A Secret Voice

Aging as a Spiritual Journey was my first major foray into the challenges and promise of growing older. I got into this study more than thirty years ago, and on returning to Emory University I started a graduate seminar on Jung and religion as well as an undergraduate course on death and dying. From such experiences, it seemed natural to back up into a study of aging, which for most of us opens the door to our own mortality. You can read more about all my books by clicking on the titles to the right.

That particular book examines both midlife and elderhood in terms of difficult challenges and positive options. It explores this in both personal and social ways, and I tried to let the subject develop from many-faceted angles. As I listen to these voices thirty years later, they continue to instruct and move me. I realize that those interviewed spoke from their hearts in ways that could still reach other hearts today. My book Interbeing contains a section of poems to my younger brother, George, who died in 2019, and now that I myself am in my tenth decade these poems take on a special resonance. Best, Gene

A Secret Voice

Today I spoke with my only brother,
who struggles with cancer in his hospice at home.

George’s voice was strained in ultimate fatigue,
but truer than our easier talk.

Less than a dozen words about his tiredness,
and a mumbled question: “how are you?”

So sparse all this, yet memorable
as the evening owl calling from the Oconee.

No time left for clever talk.
Death approaches the doorbell.

In Amherst he came for Emily with horse and carriage,
more elegant than a white ambulance.

When time is very short, a few words match
a bible condensed into wrestled breaths.

Now we enter all that has been and will be.
Our mother Katie takes our hands,

“Don’t get nervous, my dears.”
Her last words.