Once in a while I’m asked about my religious roots. I typically say that the beginning was my dad taking us to a Pentecostal church starting when I was about 8 years old, followed by mom’s bringing us into the Roman Catholic fold.
[You can imagine how eye-to-eye they were on matters of religion.]
But when I recently heard a version of How Great Thou Art it occurred to me that that wasn’t actually the beginning.
Dating back to as far as I can remember, before church-going days, we watched Billy Graham crusades every time they were televised.
All five of us kids were instructed to sit around our black and white antennaed TV to hear the word of the Lord from my father’s favorite evangelist.
If any of you have ever watched those broadcasts, you’ll know that George Beverly Shea would always sing How Great Thou Art. It was hands-down the highlight of the program for me, giving me goosebumps every time.
I can’t say I remember much about the content of the preaching, except for one done on the Ten Commandments.
What I remember about that was thinking, “Man, there’s a whole lot of things that we are NOT supposed to do!”
While a lot has changed religiously for me since then, one thing that hasn’t changed in these 50-some years is how struck I am by the official set of rules speaking so heavily to the no-no’s.
The 10 Commandments tell us what NOT to do if we want to be ‘good’ in this life. Minus, that is, the two commandments that call us to honor God and our parents.
Suffice it to say, the Ten Commandments are mostly reactive against those listed perils, but not proactive with guidance about what to do.
I have a solution for this, though… a supplement to the Ten Commandments known as The Power 9 (which gives us the to-do’s).
Allow me to explain. Longevity expert Dan Buettner examined the world’s regions with the longest-living people, where people are 10 times more likely to reach the age of 100…
including areas of Italy, Greece, Costa Rica, Japan, and a Seventh Day Adventist community in Loma Linda, California.
Based on his research he came up with the 9 common characteristics of all these groups whose lives were unusually extensive, not only in length, but also in fulfillment.
Of the nine, there are the usual suspects…diet observances like eat less meat, include a bit of wine, don’t overstuff yourself…well-known physical health ‘rules.’
Then there was lesser known physical health… Move Naturally: Don’t Overdo It
Trade in the robust workouts for low-impact, frequent movement such as gardening, walking or biking short distances instead of driving. Trade in your convenient power tools like leaf blowers for rakes. Do hobbies that allow you to move your body.
Starting to move a bit away from physicality (but not completely), the next is Downshift: Keep it Mellow (aka, de-stress).
We all have stress, and we all know it derails us. While no one can live stress-free, these folks mindfully incorporate more stress-reducing habits into their daily routines than others.
It’s whatever method works best for you. The Japanese set aside a few minutes every day to remember their ancestors. The California Adventists are out west praying. The Greeks take daily naps, while Italians sip their wine at happy hour.
Their next characteristic takes a deeper dive…clarity about your life’s purpose.
The Costa Ricans call it plan de vida, your reason for being… why you wake up.
On JUST this nuanced factor alone, a study showed that those with the lowest life purpose scores were twice as likely to die than those with the highest scores.
With numbers like that I have to ask you, what currently brings your life purpose? Volunteer work? Meaningful activities in your workplace? Your relationships?
If you can’t identify it, let’s talk, because we all want you around longer.
And speaking of ‘we,’ the next long-and-full-life characteristic has to do with us…belonging to a community.
In this study 263 centenarians (100-year-olds) were interviewed, and 98% of them regularly participate in their church…some faith-based community.
Of all the Power 9 stats, this one blew my socks off most… that attending church four-ish times monthly can increase life expectancy by up to 14 years!
Don’t worry, though, you don’t have to listen to me that often. It’s not specific to faith-based groups. It can be any social setting.
But it has to be a meaningful one.
They give belonging to the ‘community’ of one’s family its own subset as one of the nine, so important is nurturing closeness with your family.
This ranges from your partner to your Granny or your toddler great nephew, to your adult kids across the country raising their own families.
Then the Power Niners take things a step further, an ever deeper dive.
They call the next characteristic Right Circles: Getting What You Give.
This is not only about having connections with others, but having the right ones. This means surrounding yourself with a close inner circle where everyone mutually and actively supports each other’s ways of being in the world.
You’ve heard parents talking about their kids running in the wrong crowd.
This is the opposite…adults running in the right crowd…so right that healthy behavior is heralded and bad ones are lovingly called out.
So you’ve got connectedness and informal life coaches rolled into one!
In Okinawa there is such a moais group where five friends have been together 97 years (their average age was 102). They still met daily to gossip and drink sake.
These are the things underneath fully living according to life experts. Their ‘must-do’ rules aren’t about living long but about living well. The long part just naturally follows.
Let’s go back for a moment to consider our religious ‘must-do’ commandments.
Like all 9 of the Power 9 rules, there are two proactive commandments instructing us to honor God and our parents (which is code for everyone).
That’s all well and good, but it leaves out the third piece of the holy trifecta. There’s God, there’s others, and then there’s oneself.
The 2 things the Ten Commandments tell us to do are for others. But there’s no mention of what to do for ourselves.
Our 3-legged stool is going to be imbalanced if we’re short on one.
Leave it to Jesus, our carpenter, to take care of the wonky stool. We haven’t talked about his commandment yet, and according to him, it’s the best one of all!
I agree because, unlike the other 10, it doesn’t overlook the ‘me’ piece.
When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment is, he replied that we are to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.
He didn’t overlook that ‘me’ piece, but we mostly do; or I should say, I usually do.
When I hear ‘Love God and love your neighbor as yourself’ I’m not thinking about self-love. I’m thinking about needing to be nice to people. It’s about them, not me.
And that, my friends, is a massive oversight…a recipe for an imbalanced stool.
Stepping back from all this for a moment, you might be asking yourself why this message is coming during Lent, when sacrifice, giving up things is the focus.
Self-help and self-sacrifice don’t really jive, do they?
If we think Lent’s bottom-line is about sacrifice, we’ve missed the boat. The point of Lent is invitation to grow. It is just that simple…to find liberation in who we were created to be, and be rooted in that, not unlike trees.
While that sounds off-handed, let’s consider this for a moment.
Have you ever thought about how trees grow in two directions at the same time…growing down and growing up?
I learned two new words recently…gravitropic and phototropic.
Roots are gravitropic, growing away from light and down into the darkness of the earth before it starts growing up. There’s resistance because the roots push downward through the soil.
When it finally begins to grow upward it’s liberated from resistance, and this part of its growth is phototropic – defying gravity and growing up toward the light.
As much a lesson in Botany, it’s a lesson for our lives.
The above-soil version is what people see. But it’s the grounded (in-ground) part evolving in the dark privacy of our inner lives that creates that enlightened part.
Trees have much to teach us. You hear it in these words of Mary Oliver…
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come into the world to do this,
to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
It is simple. Do you notice how Mary’s message about the trees is like the characteristics of the Power 9 folks?
Go easy, don’t overdo. Walk slowly. Find your people. Find your purpose. Be-long. And then perhaps be-here-long. Yes, stay awhile.
We make things harder, more complicated, than they have to be, trying to figure out how to be good.
This is what Lent invites us to – finding our way back to who and how we were created to be. That’s not only the point of Lent, but the point of our lives.
I’ll leave you with one other reference to dear Mary, from her The Summer Day poem…
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
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