AGING

Two members of the Yale Divinity School (outsider van den Bosch contributes 85 black and white halftones) have written a small text on the ""gradual fulfillment of the life cycle"" -- aging -- that time which, both in fact and the literature about it (de Beauvoir is particularly singled out for her pessimistic commentary), occasions so much current despair. Nouwen and Gaffney have attractively implemented their general theme -- the elderly as teachers who can restore the ""broken connections among the generations"" -- with illustrations from the Bible, fable, Jung, and even the Pope who can turn a very witty joke. Thus old age need not be a period of rejection, desolation, the ""last segregation"" but ""the way to the light""; and in understanding the old, and caring for and about them, we reach a greater understanding of ourselves. A much needed book as well as a salutary one, and so unemphatic that it is all the more readily accepted.