Archive for November, 2011

Staying Alert to Life’s Simple Blessings

Missy Buchanan

 

A few years ago, an older friend lost his wife to a sudden, unexpected illness and death. He was overwhelmed with grief and wondered how he would go on living without her.

One of their old friends phoned him when she first heard the news. She was living in Europe at the time and had been unable to return for the memorial service. They talked for a while, and she voiced her heartfelt condolences before making an unusual request. She asked my friend to send her an e-mail each day listing three blessings that he had experienced during the last twenty-four hours.

My brokenhearted friend said it was not something he really wanted to do. It was difficult to think about blessings when he didn’t even feel like getting out of bed. Still, he tried. Over the next few days, he began to list things like the morning sunrise, the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and a bowl of homemade soup shared by a neighbor. A few days later he noticed the first bloom on the rose bush and the way golden light spilled across his wife’s photograph in the late afternoon.

After weeks of emailing his friend a list of daily blessings, he says he felt his spirit slowly being lifted from the pit of despair. It didn’t happen overnight, but one day he realized that he was actually enjoying looking for simple blessings. Though he still misses his wife terribly, he says the blessing activity was key to helping him want to live once again.

There are many other older adults who are also grieving losses. For some like my friend, it is the death of a spouse or loved one. For others, it is the loss of independence and mobility that accompanies aging, including giving up the keys to the car. Some may also mourn the loss of their homes and belongings, and all that is familiar as they transition to new living situations.

As Thanksgiving approaches, it seems the perfect time to invite older adults to discover blessings that often go overlooked. When I speak to senior adult groups at churches or at residence centers, I encourage the older adults to keep a blessing book, a journal in which they write a set number of blessings each day.  Being intentional in keeping a written account of blessings helps one to create a habit of looking at life with eyes of gratitude.

The church should not forget that even the most faithful saints grow weary under the weight of depression or sadness that often comes as they grow frail or experience loss. Helping seniors actively look for blessings in their midst is an important part of ministry to the aged. I can’t help but think of how wonderful it would be if every church provided a special blessing journal for each of its older adults? Or if churches developed a blessing buddy ministry in which seniors share their blessings with another person like my friend did?

May we be people who will come alongside our elders who are struggling in the journey. May we help them to see God’s faithfulness in their lives. For if we do, we, too, will be blessed.

 

Missy Buchanan writes a monthly column, “Aging Well,” for the United Methodist Reporter and hosts Aging and Faith with Missy Buchanan on Blog Talk Radio.  She has also written for many publications including Presbyterians Today, Christian Association Serving Adults Ministries and Good Morning America’s spirituality page. Read more at www.missybuchanan.com. 

Reprinted with permission from MinistryMatters.com

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GOOD VISION IN A DOWNPOUR

Some good advice

 

How to achieve good vision while driving during a heavy downpour.

We are not sure why it is so effective; just try this method when it rains heavily. This method was given me by a Police friend who had experienced and confirmed it. It is useful—even driving at night. This method has been used by Canadian Military Drivers for years.

Most motorists turn their wipers on high or to the fastest speed during heavy downpour, yet the visibility in front of the windshield is still bad.

In the event you face such a situation, just try your sunglasses (any model will do), and miracle! All of a sudden, visibility in front of the windshield is perfectly clear, as if there is no rain.

Make sure you always have a pair of sunglasses in your car. You’re not only helping yourself to drive safely with good vision, but also might save your friend’s life by sharing this. Try it yourself and share it with your friends!

It’s amazing: you still see the drops on the windshield, but not the sheet of rain falling. You can see where the rain bounces off the road. It works to eliminate the “blindness” from passing semi’s spraying you. Or the “kickup” if you are following a semi or car in the rain. They ought to teach that little tip in driver’s training. It really does work.

 

This next warning is a another good one! I wonder how many people know about this:

A 36 year old female had an accident and totaled her car. A resident of Ontario, Canada was traveling between Kinburn & Ottawa. It was raining, though not excessively, when her car suddenly began to hydro-plane and literally flew through the air. She was not seriously injured but very stunned!

When she explained to the officer what had happened he told her something that every driver should know: never drive in the rain with your cruise control on. She thought she was being cautious by setting the cruise control and maintaining a safe, consistent speed in the rain. But the officer told her that if the cruise control is on when your car begins to hydro-plane and your tires lose contact with the pavement, your car will accelerate to a higher rate of speed, making you take off like an airplane. She told the officer that was exactly what had occurred.

The officer said this warning should be listed, on the driver’s seat sun-visor: never use the cruise control when the pavement is wet or icy. We tell our teenagers to set the cruise control and drive a safe speed–but we don’t tell them to use the cruise control only when the pavement is dry.

 

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Welcome to The CASA Network Board!

Wes Wick is co-founder of YES! Young Enough to Serve www.yestoserve.org. YES! helps to energize the hearts of adults toward serving in life’s second half, extending Christ’s love beyond generational and congregational borders. Wes and Judy have a strong desire see young leaders engage with them in the task of tapping the untargeted and too often shelved potential of older adults.

Before Wes and Judy launched YES! in 2008, Wes served extensively in Christian higher education administration, most recently as Vice President for Advancement at Bethany University. He holds a masters degree in Social Science from Azusa Pacific University and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Economics from Seattle Pacific University.

Wes and Judy, who reside in Scotts Valley CA, are empty nesters and proud parents of four adult children.

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For the Airplane Drivers

 

A priest dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates. Ahead of him is a guy who’s dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket, and jeans.

Saint Peter addresses the cool guy, ‘Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?’

The guy replies, ‘I’m Jack, retired airline pilot from Houston.’

Saint Peter consults his list. He smiles and says to the pilot, ‘Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom.’

The pilot goes into Heaven with his robe and staff.

Next, it’s the priest’s turn. He stands erect and booms out ‘I’m Father Bob, pastor of Saint Mary’s for the last 43 years.’

Saint Peter consults his list. He says to the priest, ‘Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom.’

‘Just a minute,’ says the good father. ‘That man was a pilot and he gets a silken robe and golden staff and I get only cotton and wood. How can this be?’

‘Up here, we go by results,’ says Saint Peter. ‘When you preached – people slept. When he flew – people prayed.’

 

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Seeing ‘Seniors’ as Elders

Jim M. Houston

 

The title “Age-ing is for Sage-ing” is not mine. It is taken from a popular Jewish book, “From Age-ing to Sage-ing” by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, 1997. As a secular Jew fearing his own ageing, he sought the wisdom of Sufi masters, Buddhist teachers and Native American shamans. He defined an Elder’s Creed: “An elder is a person who is still growing, still a learner, still with potential and whose life continues to have within it promise for and connection with the future. An elder is still in the pursuit of happiness, joy, and pleasure…whose work it is to synthesize wisdom from long life experience and formulate this into a legacy for future generations.” He teaches eleven exercises:

  1. Reflect on what eldership means for you? Think of what ageing means to you of the positive models you have seen, and imagine walking in the shoes of such models.
  2. Reflect on the cycles of your life noting significant events and people in each stage as well as what has been the integrating continuum that makes sense to your story.
  3. Reflect as from a panorama of your life, the significant turning points as well as the unfinished business you still want to complete.
  4. Turning inward to oneself as the Elder self – here our journey parts company from this New Age approach to the Secular or to the autonomous Self. Rather, the Christian moves outwardly in freedom from the self, to becoming in Christ, ever leaning by greater dependence upon Christ. We move towards him in further emancipation from the self, to follow in the narrow pathway of Christian Discipleship, i.e. in becoming more Christlike, in increasing selflessness. Yet the journey of self knowledge grows possible in the light of the knowledge of God. This double knowledge progresses upwards in heavenly mindedness, downwards in continual confession and humility, and onwards in patience and fortitude. “Let me know Thee, O God, let me know myself!” (Augustine) becomes our constant pulse-beat.

In a book I have written with Professor Michael Parker, a psychiatric gerontologist, Vision for the Aging Church: equipping seniors for the ministry of seniors (to be published next month), we have the temerity to challenge the North American churches. For we see too many seniors and too few elders populating our churches. But you may ask is there any difference between a senior and an elder? Actually, the term senior was first used in c.1500 to refer to a senior Fellow of a university college, i.e. simply older than his colleagues. In the mid-19th Century a senior partner in business was also an older business partner. But it has never had moral connotations as the term elder has had. Almost instinctively, primitive societies have recognized an elder as a wise older leader who passed on from one generation to another the relational skills needed to maintain the tribal/communal identity with its own unique customs and beliefs. The thrust then of our talk is simply that youth or seniors do not prepare us for our future longevity, only elders can do so.

For we see in the future demographics of urbanized societies a tsunami ahead of us of a rapidly ageing population. This is because of rapidly falling birthrates, the lack of reproductive rates, and the advancing ageing of life. Yet it is also the argument of our book that these revolutionary demographic changes enable Christian communities to become more counter cultural at many different levels. My co-author found that after the disaster of the storm Katrina had hit New Orleans; between 60-70% of the casualties were seniors over 65 with no difference between church or non-church populations. The handicapped were left helpless to drown. This suggests our cultural treatment of the elderly is like the proverbial canary-in-the-mine as victims of the toxicity of our culture.

 

Firstly, we practice in ageism, as in sexism, and in colour/racial prejudice, a form of apartheid. When Canada was condemning racial apartheid in South Africa in the 1980’s, the South African ambassador responded by visiting a native American community in northern Canada. He could have visited an old people’s home instead! The strong post war movement in the denial of death, lead to the funeral industry applying cosmetics to the face of the corpse and in designing the funeral parlour as if it was the home sitting room of the living! In the denial of death there developed the exaltation of youth. The market became youth-oriented, even inventing the concept of the teenager for a new market sector. The culture of youth entertainment and sports has exaggerated ageism further. The Church has bought into the cultural assumption that its future lies with the youth, so that youth ministry has overshadowed any role given to the ministry of seniors. In all these trends, forgotten is the Rabbinical proverb: “He who learns from the young is like one who eats unripe grapes and drinks wine from the winepress. But he who learns from the old is like one who eats ripe grapes and drinks old wine.” (Abot 4:20)

 

A second feature of ageism is the cultural prevalence of giving priority to the value of a professional/functional identity. What do you do is more important than who do you relate with? Indeed the Boomer generation has become the most professionalised generation in human history. To retire then from a profession becomes a dramatic loss of public recognition, and for many people it is like a spiritual death, long before they reach their own physical death. This is no different in the church as in the society, so we tend to have deacons who administer services to do everything, but few or no elders, who foster its communal and family life. Thus programs tend to dominate over personal relationships. Seniors when they do nothing, disappear from the radar screen into anonymity.

 

A third and profound reason for ageism is the loss of transcendence with the pervasive impact of secularism. Yet the Christian faith evaluates our temporal life to be just the beginning of our eternal journey. For death is not our terminus, just its beginning. As G.K. Chesterton put it humorously: “When I start out for the ends of the earth, I am stopped on the road by an entertaining lamp post, or a vividly signalling window blind; and have not sufficient sense of the scale of difference between the passing questions and the Quest.” To define a senior as stirring out one’s life with coffee spoons, and one’s only monument lost golf balls, as T. S. Eliot puts it, is indeed pathetic. To end up one’s earthly life complaining, “I am bored, I am lonely, I am depressed” is the lament of too many of our aged.

Yet the distinction between a senior and an elder is as slippery as that of an individual versus a person. For both are relationally recognized not officially appointed. In God’s initial covenant with Israel, the Patriarchs were elders not kings. But the people eventually demanded a king to rule over them, to exchange the covenant life that made them worthy of occupying the Promised Land for the power of nationhood in rivalry with the surrounding nations. Then as community became eclipsed by the growing power of the state, so eldership also melted away. Are we also finding that the more we depend upon our profession for our identity, the more impersonal we become? It is a question worth pondering.

I am not questioning the positive benefits of a profession in raising the standards of competence and moral behaviour nor of the facilities to pursue after truth and discoveries for the benefit of humanity, but of making an absolute out of professionalism. Becoming more of a person within a profession is the ideal for then in place of our selfish ambitions we are using the instrumentation of a profession to become a more effective contributor to communal needs and values both in society and within the Church.

Yet as Christians, we should claim a special status for becoming persons as a theological category of being. The Greeks defined the prosopon as a dramatic category of the hero defying the fates in what always ended as a Greek tragedy. For the Romans, persona was the legal status of citizenship for the male head of a Roman household. Women, children and slaves were nonpersons. But expressive of the triune God of grace, the Christian person is acknowledged as being created in the image and likeness of God, to have his or her being in communion with God. The pursuit of godliness is the pursuit of the personal. Even at the end stage of dementia, a loved one is still to be treated as a person God intends for being with her/him eternally. Since probably at least a third of this audience will end their days with dementia, we should start now to review our prejudices about dementia!

 

A further cause then for the apartheid of the aged is the legacy of the Enlightenment philosophers, Locke, Kant and Hume, who followed upon Descartes’ dictum, “I think therefore I am.” In the ancient world of the Near East, leprosy was more than a dread disease. For it also meant being cast out of the society where one’s identity was social not individual. All the various forms of dementia are now like leprosy a dread social disease for if you cannot remember and think effectively then you are indeed a social outcast. At the first international conferences on Dementia in Britain in the early 1990’s, medical ethicists responded by correcting this Cartesian identity to downplay human identity as expressive only of the thinker.

Now in the first decade of the 21st Century, the most recent findings of neuroscientists is that the brain is intrinsically relational so that our emotions are expressive themselves of social causes and effects whose actions can be mapped throughout the brain. Indeed most of the adult brain is shaped flexibly by postnatal development of the person to become socialized and conditioned to make the human responses that separate us from the animals. Animals give birth to much more formed animal brains for their immediate need of survival. Infant helplessness is the prerogative of caring human parents. So too, senile helplessness should be the prerogative of the human identity within a caring family.

This new field of neuroscience is now called interpersonal biology of the brain. It should challenge the Christian, not only to believe right doctrine, but more holistically to also have right emotions, such as is marked by “the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…”(Gal. 5: 22). Looking after the elderly in our fellowship or at home requires more of these Christian virtues than perhaps with any other age group. Increasingly then, with the rising percentage of seniors in our society, the test of developing a mature Christian character will be tested far more by our aged than by our young! Already we see how the spiritual qualities of saintly leaders of our day, such as Henri Nouwen, were not learned at Harvard or Yale where he was a professor, but by the example and mentoring of Jean Vanier, in L’Arche communities of the mentally handicapped.

 

This then is the central message of this address: with eyes to see and with ears to hear what God is saying to the churches today, the relational reformation we all need so badly may well come not by skilled teaching of theology, but by simply being challenged to demolish the middle wall of partition. Now it is not only between Jew and Gentile, as the early Church was challenged to do, but today also between young and old, professional and personal, in our present churches.

 

As a relatively new discipline, geriatric medicine is waking up the entire medical profession by offering a more holistic style of care. In recent decades the medical field has promoted a focus on specialization so that the most specialized doctors earn the most money in treating more patients in much less time. Although geriatricians need two further years of training they are paid much less. Treating the old has many professional handicaps. Often they have more complex histories of sicknesses during their long lifetime; they are less communicable, requiring more patience, more time, more care. They might have more complex interactions with diverse drug treatments, yet be fixated with a symptom which is not necessarily the true cause of present concern. Pastorally, there is the same analogy over soul sickness. Thus both in geriatrics and in the pastoral life of the church, the complexities of the old are challenging us to relate and deal personally patiently in more intimate ways.

But all this challenges our social norms, so it is an ageing population that may force us to become countercultural, and to challenge our demented society about the true issues of dementia! Our churches need to become intentionally more personal. James the apostle says it well: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry,” because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God demands of us. Right relatedness is both with God and with our neighbour in loving both.

We close then with the issue of how do we become sages as we age? It is an irony that as ageing is being extended, middle aged people are anticipating becoming old much younger than before. Is it the current retirement age which is not realistic with the extension of ageing? Why retire at 65 if you are going to live to 100 years or more? Yet do we have the spiritual resources to live physically longer, if we have lived the trivial lives of seniors? Why should we fear maturity? Is it because we are not being trained and educated for the needs of becoming wise with the extension of our mortal life?

Perhaps there are other misconceptions, even among Christians. To choose to be practical or pragmatic is not an option for becoming spiritual. All Christians are spiritual in seeking to walk in step with the Holy Spirit. Being spiritual is simply living in the presence of God on a daily basis. Our maturity is then primarily not psychological, according to the canons of social psychology – though these may be insightful. Our maturity lies in maturing in the Lord, which is demonstrated in the paschal meal, where we eat and drink in the benefit of Christ’s sacrificial gift of himself. So we live both as dependent on Christ and as gifted by Christ. But the more autonomous we remain in our self management, the more immature we will remain spiritually stagnant. For our future potential depends wholly upon the presence of God’s Spirit within us.  The daily pulse beat of my life for many years has, and is, the incessant prayer of the heart: “create in me a clean heart O Lord…and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.” Spiritual exercises may help us provided they do not subtly become a substitute for a deepening friendship with Christ himself.

Then we find the need to do less and less talking to embark in being more and more being in Christ. Gently we become less and less self conscious and joy in living in His presence becomes less effort and more receiving. For like the woman at the well, we too, will find the promise of Jesus so profoundly true: “Out of you will flow rivers of living water.” This of course is a process usually a very slow process that requires deepening trust, patience and longsuffering humility. For true wisdom is not just being shrewd about other people, rather it is in becoming more of a person within a profession. It is becoming wise unto salvation in living out the truth of the Gospel.

 

 

Dr. James Houston, one of the original founders and first principal of Regent College, has just published his most recent work Joyful Exiles, which reflects on the current divergence of Western culture and the Christian spiritual life. Dr. Houston also serves as a Senior Fellow with the C.S.Lewis Institute in Washington, D.C., USA. 

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Finding the Positives in a Significant Change

Linda Sasser, Ph.D.

 

“It will be gone before you know it. The fingerprints on the wall appear higher and higher. Then suddenly they disappear.” Dorothy Evslin

One woman was describing her first grocery shopping trip after her youngest child had left for college. She said she reached into the dairy cooler, pulled out a gallon of milk and suddenly realized she no longer needed that quantity. She burst into tears and had to leave the store without completing her shopping.

If you have recently become empty nesters, you are probably being asked, “What’s it like?” or “Are you coping alright?” Many parents begin to become anxious at the thought of an “empty nest” once their youngest child has vacated the home. It is definitely a change in lifestyle, the emptynest syndrome, but it doesn’t have to be negative.

 

Benefits

The first thing most empty nesters notice is that the house is quieter. You can get to bed earlier because there’s no more loud music, the clatter of young people arriving and leaving, the TV or talking keeping you awake. And it’s easier to fall asleep when you’re not worrying about whether your teenager will make it home safely. An added benefit—the car is available when you need it! One extremely noticeable difference is at dinner: you and your spouse alone, facing each other across the table, wondering what to talk about.

 

Becoming Friends

In Song of Songs 5:16, his lover calls Solomon her “friend.” The empty nest can be a time to become “friends,” to renew and deepen your friendship with your spouse. Without interruptions from children, you can have longer and more meaningful conversations. Since you are no longer attending school activities and meetings, you can use evenings to go on dates again. Or you might start traveling by yourselves and rekindle the romance of your pre-parenting years! Another upside is simplified meal preparation (e.g. one meal is enough for two nights of dinners). Eating out can be spontaneous and will cost less.

The empty nest is generally not the same experience for dad as it is for mom, especially if dad is still at his job all day and mom is primarily a homemaker. For her, the added time can be used to resume or start a career or to pursue hobbies and projects she didn’t have time for with children underfoot. Dads get phone calls from fledglings whenever one of them has a computer problem or needs advice on technology purchases (digital cameras, iPods or iPads, cell phones). Moms get the calls during peak emotional times (roommate crises, boyfriend/girlfriend concerns, stress overload). Fortunately, our generation benefits from technology that allows you to stay connected with our children via email, Skype, online chats, and texting (assuming we have learned how to text!).

 

Continued Prayer 

You can spend some of your newlyfound extra time praying more for your children. Job “would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, ‘Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’ This was Job’s regular custom” (Job 1:5b, NIV). You might also consider spending more time in ministry, finding new ways to serve the Lord through church or community involvement. A blessing you may experience is seeing your grown children making responsible choices and wise decisions. Many will see their offspring walking closely with the Lord and making their relationship with Him a priority, even though they no longer dwell at home. You can breathe a sigh of relief when you see your positive influence being lived out in their lives, as Proverbs 22:6 suggests: “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” (NIV)

 

Dr. Sasser serves as Professor of Education at Judson University in Elgin, IL. She also speaks for conferences, community groups, and professional organizations on cognitive aging, brain health, and memory. She can be contacted at lsasser@judsonu.edu. 

Copyright 2005 Linda Sasser. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Small Bites … Adventures in Downsizing

Jan Kinzel

 

Cleverness…..…Did you ever see anything so clever that it made you wish you had invented it? I did. Our quest to purchase a dining table that suits the size of a smaller living space led us to a locally owned store that carries only dining tables, chairs, and bar stools. It was there that I saw this clever thing! I think a picture is worth a thousand words, but I will try to describe it.

The function of this thing is to help the customer construct a facsimile of a finished table. It stands about three feet high and measures about two feet square. There are three rotating sections. It looks somewhat like a little carousel. The top rotating section holds twelve table legs of different styles. The middle section has eight table top styles and the bottom section has a selection of eight aprons.

To begin, I chose the farmhouse style of table leg. Rob, the young man who was helping us, slipped the leg out of its holder at the top and into a slot at the bottom of the ‘little carousel’. My husband spun the middle section to select the table top he thought looked the best; then together, including Rob, we selected the apron. When all three sections were spun to the choices we wanted – voila! – there was a model of our table! I tell you, it was the coolest thing! We ordered our ‘custom-made’ table in the perfect size for our condo and in a great creamy white finish sanded here and there so some wood shows through the paint. We will see it in 4 to 6 weeks.

At the end of that day I found myself still marveling at the cleverness of that thing and thinking whoever invented it must feel pretty smug. I wished it had been me.

 

Walk-about Food

Last year a friend and I worked together on an event for 150 people.  We thought and thought about what to serve and hit on this (dare I say?) clever idea. It was very well received so I’m just going to put it out there for you along with some variations. We called ours ‘Walk-about Salads’.  We had two distinct types: Italian & Thai.

The idea is to serve layered combinations of classic ingredients in individual clear containers. For the large group, we used plastic, short, wide-rimmed, 9 ounce glasses from the party store. To dress it up, or for smaller groups, martini glasses are perfect. Keep the elements bite-sized so it is easy to eat – no knife needed. For added pizzazz, moisten the rim and dip in an appropriate seasoning – such as a mixture of coarse salt and celery seed for a tomato salad or raw sugar for desserts. I like to use heavy-weight plastic spoons or forks of colors that enhance the dish. Here, then, are a few of the ideas.

 

Walk-about Toy Box Tomato Salad

Fill glass a third of the way with large cherry tomatoes cut in half.  Next place cubed feta cheese and top with a chiffonaude of fresh basil leaves. To make the chiffonaude, remove the leaves from the stem and stack, then roll them up like a cigar and slice across the short end with a sharp knife.  In a canning jar, place the same amounts of balsamic vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil. Add a tablespoon of sugar and 4 cloves of garlic, minced, a pinch of salt and a grind or 2 of black pepper. Place the top and turn the ring tightly to seal the jar. Shake to emulsify the dressing. Drizzle a tablespoon or two over the salad. Serve with a bright green plastic fork.

 

Marie’s Lettuce Wrap Walk-about Thai Salad

Fill the glass to 1/3 with shredded iceberg lettuce. Spoon meat mixture in next (see recipe below). Next comes scallions, cut finely on the diagonal, using white and green parts. Top with coarsely chopped cashew nuts, a lime wedge and a few cilantro leaves. Garnish with a little Asian paper umbrella and add a black plastic fork.

Meat Mixture:  In a skillet, lightly brown 1½ lbs. ground turkey in 1 tablespoon olive oil.  Add 1 diced small yellow onion and cook until onion is soft. Add 2 teaspoons salt, ½ teaspoon ground black pepper, 2 tablespoons each of freshly minced garlic and ginger. If desired, add a little red chili paste for heat. Cook 3 minutes longer. Stir in 1/3 cup Yoshida’s marinade and 3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar. Remove from heat and mix in ½ each of a red and a green bell pepper, finely chopped. Let cool. Layer in glasses as directed.


Walk-about Shrimp & Avocado Salad

Place medium-sized peeled, deveined, tails on shrimp on a baking sheet in single layer. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast at 4000for 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool. Layer in glass with 4 shrimp on the bottom, ½ an avocado in the middle, and top with several ruby red grapefruit sections. Tuck a butter lettuce leaf on one side of the salad and partly under the shrimp. Have the ruffle edge of the lettuce stick up a little from the glass rim. Drizzle with 1 or 2tablespoons of your favorite raspberry dressing. Top with a shrimp and a parsley sprig. Use a bright red plastic fork to set off color of the shrimp.

 

There’s so much more you can do: Walk-about Caprese Salad; Walk-about Caesar Salad; Walk-about Tira Misu; Walk-about Strawberry Short Cake; Walk-about Vanilla Wafer Banana Pudding; Walk-about Cherry Pie; Walk-about S’mores; Walk-about English Trifle.

These are just a few possibilities. I heard of one fancy party where mashed potatoes with gravy was served in martini glasses and in the September 2010 Food Network magazine, it showed layers of pulled pork with barbeque sauce and mashed potatoes topped off with a cherry tomato!

 

TIP:  Life is just a bowl of cherries!

Psalm 104:14 …bring forth food from the earth…

Read the whole chapter!

 

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Book Review

Leona Bergstrom

 

Building Below the Waterline: Shoring Up the Foundations of Leadership. By Gordon MacDonald.

“God, do you have a fresh call for a 60-something guy?”

This question, posed by author Gordon MacDonald on the very last page of his recent book, Building Below the Waterline: Shoring Up the Foundations of Leadership, captured the cry of my heart. The entire book pulses with wisdom, insights and honest transparency. But this particular rhetorical question throbs with urgency as I cross off the final months of life in my “fifties.”

One would think from the title that this is another book on becoming an effective leader in the 21st century church. And yes, it has sage advice for all leaders, particularly pastors, about building a strong inner life that will withstand all of the storms of ministry. But, from my vantage point, it is a manifesto for all of us in midlife who wonder if we have what it takes to minister, much less lead, for a lifetime.

Painting an image of crossing the Colorado plains only to butt up against the impenetrable Rocky Mountains, MacDonald depicts a common angst: “You get the feeling you can’t go anywhere. You’re trapped. The illusion of barrierlessness is inverted. ….That’s the perception of more than one midlifer in leadership. The freshness is gone; the fears of mediocrity, of ineffectiveness, of being lost in the shuffle are malignant.”

Do not despair. Gordon MacDonald doesn’t, and his journey of renewal and transformation inspires one to focus again on calling, mission and finishing extraordinarily well.

 

“It was a significant day when I was hit with the question: What kind of an old man do you want to be? And I opted for growth and grace as my old-age lifestyle. …I looked around and discovered I didn’t know many old men who impressed me with the same traits as in Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses.”* Why? Maybe because most men and women never build a growth plan for the old years. And if you don’t plan for the kind of man or woman you want to be when you are eighty (God willing) and begin building that when you are forty or fifty, it’s not likely going to happen.” (pp 28-29)

What MacDonald presents in this 250-page, can’t-put-it-down thesis, is a personally seasoned guide for identifying mission and purpose; for building a strong inner soul that is marked by a deep, intimate walk with God; and for developing relationships with loved ones that are significant, revitalizing, and FUN. He probes like a skilled surgeon around the infections of the inner soul, calling the reader to repentance and renewal. The anecdote is grace – “The older I become the more I realize my condition as a barbarian loved by my Father. And this may be the most important insight that comes with aging. Almost all old people who are growing have certain common traits. One of them is that they know without equivocation that they are sinners. And they have come to appreciate the central importance of grace.” (p. 37)

The book is actually divided into two parts: The Inner Life of a Leader, and The Outer Life of a Leader. The first section addresses the issue of personal spiritual direction, including advice on journaling, praying, studying and growing. The second section offers profound insight into the public side of ministry – including dealing with church conflict, how to guide a church through change and transition, and how to know when it’s time to leave a congregation. Lessons learned by a man who has been a pastor, leader, author, mentor and long-time disciple of Jesus.

The book caused me to reflect and even weep – tears of repentance as well as of anticipation. Through his writings MacDonald has coached me in experiencing anew that “fresh call” for this almost 60 –year-old gal.

 

You may experience the same.

 

*MacDonald states (p. 28), “I love the words of Tennyson in his poem Ulysses. He imagines the old, travel-worn Ulysses brooding on what one might do for an encore after having seen the world:

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

Leona Bergstrom is Director of Lifetime Ministries (a division of ChurchHealth), a ministry dedicated to assisting churches in developing powerful and effective programs for and by older adults. Along with her husband, Richard, Leona is co-director of 2nd ½ for Him Ministries of the Baptist General Conference. This review was also published with Converge Worldwide | 2nd 1/2 for Him. 

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