merry christmas!

Our manger scene with its hand-carved wooden figures and motley collection of angels

"Glory to God in the highest,

And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!" (Luke 2:14 - NKJV)

Wishing all who read here a blessed and merry Christmas!

old and alone

An article titled "Aging alone: Planning can make those future years golden" (Denver Post) talks about the very real possibility that many of us will grow old alone without spouse or even kids nearby. The piece cites some action steps suggested by Nancy Orel of Bowling Green State University to  ensure comfortable golden years:

• Assess your personal situation.

• Consider and make a list of who to call in an emergency.

• Get a good lawyer

• Don't seclude yourself. Instead build a support system.

• Keep exercising body and mind.

• Consider what changes you may need to make to your house so that you can age in place.

• Stay positive; look forward to something

I love the Orel quote that ends the article:

"Have dreams and goals and objectives for the future. ... Many people fall prey to 'I'm old, I'm old, I'm old.' No. If people assumed they were going to live the maximum life span of 122 years, they'd look differently at their 70s."

(Read all of : Aging, alone: Planning can make those future years golden)

Of course the life of a single person can be much warmer and richer than the above list would imply. In her book Embracing Your Second Calling Dale Hanson Bourke tells of a time she took her sons to visit their  widowed great-grandmother Hanson. When they walked into her nursing home room at the time they had said they'd arrive from out of state, she wasn't even there.

"Oh, she's probably at Crafts or a Bible Study," the nurses said. "She's a busy lady."

When Bourke and her boys returned an hour later, there was Grandma Hanson in her room with a half dozen other guests. There were college students, a middle-aged woman, and a young couple with their toddler, all of whom Grandma was delighted to introduce to her granddaughter and great-grandsons.

During the several days of her visit Bourke recounts:

"Grandma had many more visitors of all ages. They seemed to arrive at all times of the day, and not one of them seemed to be there because they were worried that my grandma was lonely. They came because they loved seeing her, were seeking her advice, or just wanted to spend some time with someone with twinkling blue eyes and a big smile"  Dale Hanson Bourke, Embracing Your Second Calling, pp. 193, 194.

Why was Grandma so popular? It had a lot to do with decisions she had made earlier in her life. When, as a young mom, she felt hopeless about her life married to an alcoholic, she decided to take the kids to church and came to know God in a way that changed her and her boys. Eventually her husband came around too. She  taught Sunday School for sixty years and had known many of her adult visitors when they were children. She had watched them grow, get married and have kids of their own, genuinely loved them, and was interested in their lives.

Bourke concludes:

"Our family can trace our spiritual roots back to this humble woman, and I like reminding my sons that one person's decisions can influence the next generation. We have so much, thanks to Grandma Hanson" Bourke, p. 196.

Bourke adds this bit of wisdom after telling her grandmother's story:

"A common principle of good management is, 'Begin with the end in mind.' The point is simply to know where you want to end up so you keep aiming in the right direction" Bourke p. 196.

If our goal is to end up surrounded by friends and family like Grandma Hanson was, we'd do well to cultivate some of those friendships now, so that when we are old and alone, we're not reduced to frantically casting about for a lawyer, someone to go for a walk with, or names for the list of who to contact in an emergency.

Do you know some elderly singles like Grandma Hanson? What makes them well-liked and popular?

the aging artist

"America grows older yet stays focused on its young. Whatever hill we try to climb, we're over it by fifty — and should that hill involve entertainment or athletics we're finished long before. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but supermodels and newscasters, ingenues and football players all yield to the harsh tyranny of time. They turn on Fortune's wheel. Look what happens to the overnight sensation or pick of the week or fashion of the season or rookie of the year. First novels have a better chance of being noticed than a fourth or fifth. Although we're aging as a nation we don't do it willingly: The face-lift and the tummy-tuck are — against the law of gravity — on a commercial rise....

"This book is about tribal elders in the world of art. What interests me is lastingness: how it may be attained. For obvious reasons, this has become a personal matter; I published my first novel in 1966 and very much hope to continue. Too, such hope feels representative: a "generational" problem in both senses of the word. An ever-growing number of Americans are middle-aged or elderly; no natural catastrophe has thinned our swelling ranks. And the habit of creation does not die, so there are more who paint the sunset or take piano lessons or hunt the perfect end-rhyme at day's end. Our generation, like all others, yearns to produce some something that continues — and the generative impulse, when artistic, lingers on."

So begins the Introduction to Nicholas Delbanco's book Lastingness: The Art of Old Age. In it he explores how aging affects artists. He extracts thoughts about aging artists, their processes and persistence from people like Monet (who had cataracts) and John Updike who was still at work on writing projects when he died  in 2009 at 76 years of age.

An article about Delbanco's book on the NPR site explores some of the book's ideas as well as treating us to a 6-minute interview with Delbanco.



 The three questions Delbanco asked John Updike were:

1. How have your work habits changed at present from the days when you were an apprentice to the trade?


2. How have your aspirations changed; do you think of a day's work as "more of the same" or have you set yourself different goals?



3. Can you point me to a passage — or passages — in your own writing which deals with these issues, either head-on or obliquely?

Here's a snippet from Updike's answer to #3.:

"By and large what lasts best is the most concrete, the most actual, delivering to the reader a piece of earth and humanity. Aesthetic flourishes fade and wrinkle, though they may get attention when new. A blunt sincerity outlasts finely honed irony, I would think. An ability to see over the heads of important contemporary issues into the simple truth of daily life is what we can respond to a century later. . . ."

Read Updike's complete answers HERE (partway down the page).

How would you answer the questions Delbanco asked Updike?
*************


Related: 

• A Bible thought:

"Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life."  - Galatians 6:4-5 (Message)

• Liesel Mueller has written a wonderful poem about Monet and his vision problems. "Monet Refuses the Operation" begins:

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being . . .

Read entire...

life's gifts don't stop at 1000 (1003-1015 of gifts unending)

"Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it." - John Hughes

Believe it or not, I've been missing the weekly ritual of reviewing my gratitude list and posting updates of my life! I was thrilled to reach my goal of 1000 a few weeks ago, but now ...  what? So I've decided like some others, to carry on past 1000. May finding things to be grateful for become my lifestyle!

Since I put up my last 1000 gifts post (almost a month ago) here are some blessings I've recorded:


1003. Dr. Charles Price visited our church on his publicity tour for Living Truth. Another couple joined us and we found seats in the second row. Dr.Price ended up sitting right in front of me. (I felt like reaching out and touching the hem of his garment—just kidding!)

1004. I took courage and set up a Facebook page to help me publicize my soon-to-release novel. The process was smooth. It's here, if you care to visit it. I'll be posting book events on it plus other writing-related stuff.


1005. On the subject of the book, I got the proof copy of Destiny's Hands last week, checked it over closely and found no typos, weird spacings, pages missing etc. Whew! So it's on to the print phase.

1006. I love spring's continuing flower show. My camera wants to own! Here are a few mementoes.

1007. We celebrated a couple of milestones. A sad one was my cousin's funeral. He died suddenly in his sleep one Saturday to Sunday in May. I didn't know him well so his memorial service was like getting to know him. What an incredible man who made a huge impact on many people. Memorials always get me thinking too... What will people remember about me?

1008. A happy milestone was a friend's 60th birthday party. He's taken to running triathlons, reflected in his beautifully decorated birthday cake.

1010. We've been enjoying spring scents on our walk—the sweet perfume of wild roses and the spicy scent  of Dame's Rocket.

1011. We pass a favourite dogwood every day on our walk. I've been documenting it in all its phases.

1012. The salmonberries are ripe. Here is one, photographed just before I ate it.

1013. And how about this curious bloom on a shrub (also seen on a recent walk)?

1014. Father's Day in Vancouver. Son lives just off Main Street where they were celebrating Car-Free Day. The street was a big party / stroll. We had a delicious Greek food at The Main. Happy Father's Day to the man in my life.

1015. This very handsome flicker posed for me this morning.

To discover who had the idea to start listing 1000 and more gratitudes, and to find links to many more such lists, go here.

promptings—now a blog for old fogeys

In November I will have been blogging here at promptings for eight years. Eight years! In all that time I've resisted latching onto any one theme, wanting to keep this a place where I share the eclectic variety of my life.

Themes have emerged, though. In the last two years I've concerned myself pretty much with three things—my list of 1000 gifts, book reviews, and Thursday Challenge photos.

A few weeks ago I reached 1000 in counting thankfulnesses. Though I enjoyed keeping track of and posting about them, I'm glad that project is done. Now I feel like I'm entering a new season here on the blog and have been casting about for a new focus.

Last week I read Michael Hyatt's book Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. I paid special attention to his chapter on blogging and got inspiration from what he said about why he blogs: "I blog in order to clarify my thinking and archive my best ideas. In short, I blog for me (But you are welcome to read along!) .... If you are writing, you are achieving greater clarity about your life, your work, and what matters most." Michael Hyatt, Platform, Kindle location 2204)

The idea of writing to figure out what I think about things resonates. I believe that's why many of us write—because the act of writing helps us to work through issues and ideas. So, I asked myself, what bloggable things am I preoccupied with at the moment?

My kids are grown up so I'm no longer working through potty training and adolescent discipline. I see my grandkids too infrequently to make granny topics a good blog focus. I don't have cancer, or diabetes, or any other chronic disease, so coping with sickness doesn't preoccupy a great deal of my thoughts. Neither am I into shoes, or decorating, or fashion ...

But one topic does keep coming to mind. Aging; my aging, the aging of my generation.

Even as I write that, I hear you groan. I hear myself groan. Yes, in a way it's a depressing subject. Who wants to dwell on losing function, on changes in us that society makes fun of and that we ourselves resent? And yet...

As I've been thinking about taking this tack, I've become aware of age-related stuff all around me.

• There are a lot of us. The latest reports show how baby boomer seniors (we) are creating a bulge in the census numbers.

• The government is taking notice by proposing changes in OAS (Canada's Old Age Security payment, which all seniors in Canada now get when they're 65; that threshold scheduled to increase to 67 in the years ahead).

• People our age are handling retirement differently than those a generation ago.  We're living longer. Some of us are dealing with aging on two fronts—our own and our parents. We're working longer. Many of us are richer than our parents were. But some of us are poorer.

For the Christian, I believe aging doesn't have to be—shouldn't be—a negative thing. It means we're closer to what we've lived for our whole lives: meeting Jesus and hearing His "Well done."

Yes, some of the last steps will probably be awkward, uncomfortable, even painful. But by living with our eyes open to what really matters, perhaps we can take those steps with more foresight, purpose and intention.

And so I'm taking the plunge into exploring aging here on the blog—a subject I have been musing on for some years now.  I'll try to put up a new post on the topic each Tuesday. I hope you'll join me as I reflect on some aspect of the grey years, with the emphasis on aging gracefully and joyfully. We begin tomorrow with the review of almost-octogenarian author Luci Swindoll's inspirational book, Simple Secrets to a Happy Life.

(Wouldn't you know it, I'm launching this blog-focus during what happens to be Seniors Week where I live. If you're local, check out all the free activities for seniors in the Langley, B.C. area on this downloadable Seniors Week 2012 pdf.)

If you have ideas for topics, please let me know by email or in the comments.