These are books and audio recordings I have found inspirational and helpful in the past several years.  There are Amazon.com links for those items available through Amazon.com.  Please let me know of your favorites and new discoveries that are not listed. 

Claiming Your Place at the Fire : Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose

by Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro

Editorial Reviews
More than 10,000 people turn 50 every day in the U.S.; how do they handle this shift? Claiming Your Place at the Fire invites this group of "new elders" to ask four key questions: Who am I? New elders synthesize and transfer the wisdom of the past into the present. Where do I belong? They have a powerful sense of where they have come from, where they are, and where they are going. How do I bring my passions alive? They rejoice in rediscovering their life's work, their calling, their vocation. What is my life's purpose? Freed from imposed schedules and demands, new elders now find the freedom to create their lives anew. This timely book describes how new older adults can rekindle the good life, relight the fire within, and share that warmth and light with others.

Janet McCallen

Thanks to Bob Barry for recommending this book.  Here's a quote that illustrates why I enjoyed the book:  "Being a new elder is spiritual work.  It is work that acknowledges yet transcends the day-to-day mundane concerns of everyday life and helps forge a connection to something beyond.  It involves understanding the temporal in light of the universal."  Here's another quote:  "Becoming a new elder means finding one's voice and claiming one's right to speak."  And Leider and Shapiro do mean "claiming" ones' right to speak - they don't assume that you'll get listened to just because you've reached some particular age or status - you have to find your voice and claim your right to speak. I also love the image of conversations around the fire - Circle - that the authors recommend as a way to process their four essential questions - in conversation with others. Good book.

Home | Up | A Hidden Wholeness | A Simpler Way | A World Waiting to Be Born | Birth of the Chaordic Age | Built to Last | Calling the Circle | Callings | Centered on the Edge | Cesar's Way | Claiming Your Place | Clear Leadership | Clear Mind, Wild Heart | Crossing the Unknown Sea | Crucial Conversations | Death by Meeting | Dialogue | Exploring the Future | Facilitation | Fierce Conversations | Flawless Consulting | Flawless Consulting Fieldbook | From Debate from Dialogue | Good to Great | Good to Great and the Social Sectors | How the Way We Talk ... | How to Build an Effective Board | Inspire! | Leadership and Self-Deception | Leadership and the New Science | Leading Consciously | Leading With Soul | Learning Journeys | Life at the Frontier | Marketing Warfare | Mitford Years Boxed Set | Mission Possible | Nonviolent Communication | On Dialogue | Presence | Reclaiming Higher Ground | Stewardship | Synchronicity | The Answer to How is Yes | The Art of Possibility | The Corporate Mystic | The Five Dysfunctions of a Team | The Four-Fold Way | The Future and Its Enemies | The Generosity Factor | The Heart Aroused | The Lexus and the Olive Tree | The Path of Least Resistance | The Power of Now | The Responsibility Virus | The Second Half of Life | The Seven Whispers | The Soul's Code | The Story Factor | The Tipping Point | The Will to Govern Well | The World Cafe | Turning to One Another | Writing Down the Bones | Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Last modified: 12/30/05