By Lisa Deam, Ph.D.

Dedicated to Polaris, “a rapidly aging giant star”*

The other day, I played a little game with my husband. I asked him, “What do you think? Could I pass for forty?”

He looked at me. Squinted a little. “Yes,” he said, and I think he was telling the truth.

“What about thirty-eight?” I pressed.

“Sure,” he said.

I should have left it there, but something made me continue. “Thirty-five?”

At that point he began to look skeptical.

This game with my husband was affectionate; we laughed and teased. But behind it lies a serious hang-up. The fact is, I play this age game all the time. I don’t always play it overtly, but I do it in my mind. Because I have small children, I reason, that surely makes me seem younger to people I meet. Because I choose my best photo for my social media avatar, maybe I seem more youthful online.

When I play this game, I’m not just holding on to youthful beauty. I also want to be relevant. Vibrant. Involved. I want to have something to offer. So I try to convince myself (and others) that I can pass for a woman who is younger than she is.

The word “pass” is telling. It turns my little game into a test. Will I fail the test and be cast aside by a society that values freshness and youth in all areas of life? Or will I pass the exam? Will I pass with flying colors . . . or just barely squeak by?

Recently I’ve been reframing these questions by studying the work of someone much, much older than I. My love of history led me to the work of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a German Benedictine abbess and mystic. For those of us who are aging, Hildegard’s life is a goldmine of encouragement. Hildegard herself didn’t begin writing her visionary theological treatise, the Scivias, until she was 43. And she continued writing, founding convents, and teaching into her 70s (that’s admirable today and pretty amazing for someone in the Middle Ages).

Hildegard writes with a vitality that reminds me that age doesn’t matter when living an evergreen life. In her treatise and letters, she uses vivid imagery to admonish, encourage, and exhort. I particularly like the way that she describes life and people in cosmic terms. In a letter to an abbess friend, Hildegard writes:

For God made humanity like the firmament which bears the sun, moon and stars to shine their light on the whole of creation and to show the times and the seasons. But if they were all obscured by black clouds then creation would be afraid that its end was coming. 

In this passage, Hildegard says that humanity is made to give out light like celestial bodies. We’re supposed to shine. To sparkle. To illuminate the darkness and show one another the way forward.

Shining our light is a familiar concept to Christians, of course. We read about it in Scripture; we write songs about it and teach it to our children. But Hildegard’s letter made me think about light in a different way. The sun, moon, and stars, she says, speak to us of the seasons. One of Hildegard’s recent interpreters believes that this passage is referring to the seasons of life. In the letter, Hildegard is urging her abbess friend to step into her authority; to take charge; to let shine the light of her wisdom and reason. In other words, we not only shine like a star; we shine brighter with increasing maturity.

Think, for example, about the stars that Hildegard mentions. The light from the North Star, which guides us in the dark of night, is over four hundred years old when it reaches Earth. The light from more distant stars might travel thousands of years before we see it. The stars are beyond mature. They’re downright old. Wizened. Perhaps even hoary. Yet we sing songs to them. We let them guide us. They illuminate our darkness. If they weren’t there, we’d be worried that the end had come.

I’ve been inviting Hildegard and her stars to help me as I wrestle with my hang-up. When I meet people for the first time, I still wonder how old they think I am. I still ask myself, Can I pass the test? But I’m trying to reframe this question so that I can ask some better ones: how much light am I giving out? What black clouds can I, through my increasing maturity, disperse for the benefit of those who need their path illumined?

My reframing efforts are slow going. The way forward is steep. The journey to accepting my age might, in fact, take as long as it does a star’s light to reach our skies.

In the meantime, I’ll keep wrestling and praying. May I seek to mimic not the youth of a starlet but the light of a full-grown star. May I not pass for forty but instead pass on the wisdom that only maturity can bring.

Shine on.

Notes

* “North Star’s Distance To Earth: Polaris Is Not So Close After All, New Study Suggests,” HuffPostScience 1/20/13

** Hildegard of Bingen, Selected Writings, trans. Mark Atherton (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 84