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Have your interests changed over the years?
It's interesting to look back and see how our interests change over the years. It's really a fluke that my husband was willing to go 3 days last week without my good cooking and company at the lake house just so he could sail! And with other old guys who have been sailing most of their adult lives, too! In the fall of 2004 I won sailing lessons by entering my sugar-free apple pie in a fall festival at Lakeside. I had no interest in getting wet, so my husband decided to use the $65 award for lessons in summer 2005. It turns out he loves sailing and is good at it, although he had never shown any interest before. In a few weeks he is going to take the advanced course (same instructor).
I'd never heard of blogging until the fall of 2003, and now I have eleven blogs, and am totally out of control. But that's not such a big stretch. I'd always written essays and long letters to my family and friends, and in the 90s began writing fiction and poetry. Research and publication were a requirement for my job at Ohio State University Libraries. So blogging is just a different way to publish and chat without the pressure of a deadline or peer review. However, blogging was a bit of a fluke also in that I started because I didn't like the harassment on the Usenet groups.
My husband had been an exercise instructor at the downtown YMCA for many years when he was a partner in Feinknopf, Macioce and Schappa. When he became a sole practitioner with a home office, he joined an aerobics class at UALC, our church--the only guy. The women were mostly young moms, and they invited him to become a Bible School teacher which he did. He taught VBS for 13 years and found out that he loved teaching children. And now he leads the women's aerobics class, too.
For about 20 years I was totally consumed with my children's lives--feeding, teaching, health, values, friends, schooling, teen angst, various crises, and finally the dreaded empty nest when I had to find another focus. Then from 1986 it was my reconnection with a career, promotion and tenure, conferences, organizations, publication, etc.
Thirty years ago I would have never dreamed that topics like retirement, 401-k plans, osteoporosis, nutrition or exercise could become so interesting. My reading tastes have changed completely--in fact, on Thursday I think I'll tell you 13 things about JAMA.
There were other life changes too--moving from being a humanist liberal/Democrat to a conservative Christian/Democrat to a Christian/conservative, for instance. Spiritual and social changes really rearrange your activities and friendships. Some things never changed--I never believed in evolution even though I was taught nothing else from first grade through graduate school and could fake it in science and biology classes, and I've never believed abortion was a just solution for either mother or child. Unlike many conservatives, I think the culture's gone too far to outlaw either one regardless of incredulity or cruelty to the unborn. Those two issues are very political, yet I've not swerved on them from liberal to conservative.
As a liberal I would work for social issues because I believed I could change other people's behavior and morals and make a better society. Liberals have an incredible smugness about their own power. (Living with teen-agers changed that closely held belief.) As a conservative, I no longer believe that, but am often involved in the same activities just because it is the right and Christian thing to do. Matthew 25 commands followers of Jesus to visit the sick and imprisoned and to feed and clothe the poor, not to change human society, but because those people are Jesus in the flesh.
"And when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?" And the King will answer and say to them [on his right], "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me." And He will also say to those on His left, "Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me." (NASB)
As a liberal I had no hope or good news to offer anyone except maybe training for a job, or a Sunday visit during a prison term, or holding their hand as they died. Really temporal, cultural stuff. Not much in the scope of things is it? Not that conservative Christians are always politically conservative (I wasn't for a long time), or even that they do what Jesus explicitly commanded. However, study after study have shown that a solid belief in the work of Jesus on the cross on our behalf creates a much more generous and open spirit, than a socialist or humanist mentality, which seems to create more turmoil, dissension and a stingy spirit. But even if the research and polls didn't say that, he will know a sheep from a goat (Matt. 25:32-33), and I want to be sure that the good news comes first.
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