Good For You: Aging With Humor & Wisdom

Welcome to Stories & Other Things Holy! This episode invites us to laugh, reflect, and find holiness in our shared experience of aging. Terry Nelson-Johnson brings us a hilarious gym story that leads to a powerful reflection on what it means to embrace our limits with grace. With Joshua Minden, they discuss the beauty of getting older, accepting our diminishing abilities, and finding humor in life's inevitable changes.

Join us as we explore:

• The spiritual insights of aging and diminishment
• How humor and laughter can open us to grace
• The cultural obsession with youth and its impact on our souls
• Embracing the mystery of life and death

Remember to sign up for our email newsletter at StoriesandOtherThingsHoly.com for additional reflections and "grace-ercises" to deepen your spiritual practice. If you’d like to support our mission, visit our website’s support page.

Thank you for being here. Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with those you love. Let’s keep the conversation going!

The Essential Rumi, New Expanded Edition (Amazon)

Transcript

Joshua Minden (00:06):

Hey there. Welcome to 'Stories and Other Things Holy.' I'm your host Joshua Minden, and I'm really glad that you've decided to join us today as we dive into some of the various and profound ways that a story can be a conduit for grace, fostering deeper experiences of intimacy, encouraging us to grapple with our humanity, and inviting us to embrace our embodied lives with humility and honesty. You're invited to join us as each week we come together to hear us story from our principal storyteller, Dr. Terry Nelson-Johnson, and explore just a fraction of what the story can reveal to us. Terry and I will engage in a conversation where we grapple with what rises up in us in response to the story and draw out some of its themes. It's our honest hope that these conversations will serve as a jumping-off point or an example for your own reflection and maybe conversations with your friends and loved ones. At the end of our time today, I'll share how you can access additional resources to help with your own reflection and practice. This week Terry shares a story about an experience that, while comical, also invites us to grapple with some of the inevitable realities of our lives and offers a critique of some of the cultural norms of our high-paced performance-driven society. So for now, we encourage you to slow down, take a breath, and join us for 'Stories and Other Things Holy.'

Terry Nelson-Johnson (01:38):

'Stories and Other Things Holy.' I brought my daughter out to work a long time ago, and she was having trouble at home and she's like, in seventh grade, those of you who are still in seventh grade or can access your seventh-grade self, you'll know. So, she was not happy and blah, blah, blah. So I do the work in front of a bunch of people, and then on the way home she's like, Dad. Do you think you're funny? And I'm like, I don't know, Claire, why do you ask? She says, because sometimes you crack yourself up and sometimes you're the only one laughing. And my honest response with that is, I really don't care. I'm going to laugh my way home and I'm going to invite you to join me because I think laughter and weeping without constraint are somehow so central to the realm of the soul.

(02:29):

And so if I have to laugh by myself anyway, the reason I'm laughing is because I think this story cracks me up. Join me if you're so inclined. I go to the gym and work out, and I often see the old guys, you know, the old guys, they got the wristbands and they have the socks, and they got that headband and multiple layers of clothes, and then they get all the stuff set up on the treadmill. They got the water and they got the iPad. It takes a long time to do all the prep?aring. And then they just start that thing going and they hit the incline. They go for about 17 minutes, and I just am delighted in them. And so I often, internally, I don't want to be pejorative, but internally I sort of say to them, good for you. Good for you. What a work out. So anyway, I'm at the gym and I am glancing to my left and I see one of the guys, and I'm going to wait to give him the official Good for you. I got to get set up and I get the iPad and the water and my towel. It takes me a little while, and then I turn to my left prepared to really acknowledge the guy. And I turn, it's a mirror. So I'm saying to myself, good for you. And I'm the old guy. I got the wristband. The headband.

(04:04):

Is it just me that lives in a culture that aggrandizes youth and what youth is supposed to look like and what we're supposed to be like and does anything in its power to seduce us, to avoid diminishment and to hide it, to pretend it's not happening? And there was just something, I don't know, liberating and holy and healing about turning to myself and saying, good for you. Way to get old, way to diminish. So - Stories and Other Things Holy, especially those that crack you up. Crack me up. Amen.

Joshua Minden (04:51):

You do crack yourself up though.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (04:52):

I do.

Joshua Minden (04:53):

All the time. Watching that video before you even hit play, you started chuckling because you knew.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (05:01):

Yeah, I didn't realize it until I saw some of the videos in a row. I'm like, man, you do crack yourself up.

Joshua Minden (05:07):

That's a grace though.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (05:08):

It is. I don't apologize for it. I delighted in it actually. I love that humor oxygenates. And then it's almost like it's a sauna and it opens our pores and then allows things to happen because there's a kind of trust in humor. If it's not cynical humor or humor, it's someone else's expense. It's just that kind of genuine, for me, and, you know, different people think of different things as humorous, but if there's joy in humor, I think it opens us then to have something happen. And so many of these stories for me have that rhythm to it like, ha ha, ha, boom. And in this case it's like, I can't believe I just said good for you to me, and that I'm the old guy and I have everything that I got, the wristbands, et cetera, et cetera. So you're sort of laughing. And then while you're laughing, there's something so deep in that of good for you, getting older, good for you, diminishing, good for you. Hosting the mystery of the incarnation, which has woven into its essence limitation. There's something to be said for health and for sustaining health and for honoring health and for tofu and stuff that having been said, woven into the fabric of our incarnation is limits and diminishment.

Joshua Minden (06:43):

Woven into the fabric of our incarnation.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:47):

Incarnation is diminishment and limitation limits. Yeah. I'm 68 and a half, so my dad died when he was 76. And it's rare that I go a month that somebody says to me, you look just like your dad. I'm built like him. I engage the world like he did, the stuff that got him to 60, 76, and who knows, but the prospect of my living 20 more years I think is, I'd be surprised if I lived that long. So life looks different when you're 68 than when you're 48 than when you're 28. It sort of dawns on you whether you try to outrun it, but body feels different. And I realize I've lived longer than I will live, at the very least

(07:50):

Diminishment. And people say, yeah, I want to die with my boots on. And I think that means I don't want to have to deal with looking at the diminishment. If I'm out there working, if I'm working out and I just have a sudden heart attack or die in my sleep, that'd be great. And I think there's reasons that that's attractive. And... God, my hip aches and I can't do things I used to be. So we say stuff, get an old's a bitch. It sucks. You get old, then you die, whatever. Pay your taxes, get old, you die. It's very cynical. What if it's holy? What if our limitation, what did Rumi say? When has dying hurt me? It's not the right quote, but when have I become less by dying classic roomy? Is it possible that this limitation, that there's wisdom seeded into it, it's very mysterious and especially culturally to suggest that there's something holy about aging diminishing good for you.

Joshua Minden (09:15):

I have to imagine that there was something in that moment where you realized it was you in the mirror that at the same time, and maybe there was just a tiny bit of embarrassment or kind of like a egg on face moment, but I have to imagine somewhere in your 11 stages of grief or whatever it is that those words are that there was some catharsis though, or there was some, once you were able to laugh at it, that I have to imagine that changed something in you. And I go there because I mean, you and I have been walking together for a long time, and I know that when I finally am able to get to the other side of a thing, when I'm able to walk through a door I've been dancing in front of for years and able to get to this side far enough along to laugh, the laughter is the last or one of the last bits of evidence that I've let all the way go. Yes.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (10:26):

Yeah, I think that's true.

Joshua Minden (10:28):

And there's a joyfulness in that.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (10:29):

Yeah. And there's a freedom about this thing. I mean, it's almost, I keep going back to our culture, but in our culture, it is so counter-cultural to host diminishment and not fight it

(10:45):

And

(10:45):

Not say like, well, if you do these four exercises, then you're for sure to be live longer. Look cooler sixties, the new 40 eighties, the new 60, whatever they say. But, you know, and some of folks that were sharing this with know, but not everyone necessarily, but I had had that near death experience and all the words are apropos near death experience.

(11:17):

And

(11:18):

I suspect we'll talk about it more at length at some point. One of the fruits of it for me was having come that close to dying, how clear it is to me that I'm going to die. I mean, theoretically I knew that, but my body knows it in a way that it didn't prior to this experience. And it just lives in me, and I don't feel morbid about it. It's just so clear to me that what almost happened will happen. And one of the ways that's manifested itself in the most interesting, almost organic way is when I look around the world and I see anybody really that's a little bit ahead of me in the realm of diminishment,

(12:11):

I just whisper almost to them out loud. But certainly to me, I just whisper, here I come, I'm coming to join you. Rather than, God forbid, if I ever get like that, shoot me. So when I see someone with a little bit of a limp, I see someone who's getting up from the table takes a little more effort, see somebody who's a little unsteady on their feet, see someone with a cane, see someone all the ways. We're talking about Joe Biden and what's his name? Trump. And they're aging. And that's so prominent like, oh my God. It's almost like when people talk about Joe Biden especially, it's almost like they're disgusted.

(12:57):

He looks like he's 81. That's what he looks like. And now I say, here I come, Joe, you lead the way. I'll be in the wheelchair. I'll be, and there's a part of me that while I'd be relieved if I died suddenly and didn't have to deal with all that, there's another part of me, I don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss. It's a spiritual exercise of very serious proportions, is to host our diminishment into Easter, which is it diminishment or Easter. It's like that's how you get to Easter is hosted and discover the Easter in the diminishment. That's the mystery of this. It's so powerful. And then it just takes courage. This is who I am. I am drooping. I'm slowing, and stay in good shape as best you can, swim aqua exercise, go for it. And this dying is the ultimate educator if we're willing to take the class,

Joshua Minden (14:12):

What's it called in school where you take an advanced course of study? I feel like in a weird way, I've taken an advanced course of study on this road of diminishment because I've not been the healthiest person, and I am not trying to co-opt anything here. And I say this with a fair bit of cautiousness, but sometimes when I hear people describe the experience of body dysmorphia or even gender dysmorphia and other things like that, something about my experience of myself doesn't match, or my internal experience, my external experience don't match. And I feel like I get my version of that, my probably very impoverished version of that. But it's like I have always been a bigger person. I've been bigger than I am, and I've been a little smaller. But now that I'm at 40, gosh, it's weird to say out loud, I've been hedging my bets. It's like I've got more years ahead of me than behind me. And it's like now I'm, I mean, not if I keep this up, not if I keep down this road. And so there's this little bit of, yeah, I climb a flight of stairs and I mean, hell, you climb a flight of stairs a hell, how should I do? I've followed you up a few and no one's ever going to mistake me for an athlete.

(16:12):

And it's been a really sobering realization. I've always known it's a thing I got to do something about. But my point is really about that awareness, that realization of like, oh, I am not there yet. I'm not to the point of here I come, I'm like, I got to pump the brakes on this thing and turn the cart around and

Terry Nelson-Johnson (16:35):

And I think that's partly an age thing. And there's this creative tension between, oh, don't worry about health because we're all meet the demise anyway. It's not that, and it's, selfishly, I want your lifestyle to be such that I get the advantage of your incarnation for as long as possible,

(17:06):

Dito.

(17:06):

And if we die chronologically, I'll go first. So you hang in there, dude, we got a bunch of, we referenced episode 1011 when we're going to get to whatever it was earlier. Oh, Trinity. Yeah, the Trinity. Yeah. You got to live long enough for us to do the Trinity in our 27 minutes here. So you better go get on that exercise bike. Here Here.

(17:33):

It's not a matter of disrespecting the, and honoring the body and health, et cetera. As much as it's humbling to acknowledge, regardless of how we navigate health, we are diminishing. And the ultimate manifestation of that is death. And to be free to contemplate that, a long loving look of that, and it becomes more apparent as you age. So that thus the 68 and 40 thing, there's just something very, very mysterious, 10,000 layer. There's a couple of mysteries that go like, and dine would be one of them that gets you down to that place. And in the African-American community that really refer to funerals as homegoing, I love that. The most common language that we use is they passed away. She passed away. And there's something poverty stricken about that for me, like passed away where So even if you even passed over, passed into,

(18:56):

And the way my language is, the way I think about dying is I gave myself over to the ambiguous certain arms of love. And I just love the language. I love putting ambiguous and certain in creative tension with each other, which is it? It's both baby. The ambiguous certain arms of love. And that we get there as a result of the built-in limitation of these bodies, these hearts, these organs which are going to stop functioning. And at that point then we have the privilege and the terror, the terrible beauty of moving into the next realm, whatever that might be, and however we talk about it. And I am just really struck by the grace that came out of that, my experience of almost dying, and who would've diagrammed that o ut of that comes a kind of peacefulness at looking at those people that are preceding me in the realm of diminishment and saying to them, with a kind of tenderness, here I come. I didn't deserve it. I didn't earn that grace. But there's a deep grace in it. And so the story of way to go, which has so much humorous elements to it for me, has that echoing of something deeper and the deeper the echo of the way to go is here I come.

(20:45):

I dunno, it's like mystery run out of words, but I know that there's something significant, and I know that that story captures a little bit of the spirit of it.

(20:57):

Bless us, Oh Lord,

(20:59):

and these, thy gifts,

(21:03):

Which we have just received

Joshua Minden (21:05):

From my bounty

(21:06):

through Christ our Lord.

(21:07):

Amen. Amen.

(21:14):

I'm so grateful that you joined us today. I invite you to take some time to reflect on your experience of Terry's story. Notice anything that particularly: moved you, surprised you, comforted you, provoked you, shook you up, woke you up, healed you, nourished you, ached you, or reminded you. Each week, we also have a written reflection along with some prayer prompts that we like to call grace-ercises that you can access on our website: StoriesandOtherThingsHoly.com, or by signing up for our email newsletter, we encourage you to not let the conversation stop here, but consider sharing this episode with your friends and loved ones along with your own experience of the story. If you find the work and mission of this podcast meaningful and impactful, I invite you to go to our website: StoriesandOtherThingsHoly.com, and click on our support tab where you can learn about three different ways that you can contribute to the life and mission of this project. We look forward to having you join us. So for now, from both Terry and myself, thank you for joining us and experiencing Stories and Other Things Holy.