The Pope's Love in Truth, his third letter to the bishops of the world, is written in the context of the current global economic crisis. The
Pope views the current crisis as an opportunity for us to discern and
to create a new vision for our future. In his latest encyclical, he
doesn't focus on specific systems of economics or reconstructing the
global economy. Instead, he reminds us that our markets are shaped by
our culture, and that it is up to us to focus on the common good and
reconstruct our societies and cultures based on 'love of truth', rather
than 'crude materialism'.
"Economy and finance . . . can be used badly when those at the helm are
motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in
themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is
man's darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the
instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that
must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and
their personal and social responsibility."
Read the encyclical here. Read Father Sirico's opinion here.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
I am in Kiev, Ukraine this week. This is
my first time here. In fact, it is the first time I have been in this
part of the world or to a country using the Cyrillic alphabet. I am not
prepared to write a travelogue since I just arrived a day ago, but
sometimes first impressions are fleeting but useful. In this case, my
first impressions are reflections on an ‘old’ country that (from what I
can tell) has yet to be discovered by the tourism industry. Even at one
of Ukraine’s annual festivals, I see few foreigners and most that I do
see are reportedly from neighboring Russia.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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kiev
By Jim Selman | Bio
I just finished reading a piece in the Jan/Feb issue of the Utne Reader called Overcoming Fear Culture and Fear Itself
by Julie Hanus. It is a great commentary on how our society has become
wracked with all sorts of fears. She points to the fact that fear is a
major fuel for lots of politicians and businesses, but that we pay a
very large price to create an illusion of safety. The price is not just
the billions we spend on physical security. It is also the isolation we
create for ourselves when we don’t trust each other, the spiritual
angst we encounter when we lack confidence in ourselves and our
‘reality’, and the kind of withdrawal/denial (and even paralysis) that
comes after long periods of stress and worry.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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The Science Daily reports that cultural expectations impact the benefits of intergenerational support. Intergenerational Support and Depression Among Elders in Rural China: Do Daughters-In-Law Matter?, a study published in the July 2008 Journal of Marriage and Family,
stated that in the province of Anhui in rural China, assistance from
daughters-in-law with household chores and personal care created fewer
depressive symptoms in elders than that offered by sons and daughters.
The report's authors, Dr. Zhen Cong and Professor Merrill Silverstein
of the USC Davis School of Gerontology, found this was most evident in
situations where daughters-in-law co-resided with their husband's
parents. In traditional rural Chinese society, the efforts of a son's
wife are seen and accepted as meaningful contributions. Almost
two-thirds of China's older population lives in rural areas, making it
the largest concentration of elders in the world. Considering that
Chinese society is changing, elders will be disadvantaged if they don't
adjust their expectations about the appropriateness of support from
their children.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at News
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I was talking with a fellow recently who was asking why this blog is
called Serene Ambition™. He thought that the two words didn't seem to
go together. He could get 'serenity' and also understand 'ambition',
but together they made no sense to him. In our normal way of relating
to the world, you can have serenity (meaning inner peace, calmness,
maybe even joy) or you can be ambitious (meaning committed to creating
or accomplishing something in the future)—but not both together. In some ways, we might say these two terms label the best of East and West.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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By Shae Hadden | Bio
The premise being that we CAN talk it through…
This is the question that epitomizes the possibility that the World
Café represents. It is the question that informs Anne Dosher, the
80-something ‘Elder’ of the World Café and Board member of the World
Café Community Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to developing and
disseminating this and other innovative dialogue approaches. I recently
had the privilege of interviewing this gracious, generous and engaging
lady—the human embodiment of what I imagined the World Café phenomena
itself to be—with a few inquiries of my own.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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I was watching the CBS show “Sunday Morning” on the weekend and it had
a segment on the dying art of conversation. The point was that with all
our technology and almost real-time connections available with email,
handhelds and social networking sites, people seem to have lost the
ability to have conversations. It was a thought-provoking and, I think,
mostly true observation about what is happening to us. The show also
showcased a new book by Stephen Miller called Conversation: A History of a Declining Art. The program drove home the fact that we may be communicating more than
ever, but we’re conversing less and less. Various people were
interviewed and all agreed that we’re losing (perhaps have already
lost) what may be one of the most basic and pleasurable aspects of
life.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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 By Lauren Selman | Bio
I
recently watched one of my favorite shows, "Sex in the City." This show
features four protagonists that constantly prove that 30 is the new 20
and uncovers their relationships in the city of New York. In this
particular episode, the older women were poignantly juxtaposed against
young starlettes to emphasis they're "getting older". The plot
circulated around the question about aging that Carrie posed at the top
of the episode: "Does getting older mean getting wiser?" I
feel that, in the discussion of aging, the concepts of "getting older"
are synonymous with "getting wiser." But is this really the case? [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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I am perplexed by the fact that companies have been laying off older
workers for years as part of various downsizing projects. I understand
the drive to cut costs. Under normal demographic conditions, laying off
older workers would even make some sense from a strictly financial
point of view, since they generally command higher salaries than
younger workers. The fact is, however, that those same companies are
moaning about shortages of qualified people and the difficulties
they’re having in recruiting really good people. They often resort to
paying more for younger workers or having to hire older workers back as
“consultants” at even higher rates of pay than they would receive had
they stayed on the payroll. Moreover, aside from this financial shell game, corporations are often
blind to their real costs in terms of what they lose when they lose
their mature workforce.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Retirement
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For a long time, I have had the point of view that one of the biggest
problems of aging in our contemporary culture is that it leads most
people towards a ‘state of resignation’. Resignation is the mood we can
get caught in when we ‘give up’, when we stop living into the future as
possibility. It is the mood of succumbing to the belief that
circumstances are bigger than we are. It is a mood of defeat that
generates comments like: “Why bother since we can’t do anything about
it anyway?” It should not be confused with conscious acceptance of ‘the
things I cannot change’. Acceptance (surrender) is voluntary;
resignation is not. [ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at News
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