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Editorial, Summer 2003 issue of PAGES:
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"Looking Around Me"
“What if we erased ‘Christian’ from our vocabulary and substituted ‘little Christ’?” I admit it was a new thought for me when Jimmy Carter asked the question while he spoke to those gathered together for the MC USA’s convention on the eve of July 4. Was I ready to be called a ‘little Christ’? Did I dare to claim this amazing identity? In the preface to the book reviewed on page 3, Fifty Years, Fifty Stories, author Omar Eby quotes J. B. Phillips: “It is not usually the atheists and agnostics who are to be found fighting disease, ignorance, and fear in the most dangerous and difficult parts of the world. ... The seeds of this paradoxical attitude are scattered throughout the New Testament.”
Now I wonder — this column is intended to encourage older adults to think fitness and health and play — for a change of pace. I am suggesting that the readers of this little quarterly newsletter reach out for true fun with music and story in early September.
Note the announcement of the fourth “Aging with Spirit” retreats — scheduled first at Amigo Centre in Sturgis, Michigan and a few days later at Laurelville Church Center — don’t miss that little 10% discount on the retreat costs offered to any “paid-up” member!
I am absolutely expecting joy and delight as we gather to hear all about Mennonite World Conference which, “the Lord willing” (or “inshallah” as I learned to say it in Egypt), will have occurred a few weeks earlier — far off in Zimbabwe. Some of you will experience even more concretely this joyful occasion as you travel the distance to share it with our African sisters and brothers And I trust others will come to laugh, cry, sing, walk and talk together during these three-day events. So what will it mean to be “little Christ’s” as we gather together?
And next summer we look ahead to another Mennonite Senior Sports Classic. Can celebrating fitness and good sportsmanship be included in this identity as a “little Christ”? Perhaps you too have seen the artist’s depiction of Jesus smiling as he throws horseshoes with some friends — can we imagine it? Have we really heard the humor Jesus regularly slipped into many situations and stories? Most of us want to keep trying to find the balance between working/serving and renewing our minds and bodies.
MSSC 2004 will be a time of friendship-building, running, power walking, biking, batting, hitting or tossing balls down a lane, over nets or through hoops — or simply cheering for all these exercise “nuts,” and strengthening our “funny bones” — and learning. Everyone who came in 2002 asked us to do it again! Keep tuned for this fourth sports classic for older adults of “the Anabaptist persuasion.” We are asking Eastern Mennonite University to host this a second time. And some of you will be called upon to help it to happen once more. Good health and fitness adds “life to our years” and could also add years to demonstrate God’s love.
Pages editorial (Summer 2003)
— Helen L. Lapp
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