When I first picked up Stephen Jenkinson’s Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble, I wasn’t looking for a “how-to” on getting older. I was listening for language that could name what I feel in my bones: that elderhood is a practice, a responsibility, and—when tended well—a gift to the village. Jenkinson doesn’t flatter us with cosy nostalgia; he asks us to shoulder what’s ours, now. He names the paradox of our times: we are “awash in the aged” and somehow short on elders.
What struck me most is his insistence that elderhood is a function, not a status. You don’t age into elderhood like a loyalty tier; you apprentice yourself to it. To be an elder is to be useful to the dilemmas of your day, not merely revered for surviving them. That distinction is both bracing and liberating, especially for those of us crossing thresholds and willing to serve on the other side.
Jenkinson’s case unfolds less like a manual and more like a wake-up call. He suggests that a culture fixated on youthfulness—on improvement, optimisation, and endless growth—quietly unthreads the conditions that grow elders. In such a climate, age too often becomes either invisible or idolised, rather than answerable to the times. Elderhood isn’t an honour we bestow on ourselves; it’s a burden we agree to carry on behalf of the community.
There’s a line of his I keep returning to: the elder’s work is shaped by what prevails and what ails a people at a given time. In other words, the job description changes with the weather of the world. Right now that weather is turbulent—ecologically, socially, spiritually—and the elder’s brief is to help us meet it with steadiness, grief-literacy, and ground.
He also names something tender: rites of passage aren’t decorative add-ons. They are how a culture teaches people to carry change with integrity. Without them, we drift; with them, we consent to be shaped. This is where my own passion intertwines with his.
At Earth Lodge, our Elder Honouring Rite of Passage at age sixty is not about being crowned “wise” in a flower crown and sent off to tell stories (though I do love a good story). It’s about consent—consenting to be seen in the truth of one’s years, and consenting to be answerable for the medicine those years have ripened in us.
The 60th Rite of Passage marks a pivot from primarily seeking to primarily serving. You don’t graduate out of feeling, out of learning, or out of messy humanity. But you do accept a deeper obligation to the village: to sponsor younger ones through threshold crossings; to keep faith with grief and beauty; to be unhurried when everything else wants to rush.
That sense of obligation is the drum Jenkinson beats throughout Come of Age, and it also resounds throughout our annual Rites of Passage camp, in our campfires, our morning circles, and our quiet check-ins after ceremony.
Another arena in which I hold space as an elder is at FEAST (the Festival of Embodiment and Sexual Transformation). Here p
eople arrive with tender edges: longing, shame, hope, fierce curiosity. The elder’s work isn’t to fix, dazzle, or dominate. It’s to lend shape—to hold the rim of the container so that the centre can deepen.
In practice, that looks like:
Grief-competence: Naming endings as sacred labour. Letting tears irrigate the learning.
Pace-setting: Slowing the room just enough for consent and choice to breathe.
Witnessing without rescue: Trusting the intelligence of the body while safeguarding the field.
Vocabulary for thresholds: Offering language that dignifies change, not just “breakthroughs.”
Jenkinson might call this being “useful to the trouble of the times.” In my language, it’s offering love that is anchored in the body.
Reading Come of Age while preparing to hold space at both Earth Lodge and FEAST, three threads stitched themselves together:
Function over identity. Our 60th Rite is not a title ceremony; it’s a service agreement. It echoes Jenkinson’s claim that elderhood is enacted rather than assumed.
Rites as cultural medicine. We don’t do rites to be quaint; we do them to keep culture intact. They metabolise change into responsibility.
Answerability to the moment. The elder’s questions are today’s questions: What do these times ask of me? What steadiness can I give, without pretending to know more than I do?
If I part company with Jenkinson anywhere, it’s only in emphasis. At times, his critique of “personal growth” can feel suspicious of the healing arts that many of us practise. My experience, particularly in embodiment and sexuality work, is that personal healing is not the whole meal, but it’s a necessary course. When guided toward service, it can mature into eldership rather than stall in self-improvement. In our circles, we yoke the two: we tend the personal so we can be more publicly useful.
For those approaching sixty (or any threshold), here’s an invitation:
Let yourself be seen in the truth of your years.
Let yourself be used by what ails and prevails in your community.
Let yourself be apprenticed to work that is bigger than your biography.
That is elderhood as I understand it after Come of Age: not a pedestal, but a posture; not a status, but a stamina.
And for our Earth Lodge family and the FEAST community: thank you for the trust. Let’s keep making spaces where the young can become sturdy, the middle years can be well-used, and the elders can give their gifts without apology.
Official book page, Orphan Wisdom: overview of the central paradox (“awash in the aged… lacking in wisdom”). Orphan Wisdom
Last Born in the Wilderness interview summary: elderhood framed as a function rather than an identity. Last Born In The Wilderness
For The Wild conversation: critique of youth-centric culture and growth-fixation. FOR THE WILD
Tad Hargrave interview: the elder’s responsibilities arise from the dilemmas of the time. tadhargrave.substack.com
Embodiment Matters conversation: on rites of passage, belonging, and the need for elders. embodimentmatters.com
