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Becoming a Wisdom Elder: A Teaching on Conscious Aging with Cynthia Bourgeault
August 13 @ 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
What does it mean to age consciously? The 2024 American election season brought this question to the national fore, but the topic is much bigger than one presidential candidate. With 73-million Baby Boomers increasing in years and creating what is being called a “gray tsunami,” what is our cultural roadmap for aging with grace and dignity, while also unlocking a position as a Wisdom Elder? How do we access something, as Cynthia writes: “purer and more primordial than even [our] deepest realization” as we make ourselves “malleable into the hands of the Mercy.”
Expanding on her newly published “10 Practical Guidelines for Conscious Aging,” Cynthia will share with us both the responsibilities and the deep spiritual possibilities coiled within this inescapable process. Drawing on two of her trusted spiritual classics, Helen Luke’s Old Age and Ladislaus Boros’ The Mystery of Death, Cynthia will also pull from her own experience of aging as “what once seemed far off now becomes the intimate landscape of my day-to-day life.”
As Cynthia recently wrote, “within the world’s Wisdom teachings, ‘conscious aging’ is not simply a polite euphemism but an active pathway of spiritual metamorphosis: in a sense, the capstone project of an entire life’s journey.” Join Cynthia as she engages this timely topic which arrived dramatically on our political stage, but continues to unfold each day, with more subtle implications, in our families and homes.
This online event will primarily feature Cynthia’s live presentation with time for community gathering and several grounding Wisdom practices. The event will also include a guest conversation with 90-year-old Wisdom Elder Mahan Siler, a retired Baptist Pastor, social justice activist, and writer whose recent blog invites dialogue around “Positional Power vs Relationship Power.” There will be space for questions and answers with both speakers after the conversation.
Event Details
When: August 13 from 2 – 5 PM ET
Where: Online via Zoom
Cost: Tickets are $30 and can be purchased here.
This event will be recorded and made available to ticketholders within 1-2 week of the event.