Aging with Joy and Impact: A Practical Spiritual Guide for Baby Boomers

By Jerry Black

If you belong to the baby boomer generation,-and there are seventy-six million of us-this book is targeted at you. Whether you attend church or not, this book is for you. If you grew up fearing an angry God and hell if you sinned, this book is for you. If you have that Catholic, Jewish, or other guilts about life, you will find this book comforting, reassuring, and encouraging. If retirement today leaves you feeling unwanted, unneeded, or without purpose, this book is for you. Belonging to a religion and attending services has been a way for many to check something off their "get-to-heaven" list. Going through the motions might fool our brains but not our hearts. As baby boomers (1946–1964), most of us were brought up in a religious environment that stressed obeying all the rules, or an angry God would send us to hell. As imperfect human beings, this formula did not work well for us. Guilt has flourished for decades in many religions that turned us into mechanical law observers, missing the central facet of religion that God is love and mercy, and Jesus is our model. I have expanded on the two-actually three-great commandments to give you practical applications on how, in the "third half" of your spiritual life, you can find joy in your heart and positively impact others. Enjoy my story as well as the stories of sixteen other seniors who have found joy while making positive impact on others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098067595

Book preview

Table of Contents

Preface

Background, Beliefs, and Beyond

A Twenty-first-Century Paradigm Shift

There Is a God—One God!

God’s Plan for Me

Intermission

Snowflakes and People

Models to Inspire and Energize You

Star Stories

More Star Stories

Still More Star Stories

Intermission

Challenges

The Challenges of Aging

Special Challenges for Males

Spirituality

Spirituality

My Generation and God

The Great Commandments

God-Centered

Organized Religion: The Good News

Church: The Not-So Good News

The Great Commandments Continued

Love (Your Neighbor as) Yourself

Loving Yourself Continued: Maintaining and Enriching

Loving Your neighbor

Peace: The Result of Joy and Impact

Curtain Calls

Notes

cover.jpg

Aging

with Joy and Impact

Jerry Black

A Practical Spiritual Guide

for Baby Boomers

ISBN 978-1-0980-6757-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-0980-6759-5 (digital)

Copyright © 2020 by Jerry Black

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

All Biblical verses herein are from the NIV Study Bible © 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Published by Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Mi. Up to 500 verses may be quoted without the express written permission of the publisher. For my Catholic friends the New Catholic Bible does not have this permissive provision.

MBTI® is a registered trademark of The Myers Briggs Company, Sunnyvale, CA

Htpps://themyersbriggs.com

Printed in the United States of America

Preface

Welcome! This is a book I had to write, a message I needed to spread. Was it a calling from up above? I don’t know, but I suspect so. The message has been bouncing around my mind for several years, and deep feelings in my heart kept pushing me. The book and the message became my responsibility. While five surgeries during the writing slowed me down, I was determined to complete the book. It is based upon my journey and thirty other senior citizens that I interviewed. I trust it will impact and support your journey. Neither I nor the thirty persons I interviewed have all the answers. However, I must humbly share these thoughts and feelings with you for your consideration. I am not a theological expert in any way, but you can be sure all that follows is my insight through study, experience, and reflection.

If you are a baby boomer—and there are seventy-six million of us—this book is targeted to you. Whether you attend church or not, this book is for you. If you grew up fearing an angry God and hell if you sinned, this book is for you. If you have that Catholic, Jewish, or other guilt about life, you will find this book comforting and encouraging. If retirement today leaves you feeling unwanted, unneeded, or without purpose, this book is for you.

Christ left us with some very simple messages that organized religion has often lost sight of. We have been inundated with rules and guilt rather than love and mercy. There are voices trying to turn this around, but for seniors who grew up in the rules-and-guilt world, we need to do some serious self-reflection to see our true God-given self and how we can understand and carry out what each of us was sent here for. This book is meant to help you on your journey.

Make no mistake about it. I went to church every Sunday and tried to obey all the rules, but I didn’t really feel the spirit of God in me until my senior years. It is my honor and blessing to reach out to all of you with encouragement as you travel along your spiritual journey. Our senior years are a gift from God, and let’s live them both with joy and impact!

I hope I am pleasing God with these writings; this is certainly my goal. I am a Christian and was brought up in the Catholic Church and still find their services the most meaningful. I am saddened by the church’s traditional focus on rules and laws rather than love and mercy. The Catholic Church is not alone in this paradox. I believe that the lower church attendance in recent years is due to churches losing sight of the big picture.

I want to thank my wife, Sue, for all she had put up with while I was writing the book as well as her excellent proofreading. I also want to thank the thirty seniors who permitted me to interview them and share their lives, especially the sixteen that I have written stories on in this book. They are truly inspirational.

You will find out that one of my joys in life is musicals. In light of that, you will see acts, scenes, etc. rather than parts and chapters.

I want to dedicate this book to Sister Jean, who just had her one hundredth birthday. While she is in a wheelchair, she has a real zest for life at Loyola (Chicago), especially as chaplain for their basketball team. I cannot think of a senior who has had more impact during her senior years. Between her impact and graciousness, she is the perfect model for what I am exhorting you to do in this book.

I hope you enjoy the book and that it energizes you to live a joyful and impactful life in your senior years.

Act 1

Background, Beliefs, and Beyond

Ripped from the headlines…

With Her 96th Birthday in Sight, Betty White Reveals Her Surprising Secret to a Long Life (vodka and hotdogs)!

The Fonz is Now 72 and Working.

Ann-Margaret at 76 Still Riding her Harley-Davidson.

David Letterman’s Mom, an Unlikely Star, Dies at 95.

"100-Year Old Sister Jean chaplains and cheerleads the Loyola men’s basketball team.

Nine out of Ten Nobel Winners for 2017 Are Over 70.

84-Year-Old Sculptor Ed Dwight Lives for Coming Down to his Studio Every Day and Making Art.

79-Year-Old R&B Singer Mavis Staples on Tour with Her Longtime Friend and Collaborator Bob Dylan.

112-Year-Old Auschwitz Survivor is Named Oldest Man.

Only One Thing Can Distract 85-Year-Old Ruth Bader Ginsburg from the Law: The Opera.

Chicago Jazz Legend George Freeman Celebrated his 90th Birthday Kicking Off the First Night of the 39th Chicago Jazz Festival.

89-Year-Old Comedian Dick Van Dyke Visits Gym Every Morning.

Redford (71) and Fonda (79) Talk Sex Scenes at Venice Film Festival.

79-Year-Old Peter Max Working Harder Than Ever!

Cindy Williams (70) of Laverne and Shirley Stars in Las Vegas Musical.

76-Year-Old Ron Williams Runs his 40th Chicago Marathon.

Dame Judy at 82 is Having a Great Third Act.

71-Year-Old Bette Midler Shatters Box Office Records with her Return to Hello Dolly.

McCain’s 106-year-old mom to attend his Washington services

Believe: 71-Year-Old Cher to Premiere in The Cher Show Next June in Chicago.

Former First Lady Barbara Bush Dies at Age 92.

Tomlin, 78, and Fonda, 80, Love Steady Work as Stars, Executive Producers of Grace & Frankie."

Four Leading Presidential Candidates Are in Their 70’s.

Elton John turns 72.

Scene 1

A Twenty-first-Century Paradigm Shift

How many paradigm shifts have we encountered in our lives? We started life on our backs, looking up at colorful toys hanging over our crib, with adult faces peeking in intermittently. Eventually, we were on the floor, sitting up until we learned to crawl and could explore everywhere there wasn’t a baby gate. We found our legs, toddled, walked, and then ran all around the house. With adult supervision, we discovered the outside world with slides and swings. As those wheels went round and round, the yellow school bus took us to school to see teachers and new friends. Learning to ride a two-wheeler bike expanded our street into a neighborhood.

After several years, we nervously entered high school and tried to find all the places we had to be. Our first car may have opened up our world far more than our parents were comfortable with. Going away to college after high school was a big change; going from college to a work life was even bigger. For many, there was marriage and children. Oh, how children changed our schedule and our lives! At some point, we become empty nesters. We are happy about that but maybe not sure how to handle it. Divorce, disability, or the loss of a spouse unfortunately happened to many of us. Others had midlife crises. If we are lucky, we have grandchildren nearby but not too close. Life continually calls for us to adjust and change our perspective.

There is a new paradigm shift that has been sneaking up on society for some time. Researchers Erik and Joan Erickson identified nine stages of life, and their work is solid but too much to work with here.¹ Others have chosen to limit their discussions to the two halves of our lives, often with different dividing points. I favor age forty as the dividing point. At age forty, most of us have graduated from school; established our careers; more often than not, married and have children; and perhaps own a home. Our lifestyle is established. We have identity. This is the part of our life where we have grown the most.

Sometime after forty, we started the second half of our lives. This is the maturation part of our life. Our careers advance (or maybe not). Some of us will change careers by choice or necessity. Our children will now be in high school, college, and getting married. For most of us, life will seem more stable even if it seems hectic meeting the needs of our modern times. Many will long for grandchildren.

Then, around the age of sixty-five, comes a period we have been calling retirement. I am not a big fan of that term retirement. Merriam-Webster defines retire with such verbs as withdraw, move back, and stop.²

To retire was like a life bonus, where you got to sit back, relax, and watch the world go by around you. Life became simpler. Suddenly, others thought you had wisdom. Many worked part-time, but working for a living was often not necessary. Some moved to retirement communities for golf and tennis. They hoped grandchildren would come to visit. After a time, some of those precious body organs just didn’t work anymore, or cancer or another disease came knocking, and life in this world came to an end.

Something has been happening, though, in the last twenty-five years. Advances in medicine have kept many alive much longer. My dad died of heart attack at seventy-one. He was never treated with any blood pressure medicine. Now we have prescription medicines to keep so many of our health issues under control, and new ones come out constantly. If only the drug companies would not fill our TV screens with ads about them with their endless list of side effects! We live in a time when various body organs can be transplanted to rejuvenate our bodies. To date, I have had a new hip, a new shoulder, and a new knee. Medical research to treat various diseases grows by leaps and bounds. More of us have given up smoking or never started. With Medicare, more retired people have easy access to health care.

Even more important, many of us are just living longer, which is probably impacted by many factors of modern life. Many of us refuse to see a rocking chair as the destination for retirement. The Social Security Administration reports that a male at age sixty-five can expect to live eighty-four years, a female 86.5 years. One out of three of those sixty-five-year-olds will live past age ninety, and one out of seven will live past ninety-five years old.³

Everywhere my wife and I go, we see very active people in their seventies and even into their early eighties. We try to guess their ages. I keep telling everyone at age seventy-two that I expect another twenty years or more. Only God knows that one. The point is that we can no longer think of retirement as that little extra bonus that we receive. Absent disease or severe health problems, our senior bodies seem to be able to stretch life out further and further. Our bodies may appear somewhat tarnished on the outside but are most often vibrant on the inside.

Too often, younger people look at our weathered faces and bodies and write us off. We cannot let that happen or dampen our spirits. For one of the training courses I delivered, I used a pliable round purple ball. The ball had a three-quarter-inch hole on one side of it, and you could stick a finger in and force it inside out. On the outside, the ball was smooth purple; on the inside, it was covered with purple spikes. The purpose in training was to show the participants that they may have the smooth outside as their self-image, while other people may see them as the spikes inside.

Now I see this as an aid to the aging perspective issue. Often, younger people see the purple spikes on the outside, but we are smooth and shiny inside. We need to let that inner glow shine through.

We are approaching a time very soon where many of us at age sixty-five can expect maybe twenty-five more years of life. So here comes the paradigm shift. Those years after sixty-five I like to refer to as the third half of life for those of us lucky enough to live it. I apologize to all mathematicians. We have worked so long with the idea of lives having two halves that I think we should maintain that concept and add a third half. What we perceived as a shorter, more reticent part of our life has now become an opportunity for much more living. It’s like a long weekend getaway that now lasts the entire summer.

There is another demographic that is changing too. There are a lot more of us than ever. The baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) is the largest American generation ever topping off at over seventy-six million people.⁴ Our chances for good health continue to skyrocket.

In 1998, Tom Brokaw wrote The Greatest Generation, highlighting the generation that grew up during the depression.⁵ They went on to fight in World War II, or their productivity on the home front made a significant material contribution to the war effort. No doubt, this generation saved us from a grave disaster.

The baby boomer generation can rival this generation, not by fighting a war but serving the people in their families, their neighborhood, city, or even possibly beyond the US borders. Why not make an impact? Even if you are wheelchair bound in an assisted living center, you can make a difference with other residents, the staff, and your family. The potential impact for all of us entering our third half of life to provide our wisdom and efforts to leave a much better world behind is huge. As baby boomers, we have already changed our culture in so many ways.

Are you ready? If you have reached the third half of life, read on quickly. You need this now! If you are in your second half of life, preparation starts now to get you up to speed for who knows how many years you will live. Read on and see that the third half can be lively, fabulous, and impactful. There are even more millennials coming along than baby boomers. Let’s set the bar high for future generations!

Scene 2

There Is a God—One God!

In Tim Keller’s book The Reason for God, he spends 251 pages answering skeptics on the existence of God and the need for faith.⁶ While I have enjoyed several of Keller’s marvelous books, and this one is well written, I have to admit I was somewhat bored reading through the first part. The reason is very simple. I have always believed in God, and my faith has continued to grow from childhood to today. Like most of us, it may have been stronger or weaker at times, but it has always been present.

I was raised in a very Catholic family in a very Catholic neighborhood in a very Catholic city, Chicago. Call it brainwashing if you will, but the culture around me established and reinforced my thoughts about God. As I grew up through my teen years and beyond, I certainly questioned many of the Catholic rules and what was a sin but never the existence of God. This is faith!

And yet for me, it is more than faith. How the heck did the world we live in get here? If there was a big bang, how did it happen? A freak of nature? Our world is no freak. Think about all the planets floating through our universe in a continual pattern. I say our universe since there may well be others. Earth continually turns on its axis twenty-four hours a day, but absent an earthquake, have you ever felt the earth move? And we don’t fall off into space due to gravity. Where did that come from? The sun is ninety-two million miles away and yet provides light and heat. And moisture ascends into the sky to make clouds that provide life-giving rain to us. Where does that air that we need to breathe come from? I am no scientist, but I cannot fathom how all this happened and continues to exist without a God (or higher power if you must).

The human body is another miracle. If you ever were lucky enough to see Bodies… The Exhibit at some museum, you probably were in awe of everything that is inside of you and the fact that it can, with a partner, create another human being. At this writing, it’s still at the Luxor in Las Vegas and is well worth the admission. Think about how complex our brain is, and it only weights three pounds. Paul Meier, MD, in his book Experiencing God Outside the Box, reports that the human body has 30 trillion cells, each cell with thousands of enzymes, endoplasmic reticulum, golgi apparatuses; trillions of electrons, protons, and neutrons, etcetera.⁷ I do not pretend to know all the scientific names he uses either, but you get the point.

I look around and know there has to be a God that created all this. I can’t prove that, of course, and that is where faith comes in. And there is only one God. Different cultures have different names—Yahweh, Allah, Brahman, or Buddha. As Pope Francis says, We worship the same God.

When our grandson Max was in first grade, their class went on a walking field trip to a local fire station. On the way back to school, his mom and another mom followed the end of the group with Max, a good friend Josiah and another boy in front of them. The third boy proclaimed that Zeus was the God of all things! I am guessing he picked that up from some video game or TV since I doubt at six years old, he had studied Greek mythology. He was correct under Greek mythology, but it is mythology.

Max turned to Josiah and said, Josiah, God is the God of all things, right? Josiah agreed. Max and Josiah had discussed this in a prior conversation. Max checked with his mom, who also agreed. While this was a harmless exchange between first graders, how often do adults argue over whose God is best?

The storm at Wheaton College is a good example of that. Wheaton is a private evangelical Christian college. Larycia Hawkins was an African American tenured political science professor at the school and also their first female African American as a full professor. She donned a purple head scarf or hijab on campus as part of her Advent devotion to support her Muslim neighbors. As striking as that might be on this suburban Christian college campus, it was her explanation that sparked the controversy. She posted on Facebook, I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated recently, ‘We worship the same God.’

Some Evangelical Christians associated with the school thought she should have made clear the fundamental differences between the two faiths, including what they teach about God’s revelation to humanity, the nature of God, and the path to salvation and a life of prayer, which the college