Customer Reviews
Keep this one under your pillow 
2008-10-10
This book is a keeper. All my friends love Joan Chittister's intelligence, wit, courage, and style, so we read her books and pass them around. This one will not leave my bedroom. Because each chapter is a nearly self-contained, succinct, fascinating reflection full of surprising insights and good questions about aging, I tuck it under the pillow to read a bit just before I turn out the light. Each little essay is re-readable, and like Shakespeare's plays, keeps giving new insights with each reading. I go happily to sleep pondering something better than my aching bones, so I save on Tylenol. That's the gift of Sister Joan!
The Gifts of Years: Growing Old Gracefully 2008-09-26
I found Joan Chittister's book most helpful and comforting as well as enlighting. I liked the spiritual aspect of her book. I have recommended the book to many people and have made several gifts to people approaching retirement age.
Hugh Maguire
The gift of ideas 
2008-07-15
I'm impressed to learn that this book was written by a 70-year-old Benedictine nun, which gives Gift of Years both strengths and limitations.
The book reads like a series of sermonettes. We get the "what" but not the "how." And I think the author assumes her audience shares her values and opportunities.
She seems to have a solid grip on the spiritual dynamics of growing old. But she writes about areas where her lack of experience seems obvious: dealing with health issues (especially the health care system), finding meaningful work after retirement, and making friends when you don't have time or opportunity to develop a shared history.
Not everyone finds meaning in helping others. Some people are better suited to working and donating to charities rather than taking a hands-on role in the charities. Some people want to relax and be door-greeters at Wal-Mart or (as she suggests) teachers' aides at a local school (not an easy job to get). But a lot of people will find those roles meaninngless, degrading and more stressful than the high-powered jobs they're denied.
A good book if you've got strong spiritual values, a solid support system, most of your health and financial sufficiency. If you're 80 years old and still running marathons between visits to the grandchildren, you'd probably love this book.
Excellent Book 2008-06-19
Joan Chittister has done all of us a wonderful service in writing this book. Since the population has grayed in the last few years, her suggestions about how to bridge the gap in our lives is extraordinary. Thank you Joan for a wonderful work.
Wise and wonderful 2008-06-09
This is a wise and wonderful book. A friend wanted to borrow it when I was finished and I was reluctant to let it out of my hands. I was so glad when another friend gave it to her as a birthday gift. Everyone over 50 should have this one in their permanent collection. I know I will return to it now and then, to drink at the well.
The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully 2008-06-03
Not only accepting but celebrating getting old, this inspirational and illuminating work looks at the many facets of the aging process, from purposes and challenges to struggles and surprises. Central throughout is a call to cherish the blessing of aging as a natural part of life that is active, productive, and deeply rewarding. Perhaps the most important dimension revealed lies in the awareness that there is a purpose to aging and intention built into every stage of life. Chittister reflects on many key issues, including the temptation towards isolation, the need to stay involved, the importance of health and well-being, what happens when old relationships end or shift, the fear of tomorrow, and the mystery of forever. Readers are encouraged to surmount their fears of getting older and find beauty in aging well.
Lessons in How to Live for Any Age! 2008-05-09
When "The Gift of Years" by Joan Chittister made its way to my mailbox for me to review, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Was I really the right person to be reviewing this? After all, I am in my thirties, transitioning from youth to middle age. I'm not quite ready for senior citizen status yet. As it turned out, "The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully" is a wonderful lesson in how to live, regardless of our chronological age.
Chittister, a Benedictine sister, is 70 years old. She suggests that she may actually be too young to write this book because life still has lessons left to offer. She "reserves the right to revise this edition when she is ninety." Chittister views how we life at any age to be a choice. We are each given the gift of today. It is up to us what we do with it. She counters the idea that old age need be a time of isolation and loneliness and uselessness. Rather, it can be a time of great connectedness and joy and purpose. It is a time for looking back, not with the pain of regret for opportunities lost, but with understanding of how the life that has been lived has meaning for who we are right now and what our future holds.
Chittister maintains that senior citizens have so much to offer to the world at large. Their wisdom and their stories and their experience are a great gift. They also have the time to get involved. Without the pressures of a 9-to-5 job or raising a family, they can volunteer more, make more of a difference. They have the chance to do all the things that they always wanted to do that there was never time for before. "Age does not forgive us our responsibility to give the world back to God a bit better than it was because we were here."
Of course, there are special challenges that come with the transition to later adulthood and Chittister does acknowledge that fact. It can be difficult to be older in a world that so values youth. It can be hard to reclaim a sense of self with everything that defined that self is now gone. It can be a struggle to cope with physical ailments and disabilities. As Chittister states, however, "there is no such thing as not coping. . . The only issue is whether we will choose to cope well or poorly." We do have a choice. We can adjust our way of thinking and our way of being or we can give up.
Mostly, though, being older brings freedom. "We are free now to choose the way we live in the world, the way we relate to the world around us, the attitudes we take to life, the meaning we get out of it, the gifts we put into it. And all of them can change." "The Gift of Years" is a gift in itself. It provides the opportunity to reflect on what it means to grow older and provides hope for a time of life that holds great promise.
Rev. Father Greeley calls this "a book only for those of us who grow older every day." 2008-04-22
and the Reverend Father Greeley's astute and prophetically outspoken judgment proves itself still further in his own title A Stupid, Unjust, and Criminal War: Iraq, 2001-2007.
The ever astute and learned and Reverend Father Richard McBrien of Notre Dame University, author of the authoritative and definitive tome Catholicism: New Study Edition--Completely Revised and Updated as well as editor of the sweepingly comprehensive and essential reference work, The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism calls this new book "a series of thought-provoking meditations not just on 'growing older gracefully,' but on the meaning of life itself. ( . . .) rich in wisdom ( . . .) and a carefully cultivated spirituality."
The courageous and prophetic Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty In The United States, who so strongly calls us back from the sin of capital punishment and towards a total pro-life ethic, writes that this book "brims with insight, pluck, verve and courage - and trust ( . . .) and encourages us to discover the deep spiritual meaning that can come with older age."
The Reverend Father Richard Rohr, respected for, among many others, his Why Be Catholic?: Understanding Our Experience and Tradition and Jesus' Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount, writes, "Perhaps you have to be in second half of life to know how truthfully and helpfully Joan Chittister speaks. We live in a first-half-of-life culture, which makes this wisdom all the more necessary - and all the more wonderful."
Those of other callings alongside this Holy Roman Catholic Church also draw gratefully from her deep and wholesome well of wisdom. Seyyed Hossein Nasr of The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam's Mystical Tradition writes, "Through numerous insights, she invites us to realize that old age is not a drawing away from a fulfilling life, but a new life unto itself, a life which if lived well will draw us ever closer to the Source of all life."
And Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkum Magazine, calls this book "an amazing compendium of wisdom not only for people facing aging or providing support, but for everyone who wants to live a spiritually centered and balanced life." Lerner calls Chittister "a jewel whose work as a spiritual progressive addresses people of every faith and none(,) with a depth and brilliance that startles and delights."
In noting this admiration and appreciation by esteemed scholars of the Jewish and Muslim traditions, we who know Sister Joan well remember her as the Christian contributer to the landmark tripartite work The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
The two hundred and twenty five closely printed pages of this spiritual treatise provide a keenly Catholic and Benedictine perspective on our process of living in pilgrimage. In fact her acknowledgment cites several fellow Benedictines who assisted not only with the physical preparation of this thick volume, but also the several readers and consultants who assisted and directed the orthodox development and deepening of its text.
This text is divided into over forty chapters bearing one word titles of different aspects of the spiritual essence of aging, beginning with conquering our Regret. We find similar strengthening chapters confronting the harder side of aging throughout, including facing fear, ageism, sadness, nostalgia and loneliness. We also find comforting chapters opening to our hearts more joyful mysteries of aging including solitude (the sweeter sister of loneliness), joy, meaning, newness, possibility, fulfillment, relationships, dreams, wisdom, forgiveness, outreach, agelessness, productivity, etc., etc., etc.
Thus it is impossible to select here for your careful consideration an adequate sampling of citations from this rich and profound theological work, the theology of aging. Throughout, her work is itself peppered and informed with brilliant citations of great spiritual writers, such as this opening to the chapter on Tale-telling: "'For the unlearned,' the Hasidim say, 'old age is winter; for the learned, it is the season of harvest.' (p. 85)"
Let us therefore learn with this great and sacred and prophetic text to become learned, and wise, and humbled, and to find peace with acceptance and forgiveness. Let us learn here holding closely the wise and gentle and strong, steady, certain hand of Sister Joan to harvest the rich wealth of our aging, and turn our healthy, wholesome crops to the benefit of all those who follow.
An important book for all "of us who grow older every day" to read today, right now and thereby to prepare ourselves in wisdom and truth, in love and in peace, for all that comes forth in our future life.
Please see also by the author such well known works as Mary, wellspring of peace: Contemporary novena for peacemakers : Scripture reflections, In Pursuit of Peace: Praying the Rosary Through the Psalms, and Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today
As for myself, I have already sent my only and early copy to my mother for Mother's Day, and must acquire another, or a few more, for other friends and family who have received or will somehow acquire this great gift of years, as an owner's manual for our lonesome pilgrimage along this long road.
