A Pilgrimage to Faith...from birth to conversion

"There is something before the Christian dialogue, and that is the Christian mind - a mind trained, informed, equipped to handle data of secular controversy within a frame of reference which is constructed of Christian presuppositions. The Christian mind is the prerequisite of Christian thinking. And Christian thinking is the prerequisite of Christian action".

In the late summer of 1955 Melvin and Frances Lange brought the first of what would eventually be their three children into this world. Thanks to my Father, who didn't think a child in that day and age should be saddled with the name Melvin, it was decided to name me Mark. Having only been married for a little over a year and practicing birth control, a new baby was not exactly part of the days agenda, not just yet. Needless to say my parents now found themselves having to make quite a few adjustments to accommodate my arrival. One could even speculate that in a different time and to different parents my arrival might not have taken place at all. But that option was unthinkable then, and remains unthinkable today, for people like my parents. I suspect that one of the adjustments they were forced to make however was that of my Dad not going back to College and getting his degree. Now he would never admit to that of course, but then that was one of his generation's greatest attributes - Selflessness.

My Dad was of German stock, his parents having immigrated from Germany to South Baltimore several decades earlier. My Mom was originally a southern girl from Lynchburg, VA. and a combination of English, French and Italian. Her family had come north hoping to find work in the Baltimore shipyards like so many did in those days. The finding of work, as it turns out, was something that would eventually kill my Grandfather at the young age of 61 and my Mom at the even younger age of 52. Both victims of exposure to Asbestos and the resulting cancer it caused. Both victims of this country's inexcusable disregard for the safety and lives of its citizens.

As stated previously, Mom and Dad would probably have liked a little more time to prepare for their first child. Especially with one that would turn out to be as strong willed and difficult as I. My Mom would comment in later years that it was as though she gave birth to this little man instead of a baby. That I was always so serious minded...instead of just enjoying childhood like other kids did. An Aunt would sarcastically nickname me "Smiley" because it seemed to her that I always had a frown on my face. Personally, I loved my childhood, but must admit I did spend a lot of time inside my own head...alone with my thoughts. Much later in life a test would reveal that indeed I was the kind of person who could be very happy living within the confines of his own mind - an INTJ is what the test score determined I was. Evidently that's fairly uncommon, but then again people always said I marched to a different drummer.

Mom and Dad were living with her parents at the time of my birth, a three bedroom house on the corner of 5th and Jeffrey in Brooklyn. Mom was 19 and with her two younger sisters still in school and living at home, it was more than a little cozy in that house. Dad had two years of college and had already done a tour in the Navy by the time he married Mom. Mom on the other hand was fresh out of High School. The two had met at Church where both had been active members since childhood. Now at 27 and 19 they found themselves with a new baby. Or should I say a new little man.

Brooklyn itself was a blue collar community in which most of the men worked at one of the many ship yards in Curtis Bay and most of the women stayed at home to raise the children. It was a hard working, hard drinking community where the number of Churches in the area was second only to the number Bars. It was also a neighborhood where everyone knew and looked out for each other. Where, on a warm summer day, a young boy could walk with his Grandfather to Clark's country store for a Yoo-hoo and Dr. Pepper. And with everyone they passed en route commenting on how the young boy looked just like his Grandfather, his Pop Pop as he would come to call him, the little guy just beaming with pride at the comparison. And as it is the first grandchild's right - Pop Pop would be his Grandfather's name for all future grandchildren.

Now my family was a fairly typical Brooklyn family with the exception that my father had those 2 years of college and worked in an office downtown instead of at one of the ship yards. I guess statistically we fell into the lower-middle class of the socio-economic scale of things. But then again no one seemed to care about that kind of stuff in those days.

Dad worked hard and Mom saved every penny so that by my second birthday we were able to move to a place of our own, a small rented row house out in Halethorpe. With help from Mom's parents, we would move again in only a years time to what, in my mind, was our first real home over on Walton Avenue - not more than a stones throw from 5th and Jeffrey. I have extremely fond memories of life in that house; Of the big back yard, dinner on the screened-in porch, playing wiffle ball on Pope St. and of my first dog - a Border Collie named Lassie. Walton Avenue would be where I'd go through all the typical childhood diseases, have my tonsils removed and also start school. It was also there that I watched an ambulance take my Mother away as she miscarried and lost the baby who would have been my brother. It would be the first of two children she would lose at birth in her lifetime. Twenty years would have to pass before I would realize that this incident was the cause of a recurring nightmare about my being chased by an ambulance. And only then would I finally stop having it. The house on Walton would also be privy to the successful births of my younger brother Jeff and my sister Beth.

I would receive my first instruction on the nature of things while living there. The nature of God, the nature of man and the nature of our world. This instruction would of course come from my parents, but also from my Sunday school teachers, my school teachers, and my extended family. It was a relatively simple world in which we lived then that went something like this:

There was a God and He made the world and us. But we sin and that's why Jesus had to die for us. If we're sorry for our sin, Jesus' blood takes it away. And because Jesus rose from the dead, if we believe in Him we too shall overcome death. Your life should demonstrate your gratitude for what Jesus has done for you. It should be an example of His love to others. You were to live by the Golden Rule.

If you think about...it really does cover everything. It's a world view that explains good and evil. It explains the seemingly twofold nature we have as human beings. It provides for accountability, justice and most importantly redemption. It explains, for the most part, why we are here. And since my preschool, first and part of my second grade education was spent in a private Lutheran school...every external influence of my young life reinforced this world view. At the time I was totally unaware of any differing viewpoints. I had never met a Jewish person, Muslim, Hindu much less an Atheist. In my world God was a certainty and His name was Jesus Christ. You knew you had a propensity for sin but you tried to live by the golden rule, knowing the Blood of Jesus would take care of your mistakes, if you were truly sorry for them. The Bible was an infallible historical record of man's creation, existence and in God's dealings with him. No one questioned it, it was the culture. God was in his heaven and Sundays were for Church and then afterwards...the Colts. For if you were a true Baltimorean; After Jesus Christ...Johnny U was the man. The two phrases you heard constantly in our house were "Jesus loves you" and "Unitas to Berry", sometimes in the same sentence. If it sounds like those were days of simple, carefree innocence for me, you're right. But they would not last, for outside of our little world...the country was changing, changing fast. All together we would remain on Walton Ave until I was seven.

Now 1962 is upon us, I'm seven and everything in my world is about to change. In keeping with the "American Dream", we move out to the suburbs, to Woodlawn and bigger and better things. For this was also part of the culture of the time albeit a new component of it. New at least it seems to me with my parents generation. If every generation leaves a legacy, I think my parent's generation gave us the suburbs. The way the dream went was if you got ahead through hard work, if you were able to make a "better life" for your family, then that's what you did. That was the measure of success for those of us in middle class America. And in 1962 that better life was not to be found in the city it was waiting for you in the suburbs. It was a period of time that would later come to be known as "white flight". Now I should say at this point, that the N word was never used in our house, at least not that I can remember. The bigotry that existed in our house was the subtle, polite kind. The kind of bigotry based on rumor and innuendo, not direct first hand knowledge. The kind that was never spoken of openly. The same cannot be said of my extended family however and I'll discuss both in the piece on "My Pilgrimage in Community".

Our move to Woodlawn in 1962, among other things, meant a change for me in schools. Subsequently, I started attending Johnnycake elementary school about midway through second grade. To describe that experience as culture shock would be an gross understatement. The first thing that hit me was the enormity of the place. Going from a small private school to Johnnycake was overwhelming to a seven year old. Everything from finding my classroom or the cafeteria to figuring out which one of the fifteen busses was mine at the end of the day was a daunting task. The second thing that hit me was how unruly the classroom was. What was tolerated by teachers in terms of behavior floored me. Talking without raising your hand, getting out of your seat, these are things that would have gotten you sent to Pastor Kepner's office at Saint John's. Shoot I remember getting sent to him for using a rude tone of voice to my teacher once. On that occasion Pastor only had to show me a big paddle to convince me I didn't want a return trip. What I would learn over the next couple of years at Johnnycake however was that despite how you have been raised, if you're exposed to external influences that vary greatly from your familial ones...you will be affected. Accordingly by the time I hit fourth grade I was one of the worst behaved students in the class, the class clown if you will. But I was also two different people, one at home and another in school because children will always go to the very edge of what's tolerated by the adults in charge of them. And the difference between Home and School was significant.

At home things weren't all that different since our move. Dad and Mom remained constant in their expectations regarding behavior, academics, etc. We still attended Church regularly including Sunday school, although it was a much larger and less intimate Church we now attended. My parents were the kind of parents who demonstrated unconditional love for their children at every turn. It didn't go unnoticed by me that very often my parents did without, so we kids could have something we needed. When I hear all the horror stories regarding parental abuse and such these days I realize just how blessed we were. Mom was as loving, nurturing, and self-sacrificing a mother as anyone one could ever hope for. And Dad was an even handed disciplinarian, a teacher and a good provider. Yes, I was spanked as a child and a belt was used. But it was never done in anger and was always accompanied by the requirement that I explain to my Dad's satisfaction why I was being spanked. In fact once, when I was a little older, I flippantly remarked after a spanking that he could spare me the usual lecture. Not a good idea, as Dad promptly administered a second spanking to my backside. Being the brilliant student I was however I immediately identified, to my father's satisfaction, that my spanking was due to being disrespectful, of not Honoring my Father and Mother as God commanded. And yes, we had them, the Ten Commandments. Hanging at eye level in the upstairs hallway, and we knew them to. But my parents were fighting a losing battle with me even at this young age and they didn't even know it. To be honest I don't know if they could have done anything about it even if they had known for it really was a generational issue and perhaps beyond their knowledge and wherewithal.

As wonderful as my parent's were, it seems to me that they really blew it in a major way, their whole generation did. In my opinion, theirs was a generation that was either clueless as to what was going on in the culture around them, didn't care or didn't know what to do about it. While attempting to raise their children with the same values that they had been raised, academia and the rest of the external culture were undermining everything they were teaching them. It seems to me theirs was a generation who lost sight of the "WHY", or never knew it. And unfortunately, they spawned a generation of children that did nothing but ask WHY? In a line from the song "Nights in White Satin" by the Moody Blues it says "some try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend..." And that's exactly what my generation thought of our parents. Namely, that they were living their lives in a way they could neither defend nor explain. It didn't matter if their values were good ones if they were baseless. Values are only as strong as their underlying presuppositions (the WHY). In short, can you explain/defend why you live the way you do. We would ask this repeatedly of their generation and I don't remember getting satisfactory answers very often, if at all. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

It was during my fourth grade year at Johnnycake (1964-65) that life took a dramatic turn for me. That was the year that I lost a great deal of respect for my parents, teachers and in point of fact all of humanity. It was the year I lost my innocence and most significantly, it was the year I lost my Faith.

In retrospect I should have known something was up when some parents pulled their kids out of class before the lesson began on that day. But I didn't pay any attention to it. More than likely I was preoccupied with causing trouble or something else I wasn't supposed to be doing. The lesson was going to be one of those film strips they used to show us accompanied by a voice on a record. You remember, the record would beep to let the teacher know when to advance to the next frame.

The teacher started the lesson by saying we were going to learn about the birth of our Solar System. Great I thought, I know this stuff, after all Mom and Dad had read Genesis to me many times. I just knew I was going to enjoy this, because I would know a lot of the answers. Boy was I in for a shock...and it wouldn't be the last shock for me on that day either. As we watched the film unfold I kept waiting for God to be brought into the equation. I waited and waited, and waited. But of course that was not going to happen, not on this day. For this day was to be my first introduction to Darwinism and all of its ramifications. The longer the film went on, with no mention of God, the more distraught I became. By the time it was over I was thoroughly confused, mad as hell and beginning to actually feel despair. If you doubt that a nine year old can feel despair; Understand, that this was school! To a nine year old, they just don't teach you things in school that aren't true. And if God didn't make the world then how did it get here? How did I get here? For the film strip didn't really answer these questions. And why had my parents and everyone else I trusted been lying to me all these many years? Was this going to be like the Santa Claus thing all over again? I don't remember whether the teacher had just asked a question or was asking for questions from us, I just remember needing answers to my questions and I needed them now. So up shot my hand at the first opportunity. But when the teacher finally called on me, I didn't even get to finish my question before she hastily cut me off, saying something about my question being inappropriate...whatever that meant. I wasn't satisfied however and wasn't willing to wait to be called on again. So I pressed the issue with the question yelled out at a volume I knew could be heard by all hearing people everywhere. "I thought God Created the World" (told you I was a willful child). She looked at me with eyes filled with rage and proceeded to tell me that God was about Religion and that this was Science and there would only be Science discussed in the classroom. That statement went right over my head, Science? Religion?, but the threat of the Principal's office didn't, so I shut up. But I wasn't done, not yet. I turned to the guy sitting next to me, Richard Gooner. Now Richard was a one of those guys, we all knew at least one in school, who was nine years old but had the vocabulary of a nineteen year old. So I talked him into asking about God. Richard loved to talk so I knew he'd do it. True to form Richard raised his hand and was allowed to pose a question...my question. Of course he did so in a manner far superior to mine. I remember him saying something about the Biblical record, Judeo-Christian something, Creation something or another...didn't matter, he was shot down before finishing just as I had been. And I got a suspicious glare from the teacher. I don't mind telling you, I grew to hate this teacher and I was perfectly happy to see her go out on maternity leave later that same year. I just felt sorry for whoever was going to have the misfortune of being her child. So, there I sat in as deep a depression as is possible for a nine year old. I had only one hope left at this point, Dad. My Dad knew everything, he would surely set things right. Maybe, he would even come to school and yell at the teacher. Maybe he could get her fired! Boy, I couldn't wait to get home.

I'm home waiting for Dad, waiting for my world to return to normal. By the way, I did in fact ask Mom when I got home...She told me to ask Dad. My confidence level was high, very high. Dad had all the answers, history had shown this to be true and therefore I had no reason to think otherwise. I had already started thinking of some on my own in fact. Maybe God caused this and then caused that...I'll wait for Dad. When my father came home that evening I hope he wasn't planning on relaxing, not on this night anyway. Before he could get his coat off I was on him. And in the space of about 2 minutes I blurted everything out that had transpired at school that day. I stood there looking at him waiting for his answer. Waiting for all to be made right again, as I knew it would be. I waited for my Dad to lift this cloud of despair that hung over me. But it wasn't going to happen, not this time. My father looked down at me and said, "Well son some people believe this and some people believe that and..." I interrupted. "OK Dad" I said, "but who's right?" My father would once again begin to try and explain to me the differences between people and what they believed in. And I'm sure he thought he did a good job of it too. But I wasn't buying it. It was all too clear to me that he just didn't know, at least not to my satisfaction. Dad didn't know! I was devastated, I was disappointed, but most of all I lost a great deal of respect for my father that day. I wanted him to say that God made me. Not that that's what we believe...but that it's the truth! And if it's the truth then Darwinism cannot also be true. He didn't, he couldn't and I curse his generation for that. As a result my parents lost me that day and in most respects so did the Church and the rest of Society. Their inability to answer a simple question from a nine year old, cost them dearly - What was once respect had now turned to contempt. Oh they could still discipline me and for a while force me to live according to their value system, make me go to Church, confirmation class, school, etc...for now. But the day would come...when and what form it would take remained to be seen when my contempt for them would rise up and and strike at them. For if you couldn't tell me that there was a God to whom all of us are ultimately accountable...then your parental authority over me extends only as far as you can reach. And then only as long as you're bigger than me. The same holds for society's authority, the school's, etc. - because unless you can catch me and unless you have the power to do something about it when you do...Be forewarned, you may have just created a monster.

You could see a marked change in me over the ensuing years. Oh I would still play little league baseball, hide and seek, camp out and all the other things that little kids do. But by the sixth grade I was involved in a gang, had started smoking, been suspended for fighting and finally...ended up in juvenile court. My parents would blame themselves for that period and they were partially correct, but not for the reasons they thought. For what was really going on was a fairly simple process inside of me, not anything external. Simply put, I was gradually changing my view of the world. As God's existence grew less real to me...so did its restraining influence over me. I was gradually adopting a world view where the only things relevant were appearance and whether or not you got caught. While the day in court had a sobering effect on my behavior to be sure, it didn't change anything inside of me. I would just need to be more careful in the future, because they still had the power.

By the time I reach Junior High I'm being forced to go to confirmation classes at Church by my parents...but only because they still had the power. We'd go on Church retreats as a youth group and someone would bring some booze and we'd get drunk. Then we'd go to confirmation class and sneak off for some heavy petting in the Church balcony afterwards, what a joke it was. In our Church the belief was that if you Baptized your child as a baby, gave them proper religious instruction, and put them through 3 years of confirmation classes...a Christian you would make, almost guaranteed. As I said earlier, I hadn't quite thrown off the belief in a Creator completely at this point, but I sure did question His relevance. And I was almost positive that I had no use for the religion and values of my parents. Don't get me wrong, I loved my parents, they were very good people and I know they loved me. But that wasn't enough and clearly they were in over their heads with me.

And lets not forget this was also the sixties (66-69) and it was crazy. Anything and everything was being challenged. Every system of authority in our society was under attack by the sixties counterculture. Now I'm cautious by nature, and I didn't jump right into the mêlée, but I was watching, experimenting and observing...observing everything around me. And much of what I saw didn't make a whole lot of sense. I saw the sex, drugs, and rock & roll scene for what it was, nothing more than the same materialism of the previous generation just dressed in different clothes. The Civil Rights movement seemed legit, as did the Save the Earth movement, but I wasn't sure what to think about the Anti-War movement. And the reality was that in our neighborhood, and I suspect it was the same in most, it was more about getting drunk or high than anything else. No noble crusades being waged there.

The public education of Mark Lange was succeeding nicely however, I was adopting moral relativism and situational ethics as part of my own belief system and soon I would reject even those. An example of the thought process taking place follows:

If one day I were to pop a cap in your head killing you...you could certainly try and prevent me...but you would have no basis from which to raise a moral objection to my action. Morality and ethics had no place in the process of natural selection where the strong eat the weak.

It's no exaggeration, if I had stayed on that course I could have easily done a Columbine right there at Woodlawn given the right set of circumstances. You may ask why is that, I would simply say to you, why not? But in reality I would take a path more passive, more resigned...to the futility and meaninglessness of it all.

By the time I reached High School it was 1970 and I was looking for a view, a perspective from which I could make some sense of the things I saw going down around me. Dr. King was dead, as was Bobby. Also dead were Jimi, Jim and Janis. My desire was for something sustaining and sustainable, something unifying. The Church? Oh yea, it was still there warning us about promiscuous sex, the evils of Rock & Roll and telling us to get a hair cut...they were totally, utterly, clueless. Since I had finished confirmation and taken my first communion they probably figured they'd done their job. This is what the quote at the beginning is about, it was written in 1963. It was a time for meaningful dialogue with the counterculture and those of us on the periphery observing, but how? Since there was no Christian mind and therefore no Christian thinking there could be no dialogue. At least not with any of the mainline or evangelical churches. When I hear modern Evangelicals today talking about the need for "Revival" I just laugh. I laugh because it was there for the taking in the sixties. You had an entire generation rejecting what they saw as a mindless materialistic culture and looking for alternatives. What an opportunity Evangelicals had. But the truth is nobody was home. I think they were all in hiding, hoping no one would notice that they hadn't marched with Dr. King when he was alive. What a bunch of jerks. So without any answers to your questions you escape; You get high, you play sports, you get into fights, anything to stop thinking about this stuff. And if that doesn't work...you end it. You bring an end to the loneliness, the confusion, the lack of direction and the meaninglessness of it all. You take your own life. And a lot of us did just that. For me, I had now gotten to the point where I concluded that if Darwin was right about the origin of man, then what I've now come to know as Nihilism was the only world view that made sense to me. Therefore, what was the point of even getting out of bed in the morning. I was staring into the Abyss as Nietzsche would say.

But if you said any of this stuff out loud, look out. In a best case scenario you'd get accused of being melodramatic, weird, a teenager, worst case they'd take you seriously and put you away...till you were well again, till you were normal. Plus, ultimately Nihilism falls apart...because it isn't true. There really is meaning and purpose and love and beauty in the world. And even back then I'd get a taste of it once in a while and I'd soar with it...only to crash again. So eventually you begin to think that life's just a cruel joke or that there is something very wrong with you.

While my parents were for the most part oblivious to all of this, or perhaps in denial, I had an Aunt who was not. Just how deep her perception was I don't know. But she started telling me about Jesus between my freshman and sophomore years. She had given me books to read and as a result I even got involved with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes during my Sophomore year. But while I had played sports my whole life I probably didn't have the true "Jock" mentality. I didn't get a sense of meaning or purpose from athletics, it was just fun. I did like the teamwork aspect of it however and still do. But I couldn't connect with those guys in any meaningful way. Now during this time my Mom would actually tell my Aunt to chill, to leave me alone. Clearly she thought my Aunt was too much into Jesus, too religious for her taste. Besides my parents weren't even active in the Church by this time, for they too had been affected by the changing culture. They seemed to have adopted an attitude like most people I suppose; Foregoing the Golden Rule in favor of the Hippocratic oath. I will do no harm had become their new creed. Problem is "I will do no harm" is not what Jesus commanded, it's not Christianity.

Critical mass for me came between my Sophomore and Junior years. A failed relationship with a girl I thought I was in love with. A terrible year on the baseball field. My best friend taking a poke at his father and being sent to some farm in Illinois as a result. I cut 45 days my Junior year and still to this day don't know how I passed. I had two basic moods anger and depression. Lack of funds kept me from getting and staying high or drunk. And when left alone with my thoughts...it wasn't good. Something had to give. It got bad enough during the summer between my Junior and Senior year that Mom actually asked my Aunt to help. Something in my behavior must have really caused her concern, for her to ask my Aunt to help. After all, if Aunt Tish was successful Mom would end up with a true died in the wool, born again, Jesus freak on her hands. So I must have been giving off some significant distress signals for her to be willing to risk that.

In August I got an invitation to go on a Church retreat with my Aunt. Supposedly this Church had a great Youth Pastor and group of kids. She claimed they were real kids, not phony angel types who never cursed or had problems with drugs or alcohol. She told me to call my cousin Vickie if I didn't believe her. Now Vickie had been into some shit herself so I knew I'd get straight talk from her. Vickie told me it was a pretty cool group, thought I'd be OK with them and that she was planning on going. So, I figured what the F and said I'd go. So I go on this retreat and I must admit I was pretty shocked at the group of kids they had there. It seemed, at first glance, that most of these guys were pretty real. Some had been heavy into drugs, some alcohol, you name it there were all kinds there. What amazed me I think however was how diverse and yet so tight these guys seemed to be with each other. For instance this Jock and this Head, one singing Beach Boys tunes the other the Stones, seemed to have a really strong bond with each other - really connecting. As the weekend progressed it became apparent that the bond I observed was their relationship with God. The conversations I observed were passionate, honest and very real. We studied the book of James that weekend in small groups and to the credit of the adults they let the teens study together without interference. This lent a kind of credibility to the discussions because you knew the kids were being honest with each other about where they were at. Some were taking about Jesus in such an intimate way, it intrigued me. They seemed to know him like you know your best friend. And these were real kids, my age, who a year before were strung out on acid or drunk all the time. One guy even said he used to trip every single day and now he's here talking about God's love. Others said they didn't get it, seemed to them that knowing Jesus just meant they couldn't have any fun. I listened intently to all, only speaking when asked a direct question. And then, only responding as much as needed to keep from appearing like some brainless idiot. Mostly I listened and I watched. Much like I did with the counterculture.

Saturday Night, August 27th, 1972. If it can be said that in fourth grade I experienced a loss of Faith, then this night would be best described as a rebirth of Faith. They had a worship service in an outdoor chapel just as the sun was going down. That's probably why to this day, Sunset remains my favorite time of the day. After the customary singing, scripture readings, and some interesting personal testimonies; The Youth Pastor began to speak. I must confess I don't so much remember the particulars of the message but I do remember him painting a vivid picture in my mind of God's love for me and at the same time, my sinfulness. That the reason for the loneliness and despair I felt was because I was designed for an intimate relationship with God. But that my sinfulness was preventing it. That repenting of my sin, asking Jesus to come into my life and make me new person, would wash away my sins and allow me to enter into a personal, intimate relationship with God.

I'm glad I was sitting in the back row and that it was getting dark. Because tears started streaming down my face at this point. For I had been touched right where I lived, way down deep in my heart of hearts. And on that wooden bench in the middle of a grove of Pine trees, as the Sun disappeared below the horizon; I bowed my head, quietly repented of my sin and gave my life to the Lord Jesus. I asked him to make me a new person, told him I didn't want to live alone anymore, that I wanted to be with Him. There were no shouts, no flashes of light...but in that quiet moment with the Sun almost gone I was changed, changed forever.

The Pilgrimage continues...