Spiritual Approach to Healthy Aging

Song, Woo Yong

Abstract

Everyone has his/her own life story on the personal experience. C. Y. Gerkin called the story 'The Living Human Document.' Pastoral counseling is to listen to and to analyze the story, to integrate past experiences with newly-analyzed experiences, and to give the story a new meaning and to make the subject construct a hopeful world. Ultimately, pastoral counseling is to make the subject to live 'a spiritual life,' a life in which the activities of God for human beings are recognized. In general, people are anxious and afraid of 'sin' and 'death,' and the latter becomes serious when they are in their old age, the time when people have to think of their own death instead of others' death. Therefore, it is important in one's old age how one makes use of the remaining time, and whether the last chance could be applied may decide whether one can live 'a spiritual life.' The mention of death for the elderly is not 'the close of life' but 'the completion of life,' and should be considered a course in order to complete 'the remaining time' or 'the remaining life.'