This is a text-only version of an article first published on Thursday, 23 May 2019. Information shown on this page may no longer be current.
SCOP (Spiritual Care for Older People) is the area of work in Oxford Diocese that is devoted to ageing and faith.
Joanna Collicutt and Victoria Slater talk about the exciting initiatives that are helping people address often taboo issues about growing older, death and dying.
Shutterstock The second half of life can be a time of great spiritual growth.
As folk are freed from the demands of making a career and bringing up a family, find themselves equipped with wisdom gained through life experience, and are faced with the ageing process and the prospect of mortality, they often develop a renewed and urgent interest in questions of meaning and faith. Perhaps the most important of these questions concerns how to live well at the end of life and prepare for death.
This is an area that is receiving increasing attention in secular society as the recent "Kicking the bucket" festival (kickingthebucket. co. uk) in Oxford attests.
Since 2012 this has also been a major aspect of the work of SCOP, and this year has been able to develop it further due to a generous grant from the Henry Smith Charity.
We call our project "Living well in the end times" (LWET).
This may seem rather an odd title because surely the 'end times' are all about what some people call the eschaton - the end of the world?Yet we have chosen this title intentionally to reflect the fact that the Christian faith has a unique approach to this issue. This approach is not a quirky detail of Christianity: it is absolutely central to it.
According to the creeds which we say Sunday by Sunday, we live our lives in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ; we trust his promise that we too are to be raised with him; and we believe that with the resurrection of Jesus a new age has begun. Yet the reality is that, while many of us may say the words of the creeds, our heads don't quite get them, and our hearts may be somewhere else.
It is a desire to link the reality of the Christian resurrection hope with where people actually are in their spiritual journey that lies behind the LWET project.
The project is based on the witness of the New Testament that in the last days of the old age - the end times - older people (such as Simeon and Anna) can take on a visionary role.
As they live in their own "end times" they can better grasp the essentials - the eternal realities, and they stand at a threshold with the opportunity to glimpse what lies beyond. So the project, which involves courses and other events devoted to the practical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of living well at the end of life and preparing for death, is not simply about the delivering care to those - mainly older people - who come along; it is about learning from them.
It is about doing a kind of "grass roots theology" through which we are able to paint a richer picture of the resurrection hope informed by the witness of 'ordinary' people. In this way we as churches may become better at owning the central tenet of our faith.
We may also become better at communicating it in a way that is both true to the gospel and meaningful to the increasing number of people who have little familiarity with or grasp of church dogma. Our project involves supporting and also evaluating church-run LWET events.
Here are some of the stories that have come out of the interviews we have conducted so far:
A safe space to talk about death and dying
A vicar organised a LWET following a discussion with a group of older people in the parish who were talking about the difficulty of discussing death and dying with their families.This prompted her to organise a LWET event.
A participant said: "There's still a huge reluctance by people to talk about death… Although we've discussed a number of these things with our children, they're not too keen on talking about it. " One facilitator was struck by how eager people were to participate in such an event through which he learned about "people's longing to know about it (death and dying) and their willingness to engage with it and not to be afraid of engaging people with it".
The event met people's need to talk openly about these issues and so helped them to prepare for death and dying. Support, empathy and sharingA woman who had been caring for a relative had felt isolated and alone at home and, although she attended church regularly, she had not hitherto had the opportunity to talk with other church members about her concerns.
Through attending the course, it came as "a shock to realise what so many people are going through. " In the safe environment where people could talk together about the issues around death and dying, she realised that "I am not alone with this".
Being able to share experiences transformed relationships, developed intimacy and reduced her sense of isolation.
She reflected: WIt's amazing how supportive people are when you know that they know and they know that you know … There's empathy there. "
Mutual learning
The facilitator of an LWET course found that listening to people's experiences, beliefs and understandings provided her with new ways of thinking about her own experience, theology and practice.Listening to people's stories proved to be a rich source of learning about the lives of parishioners enabling pastoral relationships to be deepened.
"It's what you learn about your own people" and "seeing what a course like this really opens up for people" that was held to be so valuable and enriching.
It was immensely rewarding to find that "People who've been part of the congregation for years and you've never had an opportunity to talk with one to one… come up with extraordinary insights that you're so grateful for. "Building relationshipsOne of the benefits of an event that was held in ecumenical contexts or in multi-parish benefices was the development of the working relationships across individual churches and denominations.
One facilitator spoke of strengthening the relationship with a GP practice after an event where a GP had been a guest speaker, and with Age UK after a representative of the charity had attended an event.
Individuals who were not regular churchgoers also felt able to attend events enabling parishes to strengthen relationships with and serve the needs of the community. Joanna Collicutt is the Diocesan SCOP adviser.
Victoria Slater is the resarcher for the Living Well in the End Times project.