An interesting conversation with a 92-year-old lady yesterday in a bookstore. Surprised me when she volunteered that she was 92. I think she had just come from the hairdresser or an expensive clothier. Maybe both. She was looking for a non-fiction or political book to stimulate her thinking.

“Things don’t look good for our country,” she said. So, we talked politics. One of her friends saw her and invited her to lunch. She postponed lunch so she could finish her conversation with me. Nice!

She kept referring to “Grandpa.” I assumed she was using a nick name for her husband, or some influencer I should know. No. She was quoting and talking about her grandfather. Do some math. What calendar years would her Grandpa have been talking about when he sowed wisdom and information into this lady? Do you suppose he ever said, “When I was your age…”? “Grandpa” could have referenced his life in the late 1800s. What could he have told her that still stands up in April 2022?

The lady told me one of her questions is whether she should have paid for her grandson’s college years. “No common sense”—among other things. Given what I perceived as a hunger for knowledge and what other people are thinking and writing, it is interesting to me that she quoted her Grandpa and not her father or grandson.

Grandfathering and Grandmothering has changed.

I wonder if that lady decided her postponed lunch date was the wisest choice. I know our chat set me on a search for those things I learned from my grandparents—or someone’s grandparents—and the things to which I wish we all would have paid more attention.

My entire life, at least from my earliest recollection, I have heard the biblical prophecies of a cashless society and the one-world government: the motivation for and the bad outcome. I heard stories of the Great Depression. I wish grandparents would have been clearer about the causes that would make sense in the 1920s and the 2020s. More certainly, to what our culture should be paying closer attention.

Two of my non-fiction ebooks have been published in the past six weeks. (Seizin the Season and “Mining for Reality & Truth).  A novel—The Carafe Conspiracy—is waiting for me to finish the last section. A half-dozen years ago, I heard someone say they were committed to “Walking beside” and “Pouring into.” I wondered exactly what it is that will benefit the people we walk beside. What shall we pour into them? And what is the source of those life-productive resources and relationships?

This is where I am so far. Besides, “I love you,” I want my grandchildren to quote me about:

• RIGHTEOUSNESS—Personal alignment with God, Truth, Reality.
• REDEMPTION—Of all things, nations, tribes, and people lost.
• RESILIENCY—Ability to discern, bounce back and stick with it.
• RESPECT—For all life, personal property, people’s opinion & experience. Empathy. Revealed Truth and instruction.
• RESOURCEFULNESS—Aimed at preparation, solutions, strategies, critical thinking.
• RHYTHMS—Life seasons; being present to laughter, tears, celebration, silence.

The rhythm section must include March Madness, open day of baseball season, time by a body of water.

What would you add to this list?

Papa Dean

©2022 D. Dean Benton