People ask me all the time:  "What are you doing now?"  "What is your next book going to be about?"  They seem to know how much joy it gave me to do all those interviews that went into Finishing Well.  It was perhaps as much fun as I have ever had.  I have often said since that I could spend the rest of my life talking to virtuous people doing things that make a difference in the lives of others.  That’s who I want to spend the rest of my life with. 

Beyond the personal pleasure it gives me to be in the company of such noble souls, my two great wisdom figures in this life, Peter Drucker and Lyle Schaller, tell me it is the most important thing I am working on.  Both of them tell me that this age wave of potentially productive and exceptionally enterprising people – male and female -- is going to be the big demographic story of our time as they make their way from success to significance in Life II.  Life II is the term I used for those beyond Halftime in my book Finishing Well. 

What I set out to do in Finishing Well was to "do lunch" with enough of these pathfinders to get the hang of how they think and what they are doing to convert good intentions to results and performance (a favorite Drucker phrase) in the lives of others.  For this is a new frontier:  what to do with the Second Half of our increasingly long lives.  The word ‘frontier’ implies that most of us really don’t know what’s out there.  I intend to find out what’s out there, and to report it to you in a variety of forms -- this Website chief among them.  Anyone is welcome.  My focus is American Christianity (all forms – individual and organized) and my interest is in those who convert latent energy for good into Active Energy. 

I hope you will join me on this adventure both by listening to my conversations with Life II pioneers and by reporting what you, too, are finding out in your own explorations.  What we will have here is a confluence of explorers gathering occasionally around the fire to tell stories about what the natives are up to out there in this wonderful new life zone that I call socially productive ageing.  It’s not The National Geographic, but the National Demographic Society and if you are on this Website, you are "in." 

If you are of a retiring frame of mind looking for leisure land alternatives for your golden years, you have wandered into the wrong room.  (

So let’s go.  I’ll write you a letter to tell you what I’m finding and I hope you will write me back to tell me of your own adventures:  what you are finding out, what cul de sacs you have run yourself into, what’s on the other side of the frontier for you and those you are "doing lunch" with. 

The Bible says of Abraham, the quintessential example of faith, "He left his land not knowing where he was going."  This is not science.  The answers are not in the back of the text book.  It’s more like conversations.  It’s organic.  It’s doing life together:  Life II.  It’s not dis-passionate, cynical or holier-than-thou.  But it is holy.  It is a journey like those great adventures recounted in Hebrews Chapter 11, where it says (in verse 8), "By faith.  Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place where he would afterward (the word is actually italicized in the NKJ version) receive an inheritance."  Think of it!  That’s where we’re going.  Together, I hope! 

Let me hear from you.  Let’s discover this new world together.