Initiated Fall/Spring 2005-06
The current LEAD initiative is the Journey of Life Walk Way – an eight foot wide sidewalk connecting Hesston College and Schowalter Villa. Within the Walk Way are the seasons of life. The basic ideas for this walk way are taken from the work of two leading scholars in the field of aging--Harry R. Moody and Thomas Cole.
Harry R. Moody is director of academic affairs for AARP in Washington, D.C. His texts, articles, and online newsletters emphasize the critical nature of the stages of life and the soul. Moody's work is especially significant because it provides insight into today’s revolutionary demographics of age and the multi-faceted, complex ethical issues with which we live. As the baby boomers age, these issues will be filled with profound promise and hope. Difficult social and complex personal choices and ethical dilemmas will accompany the promise and hope of these changing times. Part of the Journey of Life Walk Way is intended to provide instruction in terms of what Moody is calling us to hear about the critical nature of late life today and over the next several decades.
Thomas Cole is professor and director of the McGovern Center for Health, Humanities, and the Human Spirit at the University of Texas Health Science Center (Houston). In his text, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America (1993), Cole writes that until the last century or two, the western world relied on two basic concepts to represent the wholeness of life – the journey of life and the stages or seasons of life. He suggests that the power of these images help us understand the mystery of our human temporality – our finite nature. The journey of life and the seasons of life help to present a unified whole of our constantly shifting, often fragmented world. The spiritual aspects of the journey of life and its seasons are largely connected today. The Journey of Life Walk Way is an attempt to recapture and make a living statement of the spiritual aspects of these ancient concepts.
A well known example of the stages of life appears in Act II, scene 7 of Shakespeare’s As You Like It
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
His acts being seven ages.
But one’s life is more than this individual process. It is also “a maze of the inner life” represented in drama, art, folk tales, and religious teachings in the form of the journey of life. This is one of the predominant themes is world literature. Journey-based literature is filled with heroes who start out in a secure setting, have profound adventures, and ultimately reach or fail to reach a safe place. Examples are seen in the stories of Job and Gilgameth. These journeys may be circular seen in the redemption of the hero or a linear progression of moving from disorder to order. The Christian tradition offers us the idea in Hebrews 11:13 that we are “pilgrims and strangers” searching for God.
While the seasons or stages of life and the journey of life themes provide useful images regarding the individual’s unique experience, they neglect the insight of the other. Cole emphasizes that the stages motif focuses on the biological and social structural aspects of one's reality. The journey theme includes more of the fluid, spiritual experiences each person faces. Cole writes,
A deeper understanding of human ‘life time’ requires some imaginative fusion of the two themes, in which neither is reduced to the other and both together create a whole greater than the sum of their parts” (xxxiii).
This imaginative fusion is the goal of the Journey of Life Walk Way: The Seasons of Life. While stages of life is most typically used in developmental psychology and related fields, the term seasons is used here instead of stages because the idea of seasons is more in touch with the larger cycle of nature. We see this in the thought of many Native Americans who describe the life stages in terms of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
Map of the Journey of Life walkway
The Journey of Life walkway signs--2, 3, 4, 5, 6
