Hello Everyone,

QUE TAL?
I spoke today with a good friend who read my last blog entry and wanted to add a "Comment". Unfortunately she found it was more difficult than expected and decided to just send an email instead. Actually the process for entering a comment is not easy, so if you wish to respond to anything I write, please just send an email to me at frnlaw@msn.com, and on the Subject Line put the word "Blog" so that it gets through my junk filter.

A wonderful group of people at my former parish, Good Shepherd in Cave Creek, have started a wonderful ministry of providing Holy Communion to the residents at a nearby retirement residence facility. I am honored to have been asked to take part and today I had my first service there and it was delightful. One of the things I was most impressive was the people who organized this didn''t just set up a schedule for the services, they personally attended and greeted and genuinely loved those residents who attend. I conducted the service, but their presence brought the warmth and the caring hearts that were essential to the entire experience. It was a wonderful community to worship with. Thank you, Jesus!!

Yesterday I received the itinerary and additional informational material from Arizona Highways about the Photo Workshop I will be attending in June. We are going to the Olympic Peninsula. There are nine participants signed up for the Workshop. We will have a lead photographer who is a featured photographer for Arizona Highways, George Stocking. He will have two assistants, so the ratio of participants to leaders is 3:1. We will be moving to different locations every day and every night. I think we only that one location where we stay more than one night, The workshop last 5 days. My good friend and fellow clergy person and photographer, Jack Robertson, is attending the workshop with me and we will stay over three extra days to take advantage of the opportunity to be in such a glorious location to photograph. My niece, who has spent many vacations in that area recommended that we spend our extra days on one of the "Gulf Islands", which is a group of islands on the Canadian side of the water. These island are picturesque; they have great B&B's and everything you need is close by, unlike Vancouver Island or even Victoria. This trip is a retirement gift from the Good Shepherd parish community and what a blessing it will be.

A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS
I have been listening to a lot of music lately and when I visited the retirement community today a few songs came to my mind as I left. One is a song by Mary Chapin Carpentar called "Grow Old Along With Me". The lyrics are an invitation to one's beloved that they share all of what it means to grow old together. Another is a John Denver song called "Poems, Prayers and Promises" and in that song there is a line that says "it turns me on to think of growing old".

As people get older they experience many pains and many challenges, loss of hearing, loss of eye sight, loss of memory, and often debilitating health issues. Getting old is not for sissies.

Ours is a society that values youth, and especially having youthful "appearance" when youth is a distant memory. As a society we seem to value appearances over reality. Just look at the ads for youthful cosmetics, skin treatments and surgeries. As one of my children once said: "Dad, it isn't whether you win or lose, its how you look that counts."

Other cultures are less concerned with such superficial appearances, they value inner qualities like experience and wisdom, things that only come with time and age. Someone pointed out to me once that our culture has no term for older people that is not pejorative. We call them "elderly", "senior citizens", etc. This same person said that some "primitive cultures"value their older people call them "the long livers". To call someone "a long liver" has the connotation of one who has survived; and who doesn't want to be a survivor? To be survivor one has to possess many very positive qualities, not the least of which is courage. I don't mean to over-romanticize getting older. Survivors have scars and often they live with a great deal of pain, physical pain and emotional pain. But "the long livers", the survivors are "the victors". They are the ones who have come through it all and won "the victory of life". And they have brought with them the lessons they learned along the way, lessons we need to hear and learn from.
Today I met "the long livers", the victors and I was privileged to worship with them today and I look forward to the next time. Thank you, Jesus!
Glenn+