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Foreword

Fire in the Soul: A Prayer Book for the Later Years arrived on my desk for review at a time when I was experiencing a particularly severe “dark night of the soul”regarding my own aging and the aging of society in general. My struggle for faith in the context of physical decline had come to a peak very suddenly. Within the course of the previous week two older women friends had died lonely and emotionally unresolved deaths. In addition, three of my aged patients—all without advance directives—had been placed in long-term care facilities, to be kept barely alive on life-support technology. Just one—the only “success”of the week—made it into a hospice program. I was feeling like a total failure as a health-care provider and as a friend. In addition, I was struggling with my own aging, asking myself, “How will I end up—a childless woman with no living relatives and a husband whose own father died suddenly at forty-four? Who will take care of me if Ron dies before I do?”The darkest realization was that if I survive my husband there is no one who is required to bury me! These were heavy ruminations, very unlike my usual optimism about life in the later— and frailer—years.

The following afternoon Ron and I went to the funeral home to attend the wake of one of the women. To my great grief we were the only mourners present. I was devastated that a life could come to such a level of disconnection from the human community. I wondered darkly if anyone would bother coming to the funeral home to visit me when I die. The question haunted me throughout the rest of the day and into the evening. My sleep was fitful and ended at 3:00 a.m. Unable to sleep or even relax, I told myself, “You might as well get up and do something useful. Read Dick Morgan’s book and start writing the foreword for it.”What an incredible blessing this middle-of-the-night decision was. (Perhaps my faithful old guardian angel, Paula, nudged me out of my disturbing thoughts to provide me with the solace of this prayer book.) It is just what I—at fifty-two—needed. And it will continue to be just what I need if I make it to one hundred two!

Fire in the Soul is based on Richard Morgan’s belief that “In a person’s later years, the life of prayer is not a luxury; it is an imperative priority . . . the one thing necessary,”a belief affirmed by his own experience of having lived seventy years. His reflection on his own and others’ aging process is the source of his strong conviction that we face seven major developmental tasks as we progress from being “young old”to “mature old”to the “oldest old.”These tasks range from discovering God’s call at retirement, to redeeming our suffering during times of frailty and pain, to finally facing our losses and the nearness of death. The honest and potent prayers—his own and others—“fit”each of these tasks to perfection.

Fire in the Soul promises to help any reader reflect on personal aging as well as the aging of loved ones, clients, patients, parishioners, and the aging of our global society. It is not necessary that the reader be experiencing a particular stage of development to appreciate the prayers in all of the stages. For me on that dark night, reading the entire book from cover to cover was what I needed for my own spiritual nurture. Each and every prayer offered me a new and different glimmer of hope for my own aging—and for the aging of those in my care. I am firmly convinced that it is only when we who provide service to the elderly honestly encounter our own fears of aging that we can face those in the young-old, mature-old, and oldest-old categories with a new-found understanding of the meaning of late life.

For the older adult, each prayer corresponds to a real-life spiritual need. There is no whitewashing of the challenging nature of spiritual tasks of later life in this work; Richard Morgan “tells it as it is”through his honesty with God in these prayers. He deals directly with the need to let go of grudges to the need to deal with the fact that one did not live up to his or her life potential. As he does in With Faces to the Evening Sun, his wonderful, life-giving book of poignant faith stories in the nursing home, Richard Morgan presents practical scenarios and offers simple but profound lessons. I especially appreciate the honesty with which he presents his own struggles.

Fire in the Soul is a sourcebook of prayers and reflection for a variety of occasions and for many different kinds of users: older adults themselves, those ministering to older adults, and those just beginning to grapple with the reality of aging—all of us who desire to become emblazoned with the fire of God’s blessing of one hundred twenty years.

Jane Marie Thibault, Ph.D.

Clinical Gerontologist

Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine

School of Medicine, University of Louisville (Kentucky)