After visiting Ft Morgan in Alabama last week, I realized that I don’t know much about the War of 1812.  So I found a crash course video on YouTube to catch up a little bit. Now I’m an expert, I guess– lol. But in the process, I wondered what ever happened to my old history teacher in high school, Mr. Abney. I wasn’t sure if he was still alive or not, after all it has been over 40 years, so I googled to find out. Indeed, Mr. Abney is 89 years old and living in Tennessee. But what I uncovered next was a shocking surprise to me. His son Keith, my age, my very best childhood friend growing up died just last month. We were inseparable until about the 10^th grade. I saw his obituary by accident- I had no idea. Keith was a physician in Tennessee,  and I deduce from the obit that he had cancer.  Now I haven’t really kept in touch with him since early college days, but still he was a significant friend.  Couple that with the fact that my best friend in high school is also dead. Ted, a brilliant engineer, died about 20 years ago.  It was untimely and way too early for Ted and his young family.  He had brain cancer.

I recently saw on my high school Facebook page (for the class of 1973), that more than 20 people have passed away out of our small class of 164 at Searcy high School. And I guess in the next 15 years probably 50 or 60 more will likely pass away, at least from a statistical average standpoint.  It’s a sobering thought. I certainly don’t want to be counted in that number, but who knows.  I’m an insulin dependent diabetic who has had a heart attack.  I suppose one has to come face-to-face with their own mortality.  And I am reflecting on mine after losing dear friends, albeit from long ago.

While I am not in the mood for a life review just yet, it doesn’t hurt to inventory ones accomplishments, failures, dreams, and legacy once in a while to see what goals are still obtainable, and what things might be fixed.  I sometimes don’t think of myself as all that old.  But life has a way of reminding me.  I was checking out in Walmart the other day and I was loading the bags into my cart.  The young cashier quickly grabbed one of the bags I was lifting and put in my cart.  She said, “it’s heavy honey, we are in no rush, let me help you.”  I said “thank you,” and told her she was very kind.  The bag was not that heavy, but I must have looked ancient to the 19ish year old cashier. I guess part of aging gracefully is learning to accept help, whether you need it or not. 

Oh, there are benefits to maturing.  I don’t care very much what people think about me anymore, and I am much more assertive than I ever was. Hey, I don’t have to go to work- I’m retired, and that is pretty freeing. I recently purchased a lifetime fishing license for $20, and a lifetime National Parks Pass for $80.  There are some pretty sweet deals out there for seniors.  I just wish someone would explain the best Medicare choice for me!

I am much more in tune with nature now. I pay attention to birds, to clouds, to the weather. Yes, I can watch The Weather Channel for hours! I live more simply, and I appreciate beauty much more–  wherever I find it. I can’t take excessive noise, angry people, greedy people, or unkindness in any form. I recoil at watching anything violent on TV. I like to cook, and I’ve never been a homebody, but I am more so now. I like to occasionally enjoy a good cigar, and to hell with any risks associated with such a behavior.  Relationships are more important that material success, and I am really jealous of no one.  I have learned to practice the Zen art of “presence” and I try to savor the “now.”

Father Richard Rohr in his book “Falling Upward” give us some insight about the second half of our lives, and gives us a framework for a spirituality of such.  It is must reading for anyone who is on the downhill slope of life.  Jim Finely writes this about the book:  “This book invites us to see how God is moving us from doing to being, from achieving to appreciating, from planning and potting to trusting the strange process in which as we diminish we strangely expand and grow in all sort of ways we cannot and do not need to explain to anyone, including ourselves.”

Christianity, for many, offers solace from the fear of our own mortality.  But for many it comes with a catch:  If you are in “the club,” you live forever in a mansion and walk on streets of gold.  But If you can’t recite the formula, well then, some believe you will be damned and tortured forever and ever amen in the belly of Hell.  So it would behoove us to get it right.  But that’s the rub isn’t it? My childhood friend and his family basically believed that because I was baptized after my profession of faith and not before, I was in danger of hellfire.  Really? Come on man!

I guess age has done something else for me, and that is this:  It has liberated my theology and has flipped the boundaries between the sacred and the profane.  If we believe that God is love, how can we believe that he will damn you forever for not reciting formula that not everyone has heard or agrees on.  How can God love you and send you to hell for not properly stroking what we believe is his enormous ego?  He has to create lesser beings to worship him in order to be satisfied. How can God hold us accountable eternally for a few years of sinning on earth, sins by the way, that the Bible says we cannot help but commit because we were created (again by God) that way.  We reduce God to a capricious and vindictive God, and in fact all of our metanarratives about the afterlife are either militaristic or materialistic and I dare you to find those characteristics in Jesus the Nazarene.  But oh yes, he loves us.  So if you live to be 78 years old, you can burn for eons upon eons for choices you couldn’t help make because you were born defective.  I don’t think so.

I do believe that we are in need of saving, but not from hell, or maybe not just from hell.  For many, especially seniors, hell arrives early. Living every day with chronic pain, chronic diseases, increased depression, fatigue, loneliness and grief takes its toll as the losses pile up.

At the end of the day, I do take comfort in the hope of Eternal life.  I take no comfort in that it might not be for everyone.  But I mostly take comfort in the message of Jesus Christ and his kingdom.  The kingdom ethic is revolutionary:  Love one another;  Love your enemies because anyone can love a friend; Go the second mile for people when you are only expected to go one;  Turn the other cheek when someone wrongs you; Always forgive.  Jesus thought people are more important than rules.  He taught that reconciliation is job one.  He said that the least are the greatest, and the poor are most blessed.  For citizens of his kingdom, humility is  the defining trait.  Peacemaking is just as important.

These Kingdom values are important enough to get one through the second half of their life- or the first half if you want a head start. Just put Jesus and his kingdom in your life review, and you are on your way.