The Winter of God

Most men and women, as they come into their forties, simultaneously experience new areas of suffering and a corresponding spiritual development. The spiritual development may be largely unrecognised. But the suffering is page 28 always clearly identifiable.

Whether he is married or unmarried, a man in his forties can easily become depressed because he is for the first time clearly aware that he is growing old. Cold weather affects him more. He takes a special and concerned interest in his bodily processes.

To have an abscessed tooth removed at twenty-two is merely an unpleasant interlude; to have the last jagged tooth removed from one’s lower jaw at forty-two and to fit the alien plastic plate into one’s mouth is a sad reminder that the body has its own built-in obsolescence. But the changes which seem heaviest are generally social and psychological.

I remember, a year or two ago, dancing at a party with a woman less than half my age. She was wearing a maid’s uniform which she had put on to act in a play; and she was undeniably very attractive. Apologising for my indifferent dancing, I said – ‘An old so-and-so like me shouldn’t be dancing with a girl like you.’

‘Why do you think of yourself as old?’ she replied. ‘You’re not old at all.’

My inward response of gratification at this remark was quite out of proportion. I felt a violent surge of gratitude and affection towards the girl concerned. The point was that – whether she knew it or not – she had brought to life again my almost entirely deflated masculine ego. She had given me back my entrance ticket to the demolished world of youth.

My reaction was so intense that, if I had been a fool, I could have imagined myself in love with her. I went for a walk and said my prayers instead. But I can understand only too well how middle-aged men grow silly about girls in their late teens or early twenties. It is not lust. It is a mixture of vast relief and gratitude at being still regarded as men.

Obviously the middle-aged need to be very cautious on account of this. The forties can be particularly hard for women because it is then that their families commonly grow up and leave home and they themselves have to go through the change of life. The change of life like adolescence is a time of spiritual growth and stress. We too commonly regard it as the end of an era and forget that it is also a beginning,

For the first time in our lives perhaps, we are – both men and women, free to offer God our services for whatever purpose He may choose. Some women, approaching the crisis negatively, have the same reactions that I had when I was dancing with the girl. They go off the rails. They become vulnerable to the approach of unprincipled and apparently sympathetic strangers. They rebel violently against what is at least in one aspect the beginning of dying.

But most middle-aged women retain their external moral balance. Their temptation is rather to a chronic despondency mixed with self-pity and irritability. Even when their relatives are considerate and compassionate – which is not always the case – they feel deeply neglected and abandoned. And the resources they summon up may be of the wrong kind.

page 29

It is a sad sight to see a middle-aged woman dyeing her hair and wearing a mini-skirt and borrowing her daughter’s cosmetics to retrieve an appearance of youth which is in fact irretrievable.

I am not suggesting that middle aged women do not have a right to make themselves presentable and attractive in a way that suits their age. It is rather a certain quality of illusion and desperation that makes me sorry on their behalf.

We of the Faith know of course in our heart of hearts that men do not have to turn into stumps of wood and women into faded cushions with approaching age. The remedy is one of spiritual renovation. A man can become compassionate and patient. Then both the old and the young will be glad to be in his company because the strength of God is present in him.

A woman can acquire that contemplative beauty which has no need either of cosmetics or regular features. She can become a fountain of joy and consolation to her husband and her neighbours; and her children will come back to her whenever they can, bring their grandchildren, because she has learnt not to demand but to give from the treasures of God inside herself –

Who walked among the others as they walked,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and in knowledge of eternal dolour
And who made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs . . . .

The woman figure whom T.S. Eliot presents to us in this lines is probably intended to be unmarried and a member of a Religious Order. But she could equally well be married. The point is that she has become a true daughter of Our Lady, with the invincible and healing strength that comes from experiencing without reservation the suffering and the joy of God.

The winter of middle age is sent to us so that we should learn to throw our natural youth as a willing sacrifice on the bonfire and grow young again in God. It is only those who cling desperately to the natural level – to a sexuality that may be inopportune, to material possessions, to social status, to a sense of failure because of unachieved material ambitions – who are forging out for themselves a thoroughly lonely and ice-encrusted old age. God wishes us to learn to suffer joyfully. And perhaps much that looked like suffering will cease to be pain at all.

There was a time when I hoarded the verse I wrote and looked in all the literary periodicals to find out what John Smith or Marmaduke Fitzherbert thought about me and my work. I hope that the time will come when I write the best poem I have ever written. I will write it on a sheet of rough paper, and fold the paper into a boat such as children make, and send the boat sailing down a creek towards the sea. Nobody will read it. And I will forget about it.

It is right and proper to forget such things when Our Lord and Our Lady page 30 stand beside us, waiting to take our ageing hands in their own. The winter of God is sent to us to break our hearts wide open and make them ready for the spring. When we were young we did what we wanted and were bitterly sad; when we are old, let us instead do what God wants us to do. Then we will know the beginning of an inextinguishable joy.

1969 (571)