Aging as a Spiritual Journey:
Deedy, John
In brief Aging As A Spiritual Journey, by Eugene C. Bianchi. Crossroad, $17.50, 285 pp. It is a common impulse, as Eliot's Prufrock demonstrated, to dodge the great questions of life, and...
...Bianchi's thesis is that in middle life the individual is summoned to a more contemplative mode of being amid the continuing responsibilities of worldly involvements, so that one's aging is transformed "into a temporal and timeless opportunity to enhance the basic worth of the self.'' The approach is Jungian in the psychological sense and Christian in the broad religious sense, with occasional excursions into Judaism and Eastern religions...
...It is a common impulse, as Eliot's Prufrock demonstrated, to dodge the great questions of life, and particularly, as Eugene Bianchi reminds here, questions attached to being old which translates to questions of identity, worth and personhood in elderhood...
...The rest is so difficult as to leave the book market still short of what is needed: a book on aging and spiritual well-being that is neither drivel (most of what's out there) nor so esoteric as to bore the aging and aged right out of their skulls.JOHN DEEDY...
...The professional psychologist might complain that the interviews are narrowly conceived, involving as they do individuals primarily from the academic and religious fields...
...Adding personal, historical dimensions to the book are interviews with 22 men and women, including Msgr...
...John C. Bennett and Sister Mary Luke Tobin...
...Nonetheless, the interviews are the most interesting parts of the book...
...John Tracy Ellis, Dr...
Vol. 110 • October 1983 • No. 18
