Old Age | Growing Old and Jesus

Subject: A Funny Thing review

Dear Lolita:

Thank you for taking the time to write an extensive, even if unfavorable, review of my book A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to Old Age. I do think you push the envelope by doing an analysis of me based on slim or misconstrued evidence, or pure speculation.

What you say about me indeed reveals more reliable insight into you than it does into me. You write that I display "a hint of anger," then "a note of despair," and "a touch of blame." A hint, a note, and a touch? Evidently the evidence is pretty weak, and perhaps only in the eye of the beholder. I'm tempted to say I see more than a "hint" of hostility in your review, but not toward me so much as toward Christ.

When we finally get to the bottom lines of your review, and you recommend Buddhism to me; well, that explains a lot. You trace my difficulties to desire and say there's a way to get beyond that, by which I could "begin to free myself from the never-ending treadmill of birth and rebirth." You also hold out the possibility of a "terminus" of desire (and pretty much everything else).

No, thanks! That sounds like death to me. Jesus came to give life more abundant, and that includes desire, yes, and even passion. Is your life so very bad that the prospect of an end to your personal existence sounds good? Jesus has much better for you.