While I’m an elder, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to dying, that is until my brother, who’s 20 months younger, announced in...
Spiritual Practices10
Everyday Angels
GUEST POST by MICHAEL STEINMAN I did not grow up in the tradition of angels, except as tropes in comic books and cartoons. Harps and wings, no no. I did not watch Touched by Angel or the Hallmark Channel. Frank Capra’s Clarence was all right because he was a homespun mortal, sweetly goofy. Later, I encountered angels aplenty in [...]
Pat Taub
My Search for Meaning
Aging has brought a renewed interest in the spiritual questions I grappled with during my late-night college bull sessions. Is there a God? Can prayer make a difference? What is my spiritual path? In my middle years I was too busy raising children and building a career to grapple with meaning of life questions with the intensity of my [...]
Pat Taub
Mary Oliver: Poetry That Heals
I feel like I’m living inside the song, “Stop the World I Want to Get Off,” as I reel from our climate crisis, Afghanistan’s unraveling and a new Covid surge. Mary Oliver to the rescue! I pull one of her poetry books from my shelf, find a quiet place to stretch out and start to read. Oliver’s poems are balm for my soul. They settle [...]
Pat Taub
Practicing Forgiveness Is a Game Changer
Forgiveness is especially meaningful late in life. This is the time to wipe the slate clean, to do away with emotional baggage that prevents us from living in the moment. To quote Ram Dass: “The role of elders is to move away from ego into soul.” What could be better for the soul than to practice forgiveness? You might ask: “How [...]
Pat Taub
Lisa Montgomery, Home Altar, “Suffragette” & More!
Lisa Montgomery A story that got lost in last week’s horrific storming of the capital is that of Lisa Montgomery, the first woman prisoner executed since 1952. Montgomery was imprisoned for a horrific murder that has been attributed to the extreme sexual and physical abuse she endured growing up. Serendipitously, I had just finished the [...]
Pat Taub
Ferocious Love: An Interview with Joanne Arnold, Photographer
When Joanne Arnold turned 50 her life felt empty. After raising three children, she suddenly had time on her hands. She was without direction, without meaning and purpose. Ever since she was a child, the one place where she felt alive was in “first light,” or the time right before dawn. This remembering prompted her to get up early, [...]
Pat Taub
How Gratitude Can Chase Away the Blues
It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. —Brother David Seindl-Rast In an effort to tackle my Covid blues, which have intensified at the prospect of another solo holiday, I was drawn to the concept that a gratitude practice could make me happier. As I plunged into the gratitude literature, [...]
Pat Taub
What? A Second Lockdown!
Just when we were getting Covid under control, overnight the infection rates skyrocketed. With every state setting infection records, we all know what that means: another lockdown coming our way. Now that I’ve been through one lockdown, what have I learned to make the second one bearable? Experience has taught me to accept my erratic Covid [...]
Pat Taub
Aging Like a Wise Woman
This week I’ll be a guest speaker for a Zoom class of older women, addressing what makes for a meaningful aging. For my presentation, I came up with these guidelines for growing into a wise older woman, which I’m sharing here: Honor Your Failures Reframe your “failures” as risks you took where you stuck your neck out. Examine [...]
Pat Taub
The Key to A Happy Old Age
In his best-selling book, “Happiness is a Choice You Make,” the author, John Leland makes the intriguing claim, “If you want to be happy, think like an old person.” I was skeptical of Leland’s thesis, lacking role models for old people who were happy. My paternal grandmother railed at her live-in help; my maternal grandmother became [...]
Pat Taub