Treasures in Retirement

By Joanne Womack

As the chaplains to the retired (Provinces V, VI, and VII) arrived at Camp Allen in Navasota, Texas on October 6, the weather was in the 70s. The occasion? A Church Pension Group (CPG) annual meeting. Updates on the work of the CPG were presented by the CPG’s senior vice president for health and wellness, Kathleen Floyd. Also speaking were The Reverend Laura Queen and Sean Scheller, also from the Fund. We learned that the Fund has grown its assets of $8.7 million in 1917 to its current assets of $12.1 billion. An EXCEL workshop was offered, but most of us crowded into workshops on New Chaplain Orientation and Pastoral Care of Retirees.

The Reverend Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, of St. Luke’s in Metuchen, New Jersey, read from her book, The Courage to Grow Old. She spoke about what it means personally to be growing older — her thoughts, decisions, relationship choices, and letting go. For me, the most thought provoking and intriguing topic was the last essay in the book, entitled, “The Two Baskets.” This essay discusses linear time and “eternal now.” What happens when this life is over, she asks? Where were we before we became what we are? What’s next? The smaller basket sits inside the larger basket. The smaller basket is time as we know it — linear. The larger basket she refers to as “the also life.” The larger basket contains all existence — “all in all,” to quote Paul. The Good News is, we’re already there! Crafton offered up for deeper thought the question of what this concept might mean in the here and now as each one of us lives on in “the eternal now” to enter the larger basket which we only see faintly in “the eternal now.” This book will lift your spirits and inform your ministries as we enter the Season of Celebration.

The Lord bless you, the Lord keep you and make his face to shine upon you, and the Lord continue to hold you in the palm of his hand.