A Fresh Wind in Your Sails: A Fresh Breath of the Spirit in Life's Later Years

By Donald D. McCall

This book is about the joys of aging. All too much has been written and published about the fears and perils of aging with the focus of most volumes being about the perils of falling; of not having enough money; or of having arthritis, osteoporosis, cancer, heart attacks, vision and hearing loss, loneliness, dementia, memory loss . . . just to name a few. I have yet to read a book about the joys and pleasures of aging. Well, I have been glorifying God for over sixty years, and now I feel it is time to simply enjoy him forever. And that is the first gift of agingthe pleasure of enjoying God forever, of not needing to strive with him, and of no longer needing to fulfill the demands of glorifying him or pleasing him. It all comes at about the same time in life when your children no longer sense the need to please you or to make you proud of them. It comes at a time in life when you want to be in each others presence simply to enjoy one another, which truly is the chief end of man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973623878

Donald D. McCall

Dr. McCall was born of Presbyterian missionary parents in Lebanon. Educated at Hastings College, Princeton, Glasgow, Yale, Edinburgh and Oxford. Member, AKD National Honorary Sociological Society. He was for19 years the Sr. Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Rochester, MN. Member of the Mayo Clinic IRB. Served as Vice Chm. of the Nebraska State Board of Parole. A Retired Commander in the U.S. Navy and a Korean War veteran. Adjunct professor of Homiletics. Author of six previous books. Member of the MN Governor’s Commission on Suicide. Rotary Club President and an Honorary Admiral in the Nebraska Navy. Twice tennis champion of the Navy’s Captains Cup in Honolulu. Barbara Blazek McCall is also an alumnus of Hastings College who holds a Masters Degree from the Univ. of Nebraska and a Juris Doctor from the Univ. of Nebraska College of Law. Upon graduation she served as an Adjunct Professor at the Law College. Barbara is the Mother of four adult children and the Grandmother of the twelve grandchildren to whom this book is dedicated. Barbara recently retired from the practice of Law in Lincoln, Nebraska where she also served as the Director of the Foundation for People’s City Mission, a large homeless shelter in Lincoln. Barbara has served leadership roles in the Presbyterian Church including: Ruling Elder, Moderator of Deacons (twice).

Book preview

To Live Boldly

Hebrews 4:16

By reading thus far you already know how much I love sailing! It’s in my bones! Barb constantly teases me about the fact that we even spent our honeymoon on my sailboat! I still subscribe to 4 (yes four!) sailing magazines. Yachting, Sailing, Cruising World and Sail. I can’t wait for each issue to arrive every month … especially in the Springtime. It’s in my DNA. I still want to drive over to Lake Michigan to look at certain boats when I read the advertisements that they are for sale. It’s in my blood! I can’t count the number of sermon’s that I first conceived as I read the titles of articles in my sailing magazines. (It’s a part of my homiletical makeup). I tell you all of that because it’s happened again! The sub-title of the April 2014 Yachting magazine Editorial reads:

A ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for by Wm. G.T. Shedd

And that got me to thinking; not just about the quote but also about it’s author. The Rev. Dr. Wm. Shedd was a Presbyterian minister and a dominant systematic theologian of the 19th Century (!820-1894). He taught at Union Seminary in NYC for 28 years and was known to be an avid sailor! That one article in Yachting magazine got me to thinking about my two favourite disciplines: Sailing and Systematic Theology. I am degreed in the one and constantly concede to the other. And now like a ship anchored in the harbour I feel I am bodily tethered to an apartment while my soul wants to go boldly forth in pursuit of some new challenge in my life.

My interpretation of Wm. Shedd’s quote is that ‘Life is meant to be lived boldly’. It reminded me of a time when I set forth to sail across the Aegean Sea from Athens to Ephesus as did the Apostle Paul. It was in thee days before GPS and modern navigational aids. I sailed by visual navigation as did the Apostle Paul, visually navigating from island to island and after that experience I came to believe that life was meant to be lived with that same bold abandon. I remember the great sense of excitement upon leaving the harbour at Athens and going forth boldly with a stirring sense of adventure for what lay ahead. I’ll admit that I must have been very hard to live with in those days and I’m sure that my children suffered under such a parental role model, but I found it to be exhilarating approach to life.

I also remember the time that daughter Kate and I were in Egypt and I negotiated with the owner of a Felluca to let me ‘borrow’ his boat for an afternoon of sailing on the River Nile. Daughter Kate was surprised by my negotiating skills in Arabic but fully confident that I would be able to navigate the Nile and so we set forth boldly into uncharted waters. We had a grand afternoon and I have ever since admired how boldly and beautifully she has navigated through all of her life experiences. I am so gratified that she has also learned from me and from Henry David Thoreau, the poet of ‘Walden’s Pond’ to allow her life to Go forth boldly in the direction of your dreams.

Biblically I have always understood that being willing to go forth boldly in the direction of our dreams is the way life ought to be lived. Look at Abraham who was 75 years old when God called him to boldly go forth to a distant place that he knew not and begin life anew. And the April issue of Cruising World magazine tells the account of a 76 year old sailor from St. Augustine, Florida who once dreamed of sailing alone around the world and who has now boldly set forth to fulfill that dream. Age was not a factor for him nor for Abraham. And I too am beginning to understand that it ought not be a barrier that keeps me from living boldly the life that I have been given to live.

I am always enamored when I watch Grandson Jordan as he lets his imagination run wild as he builds and rebuilds different Star Trek scenarios with his Legos. He plays tirelessly as he ventures forth into Star Treks ‘Final Frontier’. But as for me I can’t help hearing the voice over of Captain Kirk describing that Final Frontier, "To seek out new life … To boldly go where no man has gone before.". What Jordan doesn’t know is that what he is playing with in his mind, I am dealing with in real life. For I am facing that final frontier where we all face the final judgment … and so let me conclude with these words: "Let us therefore boldly (or with confidence) approach the throne of our gracious God that we may receive mercy.’ (Heb.4:16} It is with that boldness that I have lived, and with which I now approach my life’s final frontier.

When The End Is Better Than The Beginning

Ecclesiastes 7:8

There is a text in the Old Testament that has vexed me for a long time time. A very long time. It’s from the Wisdom book of Ecclesiastes, 7:8 "Better is the end of a thing than its beginning." Now that I am coming close to the end of my life, that thought is bothering me more than it did when I first read it when I was much younger. I discussed this concern with my physician at the time of my last physical exam and we talked about some of the aspects of palliative medicine and about some end of life issues. I think one reason that I am having a hard time believing that the end will be better than the beginning is due to the fact that my early life was such an exceptionally happy one. My father, a Presbyterian Missinary, was the Headmaster of an American school in Tripoli, Lebanon. We lived adjacent to the school and my brother and I had every opportunity to enjoy the sports facilities in the school compound. We played soccer, basketball and tennis constantly. In the winter months we went skiing among the Cedars on the slopes of Mt. Lebanon and in the summertime we went swimming in the warm and clear blue water of the Mediterranean Sea. My memory of my childhood was that I grew up with ever loving parents in a suburb of the Garden of Eden. So you can understand that now with all the debilitations of an aging body that has fought cancer, diabetes, pernicious anemia and a stroke, I now have some difficulty in believing the words of Ecclesiastes that the end of life is better than its beginning. Nowadays I even have trouble walking over to the couch to sit down just to watch the televised sports that I used to play.

Then one day I read an article in the New York Times which stated that Ernest Hemmingway once said that when he wrote his wartime masterpiece, A Farewell To Arms he re-wrote the final words of that novel 39 times before he was satisfied with its ending. It then occurred to me that I needed to re-examine how I intended to live out the ending of my life. I realized at that moment that I had more than 39 choices.

My thoughts then turned to memories of my Father and how he had lived out the last days of his life. My Father was, without doubt the greatest influence in my life. When I was young he taught me all the basic and necessary fundamentals of life. Throughout my adult life he channeled my thinking and guided my progress in every way imaginable. But it wasn’t until his later years that I fully came to know him and to understand him. I felt that his retirement years were the best years of his life. Whenever he and my mother would visit us in Rochester, he and I would always plan on spending an afternoon sailing together on my sailboat. Just the two of us out sailing aimlessly wherever the wind would take us. It gave us a chance to talk without interruption wherever the conversation would lead us. He would often regale me with stories that I had never heard before or that I had never really understood before. Stories of his life as a Missionary in Lebanon and of his experiences in the OSS during the Second World War. His reminiscences of his life as a Professor at Hastings College in Nebraska always made me wish in a way that I had followed his career path. I remember one afternoon as I was bemoaning the fact that creating new parking spaces had become