Reinventing One's Self

   

My daughter said I would like what her pastor had to say and she was correct.
I think you might like it also.
Riverwatch



A WHOLE NEW LIFE
A sermon delivered by the Rev. Scott Dalgarno on April 28, 2013
Wasatch Presbyterian Church
Salt Lake City, Utah
Based on Revelation 21:1-6

It has been said, “We neither get better or worse as we grow older, but more like ourselves.” (Robert Anthony)

Come September I will be teaching a class I’ve taught once here and many times elsewhere: I call it, Reading The Bible On It’s Own Terms. I never tire of teaching it, mostly because I find the Bible endlessly fascinating. It has something to say about absolutely everything. Last week I preached out of the gospel of John, a gospel that is all about the importance of believing. This week I 
want to begin by looking for a moment at the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. 

The writer of Ecclesiastes hardly believes in anything. In fact his 
(or her) treatise is about the lurking fear that life is just one accident following another – “Vanity of vanities,” he writes, “all is vanity.” We, all of us, have moments when we feel this way – like when we feel that an achievement from years ago seems now, if only for a moment, like so much chasing after the wind. 
“There is nothing new under the sun,” he says, cynically, not unlike
Shakespeare’s Macbeth who said, Life is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” 
Life, for the writer of Ecclesiastes is just a great wheel with no 
beginning or end – nothing can really refresh it. 

Well, I’d like to address that notion this morning, and I want to do it by talking a little about something that has fallen on hard times since the crash of 2008. 
That thing is retirement. No, I’m not about to retire. Let me just say that and get it out of the way. I’m too young and I just found out how much my daughter owes on her college loans and I will be helping her pay that back for a very long time. And that’s fine. I can’t think of anything I’d be more happy to invest in. 

Now, I know a lot of people lost their nest-egg in 2008. 
A lot of people who thought that age 65 would mean they would be moving to sunnier climes are thinking again about that. They are putting it off, sometimes forever. 

The funny thing about the business of retirement is that it is only a recent development. 
It has only been a recent phenomenon that humans lived long 
enough to have the luxury of dropping out of the work force. 
It’s only been a short time that human beings could store up enough resources to make that a possibility. 

You know, the Bible speaks of old age as a blessing from God that some receive, 
but it knows nothing of retirement. 
The world was shocked to hear only a couple of months ago of Pope Benedict’s decision to retire. Papal historians quickly came out of the woodwork to let us know it happened before, 600 years ago. 

Let me tell you a bit about the first person I know of who was able to retire: 
Roman Emperor Diocletian retired on May 1, 305. 
He retired to the Yugoslavian coast city of Split and immediately began growing vegetables. 
He had been a phenomenally able emperor. He had declared himself a God, 
persecuted Christians and any one else he deemed an enemy of Rome. 
He unified the empire like few before him. 
What happened was that instead of appointing one emperor to succeed him, he appointed several “little Caesars” to reign here and there all over the empire. 
This led immediately to conflict, as each one wanted to be the single big cheese. 
In the midst of all the chaos, one of his old generals wrote him a letter asking him to take the field once again himself and unify the empire, bringing peace. 
And we have the text of what Diocletian said in response. 
He said, “If you could come here to Split and see these lovely cabbages I’ve grown with my own hands, you’d never ask such a thing.” 
A funny thing for a god to say, don’t you think?
Further, he said, he would never want to “replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed."
Here was a man who had been the most powerful man on earth, who was more than content to give it all up and grow tomatoes and pumpkins. 
He had reinvented himself, and in doing so had found some joy in life. 

I am not particularly fond of the word retirement. It’s a cousin of other passive words like retreat, remove, regress. It sounds as if you just withdraw, settle down, settle back, tune out and hunker down. But we know that each new stage of living comes with its own set of challenges, demands, and sense of adventure. 

I know a fellow pastor who, in mid-career, began mentoring a younger one. 
The younger one, describing his congregation, said, “The median age of my congregation is over sixty, and you know how old people are.” 
My friend said, “No, how are they?” 
And the young fellow said, “You know, settled in their ways, slow to change, stuck in their ruts.” 
To which my friend, who’d recently done some study on this subject, said, “I don’t believe they are.” He had read and passed on to us information about how of the six or eight most traumatic changes in life, four or five of them will occur after 65. These folks have to deal with declining health, loss of independence, loss of mobility, loss of a spouse, unemployment. 

Far from stuck in a rut, sixty-five year olds are about to drown in some of the most dramatic changes life can offer. 

You know, when you’ve lost the person you’ve lived with for forty of more years, or you are forced out of your life’s work, the last thing you want is some upstart preacher saying, “Let’s do something new and innovative today.” You’re kind of sick of change and innovation. 
Yes, and it’s funny, but a lot of young people have the same impulse. Those who are out of college and yet not quite up to speed in the world of work and family often say to themselves, “I’m pretty confused and in flux now, but when I am 27 I will have decided who I want to be, who I want to do that alongside, and I will settle down, settle in and be fixed.” 

But life is seldom like that for anyone. 

There are just too many surprises. 

At Duke University they did a study of engineering graduates and found that only 30% of them were still in the engineering field just 20 years after. 30%. It’s even less in the ministry. 
I’m glad my daughter is going into nursing because the field is full of differing pathways. I know she will have opportunities to choose lots of new bi-ways if she get’s tired of any particular one. 

Sociologists tell us that people nowadays will, on average, go through seven job changes in a lifetime. 

An increasing number of educators are coming to speak of 
intelligence in terms of ability to adapt, as opposed to IQ. Why? Because life, for all of us, is a series of adaptations, moves, changes, beginnings and endings. 

I’m borrowing the title for this sermon this morning from the title of a memoir by the late Reynolds Price, A Whole New Life. It’s Price’s moving account of his struggle through cancer surgery, recovery, and beyond. As you might guess, Reynolds Price came, over years, to believe that his illness was, in fact, an invitation to a whole new life. But that took a lot of time. 
He tells how at first he denied his cancer; how he was filled with anger and resentment when he found out how sick he was; how he struggled in the pain laden months after his debilitating but life saving surgery. 
Here he was, once a robust man, active, athletic, at the prime of his life, the peak of his career, relegated to a wheelchair. But Reynolds depicts his path back from anger as a dawning realization that, in his words, “The old Reynolds has died.”
His old self, so many of he aspects of his former existence, were over. 
He could not get them back. 
Now, he could spend the rest of his life in grief over what he 
had lost, pitifully attempting to salvage some bits and pieces, OR he could choose to begin a new life. 
He chose the latter. He began all over again. It was not the life he might have chosen if he were able to choose, but it would prove to be a good life; a life very much worth living. 
In fact, he embarked upon the greatest period of artistic productivity of his life, turning out more novels, plays and poems than ever before, and better, too. 

“Find your way to be somebody else,” he advises; “the next viable you – a stripped-down whole other clear-eyed person; realistic as a sawed-off shotgun and thankful for air, not to speak of the human kindness you’ll meet if you get normal luck.” 

Now, retirement is rarely as traumatic as spinal cancer. Still, I think there are analogies. From what I have observed, the people who fail miserably at the challenges of the later years are those who fail to see retirement as a definite transition from one plane of existence to another. 
They attempt to salvage too much of their former life. 
I’m haunted by one story of a woman who had worked at a low wage job in a garment factory for over forty years. When she finally retired, her children thought she would be thrilled. She was miserable. She cried. Worse than that, she took to hanging around the gate of the factory many mornings, vainly hoping they would call her back to work. She even took an assumed name and tried to 
get hired, representing herself as some one else. That’s way too sad!
That just won’t work. Your old life goes on without you. Somehow they get by without you down at the plant, down at the office, down at the University. 
Whether you were stellar, or ho hum, it’s the same. They usually carry on just fine.

No, you can’t get your old life back. 
You need to lay your hands on a whole new life. 

Whether we have hope for retirement or not, all of us still need to find ways to prepare ourselves better for transitions that will come inevitably. 
If our only life is our work we are to be pitied, unless we can find some new life after work.
Maybe if we had some good rituals for retirement. In Japan, for example, there is a tradition in which, when a woman reaches retirement age, she takes all of her pots and pans and she presents them to her daughter or daughter-in-law. From then on she is expected to not enter the kitchen. That part of her life is over. A 
new one has begun. Some of you might want to try this at home. 
Many Japanese men begin retirement by dressing in a red kimono and doing something adventuresome that they have not done before, like climbing Mt. Fuji. 
I think that would be a very good idea. 
I know of an American man who, on the first morning of his retirement from an executive job came into the kitchen, looked into a cabinet and asked his wife— “Why do we need four cans of anchovies?”
She said she heard that and thought, “Oh, my God.”

My favorite part of the religion of Hinduism is just this sensitivity to the concept of retirement. It is key for Hinduism. Here’s why. The Hindus have this wonderful concept of dharma. Dharma means doing the appropriate thing – a thing appropriate to who you are and what stage of your life you are currently in. 

When you are four years old you are expected to play and dance and sing, and get comfortable in your body. 
When you are of school age, you are expected to participate in sports and exercise your mind to its fullest. 
Once you leave school, you are expected to engage yourself fully in the world of work and you are to engage yourself in a marriage, have children, make friends, make money. You delight yourself in the physical pleasures available to you, 
and you enjoy the possessions you acquire. 

Then . . . when your children begin having children, you enter a time of transition. 
You are expected, at that time, to become what they call a Forest-Dweller. 
A Forest-Dweller is someone, man or woman, who, having plumbed the worlds of work and family to their depths, now pulls back and focuses on the more spiritual aspects of life. 
That person is expected to leave the town he or she has worked 
and lived in. Moving somewhere else where you have no prior associations, frees you to focus on your inward being. You may paint, or play music or do any number of things to develop your spirit. 
And you take as much time as you need or can afford, living very simply. 
The Hindu has the prerogative of doing this with a spouse or on ones own, but it is open to both men and women. 
Christians, like Hindus, do not believe that history is a meaningless cycle going nowhere, one dang thing after another. 
We believe that God is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. 
God not only gets us going at the beginning, 
God also meets us at the end. 
More to the point of the challenges of retirement, 
God gives fresh beginnings along the way; new days, new lives. 

The Bible opens with Genesis’s declaration, “Let there be light,” as a new world comes into being, 
and it closes with a word we use in today’s scripture text from Revelation, “Behold, I make all things new!” 
All along the way there is transition after transition. 
Those transitions are not accidental. They are a crucial part of our lives. 
Because, you know, people don’t burn out from working too hard, or working too many hours -- they burn out from having work to do that is meaningless. They burn out when they have no more mountains to climb. People can go on and on and on as long as they taking a fresh look at life, as long as they keep finding 
new things to do or new ways to do what they have long found to be meaningful.
At 80, George Burns won an Oscar, and Marc Chagall created sets and costumes for the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Mozart’s Magic Flute.
At 81, Benjamin Franklin helped frame the Constitution, and Winston Churchill started his History of the English-Speaking People. 
At 88, Pablo Casals was performing his cello. At 89, Albert Schweitzer was doctoring. And at 90, Picasso, always a volcano, was far from extinct. 

It’s never too late to remake your life.

Remember Reynolds Price’s encouragement:
“Find your way to be somebody else,” he advises; “the next viable you – a stripped-down whole other clear-eyed person; realistic as a sawed-off shotgun and thankful for air, not to speak of the human kindness you’ll meet if you get normal luck.” 

Amen
                              email:               sdalgarno@wpcslc.org

Stop it !

Stop it!
 It is time in your life to rest!!
 You're too old to do that!

I remember when Edith remarried.

I was 37, divorced and wondering where bliss was for me, and here she was, 79 years old and landing a catch! Frankly I was impressed and mollified for my future, seeing that success can come at any age.

But then I was only Edith's neighbor, not her family.

What an uproar that family made over Edith's decision!!!

The first thing they said was that Edith was demented!

She wasn't.

When that accusation didn't stick, they said the old man was demented. Maybe. I don't know. He only said two sentences to me and even though they didn't make sense, Edith was pleased with him.

He was 85. And getting married. Perhaps he was overcome with joy and so didn't make good sense.

And then the kicker, “You are TOO OLD”! ...and they started listing all the physical things that were wrong with Edith, all the trips for health care...they even threw in the broken ankle she recovered from the year before. “You aren't in good health!”

They even said that she had the poor judgement to step off a curb without looking.  (That was how she broke her ankle, stepping off a curb.)

Privately they said, “Now who is gonna babysit the grandkids? Grandkids need their grandma! All she is marrying him for is to have somebody to go to the movies and concerts with!”

The only thing Edith said about the uproar to me was, “They don't like change. This is about babysitting. They are losing their babysitter.” She sounded pleased.

Now that I am old, not having died young, I am experiencing the “you can't do that” fiddle faddle.

I continue to work some, and my physician thinks I am not viewing my circumstances wisely.

“Just look at yourself! What do you have to offer anybody!”

She is a young doctor. Honest and upfront. A straight shooter. That's why I like her.

She causes you to think, and that is invaluable.

So I thought, What do I have to offer?

Frankly, I don't know what bits I still have to offer.

But I do know I need to continue to lay my gifts, whatever they are, on the table.

I was asked to give some extra service at church. I said yes and my daughter reacted. “It's your time to rest! Let somebody else do that. You aren't young anymore!”

*

Our downward trajectory has as many zags as a teenager's upward trajectory.

The course is not smooth & even....... and the up & down nature of it is confusing.
We know it is a downward trajectory (we aren't stupid!) but it does go UP as well as down.....so of course we have to assess and reassess.

We ourselves don't know what we are capable of, because we know we have changed and “aren't young anymore”.  We know we are continuing to change.
We don't want to fail and make fools of ourselves, so sometimes we stop laying our gifts, whatever they are, on the table.
 We listen to the voices without, and the faltering voice within.

I say, “Look to God, and go for it.”  

Zigging and zagging,

Riverwatch

Judge me not

"Never ascribe to malice
 that which is adequately explained by incompetence."



                                Napoleon Bonaparte

Bagdad Burning

She's young, but she is an interesting blogger over in the Middle East.

No, I don't think we in the USA have any idea what it is like.

I caught her blog because she goes by "Riverbend".
"She has to be cool", I thought.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com.au/




Riverwatch

"Between Two Rivers"

From "March River Walk" by Monica Devine

"I walk the river discovering a new direction where

cutbanks have sloughed off and bending

trees lean with a weary creak

meltwater seeps up, whirlpools suck down and

everything is on the verge of

falling in, falling off, falling apart "

                  follow her at        monicadevine.blogspot.com

Her posts are awesome, her artwork divine.

A wee bit jealous,

Riverwatch

Wit incompetence

Don't you just love adult kids with a sense of humor?

Like my daughter at my sister's funeral at which I spoke.  The much younger man who owed the Funeral Home sought me out afterwards to tell me how much he enjoyed my speech, what an excellent speech it was.
Pride.  The universal sin.  Even at a funeral.  I sought out my daughter to tell her about my great compliment, and she smiled and said, "It was a good speech, Mom, but that man is just currying future business....as...in...YOU!"
Ha Ha Ha.

They're all so cute.

And just yesterday my son and I went to lunch together.  Feeling good, I made some comment about something funny around us.....and he just broke up laughing!   "Mom!  You used to be such a wit, but I think you better drop the wit routine.  You have become "wit incompetent"!

What can I say?  I don't even remember what I was trying to be witty about!
Dang.

Does that rank up there with my going out in my yard in my night clothes?
I did that just the other evening.  Something I wanted to see and sure as heck didn't want to re-dress to go see.
Call it lazy if you will.
Call it poor judgement if you must.
I knew what I was doing......I just didn't care.  I was covered.

But I must admit this is new behavior for me.  Never, even when I was trying to be cute and noticed, would I have gone out in the "public" yard in nighties!
As I was out trolling my grounds in my nighties, I suddenly remembered all the old women ......OLD women...I have seen through out the years out in their yards in nighties.  Lots.
Housecoats.
MuMu's.
Flannel gowns.

Don't remember seeing any old guys doing the yard parade.
Probably because their "nighties" are of such ilk that somebody would call the police!

Some people miss their former good looks as they age.
Some people miss their former wit.

Disappointed,
Riverwatch

Grandma! Where are you?

"Grandma!  Where are you when I need you?!"


Been thinking about my grandma lately.  I had two and I think of both.
I only had one grandpa, and I do think of him, but not in the same manner as I think of the old women in my young life...now that I am old, not having died young.

Always thought I would die young.

Didn't die young.

Granny was my dad's mom, and Grandma was my mom's mom.
Neither one was the warm-fuzzied kind of woman!
They were very different from each other, but they shared a common trait:  they weren't into children all that much.

It was from these women ......and my sister....(and to some extent my mom) I learned that not all women are into children all that much.
And I learned that is ok and doesn't make a woman deficient at some core level.

I myself love children...never met a child I did not love and find fascinating....and I could be happy managing an orphanage and writing about and for children.  I am full of warm fuzzies.

But I learned from my grandmothers that not all women would be happy in such a role, and for them it would be a sentence, not a destiny.
And that is ok.
Society wants all women to be into children "by nature", but that is just plain missing the boat!

I come from a family of several sweet men

                                  forum.thesims.com

 and many fierce women, 
                                         


so I learned that society's idea about the role of women...and the role of men.....is not correct.

It is a pretty idea, but not correct.

It is good for society, but that doesn't mean it is natural.

It functions well for society, but that does not make it natural once the jungle is left behind.

The roles, "nature fitted", are actually about dictating what you are and ensuring you do your bit for society, and there is great pressure to get you to buy off on your "nature fitted" role.

Heck, my dad wouldn't even let me chew gum!
"A chewing girl and a crowing hen, all come to a very bad end", he loved to say.
I chewed on.
Behind his back, of course.

Both my grandmothers were forced, more or less, into the role of abundant motherhood.

One grandma jumped the tracks completely and reappeared when the child-rearing was done.                                                              

                                                by abundantmama.com 



                                     
.    The other was a self-directed slave with a sad tired expression.




How I wish I had interviewed them when I was young and had the chance.
How I wish I had even listened to them!
How I wish either had left behind some written words from their old age.

Where are my grandmothers when I need them now that I am old!
Whatever were THEY thinking as they aged?

Granny (the track jumper) lived to be 104 and Grandma lived to be 79.
Now there's a clue as to what jumping-the-tracks will do for life expectancy!
Also, "the good die young" takes on more meaning.

Perhaps old age is a sentence and we are in prison?
Nah!  I don't believe that!
I just wish the thought hadn't sprung to mind.

My grandma who "jumped the tracks" was maligned behind her back all the time, but, just like she wasn't into kids all that much, she wasn't into gossip all that much either.  She did as she pleased!

Even before I was old enough to understand, I admired her for doing as she pleased.
That childish characteristic in me has lasted even into my old age.
I cannot help it.  I admire people who do as they please, let the consequence follow.
I disrespect them if they whine about the consequences....but I have noticed many self-directed people do not whine about consequences.  They are too busy directing and redirecting their lives.

Have I mentioned I do as I please?

The biggest consequence for me is: this "non-society-approved" characteristic in me has leaked into all my children, who do as they please!

I must not whine.


Missing Grandma and Granny who would surely cheer me on,
Riverwatch

Protecting Our Brains

So.......many of us may live to be 100 or more & we certainly want to have brains to help power our lives, especially if we are going to be short on cash.
It's too much to hope for beauty, but not too much to hope for brains.

According to Dr. Neal Barnard, there is a 3 step plan that can protect our brains:
1.  Get rid of the metals, (iron, copper and zinc) in our pots and pans, in our supplements and avoid the foods that have too much of those metals, ie  meats and dairy and even fish.   We need these metals but we get enough of them in decent food.  Too much clogs the brain.
2.   Eat the power foods: broccoli, sweet potatoes, fruits, kale and beans.
 Make ourselves a shield of an umbrella of vitamins, especially E and B6 and B12 and Folate.
3.  Use "linking" to bolster specific memories.  (Want to know how to do that?  Read his book, "Power Foods For the Brain".)

Hope this gives you hope.

Saying a fond farewell to my darling cast iron skillets,
Riverwatch

Longing for the Future

CDC says 105 kids died of flu this year; most didn't get vaccine!

I truly am amazed at some of the scientific data we are subjected to from the CDC ......data put out there with words like "most", headlines even!

"Most".  
How scientific is that?  
Isn't there a number?   Like 57....or 90..and did they not get both shots (recommended for children) or did they get only one and so it was counted as NO instead of YES?

So when I read this latest little blurb from the Center for Disease Control who are obviously not very talented and gifted at researching, compiling and sorting data, I decided to do a google search on deaths of children...which was mixed in tables that also included deaths of adults, also. 

I was amazed at what I ran into.

One teen in Minnesota who died from the flu (she reportedly had been vaccinated but that was "not proven" and considered anecdotal!) was "perfectly healthy" before.....I wonder how they knew that.  ?????
Was that anecdotal information?  
Or had she had MRI's and Scan's and batteries of lab tests before she fell ill?  She got the flu, had trouble breathing immediately and was put on heart-lung bypass and "received blood transfusions".  What I would like to know is:  what was her true health status right before she got the flu?  

As I plowed on through the articles on flu data, I found the word "estimates" so many times  I wanted to run up a white flag and surrender.  Why even bother going on!  

The word "methodology" came up without saying what methodology they were using!  

I did read this: "portions of records were inflated in order to better estimate".  Now there's a handy dandy methodology!

Guess what.  All the info on Hispanics was "adjusted for under-reporting".    Say what?????
To top it all off, I read that one way CDC estimated how many people were getting the flu was by counting the google searches on flu symptoms!  I kid you not.  

I kid you not.

I kid you not. 

I kid you not.   (me....with my mind blowing away)

I just know they didn't  weed out the hypochondriacs like me who google and google and google and google diseases in an obsessive-compulsive manner.

Our "methodology" on gathering human statistics seems like a hold-over from Aunt Neanderthal.

I look forward to the future when we actually can manage clean clear data.  Surely we have that kind of technology.

Even when Jesus was born, civilizations were doing a better job with statistics even if you had to ride a donkey to your hometown to be counted!  
And back then they didn't "guesstimate and estimate" crap they really didn't have data on!  They limited themselves to the "begats", on which they did have reliable data.
Of course they had no flu vaccine to sell! No drug companies making big bucks.  Their big economic thing was staggering taxes without representation, not drugs and medications and false advertising (is there any other kind?).

In the meantime, I keep messing up the statistics with all my google searches on SYMPTOMS!   Damn that internet tracking! 
Sorry. 
Do you have any idea how often I have looked up "cognitive decline" ????  No wonder the guru's think Alzheimer's is on the rise!!!!!



PS  If you get the flu shot and you die of the flu, don't expect the media to report the fact of your immunization properly except to say "it is reported that she had the flu vaccination, but that is under investigation and has not been proven."   ( I use the term "you" because I haven't had a flu shot since my first one 50 years ago.  My daughter thinks I'm daft since she and her kids go get the jab every year with excellent results.  To each their own, I say.)


Bunches of gratitude to you for listening to my warbles,
Riverwatch, RN

The Law of the Harvest

I have always loved the concept of the Law of the Harvest: you reap what you sow.  It is a spiritual concept, to be sure, but it is couched in earthly terms and often used in earthly terms.  And it makes sense in earthly terms.

It is such a guide to living when you are young.

Good guide even when you are middle aged.....though by that time you may be wondering if, ahhh, well...perhaps...you might possibly be doing something wrong about that sowing and reaping concept.

By old age you get figured out that the "law of the harvest" as understood in youth is just the tip of a mighty iceberg.
It is a much bigger, a much more comprehensive picture at harvest time!!  Not only have other people's sown seeds affected your field and your harvest, but you are beginning to suspect you might be part of the harvest!

Betsy owned a beautiful home but by age 82 was living in her own basement while needy family members lived upstairs on ground level.  Yep, Betsy fell on the stairs twice, ripping out her shoulder once.......but she continued to soldier on alone in the basement.

Keith and Dina, neighbors, died suddenly together in an accident leaving their beautiful home and grounds for their posterity.  It was my horrid privilege to see their posterity dancing and rejoicing on the grounds of their new riches!!  I was sick for days after watching that display of "grief".

Last week, Emma Jean told me about her 83 year old friend.  Seems  Lavelle's daughter came into Lavelle's home and took all her valuables "so nobody will rob you, Mom."
See?  They thought she was so old and stupid she wouldn't recognize a robbery if she saw one in progress!

"The law of the harvest" is a beginning concept to something so complex we may never get it figured out.
In the meantime, be careful if you are old.  We might be part of the harvest.

                       "Knock knock.  Let me in!"     

"Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin.

You are the wolf and you can't come in!"

And speaking of hair on the chinny-chin-chin...but that's a blog for another day.

Watchful,

Riverwatch

My responsibility

Even when I am old and gray,
do not forsake me, O God,
till I declare Your Power to the next generation,
            & Your Might to all who are to come.
                              Psalms 71:18

Her Fruits of Their Labor

HER FRUITS OF THEIR LABOR

I decided to get brave and ask Sarah what I wondered about. 

She is in her late 80's and very active, very interested in life & people.
 She travels occasionally. She occasionally has surgery or a patch here or there to keep going.

She keeps her hair cut short and straight. Lipstick? Yes. 
Eye make-up? No.
Clever well-to-do clothes? Yes.
 Happy attitude? Yes.
 Perfect “Hollywood fake” teeth? No.
 Nice car? Of course! 

She breaks a bone now and then, but aces the recovery.

What I wondered about was what she was thinking about old age.

So I asked.

“Sarah, I write a little blog on aging.  May I ask you something I've been wondering about?”

“Of course.”

“What do YOU think is the very nicest thing about this stage of life?”

Without hesitation she said with enthusiasm, “Oh I love it that I am well off and don't have to budget. If I want something, I can just go buy it. The money is in the bank because we worked hard and saved. Roland always made good money and we managed it well. My brother was in high finance and he advised us well. Free. He never charged us for his advice. It wasn't always like this, and so I am enjoying the fruits of our labor. Roland left me well off when he died. I love to shop, but I actually have everything I need! I seldom buy anything, but I can if I want and I can buy the very best. My needs are all taken care of. I still love to shop even if I buy nothing.”

See? We become more and more different from one another the longer we live.  

Our experiences in life guarantee we will be different from one another.

Aging produces such interesting people!

You won't find any boring cookie-cutter-people on the twilight zone of life where I have landed, not having died young.

Surprised by Sarah's answer,

Riverwatch

Who's reading books?

More women, 81 percent, read books, compared to 70 percent of men, and the 
number of readers declines as people age. 
The trend toward e-books impacted libraries, which stocked and loaned more e-books.

Pew Research Center
according to Reuters





As you probably know, I have a goal to read 52 books this

year. 

Wow.  Can I tell I am old!  


Some reader suggested a way to modify that goal without 

getting rid of the numbers!  I listened!  Reading 52 books 

doesn't mean sitting down (in pain) and actually plowing

 through 52 books with 300 pages apiece!!!!! 


Choose cooking books!   

Choose children's books!  

Choose picture books!


I picked up a little book on "Slang" and that was interesting!

I don't remember anything I read in that little old book,

but I do remember the feeling:  that slang sure

changes over time.  Learned something!


I  have also become a fan of "scanning".  Read the first part, 

scan the middle part and read the last part.  Does that count?


Read the cliff notes.  Pretend I am back in high school!


Another little tip:  make no effort to remember what you read!


Count the little 30 page "article" on nursing that you bought 

on line and had to read for credit towards your nursing 

license.


Listen to the book on tape.  Is that reading?


Read a book I've already read.  Does that count?


***Accept this little lesson in goal setting as 

education .........move on..........

and stop ruining the joy of reading!!    

Modifying and "up-grading" goals as we proceed is wise.  
Be careful making a goal next year to read 52 books!



Still looking for ways to make it count,
Riverwatch

F L U.....................S E A S O N

                                          Flu Season

Just like I hate statistics and find them flawed, I hate the absence of clean data.

I absolutely HATE the hype (exaggerated claims and ensuing commotion) that comes out about flu each year as the guru's try to get you to buy and use this year's vaccine especially formulated just for this flu season.

A few years later you find that all the You May Die or Your Children May Die scream was based on fear.......or projections... .or misinformation .........or misunderstanding, and the year in question was not a screamer after all (when you look back at the final data).  What data we get in real time is guesstimates, estimates, extrapolations and even anecdotal.  This data will be "cleaned up" later and will look different in retrospect and will be more nearly accurate.

Yes, it is possible to die from the flu. 
But highly unlikely (unless it is a rare flu like the 1917-1918 Spanish flu)
....or unless you are already flirting with death at death's door.

It is also possible to get flu or even bad bad side effects from the flu immunization. 
But highly unlikely.

We could try not to build our life decisions on hype. Think it through.

We have been blessed with brains

and immune systems.

We could think it through before making our own informed decisions.

This year's flu immunization is proving to be about 60% effective. HELLO! I'm impressed!!

If you get the flu instead of the immunization, your immunity will likely be 100%. (If you don't die, for goodness sakes!!!!!!!!)

Have you ever wondered just exactly when Flu Season is?

Did you hear it “started early” this year? 

Ahh, are you curious as to just when it started?
Doesn't it sound ominous in the media...."started early!"....."epidemic proportions!"......"deadly!"......
Well, they gotta sell newspapers, TV shows and pharmaceuticals.  Our economy in America runs on selling and buying....and advertising hype.

“Flu season” is a time during cold weather when the flu virus which has been around all year, finds it much easier to be passed on and replicated.  People begin spending more time indoors and  vents for fresh air are often closed...so air gets more densely packed with viruses which are no longer held in check by the warm weather that makes them less able to flit about effectively.

“Flu season” lasts 6 weeks, so if it starts early it ends early.......as it takes 3 weeks for it to peak and 3 weeks to diminish....as people build natural immunity to the virus.  (the hype begins much earlier and lasts longer) 

Protecting oneself against the flu is possible.

Flu bugs like cold air, dry air, dry mucus membranes, weak "hosts".

As with all germs, the key factors of whether I will come down with any germy disease are:

1.  how densely packed together the germs when I encounter them

2.  the length of time I are exposed to the germ

3.  how strong (virulent) the germ is

4.  how well my immune system is at the time

I hate it when children are lined up and get the jab based on fear. Being a substitute school teacher in my spare time, I see some interesting things. Going in at noon to take over a fourth grade class last Tuesday, I watched the real teacher line his students up and dismiss them for lunch without hand washing or hand sanitizer.  That teacher never heard that hand washing helps prevent flu.
 

But people better get their flu vaccines so they don't get the flu! 
 Or somebody's gonna be fired or jailed!

We live in a strange technologic world anymore.

Staying healthy is a matter of Being Healthy to begin with.

Eat right, exercise right, get plenty of fresh air and keep yourself hydrated.

Don't abuse your immune system with drugs, alcohol, non-nutritional food, and poor sleep habits.

Wash your hands.

Stay out of crowded places and if you cannot stay out of crowded places take lots of vitamin C........& wash your hands more often,

and let in the fresh air if you can. Disperse those germs!

Don't get over tired.  Breathe moist air.

If you have blood sugar problems, keep your blood sugar in tight control. Germs love syrupy blood!

If you do not have blood sugar problems, still keep your blood free of brief bursts of circulating sugars. Germs love syrupy blood!

If you get the flu, rest, keep very well hydrated, take lots of vitamin C, eat chicken soup, green tea, toast, veggie juice and garlic.

If you are terribly frightened that you might get the flu and die, get the immunization which may or may not keep the flu away this season, and it may or may not help you stay on the job so your employer doesn't have to pay for a sick day or week. Or so you don't lose work that isn't covered by sick leave.  And it may or may not keep you from passing on the flu to others.

Make your own decision.

But wash your hands and don't cough on me! 
Cough into your elbow....and I will do the same for you.

By the way, Zanamivir (Relenza) is 100% effective against all strains of the flu virus if you get the flu and start the med within 48 hours.There are other anitviral meds like Tamiflu, etc.

I don't like to see a society guided by fear from the government and its agencies.

I once read that in FRANCE, the government is afraid of the people........................

but in AMERICA, the people are afraid of the government.

That could explain why our government takes us for fools and does not listen to us.

Riverwatch

Live Without Fear

                                  I will sustain you....

Even to your old age and gray hairs

I am He, I am He who will sustain you.

I have made you and I will carry you;

I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

                                         -Isaiah 46:4

I am doing this blog about aging because I am so tired of excellent books (on managing life stages) that devote 5 pages or so at the end of the book to the subject of the “final” chapter of our lives! I want a whole book on what it is like on the twilight landscape where I have landed instead of dying young.

"Old age" lasts a long time for many people!  Five little pages on it is NOT ENOUGH.

The “final stage” in said books is often lit up with posters on retirement, and cruises and reflections.

I do not find these posters helpful.

I want the facts, Ma'm, the real facts.

What the heck is going on here?

And I don't want 3 or 5 little pages to leave me worrying about why there isn't more volume!

“This is it? This is THE END?”

If I were writing a play of said circumstances, I would have a mean nurse character walk up to the aging patient in his hospital bed at the “final stage” and say “Oh shut up! You've lived a long time. Suffer through this last little bit and be done with it! Quit bothering us with your whining!” At which point said nurse would drop dead prematurely and unexpectedly, and anonymous patient would grab hold of the siderails of his bed, pull himself up far enough to peer down at her prostrate form and mutter (in a whiny loud voice) “Life is so hard.”

My gospel, He said, is the good news.
 It is a message of peace.
 It is not a message of fear.

Living without fear.
That's what Kit said she is doing , and she is older and in worse shape than I!

“You should not fear!” Kit said.

“You are being fearful!" Kit said.

Frankly I don't value Kit's opinion on most things, so I guess I could dismiss her words on this.  But I have to admit, Kit seems to be living without fear.

 I do want to live my life without fear.  

That can happen for me only spiritually...............

because I worry better than just about any thing I do!
Need to have somebody worry on your behalf? Just fax the facts over to me and …..hey, don't even bother with the facts, just send a brief outline of possible future events, and I can manufacture an Electromagnetic Field of worry that will blow you socks off.

Worry and fear go hand in hand, like lovers.

Even though I have many wonderful hours of peace, it seems worry (and fear) are ever lurking outside my castle walls.
I must turn to God over and over to sustain me like He has promised.

One of the things that is helping me these days is remembering that no matter how brief the chapter is at the end of the book addressing our life challenges, the book's “last page” is by no means the last page. The last page has not been written.

Mortality ends at death. I will give you that, with only a bit of an argument.

But life goes on after we are “done” here. Believe me. I know for certain. (read my November 2014 post on “Identity After Death” about Mary).

Let's pause to think a moment what it means to be “done” with mortality, as in  d-e-a-d .

Sure, it means our actions are over.

No more handy work.
No more hanky panky.
 We are done with our actions.
 The birth process is over and we have been delivered wherever we are going.

But are we totally gone?

Is our influence over?

Has Cicero totally died? When you read his letters does he not “live” in some way as his words alter how you think and how you understand?

Just how dead are we if our passed-on-DNA is alive and well in somebody else after we depart?

Just how dead are our ancestors while yet we live, carrying their strands of living DNA within us?

"Dead", like "Old Age", is defined in more ways than one.

If my brain waves are flat but I am on a ventilator and have a good pulse, am I dead?  I certainly are done with  handy work and  hanky panky!
If you donate your heart at death and it beats on in somebody else, are you totally dead?  Are you in any way somewhat responsible for the handy work and hanky panky going on?
When a person is "clinically dead" is that person necessarily "biologically dead"?
After every cell in my body is replicated...and replicated...and replicated and I am more or less built on a pattern of the original, have I already died (several times) in some way?
Is death really about the spirit leaving the body, rather than about the body dying?
Is life just renewal, renewal, renewal?
Is replication some form of resurrection?  We know...errr, think... mortal replication has an end, but isn't it getting easier and easier to believe in resurrection, even without faith?  When I was in elementary school, it took pure faith to believe in a Virgin Birth!  And I believed.  Does it take any faith at all today to believe in a virgin birth?  Even a grade-schooler today can understand the process!  Easy.  Just plain easy.
Will that happen with understanding Resurrection in the future?

Trailing clouds of glory we come from afar.

And trailing clouds of our humanity we sail on.

I think those trailing clouds of humanity, left behind, are very real and very important  and extremely interesting.

Grateful for the peace of God,

Riverwatch