Jitterbugging for Jesus

Scroll down and rock on, dear reader . . .

Sixty-five and been around the mountain a few times only to come out wiser and stronger.

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you

But time makes you bolder
Children get older . . .
I’m getting older too

— Stevie Nicks

Here’s some music therapy by that great Old Soul and Queen of Rockdom Stevie Nicks and her soul mate Lindsey Buckingham.

(For Ames and Mo and Meggles)

And here’s some words of wisdom on aging by His Greatness the Christian writer and Presbyterian minister, he who doesn’t attend church and yet is a “preacher’s preacher,” Frederick Buechner.

(More about, and from, His Greatness the Rev. Buechner here.)

His Greatness the preacher and writer Frederick Buechner, with words of wisdom about a “second childhood.”

“It (old age), as the saying goes, is not for sissies. There are some lucky ones who little by little slow down to be sure but otherwise go on to the end pretty much as usual. For the majority, however, it’s like living in a house that’s in increasing need of repairs. The plumbing doesn’t work right any more. There are bats in the attic. Cracked and dusty, the windows are hard to see through, and there’s a lot of creaking and groaning in bad weather. The exterior could use a coat of paint. And so on. The odd thing is that the person living in the house may feel, humanly speaking, much as always. The eighty-year-old body can be in precarious shape yet the spirit within as full of beans as ever. If that leads senior citizens to think of all the things they’d still love to do but can’t anymore, it only makes things worse. But it needn’t work that way.

“Second childhood commonly means something to steer clear of, but it can also mean something else. It can mean that if your spirit is still more or less intact, one of the benefits of being an old crock is that you can enjoy again something of what it’s like being a young squirt.

“Eight-year-olds like eighty-year-olds have lots of things they’d love to do but can’t because their bodies aren’t up to it, so they learn to play instead. Eighty-year-olds might do well to take notice. They can play at being eighty-year-olds for instance. Stiff knees and hearing aids, memory loss and poor eyesight, are no fun, but there are those who marvelously survive them by somehow managing to see them as, among other things and in spite of all, a little funny. Another thing is that if part of the pleasure of being a child the first time round is that you don’t have to prove yourself yet, part of the pleasure of being a child the second time round is that you don’t have to prove yourself any longer. You can be who you are and say what you feel, and let the chips fall where they may. Very young children and very old children also have in common the advantage of being able to sit on the sideline of things. While everybody else is in there jockeying for position and sweating it out, they can lean back, put their feet up, and like the octogenarian King Lear “pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies.”

“Very young children and very old children also have in common the advantage of being able to sit on the sideline of things. While everybody else is in there jockeying for position and sweating it out, they can lean back, put their feet up, and like the octogenarian King Lear “pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies.”

“Very young children and very old children also seem to be in touch with something that the rest of the pack has lost track of. There is something bright and still about them at their best, like the sun before breakfast. Both the old and the young get scared sometimes about what lies ahead of them, and with good reason, but you can’t help feeling that whatever inner goldenness they’re in touch with will see them through in the end.”

— From Whistling in the Dark