When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary.

Our lives can't be measured by our final years, of this I am sure.

What did you do for them, Bone? Teach them to read and write? Help them rebuild, give them Christ, help restore a culture? Did you remember to warn them that it could never be Eden?

Old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Discipline

I am old and I have had
more than my share of good and bad.

I've had love and sorrow, seen sudden death
and been left alone and of love bereft.

I thought I would never love again
and I thought my life was grief and pain.

The edge between life and death was thin,
but then I discovered discipline.

I learned to smile when I felt sad,
I learned to take the good and the bad,
I learned to care a great deal more
for the world about me than before.

I began to forget the "Me" and "I"
and joined in life as it rolled by:
this may not mean sheer ecstasy
but is better by far than "I" and "Me.

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.