Life changes, even when positive, may leave us conflicted. Most people can’t imagine stepping out of the house without their cell phones, and at the same time admit to yearning for the “good old days” of a simpler life.

Hey, baby boomers, face it: like every generation before us, we’re getting old. The accumulated years have begun to reconfigure body, mind and spirit, and the hands on this clock cannot be turned back. Awesome, scary, relentless and mysterious, aging will not be denied.

It’s been five weeks now since I sat with my mother as she died, and in many small ways, I have become a stranger to myself. Sometimes I hear the foot-stamping anger of a petulant little girl crying through my mouth and I’m as startled as my family. This is strange and unfamiliar territory as feelings bubble to the surface, often asserting themselves from years past.

When I started work as a chaplain, I was later described as looking like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Looking back, I remember feeling just that scared, but I didn’t know it was so apparent to others!

(1)  The soul is neither born nor does it ever die; having come into being once, it never ceases to be. It is unborn, eternal, permanent, and primeval.

(2)  As a person casts off worn-out garments and puts on new ones; likewise the embodied soul discards a worn out body and enters into a new one.