Creative Resistance

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Before you begin, recite this mantra, alone or among allies. The mantra is this.

I am not alone. I am not powerless.

You are not alone. You are not powerless.

Together, let us find and use our power.

The first step is to find your people.  The ones who care about democracy, and freedom, and equality, and compassion, and justice. They may be family, friends, colleagues, members of a church or civic organization. They may be people you have known a log tie or people who just met.

What kind of power do we have against a fascist government and thugs in the street? We have the power of witness to testify, in person and among others and with videotapes, to what is happening, and to insist on following the law, of all of it. The first amendment. The second amendment. The Fourth Amendment. The tenth amendment. Freedom of speech and assembly. The right to carry a legal, registered gun in accordance with the laws of the state. The right to be safe in your homes and cars from being attacked by thugs masquerading as law enforcement. The right of states to try crimes committed in their jurisdiction.

So you didn’t go to Minneapolis Neither did I. What power do we have? We can protest where we are, loudly and visibly and in numbers too big to ignore (Thanks, “I am woman.”. ) We can send money to good candidates and volunteer to help in campaigns, which are coming at us already in special elections and primaries. We can annoy our representatives in Washington by demanding that the executive branch stop ignoring the law and the courts, and demand that the legislative branch resume its neglected duties of oversight. with our concerns about honesty, transparency, and accountability.

Some of these political actors can be swayed by moral and legal arguments, or threats of retribution in elections and in court, Those approaches are good things to do, especially as part of a group. Support organizations like the ACLU. Join Indivisible. Read Heather Cox Richardson. Listen to Rachel Maddow. And talk to your friends, neighbors, family, anyone who will listen.

 But as an economist, I also like to use the weapons of the marketplace to communicate with the worst corporate offenders that are enabling this destructive behavior. If you own their stock, sell it, or participate in shareholder complaints.  You have the right to show up at corporate meetings or author resolutions and get other stockholders to join.  If you are part of a religious community ask if your faith tradition is a member of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Social Responsibility.  Invest in good companies that don’t kiss the ring but instead try to be responsive to all their stakeholders—customers, suppliers, employees, communities and yes, shareholders. Invest in socially responsibly companies or in mutual funds that have criteria that expect their stocks reflect good corporate citizenship.

  If you buy their products, stop! And tell them why and tell your friends. And write a letter to the CEO of the company to tell him what you are doing.  My letter is addressed to Andrew R. Jassey, CEO, Amazon, 550  Terry Avenue N, Seattle, WA 98019.

My economic power is small, as is yours, but together, we can change the world.  As economist Eugene Steuerle reminds us, we get the government we deserve.  Let’s earn ourselves a better government. However long it takes, the time to start is now.

Cocooning with Books

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I am an avid and voracious reader, usually about 100 books a year.  I especially enjoy reading when the weather outside is not especially pleasant and the days are short.  I thought I might share with my followers some of the best books I read in 2025.

My tastes are fairly eclectic—biography, history, historical fiction, philosophy, politics, behavioral economics, theology.  My two favorite series in historical fiction are Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma mysteries, set in 7th century Ireland and a very comfortable way of learning about the history  and culture of the Irish,  I share that Celtic heritage on my mother’s side, more Scottish than Irish with a dollop of Welsh and some stray Gauls and Franks on my father’s side.  To balance Fidelma and affirm my primary Celtic heritage from Scotland (my mother was a Stewart), I also read How the Scots Invented Modern Civilization.  Although I am not overly fond of the ancient Romans, as the sworn enemies of my Celtic ancestors, I did enjoy the five (bad) emperor series of biographical fiction by Simon Turney.

In philosophy, I am especially partial to the writings of a rather obscure British ethicist, Mary Midgeley, who with three other women philosophers challenged the reigning and rather sterile orthodoxy in ethics in mid20th century England. I discovered Midgeley and the other three in a book called The Women Were Up to Something.

For the place where ethics meet politics, I am a fan of Buddhist theologian and social activist Joanna Macy’s Active Hope.  The most famous works on behavioral economics were by Daniel Ariely and Daniel Kahnemann but the award for best explanation by a non-economists the recounting of Kahnemann and Tversky’s work by Michael Lewis, the Undoing Project. Michael Lewis is more famous for his books about finance (The Big Short, is my favorite). but this one was also a delightful read.

Among novels, two books stood ut: Percival Everett’s James, a retelling of the story of the escaped slave in Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn, told from Jim’s perspective. Also, Ariel Lawson’s Frozen River, the story of a midwife in 18th century Maine based on her journals.

I hope one of those suggestions from my 2025 reading might appeal to you, and I invite my blog followers to send me their favorite books they read in 2025, because I am always seeking suggestions.  Books are better enjoyed when they are shared! I hope to make this an annual event for as long as I can see to read, and after that, audiobooks!

Welcome to Carnivale

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In the Christian tradition, the Christmas season ends on January 6th with the arrival of the three kings or wise men bringing gifts to the infant Jesus.Since every season had to have a name, the period from Epiphany to the start of Lent, was simply called Epiphany. Its length varies, depending on the date of Easter, which moves around. But in certain parts of the world with a Hispanic or French heritage, many of them in Latin America, this same season has a Latin name, Carnivale. In Latin, it means farewell (vale) to meat.(carne).. But not yet! It’s more like one long Mardi Gras, the day before Lent begins, which in Frenchmeans Fat Tuesday. Mardigraas is followed by the lean and somber 40 days of Lent. The food stores put away for the winter months are disappearing,and this is one last party. .It is perhaps significant that Carnivale is more widely celebrated in the Southern hemisphere where the summer with its abundant harvest and long days is moving toward autumn even as we in the Northern hemisphere are seeing winter ever so slowly inching toward spring.. Virtue does not require the absence of meat, but rather a focus on only greater moderation. Mderation in all things is a much more challenging virtue to cultivate.. Somehow it seems easier to say “none” than to say “less,” but the middle course is more sustainable.

My oldest daughter is a vegetarian, or at least a pesce-vegetarian, meaning that she does eat fish. An d definitely not a vegan, because she is quite willing to eat eggs and milk and butter. But for those of us accustomed to a main course of some animal variety, it seems like a big sacrifice. To reverse the Bible maxim, the spirit may be willing but the flesh is weak! Like Saint Augustine, who famously prayed “Lord make me chaste, but not yet,” we are willing to commit our future selves to good behavior–but not yet.

I am back on my nonbinary crusade. Why does it have to be either -or rather than both-and? We know that too much rich food, including meats, is not healthy for our bodies or for the planet. We grow a lot of grains to feed animals so that we can eat the animals,when it would cause much less erosion, drought, and climate change if we bypassed the cow or pig and just ate the grains. Our Asian siblings do not make meat the center of every meal, relying more on fruits and vegetables and cereal grains.. .

Each new day is a new opportunity to recall those commitments of our future selves, whether it is to eating habits that are better for ourselves, our fellow humans and our one and only planet, or to other ways in which small but significant ways in which we spent our time, our money, our attention and our efforts.

It is January. It is cold. Days are short. Nights are long and dark. Our New Year’s resolutions are a whole ten days behind us. It is easy to comfort ourselves with rich food and cocooning before a warm fireplace and a warm TV, and more difficult than at other times of year for us to stay focused on the person we want, intend,aspire to be. or to become. But every day is the start of a new year. in which to experience the joy of Carnivale, the warmth of family and friends and simple pleasures and simple foods, boasrd games and dancing instead of steak and ale, football and social media, or other indulgences that often accompany Carnivale. Life takes place one day at a time., What one change can you commit to today as a start toward a new season, a new way of being and doing?

The Role and the Rule: Black Friday

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One of the insights I gained from studying Stoic philosophy, is that the different roles we play call for different virtues or rules to guide our behavior.  The virtues required of a student are different from those of a banker or a teacher. As a grandmother I know well how different my responsibilities are toward my grandchildren than their parents’ obligations.

Each of us plays multiple roles in the course of each day.  I may be called to act in my capacity as economist, writer, neighbor, friend, matriarch (mother/grandmother), social activist, or member of an organization.  This idea may devolve into a long series of blogs, but I thought I would begin wit one of the four roles that we identify in economics: a consumer, a worker, an owner, and a citizen. With Black Friday, the peak consumption holiday of the year, about to descend on us on Friday, consumer is where I will start.

You might not think of connecting virtue to buying goods and services, but in fact there are several virtues that come into play.  Among the classic Aristotelian virtues, virtuous consumption calls for prudence (practical wisdom) and temperance, or moderation.

But consumption is not just about “me.” Our purchases and use of goods and services has an impact on other people. The waste we produce fills our landfills and requires scarce and valuable resources. The buildings we build reduce the number of trees and their important functions of shade and carbon absorption. The cars we buy and drive affect air quality. The pesticides we use on our lawns and gardens reduce the population of insects and birds.

And it isn’t just about what we buy, it is also whom we buy it from.  Does this seller treat its suppliers and workers well and respect the environment? Will shopping online over time reduce access to local businesses that help communities thrive? Can we convert some of our gift giving to experiences rather than material objects (theater tickets are one of my favorites).

All the effects of our spending on other people and on communities and even the earth are what economists call externalities. .  An externality is a negative or positive consequence, usually unintended, on other people and places.created by how you spend your money. Prudence, or practical wisdom, calls us to be mindful of how our “votes” in the marketplace doing our holiday shopping impact of friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens. Temperance calls us to control our appetites for material goods, not only because it is good for the soul but also because it keeps prices down for other buyers and enables them to stretch their dollars farther.

Another virtue that comes into play in spending our money is gratitude and its expression in action as generosity. There are a lot of calls for generosity this time of year—making sure that poor children get holiday cheer, that no one goes hungry or lacks heat or other necessities. The Salvation Army bell ringer is there to remind us. Our shopping is often motivated by a desire to be generous toward our loves ones, but it can also incorporate a wider circle of caring.

Virtue ethics. Try it, you’ll like it.  You will come home from the mall with a warm sense of making loved ones happy while also conferring benefits on other anonymous, often invisible winners that are blessed by your practice of prudence, temperance and generosity in your holiday spending.

Repurposing Leftovers

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Leftovers take many forms, even if the ones we will be most mindful pf this week is leftover food from Thursday’s Thanksgiving meal. Tangible leftovers invite both creative re-use and letting go.  

In my growing up home, there were no food leftovers at home except for Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas ham. My mother always calculated how much she needed to feed three women of normal appetites and one son growing to six feet five, and it was all eaten. In my family with a husband and three daughters, none of us big eaters, there were always creative ways to incorporate leftovers into soups and casseroles and sandwiches.

However, there were fabric leftovers in my birth family, because my mother made our pajamas, shirts, blouses, dresses, skirts, and even tailored jackets.  Later, she coached me and my sister when we made our wedding gowns and bridesmaids’ dresses. At age seven I learned to use scraps for doll clothes, then was gently guided into making my own clothes.  My mother used scraps for potholders and quilts, and had a fierce competition with my mother-in-law in outfitting my daughters’ Barbie dolls. When the scraps got too small or too scrappy, there were always cleaning rags. I have no recollection of paper towels in my mother’s household.

Leftover fabric can make something beautiful or useful or both.  I have done a lot of quilting, table runners and potholders and occasionally actual quilts, mostly from leftover fabrics. In fact, the origin of quilting as an art form was to make good use of leftover fabric scraps. When I retired from sewing, except for mending, altering, and making gift bags, I gave my fabric stash to a friend of my granddaughter who was in college majoring in costume design.

Twelve years ago, I learned about another kind of leftovers that can be recombined in a different kind of quilt, with spare parts carefully recycled in other ways. Many of us are awash in household possessions—furniture, decorations, closets filled with clothes that no longer fit or that we just don’t wear, cupboards full of extra dishes and cooking gadgets, and for me, books.  Sometimes the answer to abundance run amok is a bigger house with more closets and bookshelves.  But as we get older, a better answer is often a smaller house with fewer possessions to look after, which invites creative use of the leftovers. This retreat from “hoyuseholding” is a useful lesson from Hinduism, which is very attuned to the different challenges and expectations at different stages of life. Old age is the time to let go of possessions and responsibilities and concentrate on matters of the spirit. Less is more, but we don’t want to waste those possessions we are letting go.

My friend Fran and I taught a continuing education class and wrote a book together about downsizing and decluttering after 50.  She was a former Clemson Extension agent and a realtor, with lots of experience in decluttering houses about to be sold.  I knew more about writing than decluttering, but I learned a lot about decluttering when I left my big house where we lived for 46 years to move to a townhouse in a retirement community. The townhouse is furnished mostly with things that came from our big house, but I couldn’t begin to cram it all in.

If there are fifty ways to leave a lover,there are almost that many ways to dispose of National Geographics, porch furniture, tools, 33 RPM albums, carousels of slides, furniture, sailing trophies, all the leftovers of being married for 53 years to a loveable pack rat. The National Geographic magazines went to a home schooler I found on Freecycle. I gave Carl’s framing supplies to a young man whose mother was a fellow sailor of my husband and had taught junior sailing classes with him. I met people through freecycle who worked for Ulbrich Steel in Oconee County and wanted to know if we were related.  Yes, but not in regular contact, because Carl’s father was the black sheep of the family.  He had not only moved out of the home town of Wallingford, but had, horror of horrors, married a Protestant.

When Fran and I taught the decluttering and downsizing class, we found that people had the most trouble letting go of objects that were the carriers of memories, because they are afraid that the memories would disappear along with the objects that call those memories back into the present. Sometimes I chose to let thrift shops and recycling centers do the work for me, and trusted the universe to keep the memories. Other times, I knew where the right home was for a treasured item and was pleased to help it carry those memories to a good place.  I emailed my three daughters with pictures of Carl’s sailing trophies, all practical items destined to be used– etched glass salad bowls, mugs and pitchers. They opted to take most of them.  My middle daughter Carla claimed so many treasures to take back to New Jersey that we had to meet in Southern Virginia, to unpack my car and fill up hers with everything from 33 rpm records to end tables made by her father to snorkeling gear.  These were among the leftovers of a lifetime of memories, and a good way to let go. 

Some of our leftovers are the actual memories, of holidays, travel, milestones, joys and sorrows shared stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart. May your leftovers of all kinds find a good home in a hungry belly, a warm quilt, a different use, wherever or wherever they can still be useful and meaningful to someone. Let us also share our leftovers of mind and heart with one another, recalling the joy in the memories they embodied.

Restoring Trust

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Trust is one of those tricky words with multiple meanings.  Among its synonyms are faith and belief, but they are quite different.   The Latin word credo (I believe) finds its way into English as creed, credible (or incredible), credentials.  The Greek word pistis, or Latin equivalent fides, has a more subtle meaning of confidence or trust. Clearly, they overlap, but the meaning that I find of greatest social value is the idea of trust.  Do we trust our own judgment? Do we trust people in whom we confide? Do we trust the police, the justice system, our elected officials? Do we trust corporations to produce products that are safe and beneficial? Do we trust banks with our money?  Surveys about trust suggest that most of the institutions of American society do not evoke trust.  That decline is aided by social media, but it is not new.

Faith is the connector between belief and trust.  Think about the huge difference between “I believe in you (faith, trust) and I believe you (I think that what you are saying is factually true).  That confusion has dominated Western Christianity since the 3rd century, when the many (sometimes conflicting) stories about the life, death, teachings, and resurrection of Jesus were parsed and hardened into factual truth statements that eventually became mandatory beliefs in order to call oneself a Christian.

Blind faith is belief without evidence. Blind faith, inf fact, often  resists contradictory evidence and only is receptive to confirming evidence. (Psychologists call this “confirmation bias.”) New information that does not fit our pre-established beliefs is rejected almost every time.) Likewise blind trust in the good intentions of people and institutions weakens rather than strengthening the ties that bind us together in community at all levels from the household to the community to the nation.

Without trust, the kind that led the signers of the Declaration of Independence to pledge to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, our nation will revert to a state of nature in which (the words of Hobbes) life is nasty, British, and short for most of us. So being cautiously trusting is a risky but necessary first step.

Beliefs are durable, trust is not.  Trust is easy to shatter and difficult to repair. Our beliefs are a part of our identity. Our shared beliefs create mutually reinforcing communities of believers. And most important, trust is the foundation of a functioning democratic society.  We need to trust the good intentions, the competence, and the honesty of our public officials and the institutions—courts, law enforcement, public agencies, election administrators.  It would also be a good thing if we felt we could trust private agencies, banks and other corporations, service providers, and the media. However, each of them has let us down time and again.

Our faith in government and elected officials, in corporations, and in the shallowness of motivations of many of our fellow citizens has eroded over time, with a rapid fall in recent years. How do we restore trust in one another, in government, in the news media in an age of AI and social media?

There are no quick and easy fixes.  But there are steps that we can take to restore our capacity to trust and to be the kind of person others would trust as they judge is us our words and actions. We can encourage and support those institutions that we trust and call to account those that fail to be honest, respectful, compassionate, just, and fair.

We can begin with our own inventory of whom and what we trust—people, news media, friends, family, organizations. None of them are perfect, but we can call them to ccount when they fail and affirm our faith when they serve us and the larger community well.   t s incumbent on each of us to question, to get information from more than a single source, th protest wrongdoing and participate in civic processes that can slowly but eventually restore our trust in one another and our institutions.

We can seek out individuals and organizations that affirm our shared values and promote them together. There is both safety in numbers and reassurance in mutual support.  Together, we can learn, act, protest, vote, and engage in other ways in creating a society resting more firmly on a foundation of mutual trust and obligation.

In whom and what do you place your trust? How can you being the work of restoration for yourself and the larger community?

In Whom Can I Trust?

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Trust is one of those tricky words with multiple meanings.  Among its synonyms are faith and belief, but they are quite different.   The Latin word credo (I believe) finds its way into English as creed, credible (or incredible), credentials.  The Greek word pistis, or Latin equivalent fides, has a more subtle meaning of confidence or trust. Clearly they overlap, but the meaning that I find of greatest social value is the idea of trust.  Do we trust our own judgment? Do we trust people in whom we confide? Do we trust the police, the justice system, our elected officials? Do we trust corporations to produce products that are safe and beneficial? Do we trust banks with our money?  Surveys about trust suggest that most of the institutions of American society do not evoke trust.  That decline is aided by social media, but it is not new.

Faith is the connector between belief and trust.  Think about the huge difference between “I believe in you (faith, trust) and I believe you (I think that what you are saying is factually true).  That confusion has dominated Western Christianity since the 3rd century, when the many (sometimes conflicting) stories about the life, death, teachings, and resurrection of Jesus were parsed and hardened into truth statements that eventually became mandatory beliefs in order to call oneself a Christian.

Blind faith is belief without evidence. Blind faith, inf fact, resists contradictory evidence and only is receptive to confirming evidence. (Psychologists call this “confirmation bias.”) New information that does not fit into our established beliefs is rejected almost every time.) Likewise blind trust in the good intentions of people and institutions weakens rather than strengthening the ties that bind us together in community at all levels from the household to the community to the nation.

Beliefs are durable, trust is not.  Trust is easy to shatter and difficult to repair. Our beliefs are a part of our identity. Our shared beliefs create mutually reinforcing communities of believers. And yet…trust is the foundation of a functioning democratic society.  We need to trust the good intentions, the competence, and the honesty of our public officials and the institutions—courts, law enforcement, public agencies, election administrators.  It would also be a good thing if we felt we could trust private agencies, banks and other corporations, service providers, and the media. However, each of them has let us down time and again.

Our faith in government and elected officials has eroded over time, with a rapid fall in recent years. How do we restore trust in one another, in government, in the news media in an age of AI and social media? There aer n quick and easy fixes.  But it s incumbent on each of us to question, to get information from more than a single source, th protest wrong doing and participate in civic processes that can slowly but eventually restore our trust in one another and our institutions.

Hallowe’en, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day

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November 1st, is All Saints’ Day, a long-standing holiday in the Catholic tradition that emerged from the ancient pagan holiday Samhain (pronounced Saw-wain) in the Celtic tradition.  It was a  time to bring the herds back for slaughter or wintering, and to prepare for the coming winter. It was also the time when the veil between this world and the spirit world was thinnest, and ghosts walked the earth.  Finally, this holiday weekend is a time to remember those who came before. on All Saints Day and All Souls’ Day (The Mexican Day of the Dead.

The holiday runs from sundown Friday to sundown Sunday.  In observing the holiday from dusk to dusk to dusk, we are following the customs of our Jewish and Celtic forebears, who not only began their  holidays at dusk rather than dawn but also celebrated their respective new year’s days in the late fall, going into and through the darkness to await the return of the light

On All Souls’ Day we will also observe that most annoying of customs, arbitrarily redefining daylight hours t by setting the clocks back an hour. disrupting our biorythms for the four darkest months.

So celebrate! Dress up. Decorate. Carve a pumpkin. Hand out treats. Visit a cemetery.  Remember a loved one, or more than one. Share a memory.  Plan your funeral. Feed the hungry. Remember that every end is also a beginning, and the light and the new year lie ahead..

Here is a poem for this holiday

The darkness begins

The faces of carved pumpkins

Glow from lighted candles within.

Children ring doorbells, costumed, in search of treats.

Or so it once was,

This holiday is now sanitized for safety

Fear of the coming darkness is banished

Replaced by noisy crowds with sugar highs

And costumes not of ghosts and devils

But TV characters and superheroes.

Without the fear and mystery of darkness

Without the silence to let us hear

The sounds of nature once again.

How can we reclaim our rightful role

As partners, not as overlords

Of the turning earth?

The Final Quarter

~ purplesage41 ~ 3 Comments

Poets, philosophers, and psychologists often compare the stages of our life with the turning of the year.  If we consider the seasons of our lives, this time of year is the final quarter—an appropriate metaphor from the football season! I assume that I will live to age 92, as my mother and her sister did.  If my schedule of quarters is correct, I am more than half way through the final quarter. These years have been marked by my second and final retirement, the loss of my husband and my dearest female friend, and by the usual changes of aging. I know that the final stage of life would test the resources that we have developed over many years of life, but I didn’t expect the test to be so sudden and so painful.

My middle daughter also pointed out that, starting at age 22 when my first child was born, I had been responsible for at least one other person and sometimes as many as four or five at a time.  Now I was only responsible for myself, a situation that is both liberating and challenging.. As Janis Joplin sang, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. I am in no hurry to see my life end, but I am also accepting my mortality.

Assuming that you do not fantasize about heaven with pearly gates and a gigantic family reunion, there are two very different ways to come face to face with the final quarter and the impending end of life.  One is from poet Robert Browning:  Grow old along with me, The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made.  Dylan Thomas sees it differently: Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. There is truth in both of them.  Browning sounds like a bit of a Pollyanna, and Dylan Thomas like a grumpy old man.

In his book Aging Well, George Vaillant identifies three tasks of old age.  They are integrity, generativity, and keepers of wisdom. Those mostly joyful and meaningful tasks can make this last quarter rich and fulfilling. 

Integrity means wholeness.  It means putting the pieces of our lives, past and present, into a framework that tells a meaningful story. I have always been a storyteller, like my mother before me, but even more so since I had grandchildren with whom to share family stories. Because my story does not stand alone. It is interwoven with my great-grandmother who marched for women’s suffrage and my sister who struggled with the uprootedness of being a military wife and the ancestral faith tradition of the early settlers of New England in which I was raised. It is interwoven with my husband’s family and my children and grandchildren and the many dear friends with whom I have shared my life.    If task of the first half of life is to create a separate identity, the last half of life calls us to reconnect, to find our place in the cycle of generations and the work of the world.

Generativity means mentoring the next generation, whether it is children of colleagues or church leaders or, in my case, teaching graduate students and empowering voters.  Even if we were mentors during our working years, it is different in the final quarter.  We are likely to be less competitive, less focused on proving our competence.  The people we may be called to mentor may be older or younger than before and they may need very different kinds of wisdom and patience o from us.  More listening, less talking. Like Yoda.

In the Hindu tradition, life is divided into four stages—the child, the student, the householder, and the spiritual seeker. At the end of the student stage, one is expected to assume the responsibilities of adult life—work, marriage, children, community.  But in the words of one Hindu text, when one’s hair has turned white and one has seen grandsons, it is time to abandon he life of the householder,to turn it over to the next generation, abandon material possessions, and seek the life of the spirit.  Being a contemplative hermit would be the highest expression of this calling.  But a guru also fits this mold, a keeper of wisdom who shares it not just with selected groups like grandchildren and students and patients and clients and friends and neighbors, but with whoever turns up in need of some wisdom.  

That wisdom is evoked at least in part by giving up our attachment to possessions.  I have noticed in myself and in many of my fellow travelers through life’s last quarter a change in how we approach to possessions, not so much stressing acquisition as cultivation, enjoyment, and letting go.  Living in a smaller space, giving things away, truly practicing the belief that less is more. Approaching the end of life with an attitude or acceptance and gratitude.  This kind of wisdom is shared with anyone we encounter, not consciously or intentionally but just by the way we live our lives.

At the same times, it is important for ourselves and others to live until we die.  To be kind and caring and helpful and engaged for as long as we can.  To keep on learning, living, loving, playing within the limits of our declining physical abilities.  To accept our limitations with grace and patience, two skills that those who follow us will need to notice and acquire.  Those of us who don’t put much stock in a concrete afterlife need to continue to the last breath our work of making heaven on earth, a place where human and other life forms can flourish and prosper.

Matriarch Rules

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I was the youngest of three children.  My mother, sister and brother are no longer with us, nor my husband, my sister-in-law Kay and my brothers-in-law Bob and Dick. I have one surviving sister-in-law but our families have never been close, either in distance or in spirit. Only one of my sons-in-law has a surviving parent, whom we all like very much. I feel that I have become a matriarch with respect to my three daughters and sons-in-law, four granddaughters and one grand-son-in -law who also has no living parents. 

Several years ago, I invited my niece and nephew to join my daughters in a weekly email conversation about what’s going on in our lives. One son-in-law, one niece-in-law and one first cousin once removed (of my daughter’s generation—also with no living parents) asked to join the weekly exchange.

There are rules for just about every relational role in a woman’s life—daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law parent, grandparent—but few of us become a de facto matriarch (and even fewer men become patriarchs!). I didn’t get much grand mothering. One grandmother died before my parents were married, and the other was not the grandmotherly type, despite her 14 grandchildren.  Guidelines have been hard to come by as the generations continue to stretch on.

I learned a useful concept from studying Stoic philosophy.  Each day, think about roles and rules. I have many roles—not just the family ones but friend, community member, economist, writer, engaged citizen, voracious reader, sporadic teacher, lifelong learner.  Each role has its own rules, which in Stoic philosophy call for the appropriate virtues and the ways they are called for in our roles.  So I thought I needed to reflect on this particular role and the rules that it called for. Let me be clear. These rules are aspirational or intentions. I do  not claim to practice all of them all of the time, but as I feel my way around in a somewhat different role than I have had in earlier times, I do my best. Here they are.

  1. My first rule is to respect their boundaries, always willing to help but not to interfere. It’s a delicate balance. For example, I treasured having the freedom to choose my major in college, partly because I went on a combination of  my own earnings and scholarships.  I wanted the same freedom for my daughters, and my granddaughters, whose education we financed for the daughters and helped with for the next generation. No conflict there. Three daughters who chose to major in, respectively, art, music, and anthropology were not about to limit their daughters’ choices—one just an associate degree, the others in theater, education, and a the youngest a dual major in anthropology and Japanese.
  2. My second rule is to be open to change and accommodation around holidays. Theye are holidays, which had to be parceled out equally once the daughters got married and had in-laws with an equal claim. My mother remained a very central part of my Christmases well into my fifties, needing to be the center of attention, and I vowed to honor my daughters’ need for their own family time. We celebrate Easter now because that’s when my daughter and son-in-law in New Jersey can get away, joining us on Zoom a couple of times over the Christmas  holiday. As we await the birth of the first great-grandchild, I recognize that my role in Christmas will continue to shrink, and I approach that with a mixture of relief and regret. We have been through a steady and gradual shift to emphasizing being together rather than food and gifts and other structured activities. I cook less and buy fewer gifts.  Once I said that I wanted to smallify Christmas, a particular preference of my oldest daughter. My youngest granddaughter, who was about five, asked her mother, “Is smallify a word?” and her mother said” If Grandma says it’s a word, it’s a word.”
  3. Stories are a must.  My youngest daughter compiled a genealogy that has encouraged all of us to claim our heritage, especially the Scots-Irish part. My mother was a good storyteller and I have tried to carry on that tradition. My niece and I and my oldest daughter and her daughter have visited and fallen in love with the Scottish motherland from which that side of the family emigrated to America in the late1700s.
  4. I want them to know how grateful I have been for all of them.  On Mothers’ Day, when I remember, I thank my daughters for teaching me how to be a mother. I see traits, attitudes, hobbies, skills and physical characteristics that remind me that DNA is eternal life.  They all share my politics and most of my values. One granddaughter and I have a cowlick on our foreheads that trace back to my father. Carla’s music can be found all over the family.  We used to joke that had had her mother’s ear and her father’s rhythm, while the opposite combination would have left her no hope for a music career.  Christine’s art comes in part from her great-grandfather Christian who somehow supported a family on ten as an artist. The family stories were passed on by mother but codified by my youngest daughter, who went on to a career as a librarian but also a midlife second career as a photographer, both fed by her love of stories, pictures, and data.
  5. he most important tasks of my duties as matriarch now center around my aging and eventual death.  I live in a retirement community that makes my friends and neighbors very aware of their own and one another’s limitations and challenges. We all want to stay independent as long as we can, and some of us imagine that we can when we really can’t. I have stopped depending on my sons-in-law who have limited ability to meeting my handyman needs and found people who will do it for cash—including, at the moment, my granddaughter and her boyfriend who are my designated personal assistants. I have handled three estates in my lifetime—my mother, my husband, and my best friend who died without a will and no close relatives other than a father in a nearby nursing home. A good matriarch leaves her family with clear instructions and arrangements. Hopefully at some earlier time, recognizing the possibility of becoming a widowed matriarch, she has boned up on finances so she is prepared to take on that kind of responsibility.  Being an economist with an independent career, that was not a challenge for me, but it has been for many women of my generations.

I have chosen a green burial and intend to purchase a plot in the near future.  I have updated my will and compiled all my passwords, accounts, and other financial instructions to hand over to my executor—the art major daughter with a recently added MBA and a good head for money. I am prepared to relinquish my townhouse and my car in favor of an independent living apartment in the not too distant future. In t e meantime. I work hard at maintaining my health and managing my resources, asking for (or paying for) help when I need it. I keep my mind and spirit active and engaged with a circle of friends and communities of shared interest.

Bering a matriarch is and is not about power. It is the commitment to be a responsible adult to the very end, living life to the fullest within the growing constraints imposed by an aging body. It is the power to support, affirm, and love my children and their spouses and children without trying to control their lives.  It’s also about joy. Healthy, retired adults have a great deal of freedom and opportunity to try new ventures, renew and enjoy old friendships and develop new ones, accompany friends on the journey of aging, explore new ideas, and often mentor some of the next generations who share their interests and value their wisdom.  It is joy for me of seeing two generations of woman children grow into responsible, confident, competent, joyful human beings living rich and meaningful lives and dealing with the challenges in thoughtful and responsible ways.

May each of you live long enough to become a Matriarch or Patriarch and to enjoy it to the fullest. As Robert Browning wrote, “grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.”