There are moments in life when believing in anything feels impossible. Perhaps you’ve lost someone dear and the world feels emptier. Perhaps the suffering you’ve witnessed makes the idea of a loving God seem distant, even cruel. Perhaps you’ve simply looked at the noise and division and thought, “How can anyone be certain of anything?” […]

 Sometimes, when people say they aren’t worried, they really are. I have learned this over years of sitting across from people, listening to what they say and trying to hear what they don’t. It happens in living rooms and coffee shops, at community centre tables and on park benches. Someone will lean back in their […]

Look around you. I mean it. Stop for a moment, right where you are, and just look. If you are reading this in your home, look at the walls that have held steady through countless seasons. Look at the photographs on the shelf, the frozen moments of laughter, of gatherings, of people you have loved. […]

 I told my friend I was feeling useless, so he suggested I try volunteering at the retirement home. I said, “But I’m 78 years old.”He said, “Perfect. You can answer the front desk phone.”I said, “But I don’t know how to use the new system.”He said, “Don’t worry. Neither does anyone who calls.” I asked […]

I want to talk with you today about something the research on volunteering does not say directly but implies in every finding. Something we have danced around in our previous conversations but have not yet named plainly. The people you will serve through volunteering may not be ready to receive you. They may be suspicious. […]

I want to share something with you today that made my heart smile. Not because it is new news to most of us who have lived a while, but because it is wonderful when science catches up with what our grandmothers told us all along. A comprehensive review of decades of research on volunteering has […]

 There is something magical about the moment we wake up from a dream. Perhaps you have had one of those nights. You are walking along a quiet path, and suddenly the scene changes. A friend appears who you have not seen in years. A door opens onto a landscape you have never visited. In dreams, […]

 I have been sitting with something these past few days, something that keeps circling back to me like a bird looking for a place to land. It came to me in the middle of the night, as these things often do when you are my age and sleep comes in pieces rather than in whole cloth. […]

 I have been thinking about what I wrote yesterday, about life being a question and our job being to answer. And I have been thinking about the emails and phone calls I have received since, from people my age who nodded along but admitted something I think we all feel sometimes. “I know I should […]

 As seniors, we have lived through more seasons than we can count. We have seen the world through war and peace, through depression and prosperity. I, like you went through times when the newspaper landed on the porch with news that made my father sigh, and times when it brought stories that made my mother […]