Virgin, Mother, Crone.
These are the three stages of a woman's life. There is also the humorous five stages--
To grow up, fill out, slim down, hold it in, to h*ll with it.
Either way I'm in the last stage. If you look around carefully you may find Crone rites of passage ceremonies. It is a time of celebration once a woman passes Menopause or reaches about 56 years of age. I missed that opportunity. Considering myself to be a crone is a little hard to accept, I think I prefer to see myself as an Elder and hopefully a Wise Woman. In many traditions the Elders in the community are revered as resources of wisdom, traditions and story telling. In my collection of sayings I have many that speak to the realities and hope of reaching old age. I present some of them here.
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Time goes, you say.
Ah no!
Alas, Time stays,
We go!
Austin Dobson, The Paradigm of Time
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Age and Youth belong together
When age is not willing to listen to youth,
it has lost it's right to leadership,
and when youth is not willing to listen to age,
it is not ready for responsibility.
Benjamin Mays
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If you don't run your own life someone else will!
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A Prayer
'May we be motivated by Love.
Inspired by Joy,
Directed by Wisdom, and
Balanced by Peace.
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What greater wisdom can there be than kindness?
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To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart--
and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love.
Karl Viktor von Bonsteller
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We are all born originals--
why is it so many of us die copies?
Edward Young
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Time is the coin of your life.
It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.
Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg
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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
A.C. Carlson
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How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because some day in life you will have been all of these.
George Washington Carver
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Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but
beautiful old people are works of art.
Eleanor Roosevelt
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You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
J. Krishnamurti
