Boomers

How to remember and honor those who have died from Covid-19

When we depart this life, must the stories of our existence fade within the passing of a few years? That has been the fate of billions of mortals who have preceded today’s living.

Since the beginning of human history around 50,000 B.C., 108 billion humans have been born. Just over seven billion are living now, or 6.5 percent of all those ever born are still breathing—a tiny fraction when we consider the meteoric growth of world population today.

How much do we know of the 101 billion humans who have preceded us? The majority are nameless, forgotten as if they never lived, merely dust in the wind.

Except for a relative handful of kings, queens, heroes, political leaders, scientists, artists, writers, intellectuals, athletes, and celebrities who have been held in perpetuity through their works or historical documentation by others, the clear majority of human stories have just perished. We know nothing of those masses who have lived and passed on. Most of us do not know anything about the lives and times of our great-great-great grandparents, if even their names.

The First Immortal

Five thousand years ago, in Mesopotamia, the ancient lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers now called Iraq, something miraculous happened in the evolution of our species and its ceaseless battle against temporality. Humans discovered how to write.

Death could no longer silence people after departing their mortal bodies. The written word gave our species the power to reach through millennia and speak inside the heads of those living in the distant future.

Then something else happened, another miracle of self-preservation. Enheduanna, daughter of the first emperor in history, was also the first person known to sign her name to a literary creation.

She lived 4300 years ago, and her gift to humanity was the possibility of immortality that can be bestowed by the written word when assigned to a single visionary author. The writing was no longer nameless, codified thought but personal ownership in the future.

Enheduanna’s name means “Lady Ornament of the Sky.” For centuries after her death, the first author continued to set standards for culture, literature, liturgy hymns, poetry, and religion. Her legacy includes an extensive body of creative output, including forty-two poems, psalms, and prayers that have served as a template for poets, priests, and scribes throughout history.

We know that she existed at a certain point in time. We know what she dreamed. We are aware of her fearlessness and prescience. We know she was a great author, composer, poet, and High Priestess of the ancient Moon God Nanna at temples in the Mesopotamian city-states of Ur and Uruk (Iraq).

Enheduanna lives today, four-and-a-third millennia after she exhaled her final breath. She speaks to us through her creations—and when combined into a complete archive, we have her time capsule filled with revelations that we can contemplate at will.

Permanent Acclaim

A generation ago most unexceptional people, removed from the public eye, could not hope to persist beyond death, except perhaps as represented by a deteriorating marker bearing an irrelevant name, lost somewhere in a cemetery or mausoleum. Without notable personal achievements that would become written documents or audio or video recordings, it was not possible for the majority to survive beyond the grave.

With the advent of the digital age and the extraordinary power and memory of the internet, it is now possible for anyone to write and record their thoughts, dreams, and values for others to read, see, and hear—and with archival preservation, for thousands of years from now. Today, for the first time in human history, anybody can paddle beyond the grave, aiming for the distant shores of time.

Questions to contemplate about your “Immortality Narrative”

• Which of your life lessons are most important to share with your children or other young people in your life?
• Have you been inspired by classic children’s book characters, and, if so, which characters had the most impact on your views and values?
• Who would you most like to attend your last lecture and why are these people most important?
• If you were to be diagnosed with a terminal disease, such as pancreatic cancer, how would you prefer to spend your final months of “functional health,” if granted this time for closure? What would be your priorities?
• What tangible memories about you would you like to leave for future generations, and in what form would these memories be encapsulated? A book or other writing? A video? Artwork? A legacy website?

Excerpted from Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss by Brent Green, Copyright 2017. All Rights Reserved.

A beautiful hit song by Kansas, a progressive rock super-group, helps drive home the point of this blog post. Kerry Livgren, the song's writer and guitarist, was my high school classmate. Kerry has recently published his memoir entitled Miracles Out of Somewhere.

 

To order your copy of Questions of the Spirit, visit the book's Amazon page.

The Peace Sign, Martin Luther King, and the True Significance of April 4th

If you would conduct a worldwide opinion survey to discover one wish for the future of humanity shared across societies and cultures, chances are that universal yearning would be for peace.

A world without war and strife, without sectarian violence, without the omnipresent threat of terrorism, certainly these are among our most cherished but unrequited dreams.

Boomers attached themselves to an idealistic quest for world peace early in their adult lives.

Some demonstrated for peace. Some molded lifestyles eschewing violence, whether through nonviolent civil disobedience or conscientious objection to military service. Some sought to influence national war policies through political engagement. Some joined the military to fight for long-term peace. Some joined the military as clergy or nurses.

The yearning for peace became a theme of many rock and folk songs, with these lyrics among the noteworthy:

Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

— Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

For this generation, peace became a preoccupation.

One icon subsumed their hopes for a better future: the Peace Sign. This graphic image tapped into a collective set of values emerging during a generation's youth, from anti-authoritarian attitudes to youthful thoughts of a more Utopian society. To some it took on inspirational import about moral values similar to symbols of the world's great religions.

With its growing emotional and motivational subtext, the peace symbol eventually became a useful selling tool as businesses refined modern marketing techniques to create a Boomer revolution in product sales. Advertisers quickly recognized the strategic value of co-opting the symbol for product positioning. So-called "head shops" filled initial Boomer-consumer demand by offering peace symbols as stained glass sun catchers, silver necklaces, refrigerator magnets, T-shirts and posters. Eventually so did K-Mart and Walmart.

On April 4, 2018, the peace symbol turns 60.

The story about how it has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the Boomer generation is significant.

In the spring of 1958, Gerald Holtom, a textile designer and graphic artist from Great Britain, set out to create a mark that could be used at protest events pressing for nuclear disarmament. In perhaps one of the most inspired days of identity design during the 20th century, the artist brought together semaphore symbols for N and D, surrounded by a circle representing the globe.  

On April 4th, five-thousand people gathered at Trafalgar Square in London to support the Ban the Bomb movement and to protest testing and stockpiling of fissionable materials by the world's largest industrial powers. It was on this day that Holtom's memorable icon made its debut.

Protesters walked a few miles from the square to Aldermaston, location of an atomic weapons research facility. Their placards carried the succinct message of protest in this new and undefined symbol. Yet it needed no explanation, whether viewers understood the symbolic implications or not. Reactions were not always positive; some saw Lucifer in the logo.

The peace symbol quickly spread to other protest movements representing opposition to the Vietnam War, the quest for civil rights, a growing outcry against environmental degradation, and spirited marches for gender and sexual equality. The symbol persisted through Vietnam and onward into the debates about two wars in Iraq.

The peace symbol even emerged during a nationwide protest inspired by today's youth, called March for Our Lives.

Hundreds of thousands of young and old gathered in cities across the nation to assert their impassioned pleas for stricter gun control laws. They also honored seventeen students and faculty members massacred February 14, 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. 

The peace symbol received overdue commemoration in a book published in April 2008 by the National Geographic Society, PEACE: The Biography of a Symbol. Author Ken Kolsbun observed that the symbol "continues to exert almost hypnotic appeal. It's become a rallying cry for almost any group working for social change."

Ironically, April 4, 2018 is also the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This callous slaying represents the severest liabilities of peaceful efforts to further social and political progress.

A pivotal figure in the American civil rights movement, Dr. King personified one facet of a grassroots peace movement with nonviolent protest marches, speeches and rallies. And the symbol marched with him through Selma and Montgomery, Washington D.C. and New York, and finally to his destiny with a bullet in Memphis, allegedly fired by James Earl Ray.

April 4, 2018 is a good day for pause: to contemplate a symbol and how near or far Western society is from achieving the dream of peace. And it is a day to recall one of the most revered leaders in the history of the nation: how he knowingly sacrificed his life in pursuit of some noble ideals represented by a symbol.

 

Where have all the flowers gone? by Pete Seeger, covered by Kingston Trio

Boomers Are Ready and Willing to Engage Churches in a New Ministry Movement

Churches have had declining attendance for several decades, and today only 20% of Americans attend weekly services. Between 4,000 and 7,000 churches close their doors yearly.

Can churches turn this around?

In my keynote address at a national conference for leaders of The United Methodist Church, appropriately called Boomerstock, I emphasized novel generational strategies, coupled with intelligent branding and marketing tactics.

My recommendations boil down to two fundamental marketing principles: 1) understand the target market — in this case Baby Boomers — through nuanced psychological and sociological insights; and 2) develop the product and evolve branding to satisfy market needs, including current religious, spiritual and socioemotional motivations.

Boomers, as they are today, must become the renewed priority of churches. Dr. Steve McSwain, religious thought leader and communications professor at the University of Kentucky, stressed this demographic priority in his Huffington Post article:

America is aging. Go into almost any traditional, mainline church in America, observe the attendees and you’ll quickly see a disproportionate number of gray-headed folks in comparison to all the others. According to Pew Research, every day for the next 16 years, 10,000 new baby boomers will enter retirement. If you cannot see where this is headed, my friend, there is not much you can see.

I would modify Dr. McSwain's conclusions slightly: every day 10,000+ Boomers reach age 65, or traditional retirement age. They do not all retire. Many continue working beyond the traditional retirement age. However, with aging comes renewed interest in deeper existential questions and fundamental religious concerns. Erik Erikson's notion of generativity prevails. Searching for spiritual answers is becoming part of the generational zeitgeist once again, somewhat reminiscent of the spiritual and religious movements of the 1960's and 1970's. The explosive growth of mega-churches showcasing contemporary worship themes is partly testament to this trend.

Boomers today have the money and latent motivations to revitalize churches throughout the nation. This opportunity is awaiting enlightened church leadership ready to envision and co-create religious institutions for the 21st century.  

Here are a few excerpts from my speech:

 

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What Vincent van Gogh Can Teach Boomers (and everyone else) about Failure

Waking from a fitful dream, he struggled out of bed and stumbled to a barred window. From this perspective in the asylum, he beheld a clear night, a large morning star enchanting him. The sight of stars always inspired him. Just as we take a train from Paris to Amsterdam, he thought, we take death to go to a star.

About a year later, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He was 37 years old.

Life started more hopefully for him. He was son of a country minister who valued education. He memorized more than three-fourths of the Bible. As a young man, he lived in Paris and worked for his uncle who was a successful art dealer. He learned and mastered four languages.

He also fell deeply in love with his landlady’s daughter, who rejected him in favor of another. This rejection devastated him and led to his being fired from his uncle’s gallery.

He decided to follow his father’s footsteps and devote his life to God. Preachers being punished by the Methodist Church were often sent off to southern Belgium to coalmining territories where retched conditions prevailed. He volunteered for this assignment, finding special inspiration working with the poor and oppressed. He was quite effective as a spiritual counselor, and the miners nicknamed him “Christ of the Coal Mines.”

Church leaders did not see him as an asset but rather as undignified, so they fired him. Again, he sought refuge in his family and even became captivated by his widowed cousin, Kate. He declared his love for her, which Kate and her parents found repulsive.

Finally, he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to pursuing art. His younger brother saw potential in his paintings and agreed to support him with a monthly stipend. An art dealer, his brother believed the older brother’s paintings might sell in Paris.

During the next ten years, he moved around Europe while befriending artist peers. He started an artist’s union in a town near Paris where notable artists visited and painted with him.

The stipend his brother, Theo, gave him was adequate for living expenses but not for models, canvases, and expensive oil paints. He often lived solely on coffee, cigarettes, bread, and the psychedelic liqueur absinthe. He had a habit of putting his paintbrushes in his mouth, exposing him to lead poisoning. He also sipped turpentine from time to time.

These horrible health practices and the hallucinogenic effects of absinthe contributed to occasional spells of madness and thus the asylum that I described at the beginning of this story.

Yet he worked at a feverish pace. He wrote, “The power of work is a second youth.”

During ten years of prodigious output, he created over 2,100 paintings. Yet he did not gain the favor of rich art collectors. People in the town where he lived treated him viciously and even signed a petition asking government officials for his removal.

During this decade of frenetic work, his younger brother was only able to sell a single painting for the equivalent of $2,300 today.

Vincent van Gogh, who preferred to sign his paintings with just Vincent, felt despondent, lonely, and rejected for most of his adult life. He shot himself in the chest as a final act of self-loathing, although he did not successfully kill himself outright. He died two days later in the arms of his devoted brother, Theo.

Today, we view Vincent as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. The 1889 painting inspired by the clear night while he was in an asylum became known as “The Starry Night” and is housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His painting called “Irises” sold for $54 million dollars at auction. Another painting, a portrait of a doctor who cared for him in the asylum, sold for $83 million dollars.

Vincent’s story can be a lesson for all of us. He went to his grave seeing himself as a loser. He felt unloved, misunderstood, and rejected by all but his younger brother.

Most of us experience some of the pain that followed Vincent through his life. Maybe we fail to achieve our most private dream. Or we lose in love. Or we feel misunderstood. These feelings are part of the human experience.

Vincent’s story teaches us that in the end we may never know the full scope of our impact on the world. Our total influence may emerge after we are gone.

Next time things don’t work out, remember Vincent, an asylum and a painting called “The Starry Night.” It is a priceless masterpiece and one enduring legacy of a downtrodden and defeated man who created the work.

 

 

How A Twelve-Year-Old Girl Ventriloquist Gave Hope to a Dying Man

This is a true story about how 12-year-old Darci Lynne Farmer gave my brilliant next-door neighbor hope for a future he would not live to see. A sparkling YouTube video of the Oklahoma City ventriloquist's audition for America's Got Talent would be the last video he would ever watch. 

When my wife, Becky, and I walked into the Intensive Care Unit at St. Joseph’s Hospital that bright June day, he seemed as lucid as I remembered him during our many conversations and neighborhood gatherings spanning more than two decades. He was engaged, intellectual, funny, and circumspect. His animated chat careened from philosophical to silly, connected to transcendent, and physical to existential.

Herbert I. Jacobson had turned 86 nine months earlier. He looked and seemed to be in his sixties rather than shooting for the tenth decade of life. He never once needed hospitalization throughout his long life, but in May he became dehydrated and required hospital care. After being re-hydrated and stabilized, his physicians sent him home for a quick recovery. Yet he did not get better, and within another week he needed emergency hospitalization, this time for severe electrolyte imbalances. A life-threatening situation spiraled out of control, leading to deterioration of his kidneys and heart. Physicians declared his condition terminal.

Within minutes after our arrival, Herb launched into a conversation that Dr. Robert Butler described as life review. Dr. Butler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and psychiatrist, identified life review as a cathartic process that helps those diagnosed with a terminal condition affirm value and meaning in their lives.

Dedicating Everything He Had to Helping Another Girl, His Daughter

When she was a child, his daughter became inflicted by Gaucher disease (pronounced go-SHAY), more likely in people whose ancestors originate from the Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish population. Herb tirelessly lobbied, fund-raised, cajoled, and pleaded for financial support to fight and treat this cruel disease. He testified before Congress, pressing elected officials until the nation’s legislators agreed to support funding for The Metabolic Clinic at Children's Hospital Colorado, recognized internationally for its expertise in diagnosis and treatment of metabolic disorders.

We discussed his years as a volunteer docent at Denver’s Museum of Nature and Science. He served as a guide for an exhibit called “Space Odyssey,” an immersive, interactive experience to teach guests about the cosmos. He loved to grab the attention of children touring the museum. His favorite icebreaker joke would be to ask a child like Darci her age. When she answered, “Twelve,” Herb then would reply, “When I was your age, I was fourteen!”

A former school teacher who loved teaching children, he sometimes shared his grave concerns about the future. A child of the 1930’s, raised in a New York orphanage, he knew deprivation on a level most cannot comprehend. He had spent formative years enduring hardships without parents and stable surroundings. He grew up scrabbling for means to a good life. He believed that the US Constitution does not automatically transfer from generation to generation with inviolable guarantees. He was concerned that today’s digital distractions and cultural narcissism might crumble the nation’s foundations. A young generation lacking rigorous liberal education, rich with history and its lessons, worried him most.

Five days before Herb died, this spunky twelve-year-old girl from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, appeared on the twelfth season premiere of America’s Got Talent, a reality show on the NBC television network. The popular talent contest features singers, dancers, magicians, comedians, and other performers of all ages competing for a top prize of one million dollars and a chance to headline a show in Las Vegas. Aware of his pessimistic perspective, I brought with me an anecdote to assuage his concerns about the nation’s future. I loaded a YouTube video onto my iPhone and said, “I want you to feel optimistic about the future for our nation’s youngest generations. Here is an example of possibilities for a brighter future.” 

Petunia

She walked onstage with an endearing smile. She carried a puppet she calls Petunia – a whimsical white rabbit with large pointed ears and wide eyes encircled by mascara. She announced to judge Simon Cowell that her name is Darci Lynne. When asked by Cowell why she decided to enter the show, she answered, “Well, it was one of my big dreams, but also I would like to keep ventriloquism alive because it’s not common.”

Then she looked at her animated puppet and said, “Are you ready?” Petunia replied, “Hit it!” as orchestral music lifted. Darci Lynne feigned surprise by saying, “You’re going to sing? Oh, boy!” Suddenly Petunia opened her mouth wide and began singing Summertime.

As Petunia astounded the audience, Darci Lynne smiled sweetly, innocently. The five judges became flabbergasted, not quite believing that a petite child, so young and inexperienced, could sing with such force and in tune without moving her lips. Not once. She demonstrated poise, self-confidence, rapport with the judges and audience, shocking mastery of ventriloquism for such a young age, an uncanny ability to split her personality between Petunia and the real Darci, all while achieving vocal range beyond the reach of most children.

Darci Lynne Sang A Timeless Song Popular During Herb's Youth

Her song seemed perfect for the tastes of a dying man who had spent years cherishing music that helped define his formative years, causing him to eventually store over 35,000 jazz and Big Band recordings on his beloved iPod. Summertime, an aria composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess, is one of the most covered songs of all time, with interpretations by performers ranging from Ella Fitzgerald to Janis Joplin.

After she finished, studio audience members jumped to their feet and honored the gifted girl with a standing ovation. Her shy giggles transformed into Bambi tears. Speaking in turn, each judge praised her for a charming performance. Judge Mel B said, “You make my heart melt. You were brilliant! I’m trying to describe how amazing it was. You know what?” Mel B jumped up and slapped a buzzer.

The Golden Buzzer may be activated only once by each judge per season. Mel B’s buzzer slap meant that Darci Lynne would advance to the final live shows without needing to compete at lower tiers. As gold confetti rained from the studio ceiling, the Oklahoma City girl became overcome by sweet emotions: disbelieving, crying, squealing, and jumping with joy.

Herb Jacobson

Herb was charmed and astounded by her talent. He was uplifted by her bold and sophisticated interpretation of a hit song from his youth. His final request was for me to share this video with Sharon, his wife, soon after he passed away.

An amazing ninety minutes concluded as he weakly transferred from a recliner to his hospital bed. A few others in the room began to weep. He saw this sadness and said, “I’m sorry ... I’m sorry.” These words expressed his regret for leaving his family yet revealed courage that he had accepted his fate.

He completed his life journey holding onto a secular theology articulated by Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel wrote:

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

As we stood to leave the ICU, knowingly saying goodbye for the last time, he stretched out his hand to shake mine, his face a mystery in this moment so full of meaning. I said, “I’m not going to say good-bye, Herb. Rather, I’ll see you again.” He appeared quizzical, reflective. I shook once more. “I’ll see you again.”

Bolstered by his life review and entertained by a gifted girl from Oklahoma, Herb Jacobson’s final hours became a summertime day glorified with radical amazement. He was ready to spread his wings “and take to the sky.”

UPDATE

This story has gone viral on Twitter, with thousands of readers expressing sadness, joy, love, and gratitude. I'm so pleased that my post has garnered a wider audience, bringing public attention to the life of a good neighbor and a father figure to me. Of equal beauty is the following Tweet from Darci Lynne's mother, Misty Farmer: 

And my heart melted once again when I discovered a Tweet from Darci Lynne, written in the plainspoken style of a remarkable young lady: 

Brent Green is the author of six books about Boomers, business and aging. His newest book is Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss. Copyright 2017, Brent Green & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

The Boomer Generation Journey of "The Case for Christ"

This is not a blog about religion, nor is it a political blog. Rather, Boomers blog has maintained a clear generational focus since its inauguration in June 2005. Sometimes religion and politics have generational implications, and this is specifically true for a new movie released ten days before the 2017 Easter Sunday and entitled The Case for Christ.

This odyssey follows the real-life story of Lee Strobel, a Boomer born in 1952. Receiving a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and then a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, Strobel began his professional career as a newspaper reporter, notably for The Chicago Tribune, where he achieved award-winning recognition from UPI for his incisive reporting.

An avowed atheist, Strobel's hardened beliefs become severely tested by his wife, Leslie. After a series of family challenges, Leslie, an agnostic, aims her struggling faith at Christianity for solace and hope. Strobel cannot accept such a transformation, feeling threatened by his wife's conversion as if a cult-like wedge driving them apart.

The journalist sets out to ply his investigative reporting skills and debunk Christianity. He focuses on the most significant myth of the religion: resurrection of Jesus Christ. By disproving Christ's resurrection from Roman crucifixion and death, Strobel believes the entire religion will cave as if a house of cards. He can then rescue his wife from brainwashing and restore the equilibrium of their otherwise compatible marriage.

Strobel travels the nation to meet with and interview thirteen evangelical Christian experts covering history, anatomy, religious studies, psychology, philosophy, and cultural anthropology. Each resurrection-defying theory he attempts to prove meets countervailing evidence; each theological linchpin becomes more persuasive and captivating. When confronted with the totality of evidence presented by so many convincing experts, Strobel's emotional resistance collapses, and he also converts to Christianity.

His epiphany launches a new career, in his words "to share the evidence that supports the truth and claims of Christianity," eventually leading to his bestselling book and movie by the same title. Brian Bird, a professional screenwriter, has given Strobel's movie adaptation its Hollywood flair, with a gripping narrative pace, engaging plot twists, and satisfying story resolution.

I became aware of this movie the same day it was released for a special showing. The news came to me through a video promotion and e-newsletter developed by Marc Middleton and Bill Shafer, co-founders of a positive aging and wellness media company called Growing Bolder.

Even with such short notice, my wife, Becky, and I attended the first screening of the movie that also included a live Q&A with Strobel, his wife, and the movie's lead cast members and principal filmmakers. Paradoxically, we watched the movie in the same theater made infamous and haunting by the 2012 Aurora slayings where twelve innocent moviegoers had been massacred and 50 others injured. Although we had the choice of two other alternative theaters for this special event, the Century 16 seemed a fitting context for cinematic redemption.

My views of cultural and artistic phenomena ultimately become filtered through the lens of generational sociology. After twenty years of serious research and study of this generation, I also believe that our shared formative years are prologue to the present and prescriptive for the future. Whether Lee Strobel knows this consciously or not, his faith origin story reflects and refines the narrative of his generation. Thus, I noticed several aspects of this movie with broader generational implications.

Give Me A Head with Hair

Young Lee sported shoulder-length hair, which made him appear revolutionary and iconoclastic in the context of the straight-laced people he encounters throughout the movie. With his "freak flag" planted in a busy, all-business newsroom, his appearance reminded me of an investigative reporting duo showcased in the movie All The Presidents Men, starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. This universally acclaimed political thriller follows two obstinate young journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post. Playing Carl Bernstein, Hoffman also parades shoulder-length hair, defiant and nonconforming. 

Complicated Father-Son Relationships

Young Baby Boomer men had complex and sometimes vitriolic relationships with their Greatest Generation fathers. Much of this divisiveness centered on the Vietnam War, when the men who fought nobly in World War II often felt their sons should embrace the Pax Americana moral imperatives of another offensive war. The two generations parted company on other core values, including women's liberation, racial integration, and gay rights. Boomer men often thought of their laconic fathers as insensitive and rigid, unwilling or unable to show genuine affection. Lee's angry relationship with his father portrayed this larger generational narrative. It was only after Walter Strobel's sudden death that Lee discovers how much his father loved and respected an unforgiving son. This breakdown in communication between men of these different generations has been magnificently captured through a popular song by Mike + The Mechanics and entitled The Living Years.

Carry On Wayward Son

Set in 1979 and 1980, the movie showcases some historical popular culture. One song stands out from the cinematic background: Carry On Wayward Son, created and performed by progressive rock super-group Kansas for their 1976 album Leftoverture. In 1977, the song crested at number eleven on the US Billboard Hot 100. Then Carry On Wayward Son became the second-most-played track on US classic rock radio stations in 1995 and number one in 1997.

What's ironic and not widely known is that two of the founding band members became evangelical Christians around the same time as Lee Strobel's conversion. Kerry Livgren, who wrote most of the band's hit songs, and Dave Hope, who performed as the band's bass guitar player, shared profound born again Christian experiences during their strenuous years as part of a stadium-filling rock band. Today, Livgren creates Christian music with his ultimate achievement an opus entitled Cantata: The Resurrection of Lazarus, an epic orchestral and vocal composition based on a Biblical story told in John, Chapter 11. Hope has served in the clergy for Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida. Today he is a retired Anglican priest.

Power of Generational Aphorisms

High school classmates Kerry Livgren, Kansas songwriter and co-founder, and Brent

Many Boomers remember with clarity a romantic drama film written by Erich Segal and released to theaters in 1970. Love Story conveys a heartrending fictional romance between two Ivy League college students: Oliver Barrett IV, played by Ryan O'Neal, and Jennifer "Jenny" Cavalleri, played by Ali MacGraw. Similar to Lee and Leslie Strobel's story, the protagonists of Love Story confront severe challenges to their marriage from external forces. For the Strobel's, the aphorism distilling their unity in the face of disunity is "You and only you." For the troubled couple in Love Story, one memorable line stands out as Oliver's final statement to his insensitive father: "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Boomers were raised on marketing and cultural aphorisms, and in many ways their generational story can be unfurled with a succession of pithy statements accumulating across five decades.

The Boomer generation is at a crossroads today. Many are reconsidering their spiritual beliefs, and some are rediscovering their childhood religious values. An expanding cohort falls into a religious netherworld described with an acronym SBNR: Spiritual But Not Religious.

This perennially soul-searching generation is reemerging around a zeitgeist today characterized by grand-parenting, generativity, and grief. Because of their advancing age and oncoming "sunset lifestage," many are facing increasing losses, bereavement, and core values reassessment. This is also why I have written Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at A Time of Loss. This book conveys my own search for the sources of grace.

The timing for The Case for Christ could not be better. I'm sure the creative community that has shaped this movie hopes and even expects some spiritual wayfarers will rediscover their Christian faith. At the very least, more will become inspired to ask difficult questions about the hereafter, probing for satisfying answers, much in the same way that Lee Strobel did in 1979 and 1980, the beginning of his productive career investigating and reporting on life's greatest mysteries.

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For Boomers and older, aging brings great losses. Is there value in suffering?

As is the situation for most readers over age 50, I have lost many significant persons in my life. After each loss, I grieved privately, rarely reaching out to others when I could have used some advice or a steady shoulder. I went through the stages of grief on my own.

Then last year I lost my sister to stage IV lung cancer, leaving me as the final surviving member of my nuclear family. I did not seek grief support when losing Julie; an unexpected approach to counseling came to me, and it has made a significant difference.

My sister passed away while receiving hospice care. Mark McGann, an easygoing chaplain, visited Julie’s home a few days before she died. He asked our family members to gather with him around a dining room table. We were sleep-deprived, anxious, and grief-stricken. He then asked, “Is there value in suffering?”

When Chaplain Mark posed this question, our wife-mother-sister-grandmother was dying in the master bedroom ten yards away. That moment was as raw as life can be, Julie’s departure imminent, the question of her suffering our lingering concern. And without qualifications, we were all suffering.

But this question cut to the core of our palpable, immediate encounter with mortality. The question required us to get in touch with our feelings in those final hours before Julie passed and provided an avenue to start finding answers where sometimes there are no obvious responses.

At first I became analytical: suffering is fundamental to the human condition. Suffering creates a vivid contrast illuminating joy, happiness, and satisfaction. It is a harsh lesson on the other side of sublime. We all must suffer whether we choose to or not. There must be value in that which is given in our lives. But rationalization did not assuage my suffering nor suggest something positive about such dark grief.

Several weeks later as I reflected more about suffering after loss, I revisited the misty days following the deaths of our parents who had passed away less than one day apart in July 2000. I had existed in a thick, murky fog for months, slogging through days of routine and work, numb and disillusioned and distracted. Then my wife, Becky, and I decided we needed a spontaneous break from exhausting routine and unresolved grief, so we traveled to Amsterdam, Holland. 

The Quest for Understanding

We became spellbound with the ancient Dutch city, the canals, exceptionally friendly natives, and an all-pervading creative vibe. From Rembrandt’s original painting studio to a modern museum showcasing the magnum opus of Vincent van Gogh, we walked in the footsteps of the Masters.

I responded by taking hundreds of photos of the Dutch people being themselves, such as mothers on bicycles transporting towhead toddlers and innovative mimes frozen solid near intersections. I captured visual stories of a European setting very different from our home. I allowed my senses to take in all that life can offer if we are alert, present, and open to new experiences. And gently, numbing grief transformed into new possibilities: a satellite’s perspective of how my life might proceed forward productively.

When we returned from Amsterdam, I transformed my photos into digitally printed posters. Nine months after our parents had passed away, I hosted an exhibition at a popular gourmet coffee shop where my framed Amsterdam photographs remained on display for several weeks.

Without suffering I would not have traveled to Amsterdam when we did, nor would I have seen what I saw: transitory instants when visual elements aligned under optimum lighting conditions. I would not have mastered Photoshop so I could perfect my images for digital printing. I would not have taken creative risks involved in sharing my work in a gallery setting.

Helen Keller became afflicted by scarlet fever or meningitis at nineteen months. The illness left her sightless and deaf. Nevertheless, she became the first blind and deaf person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She wrote and published twelve books and lectured worldwide. She experienced suffering from a perspective that would incapacitate many. Quite the opposite, she wrote: “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

Suffering helped me comprehend once again what is useful and attainable in this life. Suffering motivated me to re-engage. I transformed the foreign, figuratively and literally, into the familiar. Suffering can precipitate creativity, liberating the creator through inspiration and then many available channels of human communication including painting, sculpting, songwriting, personal essays, poetry, photography, and videos. Therefore, I discovered there is value in suffering.

Provocative questions such as those posed by a humble hospice chaplain can help us reconsider our deepest values and beliefs at times of greatest grief and vulnerability. Answering unforeseen and challenging questions can become a path to greater spiritual awareness, a more resilient comportment, renewed faith, and optimism.

We may be just one question away from an entirely different life.

Brent Green is the author of six books about Boomers, business and aging. His forthcoming book is Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss. Copyright 2017, Brent Green & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Wow! This is Brent Green's sixth and finest book—and right up there with the best works focused on loss, grief and renewal. It is heart-warming to see how Brent has woven the threads of his life into a compelling personal narrative while revealing universal truths about mortality. Calling on his background in counseling psychology, he therapeutically inspires readers to search within for answers to challenging and unresolved spiritual questions. The depth and flow of the narrative kept me engaged, helping me learn more about myself along the way. The spiritual podiums and appreciative audiences will benefit from his hard-won wisdom. I give this book five stars!

— Carol Orsborn, Ph.D.

Author, Fierce with Age, The Spirituality of Age (Nautilus Award), The Art of Resilience, and many more 

Brent Green's wonderful book offers us the guidance we need when we lose someone we love. It's the kind of book we want to read before we lose someone we love and also afterwards to remind us of journey we all must go through. This is a very special book written by a very special man as a tribute of love to a very special woman who I had the honor of knowing. You will read it with joy as a reminder of how to keep our hearts open, even in the face of the inevitable losses we all must endure. It is truly a gift of love.

— Jed Diamond, Ph.D.

Author, The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformative Stages of Relationships and Why the Best is Still to Come

A beautifully written book about our inexorable experiences with loss as we move through the life course. Green presents the reader with 18 remarkably poignant stories revealing our experiences with loss resulting not only from its common association with the death of a loved one, but loss through the lens of other more latent perspectives such as identity, opportunity, success or relationships that make up our human experience.

Each chapter is followed by questions for personal reflection or group discussion that will inspire the readers to contemplate their own rarely explored beliefs and values. This is not a book of all-purpose beatitudes, or aphorisms for coping but one that will guide us to discover new paths of meaning when negotiating with loss and the tensions between presence and absence that can bring us wholeness strength and transcendence. 

— David Cox

President, Society of Certified Senior Advisors

Lessons on Marketing to Baby Boomer Men: Wade Davis, a Lucky Man Who Made the Grade

An Anthropologist, Ethnobotonist and Daring Adventurer Discovers the Ethnosphere, Realizing High Hopes of a Generation

Wade Davis has been compared to Indiana Jones, the intrepid fictional archeologist brought to life in cinema by co-creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Several linkages ring true. Jones and Davis are both explorers of antiquity; both are audacious globetrotters; both endure monumental physical pain and emotional discomfort in gritty pursuit of extraordinary treasures.

But this is where comparisons fall apart. In Spielberg’s four movies about the colorful swashbuckler, Indiana Jones chases after priceless “hardware artifacts” such as the Crystal Skull of Akator or Ark of the Covenant. Davis pursues “software artifacts” of vanishing cultures; his treasures are language, ritual, social custom, and ancient wisdom.

Brandishing whip and pistol, Jones brutally dispatches evildoers; Davis engages adversaries with pen and oratory. Davis’ quest is not for material riches but for preservation of biological, psychological, cultural, and spiritual diversity—maybe even protection of the Penan of Borneo, Inuit of North America, Moi of New Guinea, and Waorani of Amazon lowlands.

An explorer-in-residence for the National Geographic Society, the Harvard-educated ethnobotonist and anthropologist has invested over 25 years of his career exploring, investigating, describing, photographing, and writing about ancient cultures, native tribes, and flora and fauna in isolated destinations, from Amazonia to the Canadian wilderness. He is an author of nine books, including global bestseller The Serpent and the Rainbow, a spellbinding account of the voodoo culture.

His remarkable book catalog also includes:

• Award-winning One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest
• Canadian best-seller Light at the Edge of the World: a Journey through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures 
• Shadows in the Sun: Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire
• The Clouded Leopard: A Book of Travels
• The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World

Davis, born in 1953, is aware that his core values reflect the context in which he came of age, and he expresses his awakening into adulthood with a keen sense of history.

“There were major sociological and historical forces converging at the time the Baby Boom Generation was born. Our parents were scions of the Victorian and Edwardian eras where progress was taken as a given, improvement as destiny— the inevitable domination and success of European society.

“Suddenly all of that dies in the blood of Flanders Fields, and we birthed the nihilism of the 20th century. This gave us notions of modernity; this gave us Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Our parents had gone through this incredible upheaval of the spirit—not just The Great Depression and World War II. You can understand their collective exhaustion. We didn’t know about this in our youth.”

What Davis did know, as did many Baby Boomers maturing during the 1960s and 1970s, was that a future characterized by “Happy Housewife” and “Organization Man” would not be manageable. Drawing on his thoughtful love of literary masters, he embraced a precipitating gift of self-awareness early in life. He understood what he did not want, which became a giant first step.

His awakening arrived in the summer of 1968 during a high school field trip to Colombia. As he wrote in Light at the Edge of the World:

“Life was real, visceral, dense with intoxicating possibilities. I learned that summer to have but one operative word in my vocabulary, and that was yes to any experience, any encounter, anything new. Colombia taught me that it was possible to fling oneself upon the benevolence of the world and emerge not only unscathed but transformed. It was a naïve notion, but one that I carried with me for a long time.”

His passion for novelty also originated from dread of an overly manicured life as he witnessed his parents’ resigned acceptance of a predictable, prosaic, and regimented middle-class existence.

“Hemingway said the key to being a writer is to have something important to say,” Davis recalls. “And second he advised writers to first live an interesting life.

“Early on I never had aspirations to be a writer, but I desperately wanted an interesting life because the opposite is a world of conformity and banality. My father called his work ‘the grind.’ I had to escape that, and I think our whole generation felt a need for change.”

Davis recalls critical defining moments shared by many of his peers who began questioning the society proposed to them by their parents.

“Where I came from was like so many of us. I remember turning on my clock radio and listening to The Beatles, particularly ‘A Day in the Life’ from the ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ album and I thought, ‘Wow, there’s got to be another way. This is what works for me.’”

Energized and propelled by his generation’s commanding cultural imperatives, Davis discovered Harvard University, a quixotic hotbed for confrontations between Boomers and the establishment outside academia. In a recent essay on creativity, he reflects upon this time:

“In the summer of my junior year I had a job fighting forest fires and our camps were filled with young American draft dodgers. We were obedient Canadian lads. They by contrast had an irreverence and disdain for authority that was electrifying. One had a copy of Life Magazine with the Harvard student strike of 1969 on the cover. In a raw atavistic way I concluded that this had to be the school to attend. I arrived alone in Boston in the fall of 1971.”

He became opposed to the Vietnam War, investing time and energy to shape public opinion through demonstrating and pamphleteering. A tenacious struggle to end the war exhausted him, and so, like many of his peers, he looked to the wider world for answers to profound questions about war, peace, and humanity’s fundamental nature. He decided to hitchhike into the unknown.

During a moment of spontaneous decision-making while at a café with his Harvard roommate, he pointed to Africa, as depicted on an old National Geographic wall map, as his next destination. Making such an abrupt decision to explore territories near the equator, he sought counsel from a scholar who would become his mentor: Richard Evans Schultes, a Harvard professor widely regarded as the greatest 20th century explorer of the Amazon. After meeting with Schultes, who intuitively embraced this ambitious, idealistic student from Canada, Davis journeyed within a fortnight to the Amazon where he lived with fifteen ethnic groups in eight South American countries while collecting over 6,000 botanical specimens.

The plants, and the wisdom he has reverently accepted from them, have given Davis intimate access to indigenous cultures worldwide and penetrating insights into the cultural equivalent of environmental desecration. Just as modernization is under-girding destruction of the planet’s biodiversity, technological innovation and proliferation are also destroying many of the world’s oldest cultures and languages.

During a speech at the LOHAS Forum, an annual gathering of like-minded professionals and business executives committed to promoting human health and environmental sustainability, Davis made palpable the plausible monochromatic path of humanity’s future:

“When each of you in this room was born, there were 7,000 languages spoken on earth. Now a language isn’t just a body of vocabulary or set of grammatical rules; a language is a flash of the human spirit. It’s a vehicle to which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of social and spiritual possibilities. And of those 7,000 languages spoken the day you were born, today fully half are on their way to extinction.”

Like the planet’s biosphere, the health of which depends on species diversity, humanity’s ethnosphere also depends on diversity for our collective psychological health. Davis defines his neologism as the cultural web that encompasses the diverse dreams, myths, thoughts, products, and intuition of every culture on earth.

Within another generation, humankind will lose the exclusive wisdom, insights, and knowledge of peoples who have carried their traditions from generation to generation with inimitable languages and stories. Analogous to losing a plant species that could have provided a cure for pancreatic cancer, when humanity loses a unique language and primordial wisdom it codifies, we might be losing ways of understanding our mortal existence that could cure mental cancers: war, xenophobia, racism, and existential loneliness.

As Davis cautions in Light at the Edge of the World, “Every view of the world that fades away, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life and reduces the human repertoire of adaptive responses to the common problems that confront us all.”

Davis does not consider it his primary crusade to save indigenous cultures from homogenization and cooptation by the world’s most powerful western and eastern countries. Rather, he views his responsibility as explorer-in-residence for National Geographic to make the rest of us aware of what our species stands to lose when these ancient cultures become absorbed and rendered extinct by dominating ideologies.

His uncommon career elucidates how millions of Boomers have chosen to live outside normal boundaries and typical expectations. He has shifted his own paradigms by taking inordinate risks, not dissimilar from many entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, educators, social activists, scholars, and politicians from the same generation.

In his essay on creativity, he provokes today’s young people with the enlivening possibilities of risk-taking: “If you place yourself in situations where there is no choice but to move forward, no option but success, you create a momentum that in the end propels you to new levels of experience and engagement that would have seemed beyond reach only years before.”

Gathering vivid experiences from around the globe, seeking paths to constant self-improvement, finding creative new ways to express observations and values, Wade Davis’ career stands as a metaphor for the generation in which he was born.

He has experimented and illuminated, tested choices and found grounding, traveled peripatetically and stood motionless to discover subtle and sustainable lessons of biological and cultural variety. And he has taught millions of readers and admirers that mitigation from potential calamities we face as a species may be found through preservation of biological, cultural, and language diversity.

In a journal he carried with him on his first trip to Colombia during the revolutionary summer of 1968, Davis jotted down a promise to himself that became a life credo: risk discomfort and uncertainty for understanding.

This is one providential man’s bequest, and by extrapolation, another gift to the future from a wildly creative, irrepressibly hopeful generation.

Strategic Implications

No individual can represent an entire generation of males, but Wade Davis comes as close as I’ve discovered in representing a totality of values that spring from the formative years for Boomer males, especially those of the leading-edge.

He is accessible and articulate about how Boomer culture propelled him into a most interesting life story. And stories are the key to reaching this generation most effectively. As Wade Davis teaches, it is the stories of the peoples inhabiting this planet that make it polychromatic and rich. Stories teach us about other ways of being outside the technological frameworks of modernity. Davis’ stories can teach marketers more about a generation than numbers or stereotypes or simplification.

A generation is a story, writ large, just like stories of an indigenous culture somewhere in South America. When astute marketers anchor product marketing around this generation’s dynamic narrative, they have an opportunity to achieve unparalleled sales success.

The above profile is an excerpt from Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Today Are Changing Business, Marketing, Aging and the Future. This 279-page book explores a growing body of research, arguments, insights, and speculation over how Boomers are impacting aging and commerce. Implications from my book are monetary and personal, local and international, intergenerational and multicultural. To learn why these conclusions are significant for your work and future, you can get a copy from online book retailers, including Amazon. Thank you for following my blog and, of course, your interest in Generation Reinvention.