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Only getting older frees us, despite ourselves, from ourselves. Being older is what gives us the
opportunity to stray as we have never strayed in our lives. We could go to the cabin on Wednesday, for
instance. Well, why not? We could go down to the library and sit in the reading room and read all day.
Well, why not? We could play cards with a sick neighbor today. Well, why not? Why not, in fact, walking
into the mystery of life until we are comfortable enough with mystery to trust it even at the end?

Schedules and deadlines have a place in life, of course. They keep us accountable to society. The
problem starts when they rule our lives, when they obstruct our lives, when they become our lives.

Mystery is what happens to us when we allow life to evolve rather than having to make it happen all the
time. It is the strange knock on the door, the sudden light of an unceremoniously blooming flower, an
afternoon in the yard, a day of riding the midtown bus. Just to see. Just to notice. Just to be there.

There is something holy-making about simply presuming that what happens to us in any given day is sent
to awaken our souls to something new: another smell, a different taste, a moment when we allow
ourselves to lock eyes with a stranger, to smile a bit, to nod our head in greeting. Who knows? Maybe
one of those things will open us to the refreshing memory of pain, a poignant reminder of glory, a
breathless moment of astonishment, a sense of the presence of God in life….

So mystery, the notion that something wonderful can happen at any time if we will only allow space for
it, takes us into a whole new awareness of the immanence of God in time. God comes, we learn now,
when we least expect it. Maybe more likely of all when we least expect it.

For the most part, we have learned to deny the right of the unexpected, the mysterious, to invade our
neatly scheduled lives at all. Too risky that, in a world that lives precariously balanced on tight
schedules and in the light of menacing deadlines.

But oh, in age, mystery comes alive. Nothing is very sure anymore. Everything speaks of maybe and
perhaps, might and possibly. I might still be here. And I might not. Like children we learn to wonder
again. We learn that getting up every day can be fun, can be wonder-full. Something will surely happen.
What can it be?

Then, as the years go by, we learn to trust the goodness of time, the glorious cornucopia of life called
God. And who knows? At the end of life, the mystery waiting for us there, finally visible under the glare
of time, may be more than the soul can hold.

--from The Gift of Aging: Growing Older Gracefully