The Perks Of Reaching 60 And Heading Towards 70 And Older

1. There is nothing left to learn the hard way.
2. Your joints are more accurate meteorologists than the national weather service
3. No one expects you to run----anywhere.
4. People call at 9 pm and ask, did I wake you?
5. People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.
6. You no longer think of speed limits as a challenge.
7. Things you buy now won't wear out...
8. You can eat supper at 4pm.
9. You can live without sex but not your glasses.
10. Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them either.
11. You quit trying to hold your stomach in no matter who walks into the room.
12. You can't remember where you read this list before.
And never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

Those Were The Days

When I were a lad, me mother would send me down to t' corner shop wi' a shilling, and I'd come back wi' five pounds o' potatoes, two loaves o' bread, three pints o' milk, a turkey, a pound o' cheese, a packet o' tea, an' 'alf a dozen eggs. Yer can't do that now. Too many security cameras!

The Sensitivity Of Seniors

This letter was sent to the Lions Bay School Principal's office in West Geelong after the school had sponsored a luncheon for seniors. An elderly lady received a new radio at the lunch as a door raffle prize and was writing to say thank you.
This story is a credit to all humankind. Forward this to anyone you know who might need a lift today.
Dear Lions Bay School,
God bless you for the beautiful radio I won at your recent Senior Citizens luncheon. I am 87 years old and live at the West Geelong Home for the Aged. All of my family has passed away so I am all alone. I want to thank you for the kindness you have shown to a forgotten old lady.
My roommate is 95 and has always had her own radio; but, she would never let me listen to it. She said it belonged to her long dead husband, and understandably, wanted to keep it safe.
The other day her radio fell off the nightstand and broke into a dozen pieces. It was awful and she was in tears.
She asked if she could listen to mine, and I was overjoyed that I could tell her to **** off.
Thank you for that wonderful opportunity.
God bless you all.
Sincerely,
Edna

Grieve Well, for Now

A significant person in my extended family has just died. Even though our relationship was always a complicated one—different temperaments, different views about the conduct of faith, different perspectives on … well, almost everything—I feel stricken. In my deepest parts there are regrets and appreciations. And many stories.
For me, this death has generated that bundle of sensations called grief. I've often defined grieving as our behaviour when we try to deal with something we were not created to experience. The Creator simply didn't wire us to die. Nevertheless, we must deal with this inexorable event: the dying of others and, eventually, our own death.
Because this end-of-life experience is incomprehensible, it can generate fear, loneliness, disorientation, loss, and mystery. We become paralysed in swirling feelings that seem incapable of any helpful summation.
When you've been a pastor as long as I have, you've seen varieties of grief close up when people have invite you into their private lives in that poignant moment. You think you've learned the right ways and the wrong ways to grieve. I've seen hysterical grief, which seemed over the top, and I've seen hollow grief, which caused me to wonder if the griever had any feelings at all about the departed.
What I've learned—a no-brainer, actually—is that everyone grieves in different ways, for different periods of time, and for different reasons. Along the way there can be tears, anger, withdrawal, conversion, regret, and pleasant recollection.
I once asked an Episcopal priest if he could ever remember a speechless moment in his ministry-life. Yes, he could, he said. It occurred in a funeral parlour where an old man (married 57 years) stood by the casket of his wife. The priest—then very young—approached and quietly said, "Fifty-seven years is a long time." And the widower, without hesitating, responded, "Too d—long; she was meaner than h—." Have a name for that kind of grief?
But then there's this. I once sat with two brothers in the living room of their home, their suddenly-stricken father lying dead on the living room couch awaiting the funeral director's coming to take the body. "Our grief is strong and sweet," one of the brothers said. "We told our father how much we loved him, that we were thankful for all he'd done for us. He knew Jesus and he was confident that we also followed Jesus. So we can let him go. There is nothing of importance that has been left unsaid."
Back to me. When I learned of this family member's death (it was anticipated), I made a conscious decision to let my heart have its way. I chose to feel this loss and not be ashamed or secretive about what was happening within me. Perhaps this may seem strange that I would have to do this, but I grew up in a spiritual tradition which, all-too-often, told people what was a correct form of grief and what was incorrect. Even in death, there was a "prescriptive way" to feel and act.
In my child-years, it was fashionable for some to say of a funeral, "Oh, 'twas a blessed event. There wasn't a tear in the church. All we did was celebrate." If that's what some want, I'm inclined to say, "have it your way." But I'm impressed that even Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus.
In these last few days I let my inner person quietly wail, and I have discovered these things.
My grief has aroused and rearranged both good and not so good memories of this person. I have chosen to preserve the good memories and express gratitude for them, and I have chosen to bathe the bad memories in grace and renounce any hold they have had on me. The objective: to get the recollections settled and filed away in my soul so that I shall fully love this person into eternity. Naturally, this effort will take some extended time.
My grief has taken me back to the Scriptures where I have reminded myself of its teaching on heaven. I have found myself asking interesting questions about this relative now in heaven: some humorous, some searching. How did he arrive at heaven (taxi, train, horse and carriage)? Is there an orientation program (like your first day at college, your first hours at camp?). Does he feel instantly acclimated to heavenly life? And what happens when he runs into people in heaven who were lifetime adversaries here on earth? What will he say to his (divorced) first spouse? His parents (who may have some explaining to do). What about the people he was sure would never get to heaven (mostly Democrats)? What will he say to them? Does he get a personal interview with Jesus? Will he find that heaven is just a perpetual worship service as some seem to believe? Or will there be creative work to do? I hope for the latter.
My wife, Gail, and I (like most married couples) occasionally joke—or not joke(?)—about which of us will die first. And I often tell her, "If you go before me, I can imagine arriving in heaven later on and discovering that you've got a gazillion coffee-dates with Brother Lawrence, Mary Slessor, Catherine Booth, and Amy Carmichael (some of her heroes). You're going to be so busy that you won't have time for me until ten thousand years have gone by." Gail usually laughs at me and reassures me that this couldn't happen.
My grief has taken me back to the biographical section of my library to remind me of how other heroes of faith died and how they viewed their final days. I am less impressed with some of the Victorian Christians who scripted their last dramatic words far in advance of their death-bed moments (as in "one small step for man …"). Some called these elegant 19th-century soliloquies "the happy death." There are the English martyrs who said to the executioner, "Bring it on." And there is lovely and strange St. Francis dying, naked, on a dirt floor of a shack in the woods because he wished to die a pauper and out of the sight of institutional religion, which he despised so much. The man died as he lived.
Today most of us die less dramatically: in a hospital bed, intubated, surrounded not by the sounds of singing angels but by the beeps and buzzers of medical technology. Can we do better than this?
My grief has awakened a need to be with friends and close family members. To sit and talk with them without agenda. Why? I am not sure. Actually, I am an introvert by temperament and usually wish to be alone in my melancholy moments. But in the wake of this loss, I yearn for the company of the intimate people in my life. I want to tell them stories about this person and hear myself describe to them how I feel. I appreciate their embraces, their reassurance that they are present to me.\Finally, this grief has reminded me of my own mortality. A few days before my relative's death, I stood at his bedside and took in the sight of his cancer-ravaged body and heard faltering, sedated words lurch from his once-sharp mind. I watched his wife tenderly spoon-feed him his last morsels of nutrition. In it all I saw a vision of myself in a not-too-distant day. And I concluded, "We travel from the beauty of infancy to the strength of maturity and on, inexorably, to the grotesqueness of the dying days. And we make the journey so quickly. Few of us are ever ready for the last stop."
In these moments, the lines of Scripture that have meant the most have been ones I've read in many funerals. On those occasions I read the lines for other grievers. Today I read them for myself: "(In the new heaven and new earth) He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
No more death. No more mourning. No more crying. The old order of things: passed away.
Apparently, there is no grief in heaven.

by Gordon MacDonald

My Travel

Thought I would share some of my travel last year...
I have been in many places, but I've never been in Cahoots, apparently you can't go alone, you have to be in Cahoots with someone.
I've also never been in Cognito, I hear no one recognizes you there. I have, however, been in Sane, they don't have an airport so you have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my children, friends, family and work. I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump. I have also been in Doubt, that is a sad place to go, and I try not to visit there too often. I've been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm. Sometimes I'm in Capable, but not very often.
One of my favourite places to be is in Suspense, it really gets the adrenalin flowing and pumps up the old heart! At my age I need all the stimuli I can get! I may have been in Continent, and I don't remember what country I was in. It's an age thing. They tell me it is very wet and damp there. You can do your bit by remembering to send an e-mail to at least one unstable person. My job is done! Life is too short for negative drama and petty things. So laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly! From one unstable person to another…. I hope everyone is happy in your head - we're all doing wonderfully in mine!

Neighbour Helps Rescue an Uncooperative Cat

A year or two ago my friend Linda's cat escaped. It was cold and rainy, and that cat would not come home. Not for three days! The cat wasn't exactly lost; Linda knew where it was—a good 20 feet up a tree right outside the back of the house. But that little critter would not come down. So another friend named Jim took a long extension ladder over to help, and he called me for my unique expertise - ladder-holding in the rain. That cat probably hadn't eaten in three days. It was cold and scared, but when Jim finally got up there, that cat was not glad to see him. It was downright hostile. In fact, the only way Jim got the cat down was to put a towel over its head and pry its claws out of the tree. Jim did all the rescuing. All the cat did was finally let go of the tree.
Salvation is often a lot like that — it is when we finally let go. None of us can look to Jesus, remembering our rescue, and say, "We made a good team, didn't we!"

 source

Expert Claims Loneliness Seeps into Our Whole Body

John Cacioppo, the director of the Centre for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, is the world's leading expert on loneliness. In his landmark book, Loneliness, released in 2008, he revealed just how profoundly the epidemic of loneliness is affecting the basic functions of human physiology. Cacioppo writes: "When we drew blood from our older adults and analysed their white cells, we found that loneliness somehow penetrated the deepest recesses of the cell to alter the way genes were being expressed."
[In other words], when you are lonely, your whole body is lonely.

Stephen Marche, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" The Atlantic (May 2012)

Research Suggests We Want What Others Have

Researcher Robert Cialdini once demonstrated with a fascinating experiment the persuasive power of desiring the possessions or experiences of others. Several hundred volunteers took their seats in a room, purportedly to fill out a survey. But that was only a distraction from the real purpose of the experiment, which had to do with how our behaviour is swayed by those around us. A large glass jar of cookies stood prominently on a nearby desk.
"Would you like a cookie?" one of the researchers asked the survey takers. Approximately one fifth of the volunteers took him up on his offer. In the second stage of the experiment, the research team secretly removed most of the cookies from the jar, so that it looked as though others had already taken one. Still, only about one fifth of respondents reached for a cookie.
In the final stage of the experiment, however, a researcher sat behind a desk beside a large glass cookie jar. But this time, before the researcher could ask volunteers if they wanted a cookie or not, a stranger ambled into the room, removed the glass lid, took a cookie in front of everyone in the room, and walked out again. This time, when the survey takers were asked if anyone wanted a cookie, nearly every single person took one.
This experiment suggests something that advertisers and marketers have long been instinctively aware of: humans want what other humans want. And the more visible other people's demand is, the more we want what they are having. In the cookie jar experiment, people didn't want more cookies when they thought that others might have taken a cookie. But when they actually saw another person take a cookie, their brains said, Gimme!

Martin Lindstrom, Brandwashed (Crown Business, 2011), p. 109

Chuck Colson: God Used My Greatest Defeat

The great paradox [of my life] is that every time I walk into a prison and see the faces of men or women who have been transformed by the power of the living God, I realise that the thing God has chosen to use in my life … is none of the successes, achievements, degrees, awards, honours, or cases I won before the Supreme Court. That's not what God's using in my life. What God is using in my life to touch the lives of literally thousands of other people is the fact that I was a convict and went to prison. That was my great defeat, the only thing in my life I didn't succeed in.

Chuck Colson, Sermon "The Gravy Train Gospel," source

Atheist Flabbergasted by a Church's Love

Patrick Greene of San Antonio, Texas, has had a long history of disliking and combating Christians. At one point Greene, an outspoken local atheist, threatened to sue Henderson County about the yearly manger display at the courthouse. "My wife and I had never had a Christian do anything nice for us," Greene said in a local newspaper interview.
But all of that changed in March of 2012 when the 63-year-old Greene learned that he needed surgery for a detached retina. Greene didn't have money to pay for the surgery, and he had to give up his cab driving job. When Jessica Crye, a member of Sand Springs Baptist Church, heard about Greene's situation, she told her pastor, Eric Graham, who then called Greene. Greene said, "If you really want to contribute something, we need groceries."
Greene thought that if anything, he'd see $50, or at most $100. But a few days later, the church sent a check for $400. More checks soon followed. The flabbergasted Greene said, "I thought I was in the Twilight Zone. These people are acting like what the Bible says a Christian does."
Now, rather than try to remove the manger display, Greene said he would like to add his contribution—a star for the top of the Nativity scene. However, Greene added, "You people can figure out how to plug it in."

Rich Flowers, "Atheist 'flabbergasted' by Christians' assistance," Athens Review (20 March, 2012)

The Atheist on the Plane

An atheist was seated next to a little girl on an airplane and he turned to her and said, "Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger."
The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total stranger, "What would you want to talk about?"
"Oh, I don't know," said the atheist. "How about why there is no God, or no Heaven or Hell, or no life after death?" as he smiled smugly.
"Okay," she said. "Those could be interesting topics but let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff - grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?"
The atheist, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, "Hmmm, I have no idea." To which the little girl replies, "Do you really feel qualified to discuss God, Heaven and Hell, or life after death, when you don't know shit?" And then she went back to reading her book.

source unknown

Most People Have Thought about Killing Someone

Following the murder of 16 Afghanistan civilians by an American soldier in March 2012, David Brooks writes that terrible crimes such as this should not surprise us:

Even people who contain reservoirs of compassion and neighbourliness also possess a latent potential to commit murder.

David Buss of the University of Texas asked his students if they had ever thought seriously about killing someone, and if so, to write out their homicidal fantasies in an essay. He was astonished to find that 91 per cent of the men and 84 per cent of the women had detailed, vivid homicidal fantasies. He was even more astonished to learn how many steps some of his students had taken toward carrying them out.

One woman invited an abusive ex-boyfriend to dinner with thoughts of stabbing him in the chest. A young man in a fit of road rage pulled a baseball bat out of his trunk and would have pummelled his opponent if he hadn't run away. Another young man planned the progression of his murder — crushing a former friend's fingers, puncturing his lungs, then killing him.

David Brooks, "When the Good Do Bad," New York Times (19 March 2012)

The Power of Christ's Resurrection Bursts through Obstacles

Tim Keller tells the following story about the power of Christ's resurrection:

A minister was in Italy, and there he saw the grave of a man who had died centuries before who was an unbeliever and completely against Christianity, but a little afraid of it too. So the man had a huge stone slab put over his grave so he would not have to be raised from the dead in case there is a resurrection from the dead. He had insignias put all over the slab saying, "I do not want to be raised from the dead. I don't believe in it." Evidently, when he was buried, an acorn must have fallen into the grave. So a hundred years later the acorn had grown up through the grave and split that slab. It was now a tall towering oak tree. The minister looked at it and asked, "If an acorn, which has power of biological life in it, can split a slab of that magnitude, what can the acorn of God's resurrection power do in a person's life?"

Keller comments:

The minute you decide to receive Jesus as Saviour and Lord, the power of the Holy Spirit comes into your life. It's the power of the resurrection—the same thing that raised Jesus from the dead …. Think of the things you see as immovable slabs in your life—your bitterness, your insecurity, your fears, your self-doubts. Those things can be split and rolled off. The more you know him, the more you grow into the power of the resurrection.

Nancy Guthrie, editor, Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross (Crossway, 2009), p. 136

Research Points to Our Belief in an "Ordinary God"

Several years ago in Britain, researchers went door-to-door asking persons about their belief in God. One of their questions: "Do you believe in a God who intervenes in human history, who changes the course of affairs, who performs miracles, etc.?" When published, their study took its title from the response of one man who was seen as rather typical of those who responded. He answered, "No, I don't believe in that God; I believe in the ordinary God." How many of our friends and neighbours believe in "just the ordinary God"?

Al Mohler, Words from the Fire (Moody Publishers, 2009), p. 38

A Six-Year-Old Gives Up Consequences for Lent

At the beginning of Lent, my wife and I sat at the dinner table with our three daughters, ages 6, 8, and 11, and attempted to explain the meaning of the period and some of the practices that go with it.
"Lent is a time to do what the Bible calls 'repent.' This means that we walk toward God, not away from him. We say that we are sorry for the things we do that are not right. Lent is also a time when many Christians think about how they are living as they get ready to celebrate what Jesus did on the cross and through his resurrection."
So far, so good. The girls' eyes were locked on me and hadn't glazed over.
"So, some people like to show they are thinking about what Jesus gave up for us by giving up something they think has become too important to them, like their computers or coffee or dessert or meat or television. It doesn't make God love us more; it just makes us more open to God and less cluttered with our own junk."
The girls were still with me.
"We would like to do the same as a family. We want to show God that we are thinking of him in a special way. Your mum and I are going to give up all desserts until Easter. We want you girls to think of what you could give up, something that means a lot to you."
Our oldest daughter followed our leading. She said, "I will give up sweets."
"Me, too," our middle daughter chimed in.
Our youngest daughter pondered the question a little longer, her six-year-old mind working the angles. I figured she was letting my deep teaching sink in, that she was pondering what really meant a lot to her. She finally nodded with satisfaction at her thoughtful conclusion and said confidently, "I want to give up consequences!"

source

Sixty Years Later, Man Wants to Return Stolen Cap

In the fall of 2011, Pete Richeson walked into the sheriff's office to turn himself in for something he did nearly six decades ago.
While attending the Iron Bowl, the annual college football game between rivals Auburn and Alabama, the Auburn student stole a "rat cap," a fraternity beanie, off the head of an Alabama freshman. Pete said he and his brother were walking to Legion Field with stealing a hat in mind. "That was one of the objectives, to go to the ballgame, but look for a suitable victim that you could attack," he said. Richeson said his plan worked perfectly as his brother blocked the Alabama freshman while he ran off with the hat.
"We took it back to Auburn and passed it around the dormitory at that time, and we nailed it to the wall, and it stayed there."
Now, sixty years later, Richeson tried to return the cap, but the local sheriff told him the statute of limitations had expired. But Pete would still like to return the rat cap to its rightful owner and make amends. He even provided a personal email for anyone who wants to claim the cap.
Richeson said, "It's stayed with me for over sixty years, and I would like to give it back to the man it belongs to. I'm sure he had some consequences he had to face …. I must do something soon, because we're both close to 80-years-old, and I'm hoping he's still alive."

Auburn alum in his late 70s trying to return rat cap stolen off Bama student at 1949 Iron Bowl, The War Eagle Reader (November 23, 2011)

Kids Playing Mud Football Realise They're Playing in Sewage

In his book Glorious Mess, Mike Howerton tells the following story about a childhood experience playing "mud football." After a huge downpour, he and his neighbourhood buddies found a gully filled with two inches of standing water. Howerton describes what happened next:

We had a blast. Every tackle would send you sliding for yards and yards. The ball was like a greased pig, which meant tons of fumbles and gang tackles and laughter.

I remember tackling one of [my friends] and watching him skim across the surface of the water for something like four miles and thinking, "I might be in heaven." When he got up, I noticed something stuck on his shoulder. I peered closer, wondering, "What is that?" Now, there was a huge, concrete sewage runoff drain right next to the gully. And apparently during heavy rains, all sorts of things got backed up, and I don't know if the apartment complex immediately next to the school burst a pipe or what, but I do know we didn't really pay attention to the flotsam in the gully until I noticed that something on Craig's shoulder. I peered closer and suddenly realised it was a soaking piece of toilet paper. In that same instant I realised the smell surrounding me was a bit more pungent than a typical mud football game ought to smell. I yelled out, "We're playing in POOP WATER!" and we bolted for home as fast as we could.

Talk about an instant of mental transformation …. Sometimes in life we need our thinking transformed. Sometimes we think we're having fun until we realise we're rolling around in sewage.

Mike Howerton, Glorious Mess (Baker, 2012), pp. 101-102

The American Church Looks Too Much Like Disneyland

The predicament of the American church is that we live in a kind of Magic Kingdom. Like going to Disneyland, you buy your ticket, and once you are inside the gates, everything you experience is controlled. The rides, the food, the shows are all there to entertain and amuse you. All you have to do is be there and observe.
Yet just beyond the walls of Disneyland is Anaheim and the rest of Los Angeles, including the streets of Compton. This is the real world with real problems: pollution and congestion, drugs and violence, islands of upscale neighborhoods surrounded by slums. Inside the Magic Kingdom, the outside world is almost inconceivable.

As Christians, we too are tempted to see our world that way. We can start thinking that our job is to invite a few fortunate others into the theme park, away from the troubles outside. But our job is not to increase the attendance at Disneyland; it's to tear down the walls and transform the world outside.

Richard Stearns, "Shedding Lethargy," Leadership Journal (Winter, 2012)

Heaven

There was a man who spent his life longing to go to heaven. He spent hours every day deep in meditation, contemplating heaven. When he died an angel took him on a conducted tour. The angel showed him majestic, snow-capped mountains. He gazed, transfixed at the sheer beauty of evening mists rising above tranquil lakes. He walked across lush, green water meadows covered with king-cups and stood on the banks of crystal clear streams. He skirted deep green woods, walked across miles of golden, sandy beaches, and listened to the gentle music of the waves. One beautiful sight after another was revealed to him. The man was so overcome by the loveliness of it all that he turned to the angel and whispered breathlessly,
“How wonderful! So this is heaven!”
“No, came the reply, this is the world in which you lived but never saw.”

source unknown

78-year-old Christian Leader Renews His Commitment to Christ

Soon after the publication of John Stott's 1971 revised edition of Basic Christianity, he received a letter that read:

Dear John,

Thank you for writing Basic Christianity. It led me to make a new commitment of my life to Christ. I am old now—nearly 78—but not too old to make a new beginning.

I rejoice in all the grand work you are doing.

Yours sincerely,

Leslie Weatherhead

Leslie Weatherhead was one of the most respected and influential Christian leaders in the United Kingdom. Thousands heard him preach at City Temple, his books were read widely, he pioneered in the field of pastoral counseling, and he was president of the Methodist Conference. Yet at 78-years-old he was not too proud or too worn out to make a fresh commitment of his life.

Adapted from Roger Steer, Basic Christian (IVP Books, 2010), p. 153

Comedian Stephen Colbert on the Gift of Suffering

An interviewer for the New York Times Magazine ran the following story about the faith of talk show host and comedian Stephen Colbert:

In 1974, when Colbert was 10, his father, a doctor, and his brothers Peter and Paul, the two closest to him in age, died in a plane crash while flying to a prep school in New England. "There's a common explanation that profound sadness leads to someone's becoming a comedian, but I'm not sure that's a proven equation in my case," he told me. "I'm not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so." He added, in a tone so humble and sincere that his character would never have used it: "She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that's directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain— it's that the pain is actually a gift. What's the option? God doesn't really give you another choice."

Charles McGrath, "How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?" The New York Times Magazine (4 January 2012)

Stray Cannonball Rips Through Suburban Neighbourhood

A crew from the TV show Mythbusters was staging an "experiment" in the town of Dublin, California. They were trying to fire a cannonball into some large water containers at a bomb disposal range. Unfortunately, the Mythbusters crew seriously underestimated the dangerous power of a stray cannonball.
According to a newspaper report, "The cantaloupe-sized cannonball missed the water, tore through a cinder-block wall, skipped off a hillside and flew some 700 yards east." But that didn't end the damage. The cannonball "bounced in front of home on [a quiet street], ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs and blasted through a bedroom …. [Then] it exited the house, leaving a perfectly round hole in the stucco, crossed six-lane Tassajara Road, took out several tiles from the roof of a home on Bellevue Circle and finally slammed into [a family's] beige Toyota minivan in a driveway on Springdale Drive."
Regarding the power of the stray cannonball, the owner of the minivan said, "It's shocking—anything could have happened." A spokesmen for the local sheriff's department also commented, "Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. You wouldn't think it was possible."
Stray words also have tremendous power to rip through communities and lives. Like a cannonball, they create "crazy" damage that you wouldn't think was possible.

Demian Bulwa & Henry K. Lee, "Mythbusters cannonball hits Dublin home, minivan," SFGate.com (7 December, 2011)

Former Basketball Star Jerry West Admits Struggle with Anxiety

In October 2011, hall of fame basketball player Jerry West released a book called West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life. Instead of using this platform to catalogue his various achievements (of which there were many), West decided to write about his struggles with anxiety and depression. It turns out the man who earned the nickname "Mr. Clutch" because of his outstanding performances under pressure and who inspired the official NBA logo was also debilitated by such high levels of game-day tension that life became almost unbearable for him. One of his biographers, Roland Lazenby describes West's early days on the court:

As he gained more confidence and took on more responsibility, West became wracked by incredible game-day tension. He would become a pacing nervous animal each game day, with the tension building moment by moment until he was absolutely beside himself with anxiety over his coming performance. It was a condition that threatened to take down his legacy before it ever got started. "I've always been a nervous person," West admitted many times.

sources: Jerry West, West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life, (Little, Brown and Company, 2011); and Roland Lazenby, Jerry West: The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon, (ESPN Books, 2009), p. 139.