“Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to.” Harry Emerson Fosdick

Retiring To, or With, that is the question:

A bit before the time of the baby boomers, H. E. Fosdick was a well-educated and influential preacher who J.D. Rockafeller hired as the head minister of the Park Avenue Baptist Church. Taking the job, Fosdick demanded that the church would become non-denominational.

Fosdick was a believer in the “Social Gospel,” as was advocated by Dr. M.L. King. “Let us continue to hope, work, and pray that in the future, we will live to see a warless world, a better distribution of wealth, and a brotherhood that transcends race or color.” The Social Gospel, as it were, dealt “with the whole man, not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well-being, but his material well-being.”

This advocacy of a “Social Gospel” is a very controversial subject in our time, as I understand it, and something that all governments of the world, more often than not, push to the side and choose to ignore. Why? Because it is an impossible task to “please all of the people all of the time.” Social injustice is evident throughout the world, else we would not need the news media.

But such was not the case with Mr. Fosdick’s assessment of retiring. When one retires, one cannot simply enter a void and hope for happiness and joy. One must have something to “retire to.”There is a short survival rate for anyone who simply accepts “work today, none tomorrow.”

So, are you a woodworker? Is it time to write that book you always wanted to write? Gardening, perhaps? Whatever your passion may be, you do not need to have a yacht, a mansion, or even a large house on the hill; it is what you retire TO that is far more important than what you retire with.

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