Health

Blessed Are The Anguished

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— Demonstration supporting Sammy’s Law, March 22, 2024. Photo: Roger Talbott

This is the week when Christians recall the passion and death of Jesus. On Thursday, we have a service to remember his last supper. On Friday, we often have long services in the afternoon that recall the seven things he said on the cross or the 12 events that happened on the way to the cross.

All these are in preparation for the joyous celebration of Christ’s resurrection on Easter Day. 

Some churches also have a service of Tenebrae — a word that means “darkness.” The service consists of lamentations from the Psalms and the prophets. No one preaches. If there is music, it is also the music of lament and grief — think, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord.” Periodically, a candle at the front of the church is extinguished, and the church grows so dark it is hard to see anything but the candles.

In the end, only one large candle remains lit and it is removed from the sanctuary. The congregation sits in silence. Then there is a loud noise. Last night, someone beat on an unseen kettle drum. The large candle is returned to the front of the church, a symbol of St. John’s words, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.” 

When I used to lead Tenebrae services in the suburban church I pastored when our sons were growing up, our son Matt helped me by making the loud noise at the end of the service. He created a loud, hollow noise that sounded like a door slamming shut on your tomb. 

As an adult, Matt sometimes attended a Tenebrae service even if he didn’t attend church on Easter morning. He said, “It is the world’s best horror show.” 

As I recited lamentations in my church’s Tenebrae service this year, I remembered how all of us who loved Matt felt when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and watched over the next ten terrible weeks as he slowly wasted away in front of us, even as the light of his love for life and his family fought back against the darkness. 

The feeling we had, like the feeling the followers of Jesus must have had in the last few hours of his life, was anguish. 

It is the same feeling I have had for the last six months about Israel and Gaza. 

I have Jewish family and friends for whom Israel’s national security represents a kind of psychological safety net in a world that periodically decides to blame Jews for everything. The brutal attack on October 7-8 poked a hole in that safety net. Many of them see the net being further degraded as Israel’s short-term military objectives risk the long-term safety of all the world’s Jews. 

As what might have been a just war has become just war, my friends and friends of friends who are Muslim, Arabic Christians, and people whose skin doesn’t match the paint samples Americans arbitrarily call “White” see our country’s support of Israel (now waning) as a clear indication that some lives matter more than others. 

The great temptation is to feel nothing.  After all, I can’t do anything about it. It is the way of the world. As one of my pastors said last Sunday, most of the people involved in Jesus’ crucifixion treated it the way we Americans treat mass shootings. It was just another day. 

His Sunday sermon, the Tenebrae service last night, Holy Thursday, and Good Friday remind me if I am to remain whole and human in this cruel world, I am called to feel anguish. 

I Googled “anguish” and found this:

“Anguish is often referred to as emotional distress or pain, and it can encompass several different emotions, such as trauma, grief, sorrow, fear, and anxiety. It’s a reasonable, typical, and sometimes even a rational response to a horrible situation.” 

Betterhealth.com

It isn’t easy to choose to feel distress and pain. No one can do it all the time, as the exhausted caregivers of dying loved ones know all too well.  Yet we also know that shutting those feelings out entirely makes us less than human. 

We need rituals and seasons that bring us back to our anguish.

 In the last few years, I’ve been fascinated by how people who never go to church, especially young people, show up for Ash Wednesday. Having ashes applied to your forehead while hearing “Remember you are dust” is as grim a ritual as there is in Christianity’s toolbox.  Yet, if a clergy person is willing to stand in a public place and perform that ritual, people will line up for it, showing that it reaches something that happy, clappy weekly “celebrations” do not. It helps us get in touch with the anguish of life itself. I suspect that if there were some way to take Tenebrae out into the streets, people would line up for that, too. 

I experience the same “vibe” when I attend Yom Kippur services at Malkhut, the Jewish spiritual community my daughter-in-law, Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg,  has formed here in Western Queens, and hear my son, Jim, chant in Hebrew alphabetical order the names of the sins we all commit. (You can taste that vibe by listening to Leonard Cohen sing “Who by Fire.”) I suspect that my Muslim friends who are observing Ramadan are getting in touch with the same feelings. 

 I have recently seen the importance of secular rituals of lamentation, too. I have attended demonstrations led by Jews and Muslims demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. I recently marched with neighbors who are demanding a radical change in New York State law — to give New York City the right to set its own speed limits — a week after another child had been run over in Queens. All of them are acts of communal anguish and lament.

As the Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann has repeatedly pointed out, lamentation is prophetic. It expresses humanity’s resistance to the Powers that Be, who insist cruelty and death are necessary. Living in this world without anguish means caving to the Powers that are trying to squeeze us into their image.  

Jesus once said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” We find comfort because we are not alone; we are part of the human race made in the image of God, who often weeps over us.  

This is part of a larger project on the Beatitudes. I would appreciate any comments you would like to share.

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

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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.

The One Question To Ask When Reviewing Your Life

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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?

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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

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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

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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?

Guest Blog: Everything I Needed to Know for the Pandemic I Learned in Kindergarten — Creativity

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As I ask friends how they are getting through this strange time, a lot of them talk about going back to things we did in Kindergarten: drawing, painting, making things out of clay or wood — the stuff we often call “art.” (Soon, I’ll share something for those of you who, like me, don’t turn to these practices.)

Recently the Rev. Nancy Talbott wrote a letter to her congregation about how to take these practices deeper.

Nancy is pastor of The Congregational Church of North Barnstead in New Hampshire. She is also my sister. (Yes, it’s probably genetic.) Nancy not only writes, she makes music, draws, bakes, and builds congregations. She and her husband, Steve, have put two families together to create an amazing three-generational tribe. 

Nancy gave me permission to republish her letter here: 

Dear Friends,
The other day I was in a conversation with friends about how they are using their time during this Covid-19 summer.

One shared she was crafting and the other shared they have been doodling and coloring as a way to relieve stress and anxiety.

The coloring craze has been around for a number years now, and we can find adult coloring books everywhere, however, this conversation reminded me of a prayer practice I took on a number of years ago, after reading a book called, Praying in Color: Drawing a New Pathway to God, by Sybill Macbeth.


This practice is meditative, creative, and opens our communication with God. You can practice this anytime, however, it is an intentional practice, so turn off the 24-hour news cycle and find a comfortable, quiet place, a cup of tea or coffee, and begin!


All you need is a pencil or pen, and piece of paper. You can get fancy and pick up some colored pencils and a special pad of paper or a journal, however, the point is not to do too much planning…just begin.

Start with a name of someone you want to include in prayer, or maybe your own name. Draw a shape in the middle of the page, and write the name inside it, then draw another shape, and connect the two with a line. Or place God, Jesus, or Christ in the center and expand out with names or feelings, from there. There are no rules, the point is to relax with yourself and God for whatever time you want to spend.


You can also do this with a short piece of scripture as a Lectio Divina meditation. Here is a link for instructions on how to do this: Praying Scripture – click here


I have included some images at the end of this reflection for ideas. I have also included a link where you can find templates to print, however, I think the circles and curly-q’s you draw yourself will be better than any template.


This Covid-19 world is stressful and brings on so much fear and worry about things we cannot control. Praying in color, or just in black and white, can activate our right brains where compassion and creativity wait for us to participate, relax and grow.


When our hearts and minds are praying about ourselves and others, the perfect love of God enters our space and casts out our anxiety and our fear.
See you in worship!

Your pastor,
Rev. Nancy
Praying in color templates click here

The Year of the Rat

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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.

How To Time Travel Safely 2: Into the Future

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When I was a pastor, I watched parishioners who, as they got older, seemed to be paralyzed.

  • They hung on to jobs that were too much for them.
  • They hung on to their big houses, when they couldn’t take care of them.
  • They hung on to their cars when driving was no longer safe for them — or anyone else.

These were often people who had made good decisions all their lives.

I used to think that they refused to look at the future.

Now, as I face aging myself, I see that the real problem is getting stuck in the future. They had looked ahead and saw nothing but decline and death. They believed that there was nothing they could do to make it better. So, they did not come back to the present to take action.

That is the problem with Mental Time Travel. We feel the impact of past or future events with the same intensity as if we were there.

James Baldwin wrote:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed,
but nothing can be changed unless it is faced.”

We can’t change the fact that we will decline and die.

We do not have control over when we will die.

We do not control how we will die.

However, when we time travel to our last day, we can ask, “What can I change now that will make a difference on that day?”

I have seen people make significant changes in the last years, months, even days of their lives that made a difference in the end.

Here are some examples:

My mother loved her house, her garden, her community. On the night my father died, she said to me, “I’m going to move into a retirement community.” She faced the fact that she was declining. She would not be able to live alone much longer.

With the help of her children, she cleaned out her house and sold it. She, had never lived more than 15 miles from her birthplace. Even so, she moved across three states to a retirement community near one of my sisters.

There, she moved from independent living to assisted living to the memory unit. Each time she moved, she divested herself of what little she had left. When she died, she left behind a chair, a dresser, and two shelves of books.

I remember her as someone who calmly and courageously faced the fact of aging. She was a model for all of us.

I knew a man, who hid his vulnerabilities under bluster and bragging. Yet, as he was laid low with cancer, he opened up his heart to his wife, his children, and others. It softened their memories of him. For me, he is an example of how it is never too late to change.

There was a woman who spent much of her life in bitterness. She had no friends and she often alienated the relatives who tried to love her. Having to live in a nursing facility did not help.

One day, this woman changed. She was warm, grateful for a visit, interested in her visitors, and she had dropped her usual complaints about the world. She remained that way for the rest of her life. It changed the way everyone remembers her.

My mother’s Alzheimer’s disease used to make me despair about my future. Then, I started working with a doctor who recommended, The End of Alzheimer’s, by Dr. Dale Bredeson. That led to The Alzheimer’s Solution, by Drs. Dean and Ayesha Sherzai.

I am convinced that, even if I can’t completely prevent cognitive decline, I can make changes in my life that will slow it down. I’ve gone from despair to a feeling that I can do something. Plus, I feel better and sharper than I have felt in years.

If we don’t face the fact that we will decline and die straight on, we will be stuck there in despair.

If we do face the fact of decline and death, we can make changes now.

It is never too late to change things, even if it is just our attitude.

I’d like to hear from you.

Who are good examples for you?

What decisions have you made because you have faced your future?

It’s Good to Suck at Things 2: When We Suck At What We Were Once Good At

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“We fall down and we get up.

We fall down and we get up.

We fall down . . . and we. . . . get. . . .up!”

You may remember this song, “We fall down,”* sung by Bob Carlisle,  but even if you don’t, the refrain is all you need for background music while reading  this post.

One of the realities of this Third Half of Life is that we fall down; sometimes literally.

I fell not long ago walking across a parking lot after dinner with my sister and brother-in-law. As we got to their car, I did not see that I was stepping off a curb. I went down. I didn’t hurt anything but my dignity, but my cochlear implant processor and my glasses went flying.

I have difficulty with depth perception in low-light conditions. I was a little off-balance because of a bout with vertigo a couple of weeks earlier. Probably the Guinness I drank with dinner did not help. I fell down, but I got up.

So, there you have my organ recital. I can’t see, hear, or walk as well as I used to. I suck at things I used to be good at. This happens to all of us if we live long enough.

When it happens, we have three choices:

Denial

Despair

Defiance

Denial The best way to deny that you have a problem is to blame it on someone else. Have you ever said something like this?

“Everybody just mumbles these days. Even the ones on TV.”

“They keep shrinking the print on everything.”

“Why doesn’t the city fix the sidewalks? They are a menace.”

“All these young doctors ever talk about is losing weight. I want them to give me pills, not a sermon.”

Ironically, we most likely go into denial because we are afraid that reading glasses or hearing aids will make us look like old coots. Yet, when we talk like this we sound like old coots.

Denial can be kind of funny – until it kills us or someone else. Think about Prince Philip’s recent accident. He was lucky he did not hurt anyone.

Despair

Despair is never funny.

Despair is often accompanied by depression — another thing we tend to deny.

Despair is a decision to stay down after we fall down and not get up again. When it becomes clear that what we are eating and drinking is killing us, or at least limiting our ability to tie our shoes, we choose to believe that we cannot change. Instead we put on the slip-on shoes and find pants with an elastic waist. We accept that there is a whole list of things we cannot do anymore. We spend thousands of dollars on medications. More tragically, we become more and more isolated and lonely as we lose our eyesight, our hearing, and our mobility.

Yes, we may have to learn to live with some limitations. However, most conditions can be improved with some help and some effort. Sadly, when we start to suck at things we used to be good at, too many of us just despair. We fall down and don’t get up.

Defiance

Defiance is different from denial in that it begins with admitting that we now suck at what we used to be good at. Defiance means facing what is changing in our bodies.  It is different from despair in that it means learning what our alternatives are. It means doing the hard work of getting up after we have fallen down.

One of my heroes is  a friend who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He not only goes to physical therapy, but does the exercises his PT prescribes.

Another is a physician and social activist who, in his 80’s, began to lose his ability to speak clearly. He goes to a speech therapist and then carefully speaks in a way the rest of us can understand.

Another hero is a woman who decided when she was 60 years old that if she did not lose weight, she wouldn’t make it to 70. She has lost more than 70 pounds and is still learning how to change her eating and exercise habits to get healthier. Since I’m married to her, I am much healthier, too. By the way, she just turned 70, but does not look like it.

That’s what defiance looks like from the outside looking in.

Here’s what it feels like on the inside.

Last Thanksgiving, my 13-year-old granddaughter sang a song for our family gathering. It was an Italian art song she sang to audition for a place in a performing arts high school. In the unbiased opinions of three of her grandparents, she was startlingly good.

The fourth grandparent had no idea. Through my sound processors it sounded like someone singing on a telephone. I know that some people who wear cochlear implants hear music in all of its richness. Most of them are musicians whose brains already know how to hear music. I am not a musician. I despaired that I would ever hear music again. I also denied that I wanted to. My cochlear implants helped me to hear and understand speech remarkably well. I told myself that was good enough. That day, however, I decided that I want to hear my granddaughter sing. I want to hear her brother play the viola that he is starting to learn.

I now have an app for people like me. Several times each week, I play games that reward me for choosing the lowest note from five options. It also gives me points when I determine whether a two-note sequence goes up or down. I was able to do that after “graduating” from a series of exercises that helped me hear the difference between a trumpet and a piano. Yes, my hearing was that bad.  Now I am moving on to listening to 60’s music on Spotify. It helps if the songs are already stored in my brain.

All this takes time, effort, and energy. I am often mentally exhausted afterward.  Nevertheless, I can now hear Petula Clark sing “Downtown” and Glen Campbell sing “Gentle on My Mind” at least as well as I first heard them over my tiny transistor radio. Best of all, I feel like I am getting up after being knocked down.

So, what are your stories? How have you fallen down? What are you doing to get back up again?

 

* The story of the origin of this song is worth reading.