A word from the guest editor: A special issue on soulful aging

Abstract

I led symposia on spirituality and aging last summer at Houston’s Hope and Healing Center and Institute (HHCI), where health professionals deliver mental-health lectures and psycho-social outreach to older persons. Unlike most of the scientific research on late-life wisdom and ripening, I wanted to encourage participants to catch gut feelings that integrated mindfulness, animated heartfelt emotions, and stirred contemplative action in the here and now. Gerontologists, I knew, blazed scientific paths by generating evidence-based reports in the context of positive and productive aging, and/or healthful, successful Saging. As I engaged with HHCI program directors and various audiences of older individuals, however, I discerned that many insights and shadows ascribed to conscious and spiritual aging spiraled into a third component of individuation: with advancing years arose an uncharted, albeit growing and deepening sense of soulful aging along with increasing frailty and intimations of finitude. I wondered whether mapping out the borders and boundaries of “soulful aging” merited further reflections – but not mine alone. Investigating the topic required collaborative assessments by peers willing to risk expressing conscious, inward reflections. I proposed to Jim Ellor, the general editor of the Journal of Religion, Spirituality, and Aging, that we design a special issue on the topic. Three colleagues – Tom Cole, Heike Hartung, and Roberta Maierhofer – helped generate a list of three dozen possible contributors. What follows in this special issue is the first wave of responses.