I'm 43 years old and I can still remember what it was like to have my bench press

number slowly increase. I can remember what it was like to feel like my legs

were getting faster and my arm's stronger and that my height was increasing.

I remember what was like a few years ago after eight years of not having a very regular pattern of exercise,

getting back into running and like seeing my mild times increase a little bit.

It felt like my body was getting stronger.

And now I'm 43 years old, and I'm feeling the effects of aging in ways that I haven't when I was 33 or 23.

New aches and pains come, and they linger.

I'll do some hard work, and I won't be sore the next day, but two days later.

And so in recent years, I feel like I felt both the glory and the humiliation of the human body in life in this age.

Sius Lewis in 1960 wrote in his book, The Four Loves.

He says, man has held three views of his body, three.

First, there is that view of those who called the body the prison or the tomb of the soul,

those to whom it was a sack of dung, food for worms, filthy, shameful,

a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones.

That's one view.

Then there are others to whom the body is glorious

and assuming only glorious. But thirdly, we have the view which St Francis expressed by calling

his body Brother Donky.

That's a translation for the children.

Lewis says, all three views may be defensible but give me Saint Francis for my money.

He continues.

...