Sages Book Read, Sept 29, 2026

Insane for the Light: A Spirituality for Our Wisdom Years by Fr. Ronald Rolheiser
7:00 pm, Tuesday, Sept 29 on Zoom

Read a sample of "Insane for the Light: A Spirituality for Our Wisdom Years"

About the book: Each phase of life presents us with its own unique opportunity to connect with God and to bless those around us.

Rolheiser writes in "Insane for the Light: A Spirituality for Our Wisdom Years," 
“Here’s the issue today: We are living longer and healthier late in life. It is common today to retire in our early sixties… So, what is next, given that we probably have twenty or thirty more years of health and energy left? What are these years for? What are we called to now, beyond loving our grandkids?

Later he notes, John of the Cross suggests that as human beings, we pass through three major stages of our lives:

• We struggle to get our lives together.
• We struggle to give our lives away.

Finally, in the last stage of our lives, 

• We struggle to age with grace and give our deaths away as a gift to others.

 
In “Insane for the Light,” Fr. Rolheiser walks readers on a spiritual journey through the elder years and the mellowing of our souls through a series of transitions. During these transitions and changes, significant transformations may occur: from resentment to gratitude, from bitterness to forgiveness, from imagination to faith, from wishful thinking and natural optimism to hope, from sophistication to childlikeness, from control to surrender, from achievement to fruitfulness. and from control to surrender. Readers will begin to see in Jesus a model for a spirituality of holy passivity rather than activity and find in him the courage to overcome the darkest nights of faith.
 
Rolheiser outlines a spirituality capable of giving away one’s death―and by that a spirituality of truly living.