Centre for Vital Elders

  

Mike and Patricia Bell

Mike and Patricia Bell founded the Centre for Vital Elders as a community interest company with the aim of helping restore the wisdom of Elders in our society – wise Elders in every family!

We have studied and taught with Elders and Keepers of an ancient body of Earth Wisdom Teachings for over ten years.  These Teachings, known as The Origin Teachings of the Delicate Lodge, have been passed down orally for over 35,000 years. They represent one of the many surviving streams of human wisdom that have a direct relevance to the challenging issues facing each of us, our communities and our world today.

We have shared these teachings, in ceremony, with people of all ages, and in community and organisational settings in Europe and the USA, and now we see the great value that would come from restoring the wisdom of the Elders in our culture.

What we offer are a number of powerful tools and practices that we teach in events and learning journeys from one day to two years duration. These tools and practices provide a way for people to restore wholeness and balance in their lives, access their wisdom and learn to share their wisdom stories.

We wish do more of our work in the UK and are seeking partners with shared values, with whom we can collaborate and, ideally, who have a venue from which we can share our work. Please get in touch if this is of interest to you or your organisation.

Background

Through the millennia, Elders have been revered and respected by their tribes and communities. Many still are, but not for their age. For the gifts that only age can bring.

While our young people have much to offer, they do not have the long perspectives and broad foundations that elders have. They have not faced the struggles, pains and irritations which, when we surround them with our patience, perseverance, passion, courage and love, grow into our wisdom.

This wisdom, if we nurture it, gives us the power to step back and see the bigger picture, to appreciate our relationships with all that is and, toembrace and move beyond the materialistic needs of the small ego.

For deep down we know, just like our ancestors knew, that the greatest gift we can bring in this time is to know ourselves and to share our stories.

Aims

Our aim is to benefit the growing community of people in the second half of their lives, including those who are very often marginalised from society, whose accumulated wisdom is not recognised and used to benefit the whole. We aim to help older people harvest their wisdom and learn how to tell their wisdom stories to others, particularly young people.

We are creating ways for elders and communities to discover and disseminate the accumulated wisdom of people in the second half of their lives. The Centre will connect people who we teach to access their wisdom and tell their stories with those who can benefit, and as a result we will be creating intergenerational learning to strengthen community spirit.

Older people can provide younger people with positive role models of vital, active ageing, based on the stories of their life experiences.

About Vital Elders

Let start by looking at our name – why Vital? Well vital has two meanings:

We are vital because, in the words of the dictionary, we are

“necessary for the success or continued existence of something”

that something is our families and communities, and our planet. We are vital because of the wisdom we hold.

Vital also means full of energy and we want the Centre to be a source of all the latest knowledge about mind, body, spirit and emotion, to enable us to stay full of energy as we grow older.

Now let’s explain what we mean by Elders. Here are some descriptions aligned with our view:

“An elder is a person who is still growing, still a learner, still with potential and whose life continues to have within it the promise for, and connection with the future …… and whose work it is to synthesise wisdom from long life experience and formulate this into a legacy for future generations” Barry Barkan, Live Oak Living Center, California

“Elderhood is a time to discover inner richness for self development and spiritual growth”
Gay Luce, Longer Life, More Joy

And finally this quote from Zalman Shalomi’s excellent book, from Ageing to Sageing, really sums it up for us:

“Elders are wisdomkeepers who have an ongoing responsibility for maintaining society’s well-being and safeguarding the health of our ailing planet”

Our Mission

The Centre for Vital Elders is dedicated to supporting Elders in 2 primary ways:

Firstly - claiming our power – Nelson Mandela is a great model for claiming our power. Most of us know his story of an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and for the triumph of hope and dignity over despair and hatred, of self-discipline and love over persecution and evil. All of this achieved with compassion, benevolence and wisdom and without aggression.

Secondly - sharing our wisdom – we all have myriad life experiences, from which we can learn to harvest our wisdom and share it through oral and written stories. This is contrary to our culture that has tended to put wisdom on a pedestal.

Who is the Centre for Vital Elders for?

• anyone entering or already in the second half of their life;
• choosing to live the second half differently to the first, by living more on purpose,
• wanting to harvest the wisdom of their life journey so far, and
• keen to learn how to share their wisdom with others through storytelling.