This is a Methodist Church? Evanston, IL Church Remembered....

Having been brought up mostly a Methodist and attending the Church in Evanston, Illinois  as a kid until I was confirmed at age 13....I have my own ideas about what a Methodist Church would look like, and this is much too fancy and exotic...

In case you did not know, Evanston is a strange town with a very strict conservative past (home of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which battled successfully to make Prohibition happen-- as far as I know, Evanston is still "dry"--i.e, no alcohol can be sold

I took a pledge as I remember not to smoke, drink or gamble.  I don't gamble, and I no longer smoke or drink, but I strayed pretty far from the Methodist straight and narrow in my time..

Oh yes, modern day Evanston is a racially integrated upscale suburb with a lot of social consciousness. Some of this comes from being the home of Northwestern University...

This Church on the Upper East Side looks like some kind of High Church Episcopalian territory to me...but we just cannot judge things by externals.

In fact, one of the tenets of the Evanston Methodist Church (at least that struck me while I was there) was an insistence on not judging other people superficially, and also the idea of giving people who are different than you are the benefit of the doubt.

Recently attended a social meeting where different speakers come..one of the latest was a Methodist Minister of Korean heritage who spoke about Paul Tillich and our "Ultimate Concern"-- I have been looking on the internet for more on this and here is a brief quote from a paper written by a California Theologian, Mackenzie Brown, on what Tillich was thinking:

"Tillich defines faith, and indirectly religion, as "ultimate concern." Religion is direction or movement toward the ultimate or the unconditional And God rightly defined might be called the Unconditional. God, in the true sense, is indefinable. Since the Unconditional precedes our minds and precedes all created things, God cannot be confined by the mind or by words. Tillich sees God as Being-Itself, or the "Ground of all Being." 

Now this is pretty heavy going and I am not an expert in theological writing...but we were urged to think in more personal and practical ways about what our "Ultimate Concern" was.

Upon reflection, I said that I thought of all the zigs and zags my life has taken and at this point in my life my general "Ultimate Concern" was simply how to best make use of the time I have left.
This meant planning to deal with issues of my own I knew I was going to have to face and what everyone faces if they live long enough---how they are going to deal with growing old.

Here, it seems to me, is an interesting observation which other people have told me they have noticed too: many people who lead very long lives do not consciously think about how they are going to grow old, they just go on with Life as best they can and often are not all that introspective about it. 

I saw the TV star Betty White on television today while at a medical clinic waiting room-- it was a show akin to the "The View" but whose name I forget-- and it struck me again on how someone like Betty White is very much like this. She just carries on with living and doing the things she enjoys the most ( the woman is a born but delightful "ham"--she loves being "on stage" and luckily for her she has a really charming stage presence.) She has grown old very gracefully and I wonder how much of this just came naturally to her and how much she planned it out...well, I am sure she had to make plans at some point just like everyone else does. But as for delighting in living in the present, Betty White is a great example. As for the past, she just accepts it as it was and moves on...very admirable.