How old do you feel?  My hunch is that most of us feel many years younger than our official age, yet we also embrace every year and decade we’ve lived.

Anne Lamott, popular writer on spiritual topics, notes that distinction between our “paperwork” age and our “inside” age (forgive me for this longish quote, but it’s so good):

“So I sat down a few days before my 61st birthday, and I decided to compile a list of everything I know for sure. . . For instance, I am no longer 47, although this is the age I feel, and the age I like to think of myself as being. My friend Paul used to say in his late 70s that he felt like a young man with something really wrong with him.

Our true person is outside of time and space, but looking at the paperwork, I can, in fact, see that I was born in 1954. My inside self is outside of time and space. It doesn’t have an age. I’m every age I’ve ever been, and so are you, although I can’t help mentioning as an aside that it might have been helpful if I hadn’t followed the skin care rules of the ’60s, which involved getting as much sun as possible while slathered in baby oil and basking in the glow of a tinfoil reflector shield.”  (Hear more from this TED Talk by Anne Lamott)

As we carry “every age we’ve ever been,” we also may feel burdened by regrets from every age — each decade seems equipped with its own temptations and predictable mistakes, starting in our teens (see above, “tinfoil reflector shield”).

This Sunday our guest preacher, the Reverend Denise Welsh, will challenge us, “What is the One Thing I Regret Never Getting to Do?”

And this Thursday, November 14, Denise will be the featured presenter at our second meeting, “What Really Matters,” 3:00 PM at the Monterey Peninsula Country Club.  Ken and I will join her, discussing what we’ve learned about families, funerals, and planning ahead.  You won’t regret attending this important gathering!