"In a spiritually sensitive culture, then, it might well be that age is something to be admired or envied"
About this Quote
Age gets treated like a technical problem: a thing to delay, disguise, or apologize for. Rowan Williams flips the premise with a calm, almost disarming conditional: "In a spiritually sensitive culture". The phrase is doing the heavy lifting. He is not describing the world as it is; he is sketching a diagnostic ideal, then letting our current anxieties about aging indict themselves.
The intent is pastoral but also quietly polemical. Williams suggests that what we celebrate reveals what we worship. If a culture is spiritually attuned, it reads a long life not as diminished desirability but as accumulated perception: someone who has borne time, loss, ordinary routine, and still has interior resources. Admiration and envy are provocative choices because they’re affective, not dutiful. He’s not asking for polite "respect your elders" moralism; he’s pointing to a society where people genuinely want what the old have.
Subtext: our contempt for aging is a theological tell. It implies we prize the self as a project of control, beauty, and productivity, not as a creature shaped by dependence and grace. "Sensitive" hints at practices that train attention - prayer, patience, confession, listening - disciplines that make you less impressed by novelty and more alert to depth. In that light, wrinkles become legible as biography rather than failure.
Context matters: Williams writes as an Anglican theologian formed by communities where time is measured in liturgical seasons, not quarterly results. His line nudges a modern audience toward an uncomfortable question: if age isn’t admirable here, what does that say about what we think a human life is for?
The intent is pastoral but also quietly polemical. Williams suggests that what we celebrate reveals what we worship. If a culture is spiritually attuned, it reads a long life not as diminished desirability but as accumulated perception: someone who has borne time, loss, ordinary routine, and still has interior resources. Admiration and envy are provocative choices because they’re affective, not dutiful. He’s not asking for polite "respect your elders" moralism; he’s pointing to a society where people genuinely want what the old have.
Subtext: our contempt for aging is a theological tell. It implies we prize the self as a project of control, beauty, and productivity, not as a creature shaped by dependence and grace. "Sensitive" hints at practices that train attention - prayer, patience, confession, listening - disciplines that make you less impressed by novelty and more alert to depth. In that light, wrinkles become legible as biography rather than failure.
Context matters: Williams writes as an Anglican theologian formed by communities where time is measured in liturgical seasons, not quarterly results. His line nudges a modern audience toward an uncomfortable question: if age isn’t admirable here, what does that say about what we think a human life is for?
Quote Details
| Topic | Aging |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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