The Bucket List for Our Souls: A Rite of Passage for Elders

What if growing older were not something to endure, but something to embrace?The Bucket List for Our Souls is a pilgrimage for the second half of life. Part memoir, part spiritual guide, part gentle provocation, it invites readers into the deeper soul work of elderhood: making peace with one’s story, finding meaning in mortality, engaging mystery, and leaving a legacy of wisdom.Drawing on Erik Erikson, Carl Jung, William Blake, The Book of Job, and other ancient wisdom traditions, William O. Roberts Jr. offers something rarely found in books about aging — honesty, humor, and companionship. This is a conversation between friends growing old together rather than a prescribed program to follow. Striking “the perfect balance between scholarship and passion,” Roberts invites us to join him on a quest to find the Heart of Wisdom, the secrets that lead to a complete life, or even, as Albert Einstein suggested, “our sacred purpose.” At this book’s heart is a Rite of Passage for Elders — including seven “Mystery Rites” adapted from timeless ancient rituals made accessible for contemporary readers.Nearly one in five Americans is now over 65. Yet our culture offers almost no rituals to honor the Elder Passage. The Bucket List for Our Souls helps fill that silence, reclaiming elderhood as a sacred stage of life and showing how the years ahead can become a Rite of Passage in the fullest sense.This book is for anyone who senses there is more to this season of life than they have yet discovered. Read more