Building on a very successful conference in October 2008 on the theme of Old Age: Wasteland or Harvest Field Faith in Older People responded to requests to enable people from the more remote parts of northern Scotland to participate in discussion and in meeting our aim of working on a wider geographical basis..
Even though we held the conference in May the harvest theme seemed to resonate with our participants! We were delighted to welcome over 50 delegates to the first conference held in Inverness. We had a very pleasant venue, using the Bishops Palace which is part of the Eden Court developments.
Our morning speaker Gaynor Hammond……………… inspired us about the use of memory boxes and the importance of these as part of transitions. She was speaking particularly about movement into residential care but I felt that she could just as well have spoken about any kind of transition. I think we all felt we wanted to create our own memory boxes as part of our life’s journey whatever age or stage we were at.
We divided into group work sessions which covered a variety of topics including the spiritual tasks of ageing, worship and dementia and voicing the spiritual. The expected rain didn’t materialise so that we could get to the different break out venues without getting soaked. Professor John Starr helped us place individual ageing in the context of the wider demography, economic, health and social policy. He gave us a very engaging talk and helped us understand the wider context in which we experience ageing.
The delegates all felt by the finish of the conference that this should be the beginning of something important rather than the end of the conference. We hope that we can build on this feeling and aspiration. During the day we talked a lot about the importance of relationships and how relationships are made and sustained through story telling and listening. It is our relationships with each other that help us understand ourselves and our own ageing. Our gift to each other is to offer ourselves in friendship and to faithfully try to understand and celebrate ageing. We hope that we can take our learning from the conference back into our faith communities and build on a very successful and encouraging day. We will be setting up some further North of Scotland events which will help to do this.
We again appreciate the financial support from ACTS and the Scottish Episcopal Church in Society Committee
