One Lesson at a Time: A Year of Living Thoughtfully

By Junietta Baker McCall

Sorting through what we have learned in life is like sorting through household clutter: Some lessons we keep, some we share, and the rest we are challenged to throw out or recycle to fit today’s needs.

Junietta Baker McCall, an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ with a love for writing, shares life lessons, philosophical ponderings, and stories with clinical and pastoral theories and practices sprinkled here and there in a series of journal entries chronicling a year of thoughtful living.

Her entries are written using the format of four seasonal periods and arbitrary dates, starting with spring. Those interested in duplicating her format will find that the process can bring renewed vigor to their lives.

The author draws on her personal and professional experiences, as well as inspiration from other writers, to consider subjects both mundane and sublime, from battling a cold to the rejuvenating nature of spring and building good karma.

Reflect on your life and make sense of your place in the world with the thought-provoking insights in this journal of life lessons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532063091

Junietta Baker McCall

Junietta Baker McCall, D. Min. is the previous director of pastoral psychotherapy and counseling education at Beverly Hospital, Beverly, Massachusetts. For twenty-two years she served as director of pastoral services at New Hampshire Hospital in Concord. A retired licensed pastoral psychotherapist, diplomate in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and ordained minister of The United Church of Christ, she is the author of Grief Education for Caregivers of the Elderly; A Practical Guide to Hospital Ministry; Bereavement Counseling: Pastoral Care for Complicated Grieving; Building Hope During Challenging Times; With Wings Widespread: Reflections on Life and Hospital Ministry; Co-author of Living Well as You Age; and her recent publication: One Lesson at a Time: a Year of Living Thoughtfully. Dr. McCall has served as adjunct faculty member in pastoral counseling at Andover newton Theological School and as associate pastor of South Congregational Church in Concord. She is currently retired and remains in Concord, New Hampshire, where she is working on two new pieces temporarily titled ‘One Life to Live’ and ‘Living a Grateful Life’.

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Copyright © 2018 Junietta Baker McCall.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-6310-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-6311-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-6309-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018915288

iUniverse rev. date:  01/11/2019

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About the Author

Junietta Baker McCall, D. Min, is the previous director of pastoral psychotherapy and counseling education at Beverly Hospital, Beverly, Massachusetts. For twenty-two years she served as director of pastoral services at New Hampshire Hospital in Concord. A retired licensed pastoral psychotherapist, diplomate in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, she is the author of Grief Education for Caregivers of the Elderly; A Practical Guide to Hospital Ministry; Bereavement Counseling: Pastoral Care for Complicated Grieving; Building Hope During Challenging Times; and With Wings Widespread; Reflections on Life and Hospital Ministry; and co-author of Living Well as You Age. Dr. McCall has served as adjunct faculty member in pastoral counseling at Andover Newton Theological School and as associate pastor of South Congregational Church in Concord. She is currently retired and remains in Concord, New Hampshire.

Contents

Acknowledgements

1. Beginnings

2. Spring

3. Summer

4. Autumn

5. Winter

6. Endings

End Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

There are many types of projects that tell the story of our souls, our passions and our struggles. Writing, for me, is one such project. It is a medium I have learned to trust and continue to use. Although, my target audience changes as I expand in my efforts to express parts of who I am and seek to pass on some of what I have learned.

However, my acknowledgements remain quite lasting. I am thinking of the various members of my family; the numerous teachers and colleagues I have journeyed with and whose wisdom remains within me; and the clients, students, patients, and parishioners I have listened to and who have taught me probably far more than the wisdom I have imparted to them.

In this manuscript I am also grateful to various other resources. I have gained wisdom from television, movies, roadside signs, famous people, nature and the Internet. As evidenced in my bibliography, I have even found lessons in cough drops and from short sighted birds that continue to fly into my front porch windows. I’ve pulled out sayings, words, lyrics, and experiences long ago imprinted on my mind, heart and soul.

In a sense I acknowledge that all my life has been a lesson to be learned. And all the lessons I have learned make up all the parts of my life. For this I am thankful.

1

Beginnings

Sorting through what we have learned in life

is a bit like sorting through household clutter!

Some lessons we keep,

some we can give to good causes

or share,

and the rest we are challenged to get-rid of differently,

perhaps even recycle or upcycle to fit today’s needs!

It was not until I wrote the final words of my sixth book that my husband informed me that I was a writer. The thought seemed novel. But then I recalled the twenty-some boxes of written pages residing in my basement; notes scattered here and there; lectures and sermons; remnants of half started journals; outlines of professional books yet to be born; post-it notes and even a chapter or two of long-ago started novels. All now resting in the basement waiting to be sorted and either brought to life or put to rest. As these various pieces came to mind, I knew that my husband was right. I was many things, one of which was a writer.

And along with being a writer, I am also a thinker, not a philosopher, not an abstract thinker of great theories, but a thinker about life. To no one’s surprise I majored in psychology and religion in college and in seminary. After all what could be more exciting than wondering about the meaning of life and how the human mind, body, and soul work?

I love life and have experienced the Good, the Bad and the Ugly as the movie title goes. ¹ I have spent a professional life time as teacher, minister, chaplain and therapist helping others get through their version of life. So, it now occurs to me I am ready to take on the challenge of spending a year thinking about what I have learned. Not everything I have learned but manageable practical things. Things that others might enjoy reading and reflecting about too.

SO, TO THE BEGINNING OF THIS PROJECT

Who can help but remember Robert Fulghum’s little piece on lessons he learned early in life. In 1988, he published an extremely popular book titled, All I Really Know I Learned in Kindergarten.² As I started this project I thought about this little book, re-read it, and wondered what my life lessons were. And the first lesson that came to mind was that I was happy writing and wanted to continue to do so.

THUS, I BEGAN THINKING OF WORKING TITLES:

Things it Takes a Lifetime to Learn

This brainstorm was followed by the snappy possibility of calling the book: It Only Took 70 Years to Learn Something!

Next came: A 21st Century Devotional

And with tongue in cheek firmly set, I also declared that the name of the volume should be: Knowing What I Know and How I Came to Know it!

However, a favorite emerged: Looking Through the Rearview Mirror: Lessons It Has Taken a Lifetime to Learn

And finally: One Lesson at a Time: A Year of Living thoughtfully

As one can tell even choosing a title for a journal about lessons learned over a lifetime was a lesson in clarification. And my intention became clearer as I began to write. Like the reader I would reflect on what has been, and is now, important in life. Drawing from personal and professional care and counseling experiences I hoped to reflect in a spontaneous way, for a period of one year, on my experiences, and challenges, with an eye to what could be learned and prove useful to myself and others.

ABOUT FORMAT

For convenience, the following lessons, or reflections, are written using four seasonal periods and arbitrary dates, starting with Spring. Those interested in duplicating this format, for personal benefit, will find using a similar process can bring renewed vigor to their lives. For one of the things I have learned repeatedly in life, is that reflection about oneself and one’s place in the world is crucial to living well and even to the survival of the human species, and our care of the world around us. Taking the time to engage in reflection about one’s life through a creative process, such as keeping a journal, or engaging in other artistic endeavors which emerge from this reflection is worth its weight in gold.

USING THE REARVIEW MIRROR AS A GUIDING IMAGE

As I started working on this book, I also began talking about it with friends. I shared the initial working title "Looking through the Rearview Mirror. I thought it was brilliant and certainly beautifully poetic. But their response was either blankness or puzzlement. However, when I added the subtitle, Lessons it has Taken a Lifetime to Learn" they nodded their heads and sometimes gave me their own example, most of which were humorous.

Still, as a guiding image and provider of inspiration I stuck to the Rearview Mirror title right up until my final draft. This is because I am a person with visual preferences and I love what I think of as poetic images that ring true to heart, mind and soul. Plus, the great crime writer, Agatha Christie, came to my defense just when I needed her after a somewhat lackluster event of trying to explain my wonderful working title.

I am referring to the PBS Masterpiece series, Agatha Christie’s Poirot. In Series 6, Dumb Witness,³ the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot solves the case by accidently looking in a mirror where he sees that what he initially thought of as being the letters TA were really AT. They were seen through a mirror and therefore backwards!

Of course, not all images seen through a mirror are distorted and many mirrors are essential in life anyway. Think of the rearview mirror of a car. Or the side mirrors on a car that used to be provided with a caution label – images are closer than the driver thinks. Mirrors are used for security and vanity sake. What I am saying in this book, is that looking back on life (the rearview mirror) changes our perceptions, our thoughts about things, our beliefs; and sometimes our memories and our future choices. In doing so we are not changing the past, rather we are updating our beliefs and conclusions – fine tuning our lesson file if you will.

FINDING A WORKING IMAGE

But there are other images that can work well when reflecting on life lessons. And at this point, I add another life lesson - once you find a working image or analogy grab hold and see where it goes! Use it for as long as it is helpful and set it aside when it doesn’t work. Wait a bit. It may renew itself or another image or analogy will come to help you with the next leg of your reflective journey.

In this process you are sure to discover:

• that some lessons tend to repeat themselves

• that life is seldom linear

• that learning can bring growth and development as well as great satisfaction

• that seeds of learning come in all shapes, sizes, locations and circumstances

• that some of what you read and discover, in life and in this book, will be inspirational, helpful and interesting and other lessons will not be applicable to you or at this time.

BUT, HOW DO WE KNOW WE HAVE LEARNED SOMETHING?

From the minute we are born, we start learning about ourselves and the world around us. Some things we learn quickly; others take a while; and still others need to be relearned, or unlearned, as we grow and adapt to our world and learn who we are and what we want to be.

And to add to the complexity of the numerous things we need to learn in life, even if just to survive, let alone thrive, there are also personality and learning style factors to be considered. Because this is a piece about lessons learned this is a good place to consider the question of what constitutes learning and how we know we have learned something. Admittedly, I am not going to do more than glance at the surface of what constitutes learning, but I will approach this subject in a common sense and practical manner.

To begin with, knowing something involves several cognition components. We know something when our brain, and other senses, have developed a connection with that which is being learned. This means we have moved to some degree through the following cognition steps of:

Awareness

Recognition and

Recitation/recall (storage of the lesson)

We then start to form integrated maps that become full-fledged-life lessons about ourselves and our world. We then can author things like Mr. Fulghum,⁴ or in the case of this work, we can declare that we are ready to complete a journal which we can name, "One Lesson at a Time: A Year of Living Thoughtfully."

Whether a journal, a book or some other medium is used to store our reflections on what we have learned in life, these formats must humbly remain tentative and incomplete; unfinished. Because learning is an ongoing process - meaning what is learned has a fluid life.

We learn things that stay with us throughout our lives. And we learn things that we must continue to grapple with both in their truth and their helpfulness. What we used to know we forget. What we are attached to, we sometimes hold onto long past their usability. So, it is helpful to consider lessons learned as that which is relied on daily, that which is occasionally useful, and that which is best stored in the junk drawers of our mind and heart until the drawer gets so full we would benefit from sorting it out and discarding a few items we no longer recognize or want. In the case of this collection of lessons; these are the ones I recognized, and thoughtfully recorded this year.

USING INSPIRATIONAL OR GROWTH JOURNALS

The use of journals for therapeutic purposes has risen in popularity. My professional opinions concerning their use have also shifted over time. In the beginning, many of us took to journals as resources for patients and clients like a duck to water. We particularly encouraged troubled individuals to keep a journal to record their thoughts and feelings as they were having them.

However, it did not take long for me to discover that perhaps this was not always a helpful way of doing things – in fact it could be harmful to some. Asking someone to record, at length their thoughts and feelings only worked some of the time. The challenge to writing random thoughts and feelings is that those who are depressed, overly anxious, and recovering from trauma tended to re-read their troubled entries and re-traumatize themselves, thus confirming that their life and the world around them was truly still bad.

Once I learned this lesson, I began to favor a structured journal. One based on guidelines such as moments of gratitude; inspirational experiences; thinking distortions and the more accurate reframing of this distortions or the deliberate use of themes. And even recording the daily weather and the amount spent each day and be rewarding and helpful. In my case, I think it has been helpful to consider, on a regular basis, little lessons that come to mind and to set these lessons down, in journal format, and then wonder about the lesson and how it applies, at present, to me. Of course, as a writer and born people-helper I couldn’t help but think the end result might be good for others too.

THE PUBLISHING OF JOURNALS AS A PROUD TRADITION

Four specific authors have been of help to me over the years. Each has had an impact on my choice of a journal format that is both private and meant for publishing purposes. Two were known to me through the publishing of my last co-authored book, Living Well as You Age. The first is The Journal of Kierkagaard by Soren Kierkagaard,⁵ and the second is Meditations by Marcus Aurilius.⁶ Then there are the numerous pieces done by Mae Sarton including The House by the Sea ⁷ and Seventy ⁸ and the story formats used by Annie Dillard including On the Writing Life.⁹ The list of authors who have used the journal for a format, or their life story built around chosen themes are numerous. The list of unpublished journals is much greater! Each published writer has assumed that the large and small elements of their life and the lessons learned are valuable and good enough to share.

This Journal

This journal consists of:

Observations and experiences

Opinions and beliefs

Philosophical ponderings and stories

With clinical and pastoral theories and practices sprinkled here and there

And reflections about any, and all, of the above.

ADVICE TO YOU, THE READER

When reading any non-fiction work it is important that the reader use a reflective process for deciding what to incorporate and what to embellish, disregard or even refute. The refuting of an author’s opinion is just as valuable to any learning experience as its acceptance. Therefore, you are encouraged to consider each entry presented as a discussion starter. Add your own thoughts and options. Disagree. Make adaptations based on what life has taught you. After all, this is what makes writing, reading, and learning an interactive process. Scribble on the pages - if you own the book! Start your own life lesson journal. In fact, I will be successful in this part of the process if this book gets well used, thoroughly critiqued and passed on for others to do likewise.

THE EXPONENTIALLY UNFOLDING BLESSINGS THEORY OF LEARNING

A few years ago, I published a book titled With Wings Widespread, Reflections on Life and Hospital Ministry.¹⁰ The piece was written in a poetic format over a period of twenty-two years and then reflected upon in the final year of full-time ministry. This was a two-step process that I found both helpful and educational. A similar experience and approach are taken in this piece where I have focused over a twelve-month period on some of the lessons I was learning and had learned. And then, in the editing process, I have continued to reflect on those lessons with a resulting additional learning benefit. Often one receives more than we expect; especially when we are expecting to learn, and this makes learning a blessing, if sometimes in disguise.

A WORD ABOUT END NOTES AND OTHER RESOURCES

Keeping up with technology, including sources of information remains challenging. For this reason, I wish to explain that this manuscript contains several sources, some of which are different than those traditionally used in academic publications. This time I have used:

My experience, training and opinions

Colloquial Sayings

Material from a variety of media – identified as best as possible

Reference to traditional written material – noted in the bibliography

And remembered material whose original source is vague due to my memory and the passage of time.

Thus, as with many things, when in doubt do go ahead and look up the material being presented!

2

Spring

ABOUT SPRING

Spring is a good time to consider life lessons. After all the season is usually a mixed bag. In the Northeastern part of the United States the old saying goes, If you don’t like the weather just wait a day and it will change. And that is the case for spring which, in my mind, covers the months of March, April and May.

Effective March 1st I expect to see tulips and daffodils and those tiny blue what-cha-ma-call-its popping up in my yard, all cheerful and letting me know that the long winter (the three previous months) is over. In truth this has happened once in 40 years, but spring is about hope is it not?

To add to this expectation there is the reality that spring in the Northeast also brings with it mud, more potholes, May flies and ants along with early specimens of stink bugs, a few of which manage every year to sneak inside the house. These too tell the story of the passing of winter but not so beautifully from my point of view.

There you have it, spring in nature’s Northeastern version is filled with relief, expectation, beauty, hope and down to earthiness. And in New Hampshire, it is not until late in the season when new seeds are planted, and we start thinking maybe this will be the year we grow the largest pumpkin, the sweetest tomato or finally dry some of that traveling spearmint!

And it is not usually until the last month of spring that some of us start thinking of baby chicks and multiplying bunnies. Plus, we buy that huge white lily, which lasts a brief time and smells wonderful. With this lily we are reminded that we should make a pilgrimage to church where we can sport those spring clothes we just pulled out of the closet. Or in some cases, we start to plan the great Easter family meal to be served on a table laden with white linen and set with the best family china. Certainly, there are other sacred spring holidays, but this is the way it is at my house!

Finally, we are well on our way to the best part of spring - hope, new life, and nature’s showing off colors and growth we have not seen for a while. Some of it we love and some of it we try to tame - like our ambivalence about those spreading dandelions; our chagrin over the dead branches on the rose bushes; and our frustration about how to handle yard waste. Okay, once again this is how it is at my house.

In terms of life lessons there is no better season to start with than Spring. It is a time for childhood memories. Spring always reminds me of my early childhood growing up in rural Pennsylvania where I once walked with my birthfather down a seemingly large highway in search of a store to buy a loaf of bread. My memories of that time are few now; but the smell of spring continues to stay with me just as the lessons we learn early in life continue to abide inside us for good or ill.

By this time, I have lived many springs and had numerous opportunities to ponder the season and how it has fit into my life and the lives of others. Ultimately, at least for the moment, I think we learn, mostly, about the following things in the spring- times of our lives:

We learn to breathe deeply

We learn to grow

We learn to attach, care, love, and form relationships

We learn to choose

SOME LESSONS FOR THE SPRINGTIME

MARCH 1: IN EVERY SEASON, THERE IS A SONG TO BE SUNG

A life lesson to be noted here is not so much that seasons are the greatest factors in songs that have been written. Although it is true that every season has a set of songs written expressly about that time of year, the lesson being proposed at this time, however, is more encompassing than this. Using the phrase, the seasons of our lives, we often realize that as we grow older, we learn to focus on celebrating what is, what has been, and even what is to come. And singing is one of the ways we celebrate important aspects of life.

My favorite spring time songs revolve around church hymns. As I was raised in the Christian faith this is probably natural. But that does not mean that I don’t appreciate all kinds of music from many different religions, cultures and perspectives.

The song that is going through my head right now is not religious but beautiful, When it is Springtime in the Rockies.¹ Now, that song has a good beat and a story to go along with it. I have never seen the Rockies but their springtime beauty, through this song, is forever impressed upon my heart and evident in my own back yard.

Still, our lives do not have to be set to music to be inspiring. Although who cannot remember The Sound of Music ²