The
Aging Spirit
Sue
Bender's Stretching
Lessons Extends Spiritual Reach
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By
Beth Witrogen McLeod
The first thing I felt
around best-selling author Sue Bender is the same thing I noticed about her
home in the hills overlooking Berkeley: the spaciousness. In her presence, in
her home, there is room to grow.
Spiritual
growth is the theme of Bender's trilogy of books. Her highly acclaimed Plain
and Simple and Everyday Sacred registered combined sales
of almost 450,000 copies. The third book in the series, Stretching Lessons:
The Daring That Starts From Within, was issued recently (all
three are published by Harper SanFrancisco). The theme that resonates throughout
these highly personal works is how people sell themselves short without realizing
it, and how, with practice, each of us can learn to remove self-imposed limits
and live full, rich lives.
VULNERABILITY
Now 67, Bender is vibrant
and involved with life. Lanky and gracious, with fierce eyes and a calm demeanor,
she is pursuing a quest that began more than 20 years ago to find fulfillment
first in community and, more recently, in one's relationship to body and self.
Stretching Lessons is a metaphor based on her efforts to stretch
herself physically and deal with injuries. The book is a first-person journey
developed through conversations and observations. Through exposing her vulnerability,
Bender connects readers to their humanity. She challenges readers to allow their
spirits to grow into their biggest, most original selves--a practice that bears
the ripest fruit with advancing age.
In this book, "stretching"
becomes an examination of the unconscious. Often insidiously, Bender says, we
prevent ourselves from living larger lives. People constrain themselves for
reasons ranging from self-judgment to fear of not fitting in. She said that
the inspiration for the book came from the words of a little boy replying to
a remark about how big he was getting: "Oh, I'm bigger than that."
Bender regards herself
as a master struggler who works with great effort to balance her desire to become
a better person in the world with a yearning to let go and find peace within.
This process starts, she said, with trust that "spirit work is messy." It continues
as people learn to trust what they know--that something will be called forth
when they are present within themselves, not blocked by thoughts of the past
or expectations for the future.
As we spoke at Bender's
airy home, she explained that her quest arises from the questions: "How do we
put our spirit into form? How do we give of ourselves to allow life to unfold
on its own, to be present and to hear the soft whispers from within?" This is
the call at midlife, she suggested: to risk what has gone before so that we
may honor the heart's desire by pursuing it mindfully. This risk also invokes
the "daring" from the title of her book: to learn what limits we have agreed
to impose on our lives and to challenge them in order to nurture our gifts for
the world.
THE BOWL
Bender, who was schooled
as a therapist, infuses her thoughts with much gentle, often humorous analysis
of her feelings and state of being. Her insights are never dogmatic; they are
presented as if in a bowl for the reader to consider like an assortment of fruit
offered for the sharing. The bowl is the signature piece of her life--in the
past 20 years she has become an avid and successful potter. Her works are never
"perfect"; rather, her mostly oddly shaped bowls and cups, in a black-and-white
check motif, suggest that beauty lies in the process itself. She believes that
the beauty in their irregularity belies our cultural ideal of perfection and
control, revealing those concepts as part of what limits full self- expression.
All forms contain spirit and need not be polished or ostentatious to have full
value, Bender believes.
Bender also implies through
her skillful art--she draws now, too, exploring a recently discovered talent--that
dedicated practice is necessary to bring one's gifts forward. She said she has
learned that it takes a revolution of both heart and mind to move past comfortable
patterns of thinking and believing. To be willing to change, to be willing to
have a new life, may be the spirit's most daring challenge.
One fixed belief she challenges
is that aging is a time of decline and powerlessness. Bender's message is particularly
appealing to those wary of American society's adherence to the medical model,
which dictates that one cannot be good enough, strong enough or healthy enough
without a pill or a cure. For quite a while she suffered from a hip injury that
resulted in a limp. All she wanted initially was to get rid of her disability
and not feel herself a burden to others. Yet, with determination to change her
typical reactions to stress, Bender decided to "take pride in my limp; I became
a limping warrior. I discovered I can be both vulnerable and safe in the body.
I suspended wanting to get rid of the limp and just decided to be with it."
By softening into her pain and pausing to listen to her body, she began to heal.
Bender then realized what would become a major theme of Stretching Lessons:
"If you accept that the body has its own rhythms, it is a powerful teacher and
healer."
MIDLIFE
IS PRIME TIME
Midlife and the years beyond
are prime time to develop a program "to not become smaller with age," Bender
said. "We can grow new habits at any age. We can develop new channels, new resources.
We don't have to live in only one groove. That is what makes you old."
Not being self-accepting
also makes a person old, Bender said. "Some people are never going to see us,"
she observed. "That doesn't mean we're not there. Seeing yourself is what matters."
The lessons of risk-taking are what she calls "spirit seedlings" that spread
our larger selves tree by tree. "As we allow for new possibilities, as we move
more easily with life, we take more care of ourselves," Bender said. "This is
the risk: to be able to give to ourselves as a spiritual practice. If we are
open to the unexpected, we find spirit in everything. So do what you do with
care--and stay present. That's what makes life rich. Then we have the space
to become who we are. Then we can grow into ourselves. We all share the same
quest: to be our best selves and make a difference for others."
Beth Witrogen McLeod
is a journalist, author and speaker on spirituality, health and aging. Her book
Caregiving: The Spiritual Journey of Love, Loss and Renewal (New York
City: John Wiley and Sons, 1999) is now available in paperback.
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