Seasoning

I am growing older.  Last time I had my annual physical readiness review with medical, I told the Doc that I had been diagnosed with OAS and was told it was terminal. He looked up with a serious but puzzled look and said, "I'm not familiar with that".  I shared, "Old Age Syndrome".  His response, "ha, ha" and to go back scribbling notes as he now added an appointment to mental health.  (Just kidding on that last part). 

Old age.  Soon I turn 50.  But like the picture above, it matters in life how you "frame" the experience you are going through (or have or expect to go through).  Of course the picture makes a huge difference too.  How you see that depends on your personality type.  I am very focused on what is real and what is true. There are many types that are much more able to focus on the potential and creativity of the photo.  For example when I edit the photo I look to bring out what I saw.  Others may photoshop it and bring out the "what could have been".  But irregardless circumstances will have limiting factors.  Age is a limiting factor.  But there is a plethora of limiting factors we must deal with.

I was recently selected by the Air Force to apply for a full year of residency for Clinical Pastoral Education.  CPE is an intensive environment for critical examination of one's pastoral skills and interactions with those in need and with those who provide care.  In writing up my application package I began to realize that I have changed a great deal in these past 25 years of my adult life. 

Yep, I am growing older. My run times and recovery times are showing it as well as the wrinkles on my face, the few age spots on my hands, and my increasing population of gray rather than black hair.  But I am also seasoned. All that experience, all the people I have gotten to know, the many different situations I've engaged come together to make these final 20 years or so of my active working adult life to look very much like the picture above.  Full of potential, depth, richness, and possibility.  Yes, I draw nearer to the end with probably fewer days ahead than now lay behind, but they are days that may be richer.  Suddenly a minute, an hour, a day is an extraordinary valuable commodity as it will not come again. 

I'm not sure if I would want to be 20 again with most of my life ahead. 

So I think this time, as I go get my annual physical review I think I can say I'm feeling pretty good about where I am and what the future holds - even if I can't run a seven minute mile again.

Simply Paris

The spring has been busy.  Lot of the normal stuff related to chaplaincy - chapel services, visitation, counseling, and events targeting strengthening resiliency.  Last month was a real treat with the weather and my family was able to enjoy a nice warm week in Paris.  If not for family I probably would never have traveled to Paris. But I found some nice surprises there.  I have admired the grace and simplicity of ancient Greek culture and so enjoyed laying eyes on some ancient Greek sculpture that rests in Paris. 

 There is something about the ancient eternal beauty that communicates through the ages in the marble.  A civilization that laid the foundation for much of western civilization lays in the dust but signs remain of its ancient grandeur.  Signs continue to reside among us not only in marble but in our very values and ways of looking at the world around us and understanding who we are.

Long after the hands that carved these statues, long after people saw the beauty of the world around them and visioned it to recast it into stone, long after the minds that grasped and externalized such truths as "you can't step in the same river twice" have turned to dust - the echoes of truth and what is real remains.

In the white marble carved by ancient hands echoes a reminder, a song, that truth remains - something eternal, something beautiful there is about the world around us.

Notre Dame on the other hand felt dark and cold, hardly the warm welcoming hand of God that I had expected.  Instead it still felt grasped strong in the clutches of old superstition and dogma, a religion of terror and reward based on merit and work rather than of love and mercy.   Outside the cathedral had radiated an inviting pull calling one to come inside.  But so dark, almost oppressive.  The only hint of goodnews in the face of spiritual distress was in the cluster of Easter Lillies still blooming near the altar.

 

In contrast the Pantheon radiated light, but a light of a different kind.  A pro-reason, humanist light.  Monuments to philosophers long and recently dead towered above.  But observing the visitors, I found myself pondering how many can remember even one thing that Voltaire taught, one thing that Rousseau
 believed, or Victor Hugo.  Who can remember without turning to Wikipedia or some such resource?  The influence wanes and turns to dust and all that is left is the marble.

But even in this temple to humanism echoes an ancient simple wondrous truth.  God loves His creation.  God loves His children created in His image.  So much that He Himself took on human flesh and lived among us.  His name was Jesus.  And the simple clear truth that echoes across the age is still heard amongst the noise and confusion of the world.  In Christ there is mercy.  In Christ there is forgiveness.  In Christ there is love and eternal life.  Time does not win.  Decay does not win.  Death does not win.  Easter Lillies in the darkness of Notre Dame and an old painting remaining in the Pantheon remind us that He is risen and now reigns and He shall come again.

50 million dead

Estimated 50 million dead children.  39th Anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.     Is this really what we want?  Really?