Robert Louis Weber #111

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver

Robert L. Weber, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, and Carol Orsborn, founder and editor of the website Fierce With Age: The Digest of Boomer Wisdom, Inspiration, and Spirituality, believe that aging can be a meaningful and rich path to mature spirituality.

Synchronicity brought these two authors together at a meeting of the American Society on Aging. They quickly recognized that they were on parallel journeys, seeking meaning in the second half of their lives. Drawing on both introspection and their conversations with peers, they began turning insight into practical guidance.

The result is this book in which they make the case that, as boomers begin to age, society has begun focusing on anti-aging, diverting attention from the benefits older people can derive from facing the reality of aging and the shadow side that surfaces with that reality.

The two authors come from Catholic Jesuit and Jewish backgrounds respectively but have written this cogent and illuminating paperback for a new generation of seekers, or those whom we call spiritually independent individuals. We were quite impressed with the book's foundation of 25 questions, the Twelve Exercises for Seekers and the extensive list of resources for Recommended Reading.
Links and Topics From This Episode With Robert Louis Weber

* The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker's Guide to Growing Older
* The founder of the Jesuits- Ignatius of Loyola
* The wounded grail king myth- The Fisher King
* Joseph Campbell on the hero's journey