A journey into simplicity
The Fifth Season
with MARK NEPO
Join Mark as he reflects on the deeper meaning of aging as a natural and meaningful stage of life rather than something to resist or fear. This will be an unforgettable experience in the serene beauty of Northern Italy at Castello di Pavone.
Details Below
A Personal Invitation from Mark
MY LIFE
I am a fish
in search of bottom
when I surface
in search of surface
when I bottom
and the ribbon of God’s sea
passing through my gills
is what I feel and
think and speak.
I am excited to be offering a very special weeklong retreat for Global Journeys held at a castle in the northern countryside outside of Milan, Italy in April of 2026. Being on journeys like this with you is the blessing of my life as a teacher. Nothing is quite like the space of tenderness and truth that arises when we are comparing notes on being alive. This weeklong retreat will center on my latest book, The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life. In our time together, we will center on our quest to keep growing and feeling, ever more deeply, as we age. (Click on the orange plus sign to enjoy Mark's full invitation)
As the years go by, the question for each of us becomes more and more real: What does it mean to age? Despite the limitations that come as the body wears down, there are many gifts to inhabit as we age. For it seems that aging requires a separate set of skills. Ultimately, if faced tenderly and truthfully, aging is, as the Jungian analyst Helen Luke describes, a journey into simplicity.
Perhaps our greatest resource in aging is staying close to life and staying creative. For creativity never leaves us. Its call simply keeps changing. And living a creative life does not mean that we have to strive to create great art. More deeply, we are asked to hold our individual lives as a work of art that inhabiting fully will bring into being. Just as we need oxygen to breathe, we need the creative flow to keep our heart alive. This is especially important as we age. To live a creative life sustains our inner health.
To be clear, the goal in facing aging is not to beat it, or duck it, or run from it, or even to reframe it, or minimize it. The goal in facing aging is to live more fully the closer we get to death, so we can die with no feeling left unfelt, and no voice of life left unheard, and no thing in this world left unloved.
I confess, very simply, that it is humbling to age and exciting to be fully here. After so many years, I feel like a man who has been turned inside out by life and this has made me a student of the inside of everything. I think, as we age, we meet in this inner field of presence, where there’s very little left in the way.
a gentle glimpse
A Taste of the Magic Awaiting You
THIS TIME
MARK NEPO
This time, I will take your hand
without hesitation, as if you or I are
about to die, and if we live, where
our hands join, a flower whose
nectar will attract even God.
This time, I will honor everything,
including how rabbits chew without
looking at their food, and how your
aunt, now bedridden, twists her hair
as her mother did when a child.
This time, we will enter the silence
in which our heart wakes, yet again,
crisp as the blue above God’s wing.
This time, joy.
AS I AGE
MARK NEPO
Little things fall away
as big things become more clear.
I can no longer open jars
or carry two grocery bags at once.
But I can perch like an eagle
on the edge of the vastness
in any given moment.
I now walk into the kitchen
and forget what I was after.
But I can recite Basho’s instruction
to Kikakou in 1689 and join
their conversation.
I now stop near the top of the hill
because my hips burn.
But can see directly into the soul
of anyone who has been loved
or broken open.
And I can wake in the night
with a sudden fear of death.
But can quiet that fear with
the ancient chorus humming
in the wind.
It’s as if my body is a nest
and my soul is a bird
who has waited a lifetime
for the moment
it can fly away.
EARLY ON
AND LATER
STILL
MARK NEPO
Was there anyone
who saw the gift of
who you are, early
on, and said so?
This is the beginning
of all education.
And later, anyone
who let you know
that the gift didn’t
start with you?
This is the beginning
of our kinship with
all things.
And now that you
understand the
what and the how,
who might you
bless this way?
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