Did I Say 60? Sixty? Six - Zero? When Did That Happen?

Sixty used to be old. Over the hill. It was even older than my parents.

Now, well, now it's about to be me.

This past Monday I was sitting along the bank of the Whitewater River in SE Minnesota. It was a remarkable evening.



Down in the valley the sun had mostly gone behind the hill a good hour before official sunset up on the prairie bluff. I was overwhelmed by the beauty and tranquility of the evening and the deer across the river and running behind me.




Out of nowhere it came to me that I was about to turn 60. I had been spending so much time on my 60 for 60 Bike Ride these two days I have a hunch I was using that to play the denial card. Maybe if I ignore it and put other stuff around it I won't notice.

But sitting there on one of those unforgettable summer evenings I was overwhelmed with the fact.

"My God," I said out loud to no one standing nearby but to one who has been there for the whole 60 (and then some.) "My God. Sixty! Me. What a wonderful life to have been blessed so much! So much." And I shook my head in disbelief.

And then I noticed another deer and went to try to take another picture.


Isn't that what life is supposed to be about?

A Change of Plans

Well, the financial situation has another victim for this summer. It looks like the scheduled trip to Pennsylvania for the 60 Miles for 60 bike trip isn't going to happen. The cost of airfare and all has turned it into a luxury that is better left on the drawing board for this year.

But- that doesn't mean that the 60 For 60 is a lost dream. Au contraire. Wrong, chain-grease breath. I am fortunate to live in a place where there are many rails to trails options within 45 miles. One is a chain of four trails that runs about 25 miles along the Mississippi north of La Crosse and then heads east for another 50 miles. It includes one of the oldest rails to trails, the Elroy-Sparta Trail in Wisconsin that even has three tunnels along it.

And even with the price of gasoline it will still be cheaper than the airfare to Pennsylvania. I will update you on this as plans materialize.

Graduation Cliches

I have nothing against graduations and the people who graduate. They have become cherished parts of our traditions. Whether High School or college graduations, they are important rites of passage that mark endings and beginnings.

This past weekend I attended the graduation from college of my best friend's son. It was neat to see him walk across the stage and get his diploma. My wife and I are fortunate (and blessed) to know him and his family since he was born. There's a joy in watching these events, even as I become aware of the movement of time.

You see how easy it is, though, to fall into the graduation clinches, those words, phrases, or sentiments that you can't get through a graduation without hearing. I almost hate to say them here lest I, too, fall into the cliche trap.

• The future is in your hands.
• You have an unprecedented opportunity.
• You can do whatever you want.
• Our generation has messed things up; you can make this a better world.
• Etc.
• Etc.

Of course, cliches become cliches because there is a truth in them. They also become so when they are used over and over. So here I sit: 42 years after high school graduation; 38 after college; 33 and 15 after my master's and doctorate. Time has shown me that while these cliches are true, they are also just words. We say them because we are expected to say them and if we didn't hear them we would feel cheated.

The truth of the matter is most of us won't even know how or even if we have made a difference in the world. Is the world a better place in 2008 than it was in 1970? I don't know. Is it better or worse because I have been here? I hope so. That is where the truth comes to bear. I have been fortunate to know a lot of people who I have had the privilege and joy to make a difference with.

Some of them have told me. Others have shown me. And many I can only guess. Then the phone rings and it is my daughter. She calls to talk to one or both of us almost every day. She keeps in contact. She suggests that we go to the Twins-Yankees game or take a road trip to Milwaukee since we have never been to Miller Park.

Then I know. The cliches are true. But they are true for most of us one person at a time. Those are some of the thoughts that have gone through my mind as I watched one of those people walk across the stage and graduate.

I can only describe it as

• humbling, and
• neat!

In My Experience- I Agree

Here was a news item on the Associated Press last week that made me even happier than I already am:

Despite myth, old age is the happiest time, research says

By LINDSEY TANNER
AP Medical Writer

CHICAGO (AP) -- Newsflash for rock stars and teenagers: It turns out everything doesn't go downhill as we age - the golden years really are golden.

That's according to eye-opening research that found the happiest Americans are the oldest, and older adults are more socially active than the stereotype of the lonely senior suggests.

The two go hand-in-hand - being social can help keep away the blues.

"The good news is that with age comes happiness," said study author Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist. "Life gets better in one's perception as one ages."

A certain amount of distress in old age is inevitable, including aches, pains and deaths of loved ones and friends. But older people generally have learned to be more content with what they have than younger adults, Yang said.

I like it. I agree. There is often an emotional freedom and a freeing perspective that occurs as one gets older. Yes, the aches and pains are real and you are more cautious about some things. Yes, there is a sense of time passing and the grief process that goes with it.

But at the same time there is also much to be grateful for and much to enjoy.

Why Pine Creek?

As I have talked about here before (and will again) I am planning on a 60-mile bike trip this summer along the Pine Creek Rail Trail in northern Pennsylvania. It will be 60 miles for my 60th birthday. I have given one of my reasons for the trip. I have always been entranced by the Pine Creek Gorge and when I was younger the New York Central/Penn Central/Conrail line ran up the Creek. I always wanted to make that trip in the head end of a freight. What an adventure. What a feeling of power in a diesel pounding out the miles.

Well, the rails are gone. It is now part of the Rails to Trails program. It is an "easy" trail having no more than a 3% grade anywhere along the route. So it makes sense for a first time bike trip like this.


But why Pine Creek? There are probably 60-mile rides like that elsewhere. Well, not for me. Pine Creek is a deeply embedded part of who I am. It is one of four waters that I think of as my spiritual well. In many ways it may even be the most influential, though not the biggest. There was an old saying that my aunt used to repeat when I would talk about leaving the area and not hanging around. Once you get your feet wet in Pine Creek you will always come back.

So there is that pull. But it is richer than that. It is the spiritual pull of water- and for me this water- that draws me. It is a place of spiritual power. It is what the Celts would call a "thin place," a place where the wall between God and you is so thin that He can break right through, a place where the separation of the spiritual and material is thin enough that you can see to the other side. Some places have this naturally; others have it because of what we bring to them.

My spiritual intuition tells me that Pine Creek is one of those natural places. It has a sense of the Holy about it. It has a sense of the spiritual flowing around and through it. Water in and of itself can do that. Pine Creek has a wilderness and a majesty that is hard to grasp that adds more of that Holy. Over most of its 60-mile length it is hard to get a sense of the whole since it is so large. At the northern end at the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania you can get some sense of it. There you can be on top and look down and see, like in the picture above. But elsewhere you are caught by its height and even "softness." (Like in the picture on the masthead.) It isn't a mountain like you see at the Arizona Grand Canyon or the Rockies.

This is the Allegheny plateau with the gorge cut by ice and water. The valley is a water course through the plateau. It is not a water gap between mountains. It is cut out of the mountains themselves. Generations ago it may have been one of the few routes north in that part of the country when the native Indians needed a way to connect with their brethren in New York. Yet it was dangerous with rattlesnakes and wild animals, not to mention possibly hostile other humans.

But there was something about it. Something unique and special. When I was young that something terrified me. All wilderness did. I dropped out of the Boy Scouts because I was afraid of camping. There were things and powers and problems that I couldn't easily solve out there. Give me my warm bed and solid roof. But I remember going to the Canyon as a child. I remember, no, I don't remember in a memory that can be pulled back, I remember in a feeling that has never left me. Every time I have gone back over the past 40 years (and it has been many) my soul remembers that this is part of "home." It is part of me. I cannot let it go. It won't let me go. It is part of my ongoing pilgrimage. It is part of how God has filled me with His Spirit.

Okay, so I'm getting all mystical and weird about this. That's because these are things that are beyond words. They reside in that deep place of the soul that you know are real. They also remind us that in spite of all we may say about "home" being heaven, I am not so sure that this is the case. We were not created to live in an ethereal or other worldly "heaven." Eden was here, material, earthly and I am sure earthy.

So this trip is a time of connecting. I don't expect some overwhelming spiritual experience. I don't know what to expect in that sense. Other than a beauty and a power and a spiritualness that will, I hope, be a celebration of life and its ongoing hope and possibility as I end my 6th decade and head into a whole new territory.

Billy and Me At 60

Yesterday comedian Billy Crystal had a dream of a lifetime come true for his 60th birthday. He played as a Designated Hitter for the New York Yankees under a one-day contract. He wore # 60 in honor of his birthday which is today.

Two things came to mind:
Billy Crystal can't be that old. He was born the same year as I was.

For some reason riding 60 miles on a bike through the Pine Creek Gorge in Pennsylvania seems a lot easier than trying to hit a major league pitcher's pitch.

As any of you regular pmPilgrim readers know, I am planning to make that bike trip this coming summer in however many weeks or days are showing up on that applet there to the right. (20 weeks, or 142 days, or 3424 hours) I will be going from Ansonia at the upper end of Pine Creek to Jersey Shore, my hometown, at the other end. Two days, 60 miles, on a bike.

It is the Pine Creek Rails to Trails trail along the old New York Central/Penn Central/Conrail line. I am continuing to work out on a regular basis to get ready. I am spending time looking at the Google Earth pictures. I am even dreaming about it. Had one the other night where with all the excitement I could muster I was telling some friends that I was going to do this crazy, wonderful, exciting thing.

I think I'm going to begin to write about it in the next month or so. April 4 will mark the four month mark. So perhaps around then I will try and begin to put all this into some kind of perspective. Rolling through 60 is both a willingness to admit that it happens and to deny it. (Hey, I know when I am in denial. I just don't care about this one.)

In any case, I'll keep you posted. Although I must admit that standing on a baseball diamond with a Yankee or Twins or even an old Dodger uniform might be kind of fun, too.

I Guess I'm Not All That Strange

Here's some good news for some of us leftover liberal-types from the 60s...

The stereotype of a cranky old man, set in his ways, getting more conservative by the day, is an enduring one. But new research has debunked the myth that people become more conservative as they age.

By comparing surveys of various age groups taken over a span of more than 30 years, sociologists found that in general, Americans' opinions veer toward the liberal as they grow older.

"All the evidence we have found refutes the idea that as people age their attitudes become more conservative or more rigid," said Nicholas Danigelis, a sociologist at the University of Vermont. "It's just not true. More people are changing in a liberal direction than in a conservative direction."
--Live Science

This made me stop and think about my views and how they have changed or not changed over the past 40 years. In general, I think I am about the same place in general. It is just that I no longer feel the absolute, overpowering sense that my liberal views need to be enforced on others. Call it a little bit of awareness that I could be wrong. I think I am also much more willing to criticize my side of the fence than I was back then.

In many ways this was the theme of a thoughtful and funny play we saw at the Guthrie last week. It was called Third by the late Pulitzer and Tony-winning author Wendy Wasserstein. Her heroine is an ultra-liberal professor at a fine Eastern college where she has turned the world upside down. One day a seemingly clueless, smiling, preppy-jock-type ends up in her class. She pegs him as second-rate. After all, he's an athlete and probably a Republican. When he turns in a truly high quality paper she accuses him of plagiarism.

The play revolves around the challenge to her own prejudice which she insists she doesn't have. She is just reflecting reality. Other people have prejudices. The issue is that we can become as short-sighted and narrow-minded in favor of our side of the argument as we claim the other side is. It happens day in and day out on both sides of the political divide.

Perhaps age can give us a wisdom to deal differently with these differences. The political scene hasn't given me much hope with that, but at least we can keep on trying.

Rolling Past Sixty- or I Can't Stay At 55

You may have noticed the countdown calendar over there in the right sidebar. It counts the days until August 4. That will be the day of the Big Six-0 for this aging boomer and postmodernPilgrim.

But it is also a way of reminding myself of something I want to do for that milestone.

See this picture?


That's the Pine Creek Gorge- (aka the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania.)

Over there along the left center of the picture, along the creek there at the bottom, is the old New York Central/Penn Central/Conrail right-of-way. The trains haven't run there for years and the rails are gone. It is now part of the Rails-to-Trails program. It is a biking/hiking trail that runs from Ansonia at the north end of the gorge near Wellsboro, PA, to my hometown of Jersey Shore, PA, about sixty miles away.

I have wanted to travel that Gorge from one end to the other since I was a kid. In the old days I wanted to do it in the head engine of a NYC train. But the Gorge is just as awesome- and perhaps more pristine- over the handlebars of a bicycle. It is my plan to do that in August, ending in Jersey Shore on my birthday.

Sixty at Sixty.

And I tell you this so it is out there- public- for all of you to keep me honest and on track. (Or on trail as the case may be.)

Don't worry- I will keep you posted. But think of me as the numbers there on the right count down to Zero.

• (By the way- that's also the Pine Creek Gorge and an old railroad bridge (The Black Bridge) in the masthead above. See why I can hardly wait?)


• AND, the title for this post- Rolling Past Sixty- is the title of a poem a good friend wrote about this past year for himself as he turned 60 this month. I liked the image along with the rolling water of Pine Creek and rolling along the path on a bike. I'm easily amused.

Pondering Aging

Today would have been my father's 102nd birthday. As I commented here back in September I am now older than he was when he died in 1964 when I was 16. I have become more aware of my age recently. Not because I am feeling older- I am actually feeling a lot younger than I did a year ago before I started exercising. I am becoming aware as I prepare to move to a new job that I do not have that whole career ahead of me that I did when I started out after college.

Taking a new job that could be considered a "career-enhancing" move at age 59 seems like a silly thing to do. (I did ask, by the way, if there was a mandatory retirement age. There isn't.) I have gone through one whole career already. From age 25 through age 55 I moved through the parish ministry doing many exciting and fulfilling things. When I moved into full-time counseling and secular ministry I don't think I saw it as a new career. It was more like, "Okay. I'll do this to fill time until retirement."

Well, I have discovered that I don't work that way. So after four years in the field full-time, I am discovering that I am not just sliding into retirement. I have a lot to offer yet. So what if in 7 or 8 years I will be past my mid-60s? That's 7 or 8 (or more) years that I can be doing what I enjoy. I can be working in a fulfilling occupation doing what I am called to do. What's wrong with that?

Perhaps it is like seeing what I am doing now as a second life- an extended chance. My father's career was cut short when he was only 55 by a brain tumor that eventually took his life. He didn't get this chance. We are younger today at age 60 than his generation was 50 years ago. I am going to take advantage of that.

Yes, there is a sadness in it. I do not have 20 or 30 years ahead of me in this career. But that's okay. I have what I have. Not many people get a chance to have such a full-fledged second career at my age. My dad didn't. I am grateful that I have that chance.

Making Decisions 3

The third major decision in moving to a new job in a new city has been where to live. Should we buy or rent. Having been pastors for most of our married life we didn't live in our own home until 8 years ago when we moved to the Twin Cities. It has been great to call our own place "home." But what do we do now? After all we are both AARP-aged Baby Boomers; empty-nesters. Maybe this is the time to make that first big downsizing move.

So we looked at both apartments (larger ones, of course) and houses. We were fairly sure that at least for the moment we were going to rent. Three weeks is not enough time to truly find a place to buy, especially in this buyer's market. But what about the size question?

Well, we looked at a house about 15 miles from town. And we looked at a nice 3-bedroom "luxury" apartment minutes from work (with a shuttle van.) As we drove to the house I realized that I don't like commuting. I have never enjoyed commuting because I never had to do it until I took my current job a little over two years ago. Even my first job outside the church was a couple minute drive to three of the local schools.

I think if the house had been in town we would have taken it. It was not a significant downsize and we would have had time to decide what to get rid of and what not to- which is dangerous considering the number of boxes currently stored in our basement that have not been opened in the 8 years we have lived there.

The apartment had the local convenience and, as we described it, the ability to "unburden" ourselves from some of the physical baggage we have been toting around. It actually feels good to think in those terms. It is time to help make life a little less cluttered. Why do we keep all those papers from seminary or college? What about those books that have some sentimental value but I know I will never read them again? (Jack Newfield's biography of Robert Kennedy for example. How old is that book anyway?)

This has been an interesting process, far beyond the decision process. The aging and moving and downsizing has been a significant element of it which I still need some time to reflect on. But for now we have made the decision for the apartment. We lose about 1000 square feet of living space, but it is all on one floor. The rooms are roomy and comfortable. The location and services are truly unbeatable. Only time will tell whether we can go back to living in such small quarters 33 years after we left an apartment for a parsonage.

But hey, it's an adventure.

Signs of the (Changing) Times

#1: I'm Not So Sure Of That
Got an unsolicited email the other day. I didn't open it- never do. But the title was enough to set me thinking.

Feel Like You're 20 Again

Nah!

#2: No Longer Analog

Best Buy stops selling analog TVs

The nation's largest consumer electronics chain says it has pulled all analog televisions off store shelves. Flat panel and high-definition screens have taken their place.
--KARE 11

#3: The Direction of Time Arrow Flies

America's 1st Baby Boomer applies for Social Security

October 16, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The nation's first baby boomer applied for Social Security Monday, the start of an avalanche of applications from the post-World War II generation.

Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a former teacher from New Jersey, applied for benefits over the Internet.

Casey-Kirschling was born one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946, making her the first baby boomer -- a generation of nearly 80 million born from 1946 to 1964.
--AP/Chicago Sun-Times

Maybe I should go back and look at that feel like your 20 again. How time flies when you're having.

Pondering Life
This is the week of my birthday. I have begun my 60th year. WoW! (Or, as a Leo- RoaR!) I sure don't feel it. I hope they are right when they say that 70 is the new 50.

Anyway, I came across some neat quotes that are appropriate for birthday weeks.
First, here's one from George Santayana that manages to keep it all in perspective:

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."

Incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable physicist Richard Feynman had a good attitude about it all:

"I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe says what only a poet and author could say so well in so short a space:

"To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state."

Jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks for all of us who are not old:

"A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time."

Finally, excellent parting words from Michael Pritchard, motivational speaker and humorist. I hope he knows of what he speaks because I sure agree with him.

"You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing."

Somewhat Disappointing and Spring Sadness
The recent trip to New York also had some difficulties. First and foremost was my back. It just would not cooperate. The day Sunday in Manhattan was fun, but slowed down and made more tiring by needing to sit down and rest every five or ten minutes- and less as the day wore on. Perhaps it was too much to expect to do all that New York walking at this point in my back-recovery time. The worst was probably as we walked from the deli back to the bus terminal. Tired, sore, aching I had to stop and kneel down, get the pressure off my back and let it ease up the numbness that made me feel like I was walking on attached sponges.

The other, and probably related aspect, was a feeling of sadness from time to time. Springtime in New York, young people all over the place enjoying life and the future of life. German-speaking students on the Subway reminded me of being an English-speaking student on the subway in Berlin in 1970. Add that to the slowed-down feeling of putting up with my back- and then deciding to not take another day in the city on Monday- well, it was a bummer.

Spring- a time of young life and new life can be one of the saddest times of the year. With new life around you, you remember that you are not among the young anymore and that can make spring difficult. It isn't nostalgia for what isn't anymore. It isn't, at least for me, wanting to be young. No I don't want to be that naive again. I have enough naivete still left without recapturing the old. For me the sadness of spring is that I won't see so many things that are just starting or haven't even started yet. I still have energy, I still have creativity, I still have cunning and I now may even have some wisdom. All those things beat youth any day.

Perhaps it is that wisdom that reminds me that what I don't have is unlimited time. Each day is to be its own special day. Each day you have to be prepared to do something unique and special and eternal. Each day is filled with excitement and hope simply because each day IS. I didn't know that when I was young. Only age and some semblance of wisdom can give you that.

Which is why I still like to travel and discover new places and new ideas and new people. So maybe it shouldn't be sadness that I am feeling but gratitude for the possibilities that are now in each day that I may have missed at a younger age. Perhaps I should take the time each day to learn what that day has to teach and how God is at work in that moment. I guess it is a change from wishful thinking to wishful doing and being.

Update: The above was written on my last evening in New York. Today I went to my regular treatment appointment with my back and the doctor was quite encouraging. He reminded me that I have only been working on this for three weeks. Most people will not turn a corner in any way until nearly 6 weeks. The other interesting response I had- last night, I went to teh fitness center and worked out. And I felt better. Who would have thought....

We Get Too Late Smart
Came across this the other day- a post of 16 things it takes most of us 50 years to learn. Here are several that I would give a hearty AMEN to.

7. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

8. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

15. Your true friends love you, anyway.
-- Source: Scribd and a HT to Jordon

As the old saying went- we get too soon old and too late smart. At least we do learn some of these before it's too late!

Here's Some Good News for Us Older Ones
The following was on LiveScience the other day. As one in the older category who often works with people in the younger category, I found the results more than a little interesting.

Older adults are more likely to see the glass as half full than half empty, a new study finds.

Researchers showed 20 young adults, aged 19 to 22, a series of positive, neutral and negative images like chocolate ice cream, an electrical outlet and a dead animal, respectively. A separate group of 20 older adults, aged 56 to 81, were shown the same images.

Older adults were less responsive to the unpleasant images.

“As a group, older adults are less likely to be depressed and less affected by negative or unpleasant information,” said Stacey Wood, a neuropsychologist from Scripps College in Claremont , Calif. who headed up the study.

It is unclear why our elders are more likely to view the world through rose-colored glasses. It might have to do with the experiences they gain or the biological changes that occur as they age.

A study in 2005 found that older people see "the big picture" better. Other research has shown that optimists live longer.
--Link

At first the idea does seem counterintuitive. It is much clearer, for example, that the long-term picture is a lot shorter and probably a lot more uncertain for someone in the older age group. What have they to be optimistic about?

Maybe, just maybe, they have learned that life is what happens to you while you are making other plans so as time gets shorter in some way or another they begin to look at what life is doing. Maybe it's because there is a perspective about the "bigger picture" that comes from seeing an ebb and flow of life and events.

And maybe it is because the optimists are the ones who live longer.

In any case, that's what people are discovering. I tend to think it is related to what author Bruce Barton described in this quote:

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.

And one more
An item came across today that gives me even more reason for hope:

People who take at least three daytime naps a week lasting 30 minutes or longer cut their risk of dying from a heart attack by 37 per cent, according to a new study by a team of American and Greek researchers.

Regular siestas apparently lower stress, which is frequently associated with heart disease, the scientists reported in Archives of Internal Medicine, a leading medical journal.
--Link