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@arjuna52
Boost Your Spiritual Fitness: A Guide to Inner Well-Being
I was in fifth grade when the country school I attended began to implement President Kennedy’s physical fitness program. A Phys Ed instructor came out from the school in town and lined all of us kids up outside. Clipboard in hand, he called our names one by one and commanded us to do sit-ups, push-ups, and what I couldn’t do—pull-ups.The next week, he handed out our fitness results. Even though I…
Unleashing Creativity: A Journey Back to Art
Years ago, while living in New York, I studied musical theatre with Rita Gardner, who originated the role of the Girl in The Fantasticks. Something she’d always say was, “We sing when words are no longer enough to express what we feel.” That insight, simple as it is, opens a window into the emotional necessity of art. When the heart overflows, art becomes the means of expression. I…
Claiming Our Personal Style as an Act of Self Expression
Polonius’ famous advice to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet includes the phrase, “apparel oft proclaims the man,” often interpreted to mean that what we wear defines who we are. But is that truly the case? The relationship between clothing and identity is far more complex, encompassing cultural expectations, personal expression, and class distinctions. Throughout our lives, we…
Kids These Days!
“Kids these days!” I’ve lost count of how many times one of my fellow Boomers has made that proclamation, often aimed at a young person’s behavior or attitude. I often want to agree with them but stop myself knowing that I prompted similar statements from older people when I was young. In 1973, while hitchhiking around Europe, my hippie friends and I found ourselves in Vienna. We…
Keeping Peace in Trying Times
I was eight years old sitting on a booster seat in the barber chair at Frank “Penny” Rich’s barbershop in Spooner, Wisconsin. While my dad and mom waited, he gave me a quick haircut and then took out a “Kennedy for President” button and pinned it onto my shirt. Mr. Rich was the county Democratic Party chair and we had gone to his shop so my parents, who were Democrats, could talk with…
Among the Ruins
Dumping coffee beans into the grinder they spill onto the counter and floor. I brush them into the palm of my hand, hesitate before squatting down to pick up the three or four at my feet. It is then I remember my German mother telling me that in Hamburg after a bombing she and her neighbors were searching through the rubble when inside a box, a bag of coffee beans was found. Excited, a fire was…
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North Sea
Who would believe a life could end so suddenly? Without warning, no explanation given. Sure, he was old, eighty plus one year. And sick. Guts filled with life-robbing beasts. I can see where he was: the shed that once housed canaries. So proud he was of them laying their eggs, raising their young. And what he used: a garden hose placed around his neck, strung from the low rafter. My…
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Death
If only they let you know when your time was up, you’d be able to do some of the things you’ve put off. For years, or even lifetimes. Bicycle across Scandinavia, walk the Camino de Santiago, ask those you’ve wronged for forgiveness. Oh, so many, many things left undone. The end, more often than not, sneaks up behind you— you unaware of what is about to happen. With not even so much as a “Hello”…
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Solace
I hadn’t gone there expecting to see anyone, especially not him, the lonely, frightened boy who’d sneak out the backdoor of the miserable farmhouse, hurry down the worn path, while in his mind repeating over and over, “Not me, not me, not me,” hoping to keep at bay the demons loose in the darkened rooms behind him. But there I was. Years later, come back to the place I’d fled, vowed never to…
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Remembrance
I pull the box out from under the bed, remove the lid and reach in to find them: pictures of me in my prime. Snapshots from weddings and parties, vacations in Europe and Mexico. Show business headshots. Ads for sunglasses, evening clothes, sports clubs and automobiles. I gaze upon the taut skin, sun-bleached hair, perfect shiny white teeth, cheekbones that cut like a knife. Long, lanky body lying…
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Poem For My Father
You were always tired, weary from hard work in the fields and barns. I tried to follow your instructions: How to rake new mown hay into long even rows; how best to cultivate the field you had turned over with the gleaming plow, you on the big tractor, me on the small. I didn’t do as well as you wanted. My eyes would stray from the field and look up at the clouds or off into the woods. A soaring…
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Que Sera, Sera
I’ve been resisting writing about what the future holds. Why? Because I don’t want to look forward. Whenever I do, all I see is endless war, economic inequality, the devastating effects of climate change, political polarization—I could go on. It’s all I can do to stay in the moment and deal with the day-to-day challenges of being an elder in a society that does not respect or care in any…
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If Not on Earth, in Heaven
I didn’t start planning for retirement until well into middle age. For most of my life I’d been a performing artist and a spiritual seeker, so rarely had steady employment. It was only in my years as a pastor and chaplain that I finally had the ability to start putting money away for old age. Despite this, my present monthly income isn’t sufficient to enable me to travel or go on adventures. I…
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What Do You Believe?
Questions of Faith I once had a friend, Benny, a birthright Quaker, who had over the course of his life become an atheist. After battling lung cancer for several years, his body started to weaken, and he was put on hospice care. One afternoon as I was sitting by his bed, I asked him what he believed awaited him after death. He said he thought it would be peaceful. like lying in a mountain…
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Look Ahead, Not Behind
As a religious professional it’s always been important for me to share my own struggles with those who have come to me for assistance, so they know that I, too, deal with many of the same issues they are experiencing. All of us, at one time or other, can find ourselves stuck and unable to move forward because we’re unable to let go of the emotional baggage we’ve accumulated over the years.…
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The Gift of Longevity
Tell me, what else should I have done?Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to doWith your one wild and precious life? This, the final stanza of Mary Oliver’s well-known poem “The Summer Day” challenges readers to reflect upon the purpose of living, especially for those experiencing increasing longevity in the third act of their lives. She asks us to take…
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That Box of Chocolate We Call Life
I was brought up on a dairy farm in northern Wisconsin by an American father and a German mother. My parents had met after World War II when my father, having survived combat in France and Germany, was a civilian worker for the U.S. occupation. My mother was raised in the medieval city of Hannover where her father, a master confectioner, owned a shop that sold candies and pastries. Throughout…
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