Bent over with fruitfulness" Ponder that.