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The Elderly and Spirituality: Spiritual Needs in Daily Life
SUCHOMELOVÁ, Věra
The currenly growing preference for "active aging" aims to promote the longest possible physical and mental vitality. Caring for the spiritual development and spiritual needs of older people is usually thought to be a private matter, or an area within the competence of churches, and related to traditionally religious older people. With regard to the bio-psycho-socio-spiritual unity of the person, it is evident that spirituality ? and spiritual needs as its expression ? belong in the life of every individual, though it is primarily an individual experience linked to a particular personality and life history. Through spirituality they seek to answer questions relating to the purpose and pursuit of life, to higher values, to the processing of suffering and evil, and to some questions having eschatological character. This dissertation defines spirituality's everyday place on the path to a good life in old age. The empirical part of the dissertation is a qualitative study called Spiritual Needs in the Daily Life of the Elderly in Southern Bohemia. The first part shows the development of religiosity or spirituality of two dozen South Bohemians over seventy-five years, focusing on the period of early religious socialization, stages of working life under the rule of Communism, and the present form of religiosity or spirituality. The second part presents a possible typology of their fundamental spiritual needs: dignity, sense of continuity in ones life story, hope, faith and love. On the basis of these findings, recommendations are then put forward for pastoral, social, and geragogical practices.
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