Reply #29: Some of the liveliest, most intelligent old people I've ever know are

[Lydia Leftcoast]

people I've met through church: a man in his late 80s who attends every demonstration there is and writes a monthly column on leftist politics, a couple, also in their late 80s, who volunteer for several charities and travel the world, an 85-year-old who takes a three-mile bike ride every day, a man in his late 70s who knows everything there is to know about both football...and opera, and many others.

I was in a book study group with a mostly 65+ crowd at my former church, and in one discussion, they said that reading some of the modern writers like Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong allowed them to stay associated with the church, because they felt they had grown out of literalism and rigid dogma and appreciated the sense of community, the rituals, the freedom to believe what they wanted to , and the ease of making one's self useful in the typical parish.