Keith Tomlinson is a wise guy.
Wait, let me rephrase that...
Keith Tomlinson was my pastor when I lived and worked in Clear Lake, Iowa. Yes, my first newspaper job was in the town famous for being where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper gave their last performances before dying in a plane crash just outside of town.
Now Keith and I are both duly Badgerized citizens of Wisconsin. He's retired from the Lutheran ministry, and living in the Fox River Valley.
This weekend, Keith, at 74, plans to run his ninth marathon.
A reporter for the Appleton Post-Crescent talked to Keith -- and a photographer followed him, in a car, on one of his runs -- for a story that I'm guessing wasn't entirely what the journalists expected.
Right off the bat, Keith disputed the notion that running "keeps you young."
"My running isn't to fool myself or other people into thinking I'm young, but to challenge people's perception of what it is to be old," he said. "That you don't just all of a sudden become an old person, that you can't do this and you can't do that."
Keith took up running after he retired from the ministry -- 21 years of which he spent as the chaplain at the Bartels Retirement Community, a nursing home in the community where (six degrees of separation!) I was born, Waverly, Iowa.
One reason he said he started to get active in his emeritus years is because he saw many people at Bartels whose lives had "dwindled down to nothing" as life and age wore them down, and they stopped being active.
I take that as a cautionary tale -- one of the many Keith Tomlinson sermons that have, over the years, prompted me to change how I look at things, and to act on my change in attitude.
I've talked a little in this blog about turning 60, and the how that milestone seemed more foreboding than the previous milestones I'd reached at 30, 40 and 50. It wasn't just my achy-breaky knee, or my recent discovery that my ticker isn't functioning as it should. It was the sense -- the reality -- that I now have more past than future, although how much more I can't know.
So what do I do with that?
I move along.
I don't mean just physically, although that's a big part of it. Keeping up my exercises, keeping my body moving, is good for the soul as well as the body.
I also mean continuing to move FORWARD (as we say in Wisconsin) in my emotional, social, vocational and spiritual lives.
The late Kathryn Joosten (Mrs. Landingham on "The West Wing") took up acting when she was a senior citizen. I have a hankering to do that -- or if not to appear on stage or on camera, then to discover some new gift, and some new task, that God has waiting for me.
I need to watch and pray in the expectation that God, who makes all things new, has something new for me, even in my later years.
Meanwhile, I'll keep moving, literally, with Keith as my example and, I hope, my cheerleader.
* * * * * *
One of the ways I'll be moving on Saturday: I'm participating in the American Heart Association's Heart Walk in Madison.
I learned about it from a news release. My paper doesn't publicize events that happen outside of Columbia County, so I didn't print the release, but I did sign up. And so far, I've raised $135 for heart disease research.
I think the weather might be less than ideal on Saturday, but I'll be there, bright and early, for a walk in Warner Park.
Wait, let me rephrase that...
Keith Tomlinson was my pastor when I lived and worked in Clear Lake, Iowa. Yes, my first newspaper job was in the town famous for being where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper gave their last performances before dying in a plane crash just outside of town.
Now Keith and I are both duly Badgerized citizens of Wisconsin. He's retired from the Lutheran ministry, and living in the Fox River Valley.
This weekend, Keith, at 74, plans to run his ninth marathon.
A reporter for the Appleton Post-Crescent talked to Keith -- and a photographer followed him, in a car, on one of his runs -- for a story that I'm guessing wasn't entirely what the journalists expected.
Right off the bat, Keith disputed the notion that running "keeps you young."
"My running isn't to fool myself or other people into thinking I'm young, but to challenge people's perception of what it is to be old," he said. "That you don't just all of a sudden become an old person, that you can't do this and you can't do that."
Keith took up running after he retired from the ministry -- 21 years of which he spent as the chaplain at the Bartels Retirement Community, a nursing home in the community where (six degrees of separation!) I was born, Waverly, Iowa.
One reason he said he started to get active in his emeritus years is because he saw many people at Bartels whose lives had "dwindled down to nothing" as life and age wore them down, and they stopped being active.
I take that as a cautionary tale -- one of the many Keith Tomlinson sermons that have, over the years, prompted me to change how I look at things, and to act on my change in attitude.
I've talked a little in this blog about turning 60, and the how that milestone seemed more foreboding than the previous milestones I'd reached at 30, 40 and 50. It wasn't just my achy-breaky knee, or my recent discovery that my ticker isn't functioning as it should. It was the sense -- the reality -- that I now have more past than future, although how much more I can't know.
So what do I do with that?
I move along.
I don't mean just physically, although that's a big part of it. Keeping up my exercises, keeping my body moving, is good for the soul as well as the body.
I also mean continuing to move FORWARD (as we say in Wisconsin) in my emotional, social, vocational and spiritual lives.
The late Kathryn Joosten (Mrs. Landingham on "The West Wing") took up acting when she was a senior citizen. I have a hankering to do that -- or if not to appear on stage or on camera, then to discover some new gift, and some new task, that God has waiting for me.
I need to watch and pray in the expectation that God, who makes all things new, has something new for me, even in my later years.
Meanwhile, I'll keep moving, literally, with Keith as my example and, I hope, my cheerleader.
* * * * * *
One of the ways I'll be moving on Saturday: I'm participating in the American Heart Association's Heart Walk in Madison.
I learned about it from a news release. My paper doesn't publicize events that happen outside of Columbia County, so I didn't print the release, but I did sign up. And so far, I've raised $135 for heart disease research.
I think the weather might be less than ideal on Saturday, but I'll be there, bright and early, for a walk in Warner Park.
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