Eight Things I Want You to Know About the Eschaton!

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Eight Things I Want You to Know About the Eschaton!

More than two thousand years ago, God the Father sent his son to earth to take on human flesh. In that moment, he who is fully God became also fully man. Advent, the season when we celebrate this miraculous event started this year on November 28th and will continue through Christmas Eve. We are grateful to God for his mercy in reaching out to us in our broken humanity, for living among us, and for dying for our sins. We celebrate his resurrection.

Most Christians know about these wonders. But if you are like most believers, you don’t know much about eschatology, when history ends, and Christ comes again. Advent celebrates both, the first coming of Christ as a babe in the manger as well as the second coming of Christ.

It’s important to know about eschatology because there are so many misconceptions presented in popular literature. There, the authors (I assume) tried to fill in the blanks with exciting fiction, but to be honest, there is quite a bit we don’t know . . . yet. But if we learn what is known, we will recognize the eschaton it when it happens.

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Gratitude in Community

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Gratitude in Community

The calendar page has turned to November. Thanksgiving plans are being made, and the Christmas season approaches. This is the time of year most of us naturally turn our attention toward gratitude. And with good reason. Not only do we celebrate Thanksgiving; but we are entering into a season of gift giving, and everyone knows you say thank you for a gift.

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Human Developmental Maturity - Elder Stage

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Human Developmental Maturity - Elder Stage

ELDER (when the needs and tasks of the Parent have been fulfilled or the youngest child reaches adult maturity):
An elder is a father or mother to his/her community. They are able to treat children who are not their own with the same unselfish care they learned to give to their own children.

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Human Maturity Stages - Parent Maturity

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Human Maturity Stages - Parent Maturity

PARENT (from birth of first child to when the youngest child becomes an adult)
The Goal of the Parent stage is to learn to give sacrificially with joy, without expecting to receive in return.
Anyone who has ever been a parent knows that this new stage requires all we learned in the earlier stages—infant, child, adult—and more. Welcome to the parent stage! Only a person who has mastered the first three stages will have the capacity to give sacrificially to an infant.

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Human Developmental Maturity - Adult Stage

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Human Developmental Maturity - Adult Stage

ADULT STAGE: Young Man or Woman (age thirteen/puberty) to the birth of his/her first child)
The goal of this stage is to learn to satisfy the needs of two people—his or herself and one other person.
Ideally, the ADULT STAGE begins at age thirteen. A fully mature 13-year-old can take excellent care of herself. As s/he enters the adult state s/he will learn how to satisfy the needs of more than one person at a time.

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Human Maturity Stages - Infant Maturity

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Human Maturity Stages - Infant Maturity

The goal for infancy is for babies to organize a strong, joyful, synchronized identity. An infant must learn to receive.
Ideally the infant learned that they have value for “just being me.” The infant must experience strong, loving, caring bonds with his parents. These bonds must meet his needs without his having to ask. He must receive life and also learn to express the life that is in him, to everyone's delight. During infancy, the baby learns to live joyfully in his mother's world.

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Snapshots of Elder Level Maturity

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Snapshots of Elder Level Maturity

Catherine Curtis, our HCI Community Coordinator sat down with Jewell B., one of our community members operating from elder level maturity. Below are some "snapshots" from Catherine and Jewell's conversation.

Several years ago, my husband and I had the opportunity to spend extra time over several months with our grandchildren. This gave us precious bonding times together. The grandchildren are now doing well in school so our contact with them is quite limited (they live in another state from where we live). But on Richard’s 80th zoom birthday party this year their faces reflected much joy and delight to be together virtually!

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An Interview on Parent Level Maturity

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An Interview on Parent Level Maturity

I got married at the age of 20. Our daughter was born when I was 22 years of age. I had a very narrow mindset about what a parent looks like. I was going to be the perfect parent. I read many books including Dr. Spock, God the Rod in Your Child’s Bod, How to Raise an Excellent Child (this was a Christian book, with an authoritarian mindset) about how to parent. What I read was all about discipline and having schedules. In those days, a new mother was hospitalized for five days after a regular delivery, and our pediatrician was on vacation. Every day a different pediatrician would come in and give me advice. Each day was different advice on how to care for this little baby.

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Adult Maturity and Mutual Friendship→

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Adult Maturity and Mutual Friendship

Recently, Betsy Stalcup (BS) interviewed community member Jeannie Herbert (JH) about adult maturity and a very special friendship Jeannie shares with her friend of 40 years, Kathy.

BS: How did you meet your friend Kathy?

JH: My friend, Kathy and I met 40 years ago. Jerry and I came to Washington DC for a month as our husbands were going to work together for a college ‘J term’. Housing was pre-arranged, so that we actually lived in the same row house together on Capitol Hill. Our oldest child was eight months old and he slept in a cabinet drawer to save space. The two couples hit it off.

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