Contributed by Mahan Siler, a 90 year old Wisdom student and Elder.
What I learned with Bill Finlator.
Bill, perhaps known by the elderly among us, was in that circle of prophetic Baptist voices including Carlyle Marney, Will Campbell, Pitts Hughes, Foy Valentine, Anne Neil and Henlee Barnette who inspired my generation of proclaimers.
Bill, the retired pastor of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina and I, the new pastor of this congregation, met for lunch in August, 1983. It was my first day on the job. I began the discussion that occurs in most transitions between former and current pastors: “Bill, you have been pastor of Pullen for 26 years. There will be times when grieving members will want you to assist in funerals. I hope you will be open to joining me in . . . .” Bill interrupts me, mid sentence. “Mahan, you will do me a favor never to ask me to do one thing for Pullen.” Then he added, “I will be your friend but I mean it, don’t ask me to do anything for Pullen.” Still in shock I said something like, “Bill, this is hard for me to hear. When requests come I will ‘knock on the door.’ I will honor your choice to open or not open that door.”
Bill was true to his pledge. We did become close friends. Every month or so we enjoyed a meal together. It’s remarkable that he was able to differentiate our relationship from his fractured relationship with Pullen. His pain from this fracture persisted. Ten years passed before he would agree to preach in a worship service. That sermon was a first step toward healing this deep wound. Once healed, Bill and his wife, Mary Lib, became enthusiastic supporters of the church. Their funeral services were held at Pullen.
Fast forward with me, fifteen years later, to another lunch conversation. I had just announced my retirement four months in advance. Bill said, “Mahan, I wish I had done it your way. I was just too stubborn. When people raised the question of my retirement, I dug in, saying ‘this is none of your business.’” [Bill, once retired, was surprised by the new ways he could continue to embody his passion for justice.]
“Bill,” I responded, “there is one difference in our careers. During all your adult years you have filled this pastoral role. I’m guessing that when you retired you assumed that your vocation and thereby your influence was finished. If so, your resistance makes perfect sense. In contrast, I have been in and out of this role of pastoral leadership. I know there is purposeful life outside of this identity.”
As I write these words I have been retired from Pullen leadership for twenty-six years. I reflect often on my learning with Bill. I watch others reach that watershed moment of retiring from their familiar vocational role who wonder — “Who am I now? What is mine to do, to offer? Assuming we live in and from stories, what story or narrative will now grant me identity and purpose?”
From my experience with aging, beginning with Bill Finlator, this is a frame I offer: in retirement we move from positional power to relational power.
The role of pastor, as true for all other vocational roles, is a position or post that grants identity. It contains authority that opens doors of influence. This role is a platform on which to stand and from which to contribute.
at a 2024 Pride demonstration.
We need not, indeed we do not, retire from a vocational post and fall into a vacuum. We fall into a net of relationships long formed over many years, including family, friends, former colleagues/ students, neighbors. These spheres of influence remain, even expand. All these relationships have this in common: your former vocational identity is unplugged — yes, remembered — but no longer activated.
Within this new frame of relational power I offer for consideration this further identity: what if you are an elder? If narratives define us, define our community, define our purpose then what story of aging will you be living?
Take note that our cultural stories of post-retirement aging are anemic: “You have been a thoroughbred, performed well, now it’s time we put you ‘out to pasture;’” or “You’ve worked hard, now it’s time to play hard;” or some decide, “I’ll work until I drop.”
What if we reclaim and recreate for our time the role of elder, an identity more clearly defined in indigenous cultures? Its lack of clarity may be an advantage.
We can experiment with the role, play with it, explore what this identity might be in our time.
I am in a circle of elders that meets weekly. Intentionally we live the question: What if we are elders? When do we experience ourselves as elders? Where are “elder sightings” that offer examples of what eldering looks like? These “sightings” inevitably reveal the power to bless, the power of provocative questions, the power of introduction, and the power of the longview, both past and future.
These are public examples.
Nancy Pelosi. Setting aside our political assessment of her leadership, note her action. As former Speaker of the House and current leader of the Democratic caucus she stepped down, retiring from her positional power yet remaining as member of the House. Most members of the Senate upon retirement return home and I suspect with the conclusion my significance has retired as well. In contrast, Pelosi remained to support the new Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, making available to him her wealth of experience, that is, her relational power. In my words, she has embraced the role of an elder.
Jimmy Carter. When he left his positional power as President in 1981 Carter, along with his wife, Rosalyn, stewarded their relational power in multiple ways including the Carter Center, settling international disputes, voting rights advocacy, one of The Elders formed by Nelson Mandela in 2007 and author or co-author of over twenty books.
At this writing, 7/20/24, President Joe Biden is deciding whether or not to drop out of his current Presidential campaign for reelection in 17 weeks. I am viewing his decision through the lens of positional power. Is he, like Bill Finlator, assuming that once out of the role of positional power his power would virtually cease? Or, is he aware that what awaits him, now or later, is his boundless relational, eldering power made available to younger, emerging leaders?
I am advocating a re-frame of that moment of retiring from a recognized role of positional power. I see it as the ending of one form of agency and the beginning of another source of influence that I am naming relational power. Within that frame is the call for elders.
their 66th wedding anniversary
in May 2024.
Mahan Siler is a longtime Wisdom student of Cynthia Bourgeault and attended several Wisdom Schools at Valle Crucis In Boone, NC. He is a retired Baptist Pastor, social justice activist, mentor to many, and currently applies his systems awareness lens as an Elder. As Cynthia was reflecting on Conscious Aging in her latest blog, she invited Mahan to share his recent writing on eldering.