November 25, 2016

Terri Maragos donated two books to our Congregational Care Library from a recent Art of Aging conference at the Hoffman Center. Both books touch on the importance of learning to accept help from others.

Personal Safety Nets: Getting Ready for Life’s Inevitable Changes and Challenges by Dr. John W. Gibson and Judy Pigott, Classic Day Publishing, 2007.

Dr. John Gibson, a counselor who focuses on aging and families, and Judy Pigott, a teacher with experience in creating communities that nurture participants physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, demonstrate through real-life stories the benefits of creating a care-share team.

They cite several barriers to people asking for help, including these questions and fears:

• What if they say no?
• In our family we take care of our own.
• I don’t want to be “beholden” to anyone.
• If I ask for help, I’ll look weak.
• I should be able to take care of myself.

The authors suggest we practice asking for help while we are able to take care of ourselves.

Counting on Kindness: The Dilemmas of Dependency by Wendy Lustbader, The Free Press, 1991.

This book is written both for dependent people and for those who assist them. Wendy Lustbader, a medical social worker and mental health counselor, shows through true stories how to regain a sense of power and purpose while dependent on others. She writes, “The expectation that we will be able to count on kindness during our time of need becomes one of life’s most sustaining convictions.” Like the authors of Personal Safety Nets, she urges readers to learn to accept help: “Accepting help from others and allowing them to feel that their contributions are significant is its own generosity.”

I encourage you to check out one of these books.

Phyllis Mannan
Congregational Care Coordinator

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St Catherine’s Authors Series

Another offering from our talented authors and artists: Kay Stoltz reflects on the Manzanita Tornado.

Nature’s Whim

Above the village, we watch; frightened, awe struck.
Wind slams trees, they bend, flip back, branches tossed; down, up, whirling, spinning in a furious dance. The house shudders, settles. Rain pelts, the din furious on the metal roof. A single drop, drop, drop from water gathered on the chimney cover is counterpoint to the assault. Rivers of water flow down the hill. Crash, crash, hail, golf ball size, adds a bass note.

Clouds gather, gray, black, moving faster. One emerges, whirling round, round. What? A tail? No, a funnel! Moving furiously from the ocean east over our village.

Cell phone buzzes: texts come in. What’s happening? You OK? Online, posts of the cloud/tornado as it comes. Horror, relentless, on unsuspecting souls who expected the morning topic to be what’s for breakfast.

… Read it all here.

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