There's a truth of life that more and more people are telling me about from their own experience. To be sure, these people are mostly my own age, so we are considering that last third of life with which my Boomer Handbook is concerned.

The observed truth of life I am talking about is simply that when you reach a certain age, say from 55 or so on, if you don't move forward, you move backward.

Sometimes I just want to stay where I am -- treading water in the memories and also the accomplishments of my life's second third. But treading water is not what actually happens. Drowning is what happens! You regress, whether you want to or not, and it's easy to end up like Miss Bates's mother in Jane Austen's Emma, staring all day into space. You are somewhere but you're definitely not ... where you are.

This cast is about the anchorage and possibility of hope, hope for a real and concrete future. I get given some good counsel from a novel by Joyce Cary (d. 1957) -- who was, incidentally, a conscious Low Church Anglican -- and report on Pastor Paula's enduring gift to me.

There's also some nice parsing, courtesy of Sheila Schwartz, of "Little Bit O'Soul" (The Music Explosion, 1967). Not to mention the last track, one of the most concise and delightful rock 'n roll hits of all time.

Oh, and the Gospel of complete forgiveness comes into it, too.

LUV U!