Robert L. Weber, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School and a former Jesuit. Recipient of the American Society on Aging’s 2014 Religion, Spirituality, and Aging Award, he is an advisory board member for the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology’s Center for Psychotherapy and Spirituality. He lives with his wife in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Foreword
Summons to a Leap of Faith
Harry R. Moody, Ph.D.
Acknowledgments
PART I
Calling for a New Vision of Spiritual Aging
Chapter 1
Aging as the Path to Spiritual Maturity
Chapter 2
Our Spiritual Biographies
Contemplative Aging: Living Life to the Full
Robert L. Weber, Ph.D.
On Becoming Fierce with Age
Carol Orsborn, Ph.D.
Chapter 3
The Seeker’s Guide
Navigating the Wild Space beyond Midlife
Part II
25 Questions
A Journey of Spiritual Inquiry
Chapter 4
What Is Spiritual Maturity?
1 What is a psychologically and spiritually healthy vision of aging?
2 How has your spirituality changed and deepened over time?
3 How have your notions of the Divine matured since you were a child?
4 What is the relationship between spirituality and religion?
5 How can you assess your progress toward a more mature spirituality?
Chapter 5
What Is Spiritual Awakening?
6 Why do we want to stay asleep?
7 What wakes you up?
8 Has there been a particular experience that has finally awakened you?
9 What do you think the Sacred wants to awaken you to?
10 Is there a constructive role for regret, shame, and guilt?
Chapter 6
What Is Freedom?
11 What illusions does aging dispel?
12 Which illusions are the most difficult to let go?
13 Is there a positive purpose to keeping some of our illusions?
14 What does it mean to be free in light of the ebbing of physicality and
social connection?
15 What still keeps you at the mercy of particular events, things, and
people?
Chapter 7
How Can We Become More Fully Ourselves?
16 What can you accept about yourself that you previously disowned?
17 What qualities did you neglect in the first half of your life that you
are now free to develop?
18 What do you especially value about yourself?
19 Who has believed in you even when you did not?
20 Do you experience yourself as having intrinsic value in the grand scheme
of the universe?
Chapter 8
What Is the Value of Aging to Society?
21 Can withdrawal from the mainstream, by choice or circumstances, have
value?
22 What is the dynamic tension between accepting marginalization and
fighting against it?
23 Is there a spiritually/psychologically healthy response to those times
when you feel disconnected from the Sacred?
24 What value, if any, do those who have suffered in their aging such
things as cognitive impairment and physical pain hold for us?
25 How can spiritual maturity equip us to face our own unknowns?
Conclusion
From Midlife to Afterlife
Bear Us Away
The Last Question: What’s Next?
Afterword
Extraordinary Moments in Ordinary Time
W. Andrew Achenbaum, Ph.D.
