Catching the threads (or rather catching some personal threads)

Mary Marshall

A personal view

• Who am I?• Language• FiOP

Main Threads

• Creativity• Resilience• Spiritual care

• Love• Optimism• Rhetoric• Tears and stories• Reciprocity• Continuity• Change• Diversity

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

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

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

Love

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?

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

Tears and stories

• Music: e.g. people dancing• Stories of creativity and communication

constantly moving – ‘you have touched the strings of my heart’

• Lament

Reciprocity• Music• Churches gain as much as they give• Animations made by people with dementia

and children in care

Continuity

• Continuity of relationships in families and communities

• Biography and identity

Change

• Life in two halves• Rethinking dementia – e.g. time

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?