Accept and Receive...how I'm doing retirement...so far...

Still practicing in the Key of E. Been about a month now and beginning to move into some new patterns. My fingers got stuck doing the same old same old. Easier than changing, just playing the same old same old. Kind of a parable for life before retirement. Now, life after retirement presents its own challenges. Create your own routine or not. Keep doing what you were doing only for free, or not. Or, you can grieve.

Retirement is first and foremost a huge loss, big loss. I have 8 file drawers of over 25 years of sermon resources. I carefully filed all that stuff every week. I used the lectionary as my filing system. My files run from Advent 1 to Christ the King Sunday and there are three years in the cycle; so I have 52 files times 3 plus a lot of extra files for such things as Stewardship and other topical material. My favorite topics seemed to be the spiritual exercises I found most difficult: forgiving and prayer and grief. I can hold a grudge with the best of them. I've never found a pattern of prayer I can practice for any length of time. I  am an instrumental griever, not naturally, but when I shut down my emotional grieving, my grief worked its way into the other channel - which is "work". Instrumental grievers dig the grave for the dog, while the emotional grievers shed all the tears and tell the sentimental stories. Anyway, retirement is a loss and losses must be grieved: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and somewhere down the line, acceptance. 

Someone has said acceptance of one's self and one's total picture: good, bad, successes and failures and all those ordinary, average days that seem to fill in between the highs and the lows, acceptance of all you were and did is the best gift you can give your future. Acceptance clears the way for receiving the help the universe has waiting for you in the morning, and in your dreams tonight. Sweet dreams. 

Keep playing in the Key of E. E minor is good too!