Thoughts on Fifty

“50 years: here’s a time when you have to separate yourself from what other people expect of you, and do what you love. Because if you find yourself 50 years old and you aren’t doing what you love, then what’s the point?”
— Jim Carrey

“Every so often I read a book about age, and whoever’s writing it says it’s great to be old. It’s great to be wise and sage and mellow: it’s great to be at the point where you understand just what matters in life. I can’t stand people who say things like this.”
–- Nora Ephron

“Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.”
— Unknown

“If somebody a while back had offered me a thousand more years, I would have leapt at it, but at this point I would be inclined to beg off… The eventual end to life seems preferable to the idea of an endless and endlessly redundant extension of it. I wish such faith as I have had been brighter and gladder. I wish I had done more with it. I wish I had been braver and bolder. I wish I had been a saint.”
— Frederick Buechner

“Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90. Time is a concept that humans created.”
— Yoko Ono

“Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.”
— Victor Hugo

“The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.”

— TS Elliot

“Gray hair is God’s graffiti.”
— Bill Cosby

“Except ye become as little children, except you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five, “ye cannot enter the kingdom of God.” One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again.”
— Dorothy L. Sayers

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
―- Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

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Eric Folkerth is a minister, musician, author and blogger. He is Senior Pastor of Kessler Park UMC United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. Previously, he was pastor at Northaven UMC in Dallas for seventeen years. Eric loves to write on topics of spirituality, social justice, music/art and politics. The entries on this blog reflect that diversity of interests. His passion for social justice goes beyond mere words. Eric was arrested at the White House, defending immigrants and “The Dreamers;” and he’s officiated at same sex weddings. Eric was the 2017 recipient of the prestigeous Kuchling Humanitarian Award from Dallas’ Black Tie Dinner. (Human Rights Campaign) Eric has led or co-led hundreds of persons on mission trips to build houses and bring medical care around the globe, to places such as Mexico, Haiti, Russia, Guatemala, and Nepal. He is proud of have shephereded Highland Park UMC's construction of ten Habitat for Humanity homes, (and one Community Center) and helped forge an alliance with Habitat that led to the construction of 100 homes in Dallas, housing thousands of people. His wife, Justice Dennise Garcia, has 20 years experience as a state district judge and appelate justice in North Texas. First elected in 2004, she was the first Latina ever elected to a Dallas County state district bench, and she she left that position whe was the longest currently serving district judge. In 2020 Dennise Garcia was a elected as a Justice of the 5th District Court of Appeals for Texas. She is currently running to be Chief of the 5th District Court of Appeals in the 2024 cycle. They have the world’s best daughter, Maria, who is a practicing professional counselor in Dallas. Find links to Eric’s music-related websites, at the top of this site’s navigation menu.

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