Category: Life

Posted in Life, retirement

Too much information?

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

My life is so filled with information that I no longer know what to do.

It was a lot easier when I was young. I’d get up in the morning and look out the window. I either saw the sun or overcast skies. I could see if rain (or snow) falling. If I felt cold, I out on a jacket or coat. And then, regardless of the weather, I headed out the door and walked to school.

Now I check my phone to check the current temperature as well as predicted highs and lows. I look at the hour by hour prediction of rain. I watch a moving radar map to see if a storm is headed my way. I zoom out to see if there are any storms in other places where I might be going that day. Should I bring an umbrella? Will an event be cancelled? Should I hunker down at home? Am I feeling lucky, as if I’ll be on the sunny side of a fifty-percent chance of rain? Sometimes I don’t know what to do.

When we picked up our Great Dane puppy, the breeder gave us tips from her years of experience. She advised us on the kind of food to get and when to neuter our female. When we got home, we took her to the veterinarian for her next round of shots. He gave us completely different advice about food and age for spaying. Of course, when I got home, I got online and did some research, hoping to break the one to one tie. That didn’t help. I found plenty of expert advice to support either recommendation.

It was a lot easier when I was younger. I brought home my first pup with a bag of inexpensive food and we were both happy for his fifteen-year life.

I don’t find online reviews to be helpful for much of anything. There are just as many negative as positive reviews for products, physicians, restaurants and jobs. Are those reviews even legit? Or are some of them fake? Who knows?

It was much easier to walk in the store, pick up an item, and buy it if you liked it. Or if you enjoyed the meal, go back to that restaurant. If not, go somewhere else.

In the wake of my retirement nearly two years ago, I still get conflicting information. “So-and-so was still preaching well into his nineties.” Another person kept working, fell ill, and never got to enjoy their retirement years. “You know, the bible never speaks of leaving the workforce.” And, “I’ve been retired more years than I worked. I highly recommend it.”

It seems like there are many more experts in this world than there used to be. If I listen to all their advice, I might not do anything, paralyzed by too much information. So I think I’ll just look out the window, play with the dog, purchase what works for me, and daily learn first-hand about life, retirement, and purpose.

Posted in Life

I noticed a few contradictions

Posted on by William Douthwaite

The line at Wawa was short as I waited to pay for my coffee. I had just filled the truck with gas and needed some afternoon caffeine. In line ahead of me was a pregnant woman who looked like she had just stepped out of a hospital operating room. She wore light blue scrubs, a face mask, and head covering along with a hospital ID clipped onto a pocket.

I watched with interest as she placed a sub and a large coffee on the counter and told the cashier what kind of cigarettes she wanted. As she paid the cashier asked, “Are you a nurse?” She replied, “No, I’m a doctor.”

I couldn’t help but notice the apparent contradictions. Health care and smoking. Pregnancy and caffeine.

It’s easy to be judgmental. I don’t know the whole story. It could have been a large decaf. Those cigarettes could have been for someone else. My mom smoked and drank lots of coffee. So did my childhood doctor and his office nurse.

I wonder what contradictions people notice when they see me.

  • Did anyone notice how I could preach, “Love your neighbor” when I couldn’t stand the person living across the street from me? Did I ever mention how happy I was when I saw a For Sale sign in his front yard?
  • No one got to see the times my eyes rolled back as I listened to endless rants from members on the phone who were upset about anything and everything. Yes, there were days when I hoped some of the sheep would wander off and get lost.
  • I wonder how it looked when I didn’t get my afternoon caffeine and I couldn’t keep my eyes open during an afternoon visit. That sure makes people feel important. I suppose that was simply payback for those times when I put people to sleep on a Sunday morning.

What contradictions do people notice when they watch or listen to you?

Posted in Life, neighbor

Of course it’s private property

Posted on by William Douthwaite

It feels strange to call a house “lonely,” but every time I walk by, I think, “What a lonely, gray house.” Maybe it’s the signage that has scared everyone off. There’s not just one, but three of these signs on all sides of the house, announcing Private Property: No Trespassing.

Why would you put a sign like that in your yard? It’s not like we’re in the middle of nowhere and someone might wander through and decide to hang out for a while. This is a residential area. All the property is privately owned. Random door-to-door sales people may walk up, but I’ve never thought of that as trespassing. And if someone did want to break and enter, they wouldn’t pay attention to a sign like that.

When I’ve gone to visit some folks who live in the rural, unincorporated parts of the county, there’s often a sign like this on the front gate of a long driveway. Out in the woods or among hundreds of acres of farmland, it’s hard to tell where one property ends and the next one begins. If you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t belong here. I always called ahead to make sure they knew I was coming. There was a good chance I’d be met by someone with a shotgun if I just showed up.

Actually, a sign like that makes me wonder what someone is hiding in that house. I’m curious. What are they making or distributing or storing up in that house? Who was the last trespasser? Whatever happened to them? It is a little creepy. There isn’t much landscaping.

Such a sign doesn’t add to the curb appeal. Along with signs like No Soliciting, No Pooping (even though dogs can’t read), and a sign about who just repaired the roof, it makes the neighborhood look trashy.

But what are you going to do. It’s their property. It’s their private property.

Posted in dying, Life

One more time: visiting a friend in hospice

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I went to visit some old friends the other day. They are living in a beautiful assisted living facility just a few miles from my home. He’s been getting some physical therapy and is getting around really well. She is receiving hospice care, and her family told me she only had a day or two left to live.

Hoping that she would be lucid, I went to visit her right after I spoke with her daughter. Though confined to a bed, she was awake, comfortable, conversant, witty, and all smiles. She had every reason to be. She had all four of her daughters there with her. When I walked in, they were singing one of her favorite hymns, “For All the Saints.” Her two sons had been there the week before. I was thankful I had this chance to sit and talk with her for a while.

That was five days ago. Death isn’t an exact science. It’s inevitable, but it’s not predicable. We’ll just have to extend grace to the hospice folks when they answer the question, “How long does she have?” She’s not conscious anymore, but she’s comfortable and listening to all the conversations going on around her.

Whenever I’ve asked people about the best way to die, I often get the answer, “In my sleep.” On the one hand, that sounds like a great way to go. But on the other hand, you might miss out on all those precious moments you get to spend with friends and family. When death comes unexpectedly or accidentally, many wish they could have seen or talked to them one more time. A few days in hospice provides a lot of “one more times.”

My dad was in and out of hospice care the last few years of his life. My brother, sister, and I had a lot of “one more times” with him as he flirted with death but kept bouncing back. I think he enjoyed the attention and company when it looked like his time was up.

I like going to visit someone who’s in hospice care. When the finish line is in sight, the conversations are meaningful, the desire for life is powerful, and every moment is precious.

Posted in Life, memories

What are you going to do with all those journals?

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Just a few of many journals I’ve filled up.

I began journaling in earnest in 1989. When I started, I used 8-1/2 by 11 inch spiral notebooks. I filled up approximately four per year. In 2010 I started journaling in 5×8 inch hardcover journals. I’ve used all kinds of different ones from Moleskins to Leuchtturm 1917 to my current favorite EMSHOI with 120 gram paper that was a great deal ($11.95) on Amazon. I’ve written on blank pages, dotted pages, and currently use lined journals.

What do I write about? I start by writing about the scripture I’ve read that day, draw a picture illustrating something in that passage, summarize what I did yesterday, what I need to do today, and then come up with ten ideas I could write about. I jot down books I want to read and projects to work on. In the back I have a prayer list. It’s easy to fill up two or three pages a day. A typical journal will last me three months.

So let’s do the math. Four journals a year for thirty four years totals 136 journals. I had them all in two big boxes, prompting the question, “What are you going to do with those?”

That’s a very good question. I doubt that anyone is going to sit down and read these. My handwriting is such that I don’t know if anyone could. I have been sifting through them to put together a timeline of important events in our lives. Without them, I would have forgotten many places we’ve gone and things we’ve done. So I’m not just going to toss them.

Before I retired, I used the duplicator in the church office to scan the pages from the spiral bound notebooks. Once I cut out the metal spiral, I could feed the whole stack into the machine, which would email a file to me of all the pages. That took care of about fifty of them.

It’s not so easy to take apart a bound volume though. So one book at a time, I’ve been taking a photo of each page, uploading the group to my Amazon photos, where I can gather them into an album. It’s tedious work. But I am making progress.

Journals and letters from hundreds of years ago have helped historians write books about the past. Who knows? Maybe my notes and doodles and lists will be needed for a historical record someday.

Posted in Life, worship

Extravagance: Jesus anointed in Bethany

Posted on by William Douthwaite

In the men’s bible class I attended last night, we worked through Mark 14 and in to part of chapter 15. I know, that’s way too much ground to cover in a night, so we couldn’t spend too much time on any one scene of Mark’s account of the passion of Christ.

We did spend a few minutes discussing the woman who anointed Jesus’ head with expensive perfume (Mark 14:3-9). This scene appears in all the gospels but with enough variation to say that Jesus was anointed three different times. Matthew’s account is almost the same as Mark’s. In Luke’s account (Luke 7:36-50), the woman pours perfume on Jesus’s feet and Jesus includes a parable about love and forgiveness. In John’s gospel (John 12:1-8), Jesus is at Lazarus’s house, the woman who pours the perfume on Jesus’s feet is Lazarus’s sister Mary.

Whether or not we harmonize the accounts, the reactions are the same. Jesus loves it and calls it a beautiful expression of faith. The disciples think it’s a waste of a precious resource. For us, it begs the question, “What place, if any, does extravagance have in our worship?”

The heading for these verses is “Jesus anointed…” This moment is not just a random act of kindness but a proclamation of who Jesus is. The label Messiah means “anointed one.” Who is anointed in the Old Testament? Kings, priests, and prophets. This jar of fragrant perfume is properly applied to Jesus, the king of kings, our great high priest, and the Word made flesh.

Jesus is also the promised anointed servant of God (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18). This servant comes to suffer for his people, to die, and then be raised on the third day. The aroma filling the room proclaims that truth.

We Christians use a variety of labels to describe ourselves: followers, disciples, ambassadors, witnesses. No matter which one you choose, you know that it will cost you something. The time and resources we spend in worship, prayer, devotion, witness, and service is worth it, right?

But what if it becomes extravagant?

  • Jesus made a point of making sure his disciples noticed the woman who only put two small coins in the offering gave more than everyone else. She gave everything she had. Isn’t that extravagant?
  • A widow in Zarephath used everything she had, a handful of flour and a bit of oil, to make one last small cake for the prophet, herself, and her son. In that time of severe famine, isn’t that extravagant?
  • When a man assured Jesus he had kept every commandment necessary for life, Jesus told him to sell everything he had, give to the poor, and follow him. Isn’t that extravagant?
  • When the ark of the covenant returned to Israel, David danced with all his might (2 Samuel 6:14). He held nothing back that day, much to the dismay of his wife.
  • And if Jesus empties himself of his divinity, takes the form of a servant, and goes to the cross, couldn’t you say that he spent everything, his very life, on us? I would call that extravagant.

When Jesus’s disciples objected to the woman’s, it was because it could have been sold and the proceeds used to feed the poor. That’s a good point, but that’s not what the disciples did with their money. They had some money before Jesus fed the five thousand. They had a money bag that Judas stole from. They didn’t give it all away to help the poor or anyone else. Nice try, guys.

When you think about it, a lot of money has been spent feeding the hungry. And yet there are still hungry people. A lot of resources have been poured into the homeless, and there are still homeless. We’ve invested a lot of money into church buildings, and there are more unbelievers than ever. The economics of God’s kingdom aren’t simple, are they?

So I’m not going to pretend to have this all figured out. It’s one of those things we all have to figure out along the way. Extravagance looks a little different for each person, on any given day, in any number of circumstances. Plus, whatever looks extravagant to us is minuscule compared to what God gives.

Extravagance that feeds our own passions makes it hard to follow God. No one can serve two masters. Extravagance that expresses faith and love preaches a powerful message about Jesus. Extravagance can make us feel guilty, lull us into complacency, or tempt us to feel self-sufficient. It can also be worship, witness, and sacrificial love.

In a sense, the notion of extravagance goes away if your eyes are on Jesus. Whatever you do in word or deed won’t be too much or too little, but an expression of gratitude for his inexpressible (and extravagant) love for us.

Posted in Life

A place to live

Posted on by William Douthwaite

While walking the dogs on a drizzly Saturday afternoon, I had a conversation with a house-shopping couple from Canada who pulled up along side of us. They wondered if this neighborhood ever flooded. (It doesn’t.) They were also surprised at the cost of living here. I thought it was affordable, but with current prices, taxes, interest rates, and the exchange rate, it’s more expensive than it used to be.

As I walked away, I realized how blessed we were to have built our house nearly thirty years ago. I’m not sure we could afford to do it in today’s market.

After my wife and I got married, our first home was a one-bedroom, one-bathroom upstairs apartment on Spy Run in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, which we rented for $200 per month. The kitchen was five-foot by five-foot square, barely big enough for one person to stand. We only lived there for about four months, before packing up and moving to Baltimore for my vicarage (internship).

In Baltimore, the churches sponsoring us put us up in a three-story inner city row home. It was at the end of the row, so it had a little bit of a side yard between us and one of the churches we worked at. It was a run-down, falling-apart, and patched-together affair than probably should have been condemned. Living here for a year taught us we could live anywhere. No matter where in the world we went, from earthquake-shaken Haiti to remote villages in Kenya to single-wide trailers in rural Florida, we would say, “Well, it’s not as bad a Baltimore.”

After a year in the inner city, we moved back to Ft. Wayne for my last year of studies and rented a small house owned by a couple heading out for their internship. By the time previous owners had finished adding on a few rooms, there was a thousand feet of living space. (And it was better than Baltimore.) When the brutal winter weather hit, we discovered that the master bedroom, way in the back, had no ductwork for heat. It was chilly until we bought a kerosene heater.

After graduation from seminary, we moved to my first church in Coventry, Connecticut. There we lived in a parsonage, a two-story, five bedroom, 2-1/2 bath home on four acres next door to the church building. We moved in to the 2,700 square foot home with a bed, a crib, a table with two chairs, and maybe a dresser. We never did furnish the entire house the five years we lived there. I mowed the four acre yard, planted a big garden, split piles of logs for the wood burning stove, and let our two Labrador retrievers run freely.

The thing with living in a parsonage is that you don’t build up equity in the property. We didn’t make and didn’t save much in Connecticut, so when we moved to our second church in Iowa, we needed a lot of help finding a place to live. For the next five years I would be one of several pastors on staff at a well off church in Urbandale, a western suburb of Des Moines. We weren’t able to afford a home in that community, but found a small home in West Des Moines, not far away. The church gifted us with most of the downpayment on a 1,000 square foot, $65,000 house, the first we owned.

Five years later, we got the call to serve the church in Palm Coast, Florida. Our Iowa home sold easily, netting enough profit to buy our next home in the south. Rather than rushing into a purchase, we rented a home for the first six months. With three children, we wanted a four-bedroom home. There were few to choose from, so we decided to build. We never thought we’d be able to build a home. But building lots were going for $8,000, construction costs were $50 per square foot, and taxes were low, so we built a 2,000 square foot Palm Coast home for about $100,000.

In the years to come, we were able to refinance. We got into an adjustable rate mortgage that was tied to the prime interest rate during the years it was at zero percent. Our monthly payment and interest was actually lower than a car payment! Homestead laws meant our taxes barely inched up each year. Housing booms enabled us to refinance and remodel our home without increasing the mortgage payment. This was one of the ways God faithfully provided for us over the past forty years.

Having written that last sentence, we would do just fine if we were to start all over again.

Posted in Life

A fiery evening sky

Posted on by William Douthwaite

At certain times of the year, as the sun sets, it almost looks like the sky is on fire.

I usually have my phone in my pocket while I am driving. But on this occasion I placed it on the center console so I could plug it in to charge it. So when I turned onto this road and saw the fiery sky, I could quickly get a picture.

A photo can’t capture the palette of colors on the horizon. Who knew there could be so many oranges, reds, and yellows? If kept driving west, would I eventually reach a blazing fire lighting up the sky? Would I reach an active volcano, glowing with molten lava? Is someone smelting steel in a giant blast furnace off in the distance?

It’s a good thing I got the picture when I did. Those colors only last a moment. By the time I crossed the intersection, they had faded. The clouds had moved. The moment was gone forever, except in my mind and in my phone.

New crayons are essential at the beginning of an elementary school year. A box of twenty-four is all you really need. There’s a box of forty-eight that doubles down on all the different colors. But the best is the box of sixty-four. The assortment of oranges, yellows, and reds challenges all you thought you knew about color. Who knew that orange-red was different than red-orange? With hues like tangerine, pumpkin, and carrot in your hand, your sunset sky might look just like this one!

Posted in Life

Where are you going to go with that thing?

Posted on by William Douthwaite

It’s a gorgeous afternoon to sit outside at Starbucks waiting for Winston the Westie to be groomed. The entrance into this shopping center is always busy. And then this guy pulls in.

Yikes. I couldn’t help but ask out loud, “Where are you going to go with that thing?” It’s hard enough getting in and out with a compact car, never mind a pickup towing a forty-foot fifth wheel.

The parking lot is about 90% full. This guy isn’t going to find a place to pull over with a camper. I wasn’t sure he’d be able to get out of here at all. I’ll bet he had a few interesting comments once he saw what he had driven into.

I watched him as he turned left towards Hobby Lobby. Somehow he was able to loop around. He didn’t waste any time getting out of here. He knew it was a losing battle. No iHop or Jersey Mike for him today.

I had enough trouble maneuvering a trailer half that length through crowded gas stations and rest stops. I didn’t envy his task at all. I guess I just needed more practice.