Confucius apparently said “Chose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” I taught history and religion at St. Paul’s High School, an all boys senior high school in Winnipeg operated by the Jesuits. It was not always roses and the students were certainly not all angels, but I really enjoyed my 40 years of teaching. However, 10 years after retiring I still worry about what I should be doing.

Canada today is a free, First World country (second largest in area in the world with a relatively small population), at peace, with lots of potential. Admittedly, it gets a little chilly in Winnipeg from November till April, but this is a country that approximately 250,000 people immigrate to every year because of Canada’s bright future. We have both a national health care plan and a pension plan.

Thanks to my wife’s work outside the home and our personal investments, we have been blessed with a comfortable life style. I am in relatively good health. We have adult children and grand children and enough money to visit them.

Perhaps one of the down sides for me of this huge, mobile country is that because of the job market, none of our “children” live in our city. However, daily phone calls, Skype, email pictures and the luxury of jet plane travel allow us to keep some form of connection with our family. We even have enough money to travel outside Canada. So…why do I worry about what I should be doing in retirement?

Do I have too much spare time and not enough volunteer work? Is it time for me to go on a “news diet” and stop reading and watching all the news about the damaging world environment we seem to be leaving our grand children?…or the poverty of First Nations people in Canada?…or the vicious attacks of ISIS?….or the growing gap between the rich and poor?…or the apparent inability of governments to “solve” these problems? Is it time for me to work for more incremental change?…to pray and meditate more?

We are all different, and thus for each of us retirement is an existentialist activity. However, both serious and funny advice on retirement comes from many  friends EG) find a new “vocation” in building the Kingdom of God, look after your money and your health, go south in the winter, take up a new hobby, ask for a seniors’ discount. Save your own soul by saving others. Keep your faith and your sense of humour.

And just when I think I have incorporated and balanced all this wisdom, life continues throwing curve balls at me. Memory seems slower, new aches and pains arise. More “seniors’ moments” occur. Friends and family members move away and some of them die. Faithful old dogs die. The golden years don’t seem fun. Too soon we get old…too soon we get smart.

One of the greatest English writers, John Milton (1608-1674) grappled with his retirement. As a younger man he had lived and written during the Puritan Commonwealth Revolution of Oliver Cromwell. Then, Milton’s first 2 wives died and he became blind. He overcame these difficulties by dictating his verse and prose to his helpers.  Eventually he produced Paradise Lost in 1667 and other famous works. But it is Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness” that has influenced my thoughts on retirement:     

                “When I consider how my light is spent

                Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

                And that one talent which is death to hide

                Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent

                To serve therewith my Maker…”

At this point in the sonnet, his deep faith in God helps Milton to accept his problem….

               “God doth not need either man’s work or his own gifts….

                 They also serve who only stand and wait.”

 Maybe Milton’s statement of faith is the key for me to understand retirement.

 If I really believe that God created me and loves me, in spite of all my weaknesses….and if I really believe that God will be with me as I try to build the Kingdom, doesn’t this love continue even after my retirement when I am older and perhaps not as strong or fast or healthy? Yes! My life is a continuum and God is still with me!

 So I will continue to “love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself “in my retirement. I will find a community who will support my faith and I will find new ways of building the Kingdom. All my life God has blessed me. I have no clue what is coming in my life, but God does. And when my life in this world is completed, I know that I have been promised a new life with my loving God.

Thank you Lord. Amen.

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Unless indicated, all photos  are courtesy of Richard Grover.