4 reflections on retirement

As I near retirement, I find that I am in a reflective mood. I have written a blog for those interested at https://plastererpondering.blogspot.com/2017/02/pondering-retirement-july-2017.html

Like all persons, I have had my joys and sorrows. The therapy of everyday life and the therapy of being part of the Body of Christ have worked healing, guidance, and liberation. Like many pastors, I have learned that your greatest supporters are not the first ones you meet when you enter a church. I have learned that church people can disappoint you. I have also learned that pastors can disappoint themselves as well as their congregations. Such experiences keep leading me back to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together. We need to love the real church and real people. I have seen pastors become cynical and determined not to be that way. I lived through the disappointments of making changes in worship styles for the sake of the mission of the church. I have had to face my shortcomings and sins. I have learned that the best sermons are the ones that have spoken to me first. I would encourage any pastor to give proper attention to the family, for they are the constants in your life. I have learned that my love for Jesus and the Bible have been my constants through the many changes of an adult life. United Methodist pastors tend to have several appointments to congregations by various bishops. Like many other pastors, I have learned that when you move, you make some people sad and some people happy. I will say that I think a forgiving and graceful approach to conflict in the church will serve the pastor better than joining in any bitterness and anger that may arise.

First, you can enjoy your life, even when it surprises you. I want you to know that through all the up and down, hills and valleys, twists and turns, I have enjoyed what I have done with my life. I am thankful for the people whose lives have intersected with mine. I hope they are thankful for their lives intersecting with mine.

Second, keep learning. The primary focus of my learning has been following Jesus. I have sought to help people follow Jesus with greater clarity and depth. This has meant inviting people to have a personal relationship with Jesus and to make the Bible an important part of their lives.

Third, we experience phases in adult life. Such phases bring losses that cause grief combined with new adventures. Another phase of my life is beginning. I want to live it well. Such phases remind me that a human life is a series of endings and beginnings. The beauty of this truth is that the page I wrote yesterday does not determine the page I write today. Many things I need to leave behind, for if I carry them with me into retirement they will become a weight that will make it harder than it needs to be. I have much for which to ask forgiveness. I also have much gratitude. The life I have lived has been difficult and complex. I think that is true of most lives. However, behind the complexity is the simplicity of discovering what truly matters. You discover the values that guide your life.

Fourth, be sure to relax.

As I look back, some dreams I need to put aside. They served me well for that time. The time has passed. I need to let them go in the spirit of an old friend who has served the purpose of keeping me moving in the right direction. I hesitatingly suggest that our dreams carry us along through the various stages of life. If a dream is like a river, then we must not settle for the safety of the shore. We must sail where the dream takes us. I have had people ask me what I am going to do in retirement. I do not know – yet. I know I will want to relax. I will want to continue learning and helping other people learn. I think I will want to see if I can get published some of the things I have written. I will continue with my blog. Let us see where the Spirit leads. Some doors that seemed closed may open. Some dreams that seemed to have died may find a way toward rebirth. I do not see clearly the past or the future. Only God has eyes to see that clearly.

I invite you to reflect upon the stage of life in which you find yourself. How are you doing with enjoying, learning, transitions in life, and relaxing?  

On the Heart of the Matter

My mind is on the heart today.

May is a month for confirmation and graduation. Many young people wonder what they will do with their lives. For me several decades after such graduation moments, it makes me think of what I have done with my life, and what I will do with the rest of it. These are weighty questions, and I hope among those we ask our young people.

May is also the month for Mother’s Day, a day when our thoughts to family. Too often, we take family granted. We know we have been selfish. We complain about our roles and tasks in the family while we have been ungrateful for how it has benefitted our lives. All families need some reconciliation and forgiveness. We can understand how Anna M. Jarvis (1864-1948) gave everyone at the memorial service of her moth a carnation to honor the mother she loved. We can also understand how her suggestion to the nation that we honor mothers so quickly gained in popularity that Woodrow Wilson and Congress agreed in 1914 to set aside this day in May. In fact, we have a whole week of celebrating the family. When we think of family, I hope we think of matters of the heart and the people who matter to us. We do not want supermom. We do want the presence and love moms can give. Some people need healing in the relationship with mom. At this stage of my life, I reflect not only upon my mother, but also on the women who today have been wonderful examples of Christian life and faith.

We need to get to the heart of the matter, which is something like what the Bible means when it refers to the heart.  What are the things that matter to you? What ought to be the core beliefs and values that guide my life? What will I do with my life in terms of a vocation? Most of us want our work to be something we genuinely enjoy and toward which have some passion. What is that for me, at this stage in my life? Such questions deal with the heart spiritually, and a good response will have a positive influence upon your whole life.

            Such spiritual questions are weighty.

Many people today are quite health conscious today. I became somewhat that way in college, and have listened to what I thought was good advice over the years. Eat well. Exercise regularly. Your heart is an important muscle. I guess the point of all this is to care for the heart, and you will care for your whole body.[1]

All of this stimulated some thinking on my part about preachers and teachers within the Christian tradition referring to the “heart.”

Just as we can do things that endanger the heart physically, we can do things that endanger the heart spiritually. It will threaten your ability to be a follower of Christ. Medicine has been helpful in saying that proper diet and exercise will be the type of self-care you need for a healthy physical heart. Being a follower of Jesus addresses the heart of the matter spiritually.

What I want us to focus upon is what we can do to heed this command of Jesus: Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Let us be honest: Is it even possible, as follower of Jesus in an extremely screwed-up world, to heed his command and have an untroubled heart? Really?

I have come across a few bits of wisdom about worry. 

I have developed a new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time. -Charlie Brown.

As printed in a church bulletin: Don't let worry kill you - let the church help. 

Some suggestions on how to keep from worrying:

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles ... by the ears, by the heels or any other way you can manage it. -Mark Twain.
For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.
-Author unknown. 

These words are some wise counsel for gaining perspective on what worries us.

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[1] The basis of my concern today is a few articles I came across recently. The Mayo Clinic has some simple advice regarding a healthy heart: eat well and exercise regularly. You need both. You cannot compensate for a bad diet by exercising more. I have jokingly said that I like to run in order to eat the desserts I like. Well, a health person on television this week said the body does not work that way. The point is, you really need both.

I have come across many statistics. I will not bore you with them. Here are a few. In 2006, 631,636 people died of heart disease. Heart disease caused 26% of deaths—more than one in every four—in the United States.¹ White people die of heart disease at a greater rate than either African-Americans, Asians, or Native Americans. Death rates due to the heart are highest in Mississippi and lowest in Minnesota. Lowering cholesterol and blood pressure levels can reduce all forms of heart issues. The greatest risk factors involve inactivity, obesity, and high blood pressure, while smoking and high cholesterol are lower on the list. Finally, you put yourself at more risk when you do not eat breakfast. I have never been one regularly to skip breakfast. A bowl of cereal or something simple is usually enough. Sometimes, I get a treat with bacon or sausage and egg. Sometimes, I make my own buttermilk pancakes. Who knows, I may have gotten it from my mother. The first thing Mom would do early in the morning is have her coffee, cereal, and her cigarette.

 

3 Signs of a Miserable Job

I am thankful that God has blessed me with a job, a calling, and a vocation that I genuinely enjoy. If you have had such a job, I hope you are thankful as well. Many people have jobs they do not like.

In fact, have you ever had a miserable job? You know the one I mean. A soul-sucking employment situation that makes you feel like an empty suit.  

If so, you are not alone. A recent Gallup poll revealed that 77 percent of American employees hate their jobs. Gallup also contends that this ailing workforce is costing employers more than $350 billion dollars in lost productivity. Americans are increasingly unhappy with their jobs.

These figures intrigued author Patrick Lencioni because they reminded him of his own experience. Says Lencioni,  

“I became interested in this topic because, as a kid, I watched my dad trudge off to work each day and became somewhat obsessed with the notion of job misery. Somewhere along the line, I came to the frightening realization that people spend so much time at work, yet so many of them were unfulfilled and frustrated in their jobs. As I got older, I came to another realization — that job misery was having a devastating impact on individuals, and on society at large. It seemed to me that understanding the cause of the problem, and finding a solution for it, was a worthy focus for my career.”  

His latest book, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, is his attempt to meet the problem head-on.

One may feel particularly bad about the job when you pay taxes. I can imagine that many people in churches are in that situation as well. They do not like their life. They certainly would not call it an “abundant life,” as Jesus would put it.

You would think that the barometers of job satisfaction would depend on things like salary, job responsibilities and the possibility for advancement. Those are significant factors, but they are not the key values that determine whether you have a miserable job or not.  

“It’s important to understand that being miserable has nothing to do with the actual work a job involves. A professional basketball player can be miserable in his job while the janitor cleaning the locker room behind him finds fulfillment in his work. A marketing executive can be miserable making a quarter of a million dollars a year while the waitress who serves her lunch derives meaning and satisfaction from her job.”  

What makes the difference between a miserable job and a satisfying one? According to Lencioni, it is the relationships formed on the job, particularly the relationship between manager and employees, which determine whether your job is a dream or a soul-sucking nightmare.

Lencioni points to three critical signs that, when put together, form the perfect storm of vocational hell.

The first and most telling indicator of job misery is anonymity. “People cannot be fulfilled in their work if they are not known,” says Lencioni. People need to have a sense of being understood and appreciated for their unique personality and gifts, and that feedback needs to come from someone in a position of authority. If people feel invisible or anonymous in the workplace, particularly to their supervisor, they cannot love their job no matter what it is or what it pays. We are not talking about the need for constant praise here, just a sense that someone in authority cares about the people in their charge.

The second sign is irrelevance — not knowing that your job matters to someone, to anyone. “Without seeing a connection between the work and the satisfaction of another person or group of people, an, employee simply will not find lasting improvement,” remarks Lencioni. A job must have some kind of purpose and impact on others, even if it’s just flipping hamburgers. We all want to feel that what we do matters and that someone will miss us if we’re gone.

Lencioni invented the word “immeasurement” to describe the third sign. Immeasurement illuminates the fact that employees “need to be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution for themselves.” Employees do not want their jobs to be merely judged subjectively by the opinions of others, which can lead to politics and posturing in the workplace. They want to know how they measure up based on a set of agreed-upon criteria. Measurements do not necessarily have to be numerical, but they do have to be tangible. Take a bagger at a grocery store, for example. How many bags he fills on an hourly basis is one measurement, but there are others, such as how many times he makes a customer smile or the time it takes for the bagger to move customers through the line. Humans like to feel a healthy sense of competition, seeing it as an opportunity not only to measure performance but also to improve it.

The signs that Lencioni talks about all seem like elementary stuff that anybody who works with people should understand. It should be a given that leaders know their people well and care about them, help them see how their place on the team matters and give them markers to assess their progress. Unfortunately, it does not seem to work that way. It is little wonder, then, that job misery more often than not spills over into the other aspects of a person’s life. Health problems, addictions, broken relationships at home — these are just some of the byproducts of a miserable job.

God did not create us to work or live this way, for that matter. God made us to enjoy a fulfilling and life-giving relationship with God and with others. God created us to live with purpose and to measure our lives not in terms of the dollars we earn or the amount of stuff we own or produce but by the amount of love we give and receive.