Epilogue
The Epilogue is a meditation on old age, combining further policy thinking on compassion and civic life with a reflection on how the terror of social death can be addressed through the life of the body politic and the body of Christ. The chapter sets an agenda for enquiring into three areas of urgent practical concern: (i) why and how the middle-aged and strong who are in government are investing across the different stages of the life-course; (ii) how growing old can be so consciously embedded as part of civic life’s self-understanding as to enable citizens to live in compassionate relationship to the end of their lives; and, (iii), how an innovative democratic professionalism will be important for the way policies and practices are reformed, especially with a view to collaborating with social movements such as churches in their work of diakonia. On this basis, the emphasis on the role of health professionals as innovators can, therefore, be expanded to include innovation in civic life. To the question of what narrative will bring healing and direction to wayfarers and pilgrims in the remains of their days, the response of the church has been a continual meditation on a particular second-person encounter of new birth amidst old age: Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.