3. Main Threads
• Creativity
• Resilience
• Spiritual care
• Love
• Optimism
• Rhetoric
• Tears and stories
• Reciprocity
• Continuity
• Change
• Diversity
4. Creativity
• Arts are the best way of changing stereotypes: of
‘standing outside the dominant view of ageing’
• A wave of creativity
• We can learn ‘how to’
even if we can no
longer learn facts
• Work as creativity
• Communication
5. Resilience
• ‘Capable of regaining its original shape or
position after bending, stretching or other
deformation
• Recovering easily and quickly from illness,
hardship’
• Retaining zest for life
• Dignified autonomy under pressure in thought
and action
6. Spirituality
• No point in defining spirituality (though many
people had a good try)
• Exemplary figures who embody values you
want to imitate
• Selling it
• Embodied spirituality
8. Optimism
• We have been on an island of optimism
• Just passing references to fear, poor
care, shrinking budgets
• None at all to relationships devoid of
love, people who are and have always been
unpleasant
• Many of us are older people
• Is it because most people here have faith?
9. Rhetoric
• ‘We shall rise before the aged and honour the
face of the elderly’
• Wisdom of older people
• A lot of us here are elderly
• You are all exceptional people
10. Tears and stories
• Music: e.g. people dancing
• Stories of creativity and communication
constantly moving – ‘you have touched the
strings of my heart’
• Lament
14. Diversity
• This is a very Christian gathering
• Does it matter?
• Would other religion’s views on spirituality and
ageing be interesting? Would they be
understandable?
• Is it important to engage
an increasingly secular
society in this issue?
• How?