Aging

layers of cake

Life’s Layer Cake

by

Even in the flat gray of the picture tube, she can make out the blue veins in her outer thighs, which somehow don’t seem possible, not yet. Not yet. She’s only forty-two, which, okay, when she was twelve seemed like one foot over the threshold into God’s waiting room, but now, living it, is an age that makes her feel no different than she always has. She’s twelve, she’s twenty-one, she’s thirty-three, she’s all the ages at the same time. But she isn’t aging. Not in her heart. Not in her mind’s eye.

Lehane, Dennis. Small Mercies (pp. 1-2). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 2023

As I come up on my 75th birthday, I can identify with Mary Pat, the main character in Dennis Lahane’s new novel, even though varicose veins are one of the few signs of aging that I don’t have. But, that other thing — the feeling that the person I was at all those different ages is still there someplace inside of me — I get that. And, I’ve been thinking about those moments a lot recently.

When you get to be my age, you realize that nothing is permanent. I have a vivid memory of standing at the foot of one of the world’s tallest buildings and thinking about the effort it took to build something that massive. I wondered what could possibly bring down something that big? It was the night before our son, Jim, and his wife, Rachel, would be married in the chapel of Hebrew Union College, a few blocks away. The building was the World Trade Center and almost everyone in my family was staying at the Marriott in the lower floors that night, August 11,2001.

Nothing lasts forever. It’s not just big buildings that come down, but giant corporations (Pontiac, A & P), venerable institutions (your church may be one of them), and social norms (a marijuana store just opened five blocks from where I’m sitting.)

Most of the time, the changes are so gradual that we hardly notice. But then, it hits us. On their 50th anniversary I looked through my parents’ wedding guest register. I had known most of the people who signed, and I realized, with a start, that the majority of them: my grandparents, their brothers and sisters, and close friends, were all gone — as were several members of Mom’s and Dad’s generation. That was twenty-six years ago. Now my parents’ generation is all gone, too.

It feels like my life and the lives of everyone I know and love are like leaves in the Niagara River. We float along together for awhile and pick up speed as we get closer to the falls. That truth can be terrifying.

But, there is another way to look at life. Instead of a river, the times of our lives can look like a layer cake, or like an archaeological site:

https://www.southalabama.edu/org/archaeology/news/stratigraphy.html

Like Mary Pat, I have caught my reflection and seen, not just my balding head, but myself as a 55-year-old senior pastor, a young husband and father, a teen-ager whose pants’ inseams were longer than my waist size, even the pre-schooler blowing dandelions on a summer’s day.

In some meaningful way, the person I was, and the people I knew, and even the things I did all seem to be preserved in those layers of time.

And maybe they are. I was recently introduced to the Buddha’s Five Remembrances:

  • I am subject to aging. There is no way to avoid aging.
  • I am subject to ill health. There is no way to avoid illness.
  • I am going to die. There is no way to avoid death.
  • Everyone and everything that I love will change, and I will be separated from them.
  • My only true possessions are my actions, and I cannot escape their consequences.


Yes, four of those remembrances are about change. I can’t hang on to my youth, my health, my life, or my loved ones, but my past experiences and actions are different. They continue to be a part of my life.

I miss our son, Matt, who died last summer. I can’t call him on the phone. He won’t be around to celebrate my 75th birthday. But, in the layers of my life, he is still the tiny infant we brought home from the hospital, the toddler learning to walk, the teenager whose comments made his younger brother laugh, the young man introducing us to the woman he married, the father with two delightful teens of his own.

These memories don’t tempt me to live in the past. They remind me that the past lives in me.

As I look back, my life looks like a layer cake. The more layers, the richer my life is. Every decade, year, day, hour, moment, is a layer. I am learning late that what I decide to do with this day and hour makes a permanent difference.

As one of the wisest survivors of the Holocaust said:

Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited “for all eternity.” Conversely, what we achieve by seizing the moment is, once and for all, rescued into reality, into a reality in which it is only apparently “canceled out” by becoming the past. In truth, it has actually been preserved, in the sense of being kept safe. Having been is in this sense perhaps even the safest form of being. The “being,” the reality that we have rescued into the past in this way, can no longer be harmed by transitoriness.

Victor Frankl, Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

It Isn’t Denial. Your Wizard isn’t Talking with Your Lizard

by
Created by the author in Dall-E

My most recent post received some comments that helped me rethink what I wrote. I see now that I fell into the preacher’s besetting sin of alliteration. Trying to help us to not despair about the diminishment that takes place in aging, I urged us to discern what we can change and what we can’t. To do that, we need to resist denial.

That last word, denial, is not helpful. I wish I had not used it.

Denial is a guilt word. If you are in denial, you are bad. Even therapists pronounce the word “denial” with disapproval.

I fear that my post added more shame and guilt on to people who are already beating themselves up. We can’t beat ourselves into facing the truth. We can’t beat ourselves into discernment.

I learned this a little over a year ago. I consulted a therapist who has developed an expertise in neuroscience.

My issue was how I could take more responsibility for my health. I always seemed to sleepwalk through doctors’ appointments. I wouldn’t think about them beforehand. I wouldn’t ask questions during the visit. I wouldn’t remember what the doctor said after I left.

Jacquie is understandably annoyed when she remembers things about my health history that I have completely forgotten.

When I explained this problem to the therapist, she asked me how I felt about telling her that.

I said that I was ashamed. I felt like I was being childish.

She shook her head. She said:

“No, there is a breakdown between your lizard brain and your wizard brain.”

“You have two brains,” she said. “A Lizard brain and a Wizard brain.”

The concept of Lizard brain was not new to me. I had majored in Psychology in college. I knew that, at the base of the brain, there is an almond-shaped structure called the amygdala. The amygdala senses changes in our environment and tells us to flee, fight, or freeze. Even lizards have a brain like that.

My therapist explained that the amygdala works 50 times faster than the prefrontal cortex. That’s why you jump when a snake darts across your path before you even register that it is a little green garden snake — not a cobra.

The part that distinguishes between garden snakes and cobras is the prefrontal cortex in green below.

Only humans have a highly-developed prefrontal cortex. It is where we concoct the magic that writes symphonies, builds skyscrapers, and sends people to the moon. The prefrontal cortex is the “wizard brain.” The rest of the brain may store our past memories of encounters with snakes or pictures of snakes. The prefrontal cortex sorts all those snakes into “poisonous” and or “harmless” categories and can decide what to do on the basis of that taxonomy.

The amygdala also stores memories — especially those associated with pain. These memories may go back to birth. We may not be able to access them the way we remember learning the multiplication tables. But these memories do not fade with time. The amydala may also store our fundamental fears of falling or of death.

I suspect, for example, that as a child, I came to associate any trip to the doctor meant that I felt miserably sick. It also involved getting a needle jabbed into my little rear end. So, when I see the word “doctor” on my calendar, my amygdala immediately says: “Doctor = Sick + Pain in the . . .”

This happens so fast that I am not consciously aware of it.

The therapist asked me to close my eyes and relax. She called up the image of the doctor’s office and asked me what I felt — not what I should feel. What did the little boy in me feel?

Then she had me open my eyes. She placed an empty chair in front of me and said that my wizard brain was sitting in that chair. She told me to explain to the wizard brain how I feel when I am in the doctor’s office.

I did that, describing how I felt as a child: sick, bewildered, and hurt.

Then the therapist asked me to move to the wizard brain chair. She asked my wizard to respond to this bewildered, hurt, frightened child inside my lizard brain.

In the wizard chair, I told the lizard brain that I understood his fears and I cared and I would take care of him.

I then went back to the lizard brain chair and questioned those nice words. How would the wizard take care of me?

Back in the wizard chair and with the help of the therapist, I formulated a plan.

I would make a list of the questions I wanted to ask the doctor and read them over. I would listen for the Lizard brain’s response.

I also agreed to consult with the lizard brain about his concerns about my health. That part of the brain is more in touch with changes in my body than my wizard brain. My wizard brain is too busy writing blog posts to notice the pain in my left side.

This conversation didn’t take very long, but when I was done, I was no longer ashamed of my “denial” about my health. I had created alliance within me between the lizard and the wizard. I could combine intuition with reason. In this past year, that has helped me deal with doctors and take more personal responsibility for my health.

So don’t feel guilty about being in “denial.” Instead, create a relationship between the “Wizard” and the “Lizard” in your brain. The Lizard responds well to understanding and compassion. It runs away from — or fights — guilt and shame. Let them work together. Your lizard can detect how you are feeling. Your Wizard can respond with wisdom.

Together, you can become more discerning about how to face any problem including the problem of diminishment with age. Your lizard brain notices the changes in your body, mind, and relationships. Your wizard brain can find things that you can change. Working together, these two parts of your brain can give you the courage to change the things you can change and the serenity to accept what you can’t.

That Other “D” Word

by
“Old Man with Cane” Created by Dall-E

“You know how people say ‘passed away’ when they mean ‘died’?” our friend, Jim, said recently. “Well, there’s another ‘D’ word, ‘Diminishment,’ and  the euphemism for that is ‘Aging’.” 

Both Jim and I know what he is talking about.  I used to have to walk right along to keep up  with him. Now he pushes a rollator. 

I started wearing hearing aids when I was 35. Almost 30 years later, my hearing got so bad that I underwent surgery for cochlear implants. I also have gone from running 5K’s three times a week, to barely being able to walk a mile. I struggle with chronic fatigue and brain fog due to Long COVID. 

On top of that, I joke that my job was a post-graduate course in aging. During my career as a pastor from 1971 to 2016, the average life expectancy in the U.S. rose from 71 to 78.5. What that meant was that on Mother’s Day in the 70’s, I would see kids, parents, and grandparents sitting together. In the 2010’s, I would see kids, parents, grandparents, and great-grandmother all in the same pew.  Since great-grandmother was probably the only person who still attended on a regular basis, I spent a lot of my time with people in their 80’s and 90’s. 

I learned that “diminishment” means two things: 

– Not being able to do what we used to do. 

– Not being able to be who we used to be. 

Sometimes, just turning a page on the calendar will change who we are. A colleague said that his father complained, “Yesterday, I was the boss of the biggest construction project in the state. Today, I was issued a card that lets me go bowling for half-price.” 

That’s why Supreme Court Justices and Senators and our President still hang on to their jobs into their 80’s. I can’t say that I blame them. It’s taken me six years to quit dreaming every Saturday night about preparing (or not preparing) to lead worship on Sunday. 

The other form of diminishment is when physical and mental limitations keep us from doing what we used to do. 

In those post-graduate studies I mentioned earlier I saw people handling diminishment with three other “D’s”: Denial, Despair, and Discernment. 

I work as a volunteer with people who have hearing loss. The first barrier to overcome is denial. People wait an average of seven years between the time they notice they aren’t hearing as well as they used to and when they start looking into getting a hearing aid.  

What are they doing in those seven years?  

  • – Driving family crazy when they turn up the TV too loud. 
  • – Losing their own ability to speak clearly – as they unconsciously mimic the way they are hearing words pronounced. 
  • – Mishearing what was said and being embarrassed so that they learn to pretend to hear when they don’t or they withdraw from conversations entirely. (The last one is why hearing loss is highly correlated with cognitive decline). 

So, why do we live in denial? 

To save ourselves from the despair we will feel if we face the truth. Jesus may have said, “The Truth will set you free,” but we don’t really believe it. And, yes, I’ve talked to way too many people who faced the truth of their diminishment and despaired. On some days, I have been one of them. 

However, I have seen others take a different road and I am trying follow it myself. It is the Way of Discernment. 

Most of us are familiar with this famous proyer:  

Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can change. The serenity to accept the accept the things I can’t change. And the wisdom to know the difference. 

Reinhold Niebuhr

The trick is finding the wisdom to know the difference. I think James Baldwin shows us the way:  

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Yes, I said above that facing diminishment can lead us into despair, but that is because we jump too soon to the conclusion that our life is essentially over. “Facing” really means looking at the problem and asking, “Is there anything I can do about this?” 

Take hearing loss as an example. We are fortunate to live in an era in which technology can help us overcome a lot of the limitations imposed by hearing loss. However, sticking a hearing aid in your ear is not the same as putting on eyeglasses. We are required to work at learning to use the aid correctly and to be proactive about asking people to speak more clearly. (And to sometimes explain why, as the writer, Katherine Bouton says, Shouting Won’t Help)

But, not everything can be overcome. I am still trying to discern if there are answers to Long COVID. I’m convinced that I can’t take a pill that will cure me. I am discovering that fasting has made a difference, as well as patient, disciplined forms of exertion. But, I’m still not running any races. 

I could despair about that, or accept it with serenity. On my good days, I choose the latter. At a superficial level, I like to think of myself being as cool as Tony Bennett asking beautiful girls to walk a little slower.

But, I also am discovering something deeper. The psychoanalyst, Ernest Becker, wrote in his book, The Denial of Death , that aging requires “terror management.” For Becker, I think (I don’t pretend that I’ve read his book carefully enough to understand it fully), the trouble with being human is that we can anticipate death and  knowing we will die threatens us with meaninglessness. 

In contrast, the Christian tradition describes a scene shortly after Jesus has died his terrible death and then reappeared to his disciples. In this scene, Jesus says to his disciple, Peter, 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.”  — John 21:18

Christians read that as a prediction of Peter’s eventual death by crucifixion, and Jesus is reassuring Peter that even that will have a purpose in his life.  But, those words  also describe what will happen to a lot of us, if we live long enough. 

As things fall away in my life; as people I love more than life itself die; as I look at a picture taken 50 years ago and barely recognize the young man I was then; as my vibrant wife, three months younger than me by the calendar and fifteen years younger by any other measure, goes off to the theater while I go to bed, I still sense that there is something  that I call “me” that I am just discovering. 

William Stafford has expressed how I feel as well as anyone can:  

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

The Way It Is, by William Stafford. 

I think Jesus was saying to Peter that even at the end, when he is helpless, he will still be following the thread of his life. 

Whatever happens, beloved, your life isn’t over until it is over (and maybe not then). Hang on to your thread. 

Acquainted with Grief: 1 Grieving all the Time

by

If you are in the Third Half of Life, you are probably grieving.

The grief may be passing through your life like a thunderstorm, or sitting over you like long days of rain. Or it may, for now, be part of the climate of your life.

You may or may not believe that global climate change is real, but I bet you have noticed in this Third Half of Life that the emotional climate of your life is not as bright and carefree as it once was. Your days, no matter how bright, may be tinged with sadness, the warmest of hugs and most intimate conversations may be accompanied by a chill.

This does not mean you are morbid or unhappy, it just means that you know in your bones that things — and people — can end.

As with global climate change, ignoring these changes only makes things worse. Acknowledging the fact that grief is part of the Third Half of Life enables us to savor the sunlight and find meaning even in the rainiest of days. Grief can make us more human, if we don’t avoid the work that goes with it.

My personal experience with grief has been blessedly ordinary. Like almost everyone my age, I have seen both my grandparents’ and parents’ generation pass away. I have been spared, so far, the loss of my beloved, or any of our younger family members. My only credential is that I have watched people grieve for over half a century. More than that, I have grieved with them.

I was not many years into the ministry before I realized that part of the psychic load of being a pastor was that I was grieving all the time.

Believe it or not, I loved my parishioners. I had to. It was the only way I could stand most of them. Given all my faults, I must have been loved by them in return. So, I grieved when they died. And, I did not have to be an empath to feel the deep griefs so many of them carried in their hearts. Not that it was a constant topic of conversation, but there would be moments when:

  • A widow would recall the life she shared with the man she loved.
  • A mother would recall a child who died before I was born.
  • A man would mention that he still missed a cat that he had to euthanize a year ago.
  • Someone would talk about father who died when he or she was fourteen.

These were the vibes that people emanated whether they told their stories or not.

Most of all, I have had a ringside seat with people when they lost loved ones. I sometimes had to bring them the news myself. As we prepared for the funeral, I coaxed them to describe their loved one. I would follow up with them in visits weeks and months afterward.

That work helped me develop some deep convictions about grief — especially what the work of grief is. Most of that work is subconscious — it is soul work. It cannot be described in words.

A colleague of mine, the pastor of a neighboring church, pointed to this inner work when he described how he handled his brother’s sudden death in an auto accident. The two of them were a about a year apart in age. They had been close all their lives. So, my colleague felt the loss of his brother very deeply. He said that he mowed his lawn almost every day for months after the funeral. Pushing his mower back and forth over his large lawn gave him the space to do that inner work that no one can describe.

However, there are four things we do when we grieve that can be described imperfectly, haltingly, because we tread on the edge of mystery. These four things are:

  1. We remember
  2. We make sense out of our memories
  3. We forgive
  4. We decide what we believe about life, death, and life-after-death.

These are not “stages of grief.” You can find lots of books on that subject. This is the work we do for everyone we love and lose. It never really ends. Right this moment, you are doing that work for people who have been dead longer than a lot of the adults you know have been alive.

In the next few weeks, I am going to go into this work in more detail.

It would help me to hear from you about how you have handled the grief in your life.

Image credit: Raul Diaz, Berlin Germany, Holocaust Memorial https://www.flickr.com/photos/radzfoto/2621999611/in/dateposted/

Your Club Grows More Exclusive Every Day

by

I first realized that I belonged to an exclusive club in the middle of a sermon one Sunday morning. I said, “We all remember where we were when we heard that President Kennedy had been shot.”

I saw the characteristic rightward movement of eyes that told me that people were accessing that vivid memory — in most people. But I also saw some people’s eyes glaze over — a terrifying sight for a preacher. These were people — adults!– who hadn’t been born yet, or were so young that they had no memory of that event.

At about that same time, I was helping some of the singles in our church create a fellowship. There was a debate about whether to have a 36-and-over group and a 35-and-under group, or if they could all meet together.

One of the planners shook her head and said, “You can’t play trivial pursuit with anyone under 35. ‘Who was Nikita Khrushchev?’ leaves them blank.”

If you remember where you were on November 22, 1963. If you know who Khrushchev was. If you ever wore a coonskin cap, played with a Chatty Cathy doll, know all the words to “Happy Trails to You” — We belong to the same club.

Everywhere we have gone, we have walked into new accommodations built just for us, from Kindergarten rooms to college campuses.

My former associate, a Millennial, said, “I’m already looking forward to the delapidated nursing home where I will end my journey through the dilapidated elementary school, high school, college dorm, and all the other things that were built for Boomers.”

That solicitous attention has made us a fractious club. As a generation, we senior Boomers have been incredibly selfish, self-righteous, and self-involved. The Clintons and Donald Trump are members of our club.

Interestingly, neither Biden nor Bernie are. They are the last vestiges of my parent’s generation — the “Silent Generation” — who skillfully managed the legacy of the “Greatest Generation.” Until last year, they never elected a president. And, do you notice how quiet things have been recently?

But, I digress.

I keep wondering why I work at keeping my high school classmates in my Facebook newsfeed. So many of them are scared to death of vaccines, Black Lives Matter, Antifa (which is really scary, since no one even knows what it is!) and, of course, that Democrat who is coming for your guns.

I do it because, in this Third Half of Life, I recognize that what connects me to these people is bigger and more important than all that separates us.

It’s not just that we all know where we were on Nov. 22, 1963. Or that we remember our first TV, hula hoop, or transistor radio. It’s that we have been through all this change together. We have gone from seeing little girls being escorted to school by U.S. Marshalls to Obama, from an NRA that was focused on gun safety to one focused on our right to weapons of mass destruction, from making life hell for gay classmates to congratulating them on their anniversaries.

Some have embraced these changes. Others have fought against the same ones. But we have all been through these changes together.

We have all watched our hair change color (or fall out), little kids become parents of little kids, who are on the verge of becoming parents themselves. We have moved from feeling immortal to not buying green bananas.

We don’t have a special hat, or a motto, or even a secret handshake, but we know who we are when we meet.

Frederick Buechner, b. 1926, was of my parents generation, but what he wrote a couple of decades ago about his own cohort, applies here:

As time goes by, you start picking them out in crowds. There aren’t as many of them around as there used to be. More likely than not, you don’t say anything, and neither do they, but something seems to pass between you anyhow. They have come from the same beginning. They have seen the same sights along the way. They are bound for the same end and will get there about the same time you do. There are some who by the looks of them you wouldn’t invite home for dinner on a bet, but they are your compagnons de voyage even so. You wish them well.

It is sad to think that it has taken you so many years to reach so obvious a conclusion.

from Whistling in the Dark

The One Question To Ask When Reviewing Your Life

by

I sometimes think that we waste our lives looking for answers, when we should be looking for good questions.

A few days ago, I was part of an online presentation to some people who were considering a cochlear implant. One of them said he was afraid to undergo the surgery. “What if it fails?” he asked.

A surgeon who does cochlear implants responded, “It never fails.”

That’s what my surgeon told me when I expressed the same fear.

The surgeon went on. “Some people think that they will immediately go from hearing at thirty percent to hearing one hundred percent. Even if they eventually get up to ninety percent, they think it was a failure. People who were hearing at thirty percent and hoped the implant would raise it to fifty percent — and wound up hearing at seventy percent, think their surgeries were wildly successful. It all comes down to what you expect”

That’s the question I’ve been looking for.

I have been looking back at my life. Was it a good life? Or was it a failure? Was I blessed? Or cursed? Did my life have any meaning or purpose? Did I make any difference in this world?

Before I answer any of those questions, I need to ask another.

“What did I expect?”

I realize that most of my expectations were set by a 27-year-old who thought pretty highly of himself.

  • He got good grades (if he cared about the subject).
  • He married the love of his life (out of his league, frankly).
  • He got a lot of affirmation in his early years as a preacher and pastor.
  • He had two sons who were scarily smart and blessedly healthy.

Why wouldn’t he expect to live a life he could be proud of? Do great things? Be loved and admired?

Didn’t happen. Certainly not on the scale he expected.

Part of my job in the last few years is to teach that young man some compassion.

Compassion basically means accepting people’s frailties, their weaknesses, not expecting them to behave like gods. That expectation is cruelty, because they will not be able to behave like gods and then they will fall in your estimation and will also fall in their own self-respect.

Osho

This question, “What did I expect?” leads to compassion.

Compassion is not cheap grace. I made some major choices that were cowardly or selfish. They led to real failures. I own that. One reason I made some of those choices is that the 27-year-old inside of me did not think I could fail.

Ask the owners of the Titanic how that works out.

“What did I expect?” leads to humble realism about myself and other people. I learn to accept my failures and I am kinder to others.

This question, “What did I expect?” also leads to gratitude. It pushes me to ask, “What did I have a right to expect?”

The answer, of course, is, “nothing.”

As someone who has buried lots of people who are younger than I am now, including parents of teenagers, teenagers, children, and even newborns, I know that none of us has a “right” to life. Even being born exceeds what we can expect.

Starting with no expectations at all, I see that . . .

  • Spending my days with the wisest, most open-hearted (and attractive) woman I know
  • Being able to breathe and walk on my own
  • Having four of the people I love the most call me “Grandpa”
  • Feeling the sun on my face

All of these are blessings beyond compare.

What do you think of your own life?

It’s a good question. A necessary question.

But first, ask yourself:

What did you expect?

street lights

What is Your Brand?

by

The shortest description of marital conflict that I ever heard came from a man who said,

“First, you have to understand that my wife is Nordstrom’s and I am WalMart.”

It’s amazing how much we can tell about people by where they shop, the logo on their shirt, what kind of car they drive, even where they choose to live and what organizations they belong to.

For example, if I tell you that we own a Prius, that I love living in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York City (and the world), and that I belong to a church that has a huge ministry to homeless and LGBTQ+ people, you probably can guess how I vote.

My brands say:

  • I care about the environment.
  • I believe in diversity.
  • I am a compassionate human being.

The problem is:

  • My carbon footprint is still Sasquatch-sized.
  • My closest friends look like me, talk like me, vote like me.
  • I care a lot more about MY physical and financial security than I care about YOUR physical and financial security.

My brands are. . . . shall we say . . . “aspirational.”

My brands are a mask I wear on life’s stage to win the applause of the audience.

The Greek theater mask gives us the word “hypocrite.” You already know enough Greek to understand that “hypo” means “below” and “crit” is the root of “critic.” It comes from the Greek word “judge” or “discern”. Thus, hypocrites have not risen to the level required to make discerning judgments. They literally, “know not what they do.”

Jesus called out hypocrisy, because it was what got him killed.

My brands are my way to unconsciously pretend to be someone else, which is a very human thing to do.

The French philosopher, Rene Girard, called this tendency “mimesis.” It is the reason why, if you put two three-year-olds in a room full of toys, the only toy one of them wants to play with is in the other kid’s hands.

Marketers understand that very well.

When JoJo Siwa wears a new hair bow, thousands of “tween” girls want the same hair bow because they identify with JoJo. They, too, are positive, talented, and they stand up to bullies, just like JoJo.

I have zero interest in luxury watches, but I read a whole full-page ad that said that Daniel Craig wore a Rolex while playing James Bond. Since I, too, am ruggedly handsome, resourceful, witty — like Bond — I wondered if I should wear a Rolex.

Our brands give us our identity. They tell us — and others — who we are.

Perhaps this is necessary in the first half of life. We all start out identifying with Mom and Dad — our family is our “brand.” Then we individuate by identifying with peers: jocks, band kids, nerds, losers. Young adults may emulate mentors or personal heroes.

The Tantric religions like Buddhism and Hinduism call our brands “attachments.” The Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, call them “idols.” Both traditions tell me that

I will never find God or my True Self (which is either God or the Image of God), without letting go of my brands.

If only it were as easy as giving my shirt with the polo pony logo to Goodwill.

The truth is that giving up the “brands” that matter most to me, feels like this:

Banks, Thomas; Anatomical Crucifixion (James Legg); https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/O1350 Credit line: (c) (c) Royal Academy of Arts /

Jesus’ words: “Whoever would follow me must take up the cross daily,” mean different things to different people in different circumstances. That is the beauty of them. To me, in this Third Half of Life, it means letting go of my “brands.” My understanding of my “self” has to die so that something new and more real can take its place.

Sounds nice, but it feels like being crucified — slowly and painfully. We can do this intentionally through practices like mindfulness or letting go of our things, or we can just wait for life to nail us.

Anyone who practices mindfulness encounters stuff that contradicts the image that we like to present to the world — our personal “brand.” And that hurts. I know I am really meditating when, like Scrooge on Christmas Eve, I run into things that I don’t want to see:

  • The wrong turns I took in the past.
  • The needs of the world that I ignore.
  • The fact that I will die and all that I have will not matter at all.

It’s not fun. It feels like dying. I only do it because I keep finding something truer and less superficial underneath my “brand.”

Of course, you don’t have to meditate. Life itself will rip the brands off you, sooner or later.

When loved ones die, it can feel like a part of you has died. You lose one of your most important “brands”: “son” or “daughter,” “brother” or “sister,” “husband” or “wife.” Getting used to thinking of ourselves without those “brands” is not the only component of grief, but it is an important one.

One way we do grief work is that we often dream about the deceased in the first few weeks and months. Then, when we wake up, we realize they are really gone. It is one way our souls come to terms with the loss of that person and our “brand” in relation to that person.

When I retired four years ago, I dreamed every Saturday night that I had to preach the next morning. Unlike my dreams of lost loved ones, these were seldom pleasant dreams. They were filled with anxiety. When I awoke, the anxiety continued. Who am I now?

I am happy to say that those dreams are much less frequent and I am beginning to like No-Longer-Reverend Roger.

It takes a long time for an identity to die. Just as it takes a long time for someone to die on a cross.

This pandemic has stripped brands from a lot of people. The “stylish” were reduced to sweat pants and undershirts. “Gourmands” had to eat their home cooking or take-out. That is nothing compared to what was taken from people who lost their homes and incomes, their life-line visits from friends and relatives, and places where they gathered with their community: their bar, their bowling alley, or their house of worship.

Most of all, there were those who lost their health or their loved ones. I’ve written before about how COVID-19 took my “brand” as a strong, vital man (see Daniel Craig, above). Yet, I am also discovering a person underneath who is:

  • more open to the flow of life.
  • more accepting of change.
  • perhaps even a tad more ready for the loss of my most fundamental “brand,” my body.

I wonder what you lost? How hard was it? What did you find underneath your “brand?”

Living With Limitations

by

What I’ve learned from my Grandfathers since they died

Last week, I wrote about my strategy for a healthy old age and how I learned it from my Grandfather Talbott.

You may have read about how I built myself up so that I could run 3 miles without stopping, and said, “How nice for you. Not everyone gets to have a healthy old age.”

Frankly, I’m not sure I will have one either.

I did the running to recover from a strange illness. In December 2019, I had fever, cough, congestion, fatigue, and brain fog. Sounds a lot like COVID-19. But, I had it a month before the WHO even knew there was an outbreak in Wuhan. I was tested for antibodies six months after I had it. None showed up. Not unusual for COVID patients, but it means I can’t prove that I had it.

In January 2019, I was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. Life-long smokers get COPD. Now it is showing up in people who had COVID 19. I never smoked.

That is why I began walking and running last spring — to build lung capacity.

But, beginning in late November and continuing right up to today, I have spent most of my waking hours lying in bed with fatigue and brain fog. The brain fog has lifted, or I would not be writing this. But the fatigue continues. 

My “push the broom” solution isn’t working either. I’ve done enough exercising to know what being tired feels like. It is not the same as  feeling nauseous, having a headache, and wanting to fall asleep after walking around the block.

The Cleveland Clinic calls this “reduced exercise tolerance.”

This, too, is a symptom of “Long Covid,” officially: Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC). (I have a theory that Medicine creates the most highbrow names for the stuff it knows the least about.) No one knows how long the disease lasts. Will it get better? Or worse? How will it affect my COPD and a couple of other things that I have wrong with me that require lots of exercise? Will I die of this?

All this uncertainty makes me remember my other grandfather — Grandpa Flint.

When he was in his 50’s, he had a stroke.

In his 60’s, he went blind.

In his 70’s, he spent years battling cancer, and ultimately lost the battle.

This is what I remember:

When he had the stroke, he did the hard work of learning to speak and walk again. He had to quit his job, but he started a business. He stocked a small lake he owned with trout, then charged a dollar for each one that fishermen caught. He was able to continue that business even after he could no longer see to drive or read.

Because he was legally blind he was able to get books and magazines recorded on phonograph records. He used to say that he read more after going blind than he did when he could see. He also bought a juicer. He made carrot juice everyday because he heard it was good for the eyes. When he mentioned it to his ophthalmologist, the doctor said, “Well, I never saw a rabbit wearing glasses.”

One day, he asked a fisherman, a doctor, to look at a mole on the back of his neck. The doctor told him it was cancer. That was the beginning of an almost two-decade up-and-down experience of dealing with cancer in different organs. At the end, it invaded his bones.

He decided against chemotherapy. I thought he was crazy. Looking back, I can see that, in the 70’s, chemotherapy was both agonizing and not very effective. He might have lived a few more weeks or months, but his quality of life would have been worse.

As it was, he was in a lot of pain. There was no such thing as hospice or palliative medicine in those days. Politicians believed they had to limit pain-killers to protect dying people from becoming drug addicts.

I used to visit him in his last months. I was struck by the change in his personality.

All his life, he was a big personality who liked being the center of attention. His stories always sounded better than the actual experiences probably were. His marriage to my grandmother was sometimes tense. He was an extrovert married to an introvert. He was the guy with big ideas married to someone who, my mother said, “could always see the hole in the donut.” They were opposites: just like every other couple I know.

In the end, he bore his pain with grace. He told me that he had never loved or appreciated my grandmother more. His faith in God was his source of strength when his body failed him. In the midst of his pain, he saw goodness all around him.

My cousin, Dawn, who grew up within walking distance of our grandparents  knew them far better than I did. She suggests that those good qualities were there all along. They were covered up by the boasting, gregarious personality that he presented to the world.

But, isn’t that true of all of us? Isn’t our basic goodness encased in a shell of bad habits, defensiveness, and need for approval? And doesn’t it usually take suffering in some form to crack that shell?

As my teacher and friend, Laura Atmadarshan Santoro says:

“No one ever said at the end of a good meal surrounded by loving friends, ‘I need to make  changes. My life needs to take a new direction!’ It is only when we are hurting that we change.”

I hope I will start feeling better as Spring arrives and the pandemic restrictions finally lift as we all get vaccinated. I want to get back to walking and running and working out again. I’d like to go on to a healthy old age, like my Grandfather Talbott. I like the slogan: “Live long and die short.”

But, this period of repetitive, long-term illness has caused me to look at my Grandfather Flint for guidance, too. I can learn to:

  • Listen to my body and support my health with nutritious food and as much exercise as my body will bear.
  • Learn to make plans with the proviso that I might not be able to carry them out.
  • Love everyone around me.
  • Write some things that I hope other people will read.
  • Pray for the world, especially for those who suffer.
  • Appreciate and enjoy every day as much as I can.

When I compare this time in my life with my Grandfather’s last few months, I would hardly call my experience “suffering.” In fact, my life is so leisurely and stress-free that I fear I will become like one of Jacquie’s great-aunts. My mother-in-law always described her as “someone who enjoyed poor health.”

Nevertheless, I understand better something the Bible says:

We also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,  and endurance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God  has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Romans 5:3-5 New English Translation.

What A Healthy Old Age Looks Like

by

What I’ve Learned from My Grandfathers Since They Died: Part 1

One of the challenges of this Third Half of Life is health. Sure, that means eating right and exercise, but it begins inside of our heads. 

When we get older and we get sick or injure ourselves, we are tempted to look at the calendar and say, “I’m old,” and think: 

Old = sick

Old = feeble

Old = dying.

We are not necessarily helped much by the medical profession. Doctors were once taught that the paradigm of health is a man. So, they treated things that were uniquely female, like menopause or having a uterus, as pathologies that needed medication or removal. 

 That may have improved. However, it’s hard for lay people and professionals to get past the unconscious assumption that the paradigm of health is a 19-year-old. The more we deviate from that ideal, the more likely we are to get  prescriptions and procedures to “fix” us. 

As my mother used to say, “Every time I go to the doctor, I get a new pill. Then, every two years, I wind up in the hospital and they take them all away from me.” 

Too many of us are conditioned to think that there is nothing we can do about our health. When I talk with friends about how a lot of chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes or even heart disease can be healed with diet and exercise, a lot of them say wearily, “just give me a pill.” 

I think that they lack a mental image of what a healthy old age looks like.  I am grateful that my Grandfather Talbott taught me that old people can rebuild their health after it takes a nosedive.

I’ve learned a lot from my grandfathers since they died. The older I get the more I learn. It’s not that I remember stories that they told me or any advice that they gave me. But, I do remember how they lived and how they negotiated old age. I am benefitting from their examples.

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

James Baldwin

Grandpa Talbott was a dairy farmer. He was active in the Dairyman’s League, a cooperative of farmers who banded together to sell their milk at a fair price. As my Dad took over the farm, Grandpa took on more responsibility in the League’s organization. Before I got to high school, he was commuting 300 miles to New York City every week to work at the League headquarters as the treasurer. Then, he became president of what was then the largest dairy cooperative in the country.

It was a lot of stress and responsibility. By his mid-60’s, he was sick and worn out. He spent several weeks in the hospital before he retired.

Shortly after he retired, he drove up to our farm one morning. Dad and I had finished breakfast and we were cleaning the barn after milking. The cows had gone off to pasture. The barn floor needed cleaning. I had used a shovel to take care of the manure. Grandpa picked up the push broom and started down the barn floor, sweeping everything on his left into the gutter. He went very, very slowly.

My Dad and I watched him. It was kind of agonizing. When he got to the other end of the barn floor, he leaned on his broom to catch his breath.

My Dad said, “Go take that broom away from your grandfather.”

I walked down the floor and said, “Here, Grandpa, I can finish it.”

He said, “No, Roger, I need to do this.”

So, we watched him come back, sweeping the other side. Then he got in his car and went home.

He came back the next day. And the next. It took a few weeks, but then he was sweeping the floor as fast or faster than I could. He would stay and help my Dad with other chores. He also worked on my uncle’s much bigger farm. In fact, he was plowing my uncle’s fields into his 80’s.

I, too, pushed too hard and too long on my work for my own good. By the time I retired in 2016, I was overweight and suffering from a severe digestive disorder. I found a doctor who said she could cure me. And she did. I made a lot of life-style changes and got better and better. Then, I spent December 2019 suffering from a flu-like illness. I spent six weeks in bed with mild fever, and moderate fatigue and brain fog.  Sounds like COVID-19 doesn’t it? Trouble is, doctors diagnosed the first case in New York City in March 2020.

Whatever it was, I feared I was going to spend my life as an invalid. But I started walking and working out. Then, I decided to try running. My son, Jim, who lives near us, is a runner. When my knees hurt, he taught me how to shorten my gait and land on my toes. The pain disappeared.

By the end of October, I could run 5 kilometers (3 miles). I had to thank my Grandfather Talbott. 

As I tied on my running shoes every other day, I thought of him pushing that broom.

When I could only run about 20 yards, I thought about him pushing that broom.

When it rained, I thought of him pushing that broom.

He’s been dead thirty years, but I keep learning from him. Next week, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from my other grandfather since he died. 

Who have you learned from since they died?

The Year of the Rat

by
Year of the Rat 2020

I like Chinese food. I hate the placemats in Chinese restaurants. No matter how many times I study them, they always tell me that I am a rat.

The placemats show the 12 years of the Chinese Zodiac.

I look at all the other years and wish I could be a Tiger or a Rabbit.

Dragon would be cool!

I’d settle for Pig.

Snake is a toss-up with Rat. Although I can think of more positive things about snakes.

No matter how many times I eat Chinese, the news is always the same. I am a Rat. To me the Rat represents all that is unlovely, unloving and unlovable in me.

Astrology may be bunk, but it points to the truth that life has certain “givens.” The Native American poet, Joy Harjo, now the U.S. Poet Laureate, wrote, “Remember the sky that you were born under.” People who live close to nature notice the way the stars shine the night a baby is born. Two billion Christians remember a star shining over Bethlehem one night long ago.

If I count the year I was born, the Year of the Rat has come around for the seventh time. If I look at myself at 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, and now, I see so many changes in those 12 year cycles, for example:

  • At 12, I was a farm boy.
  • At 24, I was young man with a wife, a baby, and a church.
  • In the past 12 years, both my parents died. For the first time, I left a church smaller than it was when I arrived. I retired. We moved to New York City.

I look in the mirror and compare what I see with snapshots taken from those other cycles of the Zodiac. Where did the hair go? How did what hair I have left turn so white when it started so black? Where did the wrinkles come from?

In some ways, what remains the same is more mysterious than what has changed.

How can I be the same person now that I was at 12? What is this mystery that I call my “self?”

I still read and then pontificate about what I’ve learned. I still laugh out loud at jokes other people don’t seem to get. But there are other things that also persist. All of them are part of the rat.

The Rat represents all those parts of me that I have tried to shut out, poison, or trap. I can’t kill it. Most of the time the Rat just hides in the shadows. But he is there. He is always there.

In this 7th Year of the Rat, I look back and see that there is not much I can do about my past failures and limitations. The rat-like genes that gnawed away the cilia inside my cochlea now may be gnawing at my bones and my lungs.

My life is my life. It is a combination of the choices I made and things that were built in to my life from conception. But oddly, that empowers me to make the best of what my life is, Rat and all.

Accepting the unlovely Rat in me also helps me see that the Rat can be “quick-witted, resourceful, and versatile” at times.

Maybe that’s why the Chinese astrologers also say that the Rat is kind. Once a Rat accepts and feels compassion for himself, he can care for other fallible human beings.

After all, if you can love a Rat, you can love anybody.