What to Bequeath

Beloved:

            So, it’s my birthday.  I’m 53, like the bank.  It’s also Garth Brooks’ birthday except he’s older than me.  Also the exact day the Beatles first came to America.  The year I turned 40 my dad died on my birthday.  I didn’t begrudge him it, as he was really sick and I sort of liked the orderliness of him having been my dad for precisely 40 years.  This year some of my kids and a friend from Australia who happened to be in town came over for birthday supper on Sunday.  We had Chinese take-out with Girl Scout cookies for dessert.  It was perfect.  

            I’ve always loved my birthday.  When I was a kid I never once considered I’d still be having them in 2017.  Fifty-three was older than my mom, well beyond the range of my imagination.  Turns out the fifties suit me just fine.  While I can no longer see, hear or remember things like I once did (and I’m almost always hot!), I am also as happy and content as I’ve ever been, as at home in this body, this marriage, this family, this faith, this life, this community, this world.  

            Which is not to say I am growing more tolerant in the babyhood of my old age.  Turns out I’m more impatient with foolishness, greed, salaciousness and incivility now than when I had small children in tow.  Happy and content as I am on the one hand, this is not the world I intend to bequeath to my children’s grandchildren.  As much as healthy forests and clean water, I want them to inherit strong, peaceful, safe communities administered by sensible, decent, wise, compassionate leaders.  My eighties are on the horizon and I’m shooting for my nineties, so I figure I have thirty-five active years left to do my part, with five to ten more on the sideline.  Time to get busy, but not too busy.  It is my birthday after all.   

~peace & prayers,
​
pastor annette