In the last two posts I’ve described the relatively new teaching in the Catholic catechism that God is lasting truth and love. Yet truth strikes me as getting skimpy treatment in much of our lives, including at church. People often say, “God is love,” but I seldom hear, “God is truth.” So I am on the lookout for truth. Continue reading
Category Archives: Family
Have You Seen God Lately?
People often grow more spiritual as they move through later life, and especially for men, that growth can be halting, timid, and incomplete.
People enter Twelve-Step programs to rid themselves of addictions, and central to the method is acknowledgement of a “higher power,” which may be God for the religious, but may be something else, something people choose or define for themselves. Continue reading
How To Save Your Family From the U.S. Decline
Last week the Federal Reserve published a study that made the news: between 2007 and 2010, Americans experienced a 39% decline in median net worth and an 8% decline in median income. The report is one of a series going back to at least 1989, but the new report shows an unprecedented decline in economic well-being.
Although the data are dismal, there is a lesson for Americans willing to fight: it’s time to return to the working and saving habits of American mythology where strong families work together toward common goals. Families will want to pull together into larger, more integrated economic units to help those affected recover and move forward.
An Added Burden For Boomers: Your Children’s Retirements
The Huffington Post published the following piece on May 25. The idea—parents saving for their children’s retirements—left several readers frustrated. Yet parents have always been leaving bequests for their children; this piece recommends a specific type of bequest—a retirement account or annuity, left at death. I am reprinting it here as this week’s post.
The economy is not clicking along like it should—the recovery of the last few years is slow, halting, and uncertain. The United States now has a large cadre of long-term unemployed, and many of them are in their twenties and early thirties. Continue reading
Connect With Your Community at the Farmer’s Market
Good food is an important part of a good life. The food movement, as it is sometimes called, emphasizes alternatives to the abundance of prepackaged, additive-ladened food in modern supermarkets. It seeks to induce shoppers to consider a wide range of food attributes instead of just price and convenience. Continue reading
What Do You Do When You’re Ready to Retire, but She’s Not?
Some of you may have seen the Wall Street Journal special report on retirement earlier this week. Several topics were covered, and while we definitely plan to discuss a few of them, one article in particular grabbed my attention. A lot is written about where and how to retire, but this piece talked about a decision many of us take for granted… when to retire. Continue reading
Building Soil, Building Families
Much of the eastern United States has been cultivated or otherwise used in agriculture at one time or another. The land was used roughly by our ancestors, though they may not have known how to use it better. Soil conservation ramped up after 1930, but by then the eastern U.S. had endured up to 300 years of untutored soil use, causing great amounts of erosion. Creating new soil is an act of reparation, requiring dedicated work and patience.
Building soil may be like building families, especially for grandparents. Grandparents often work quietly, at odd moments, maybe in the background. Continue reading
Adding Facebook—a Virtual Social Life—to Your Mix
Computer photo by Wilton Rodregues
Do you have a virtual social life as well as a real one? Facebook, a social networking site dominated by young people, is also becoming popular with retirees. That trend will likely intensify in upcoming years as Boomers, most of whom are already online, move into retirement. A fundamental reason underpins Facebook’s likely growth among older people: friends can be hard to make in later life, and at its core, Facebook is about friends.
Uh-oh
This morning I was at my desk working on a blog post when I noticed music playing nearby. It was a little too loud, and it seemed to be coming from another room. I got up, walked to the doorway and hollered for Barbara, “That music you’re playing—where is it coming from?”
“I’m not playing music,” she answered from the back of the house.
So I looked around nearby rooms, found nothing, then returned to my desk only to discover the music coming from my computer. Uh-oh, I thought.
Coming Home: Multigenerational Households are Growing—Part 2
As multigenerational families grow, more people are dealing with the difficult task of incorporating a new member into an existing household. There are important generic differences between needy parents joining families of their children, and young adults returning home. Also, each case will have a unique family history. Still, it seems possible to build a framework that will help families chart successful futures.
Here are three elements of such a framework:
- Compassion
- Honesty
- Outside help