REFLECTIONS ON REFLECTIONS ON GROWING OLDER

Over the years the genesis of many of my reflections have been snippets I have gleaned from a newsletter Martin Marty used to publish and which I truly miss called Context. For some reason I’ve saved many of the issues. While rummaging through my files I found a piece in which he listed six reflective quotations about growing older They are found below with my reflection on each of the reflections.

George Eliot: "It's never too late to be what you might have been." That is, unless we die before we get started. We might not be able to do what we wanted to do long ago or even want to do today, but we can always be or become the person we might have been had we begun earlier. It is very tempting to believe that we are too old to change but the grace of God knows no time limit.

May Sarton: "Old age is not an illness, it is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow toward the light." We also become lighter. As we age, we get rid of a lot of the garbage we have been carrying around thinking it was important at the time when, in truth, all it did was hold us back from growing up and growing closer to our God and to one another.

Lyn Hall: "We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves." We discard all the phoniness we had wrapped ourselves in trying to be who we were not or who we wanted to be or tried to be for whatever reason we tried and simply allow ourselves to be who we are. We discover that we have wasted a lot of time, money and energy in the pursuit of foolishness.

Dorothy Sayers: "Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward we must believe in age." No one in his or her right mind wants to be 16 or 26 or 36 or whatever age we once were again. The best age to be is the age we are right now and to live it to the fullest as best we can, gracefully with grace. Besides, those who live in the past, which is dead and gone, are not really living. They are simply vegetating through life, which is no way to live.

Carl Jung: "Aging people should know that their lives are not mounting and unfolding but that an inexorable inner process forces the contraction of life. For a young person it is almost a sin -- and certainly a danger -- to be too much preoccupied with himself; but for the aging person it is a duty and a necessity to give serious attention to himself." We discover, as we grow older, that had we paid more attention to ourselves, especially to our bodies, we might feel better. Now we have to think about our bodies and souls, not to the detriment of others, but because we have no other choice.

And finally, for what it is worth, and it may not be worth much except that it comes from two former Yankees: the one and only Casey Stengel who opined, "I'll never make the mistake of turning 70 again." Casey was Yogi Berra's manager and mentor, Yogi, the one who observed, "It ain't over till it's over" and "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Need I say any more?

THE REAL ISSUE

I saw a license plate holder the other day on a car that was passing me. It read: "I am an orthodox Christian." I wondered what it meant. Did the owner of the car mean that he or she was member of the Greek Orthodox Church, for instance, an Eastern Christian, that kind of Orthodox Christian? Or did the driver mean that he or she held the usual -meaning true - and right Christian beliefs? That’s my, to be honest, biased guess, but I really do not know.

What I do know, or at least am convinced about, is that there is no true orthodox Christian. None of us holds all the truth, believes all of the truth, understands all the truth, because we do not know all of the truth. The real and honest truth is we are all heretics, all of us. No one has a complete handle on the truth either. As soon as we think we do, we wander off into error. Faith is not completely and totally explainable or understandable. And as soon as we try to explain the faith, define the truth, we set ourselves up for failure.

Jesus never tried. He told us that he and the Father are one. He never explained what he meant, nor could he, so he did not even try. But sometimes, for whatever reason, we try and we get ourselves into trouble. Jesus told us to love everyone. We don't. And we know we don't. And then to justify ourselves we try to explain why we don't love someone and why it is all right not to. Paul told us, learning from Jesus, that there are no distinctions within the Body of Christ. We make them and we make them based on our perception of our differences.

The problem is not that there are differences. We are all different even as we are all equal in God's sight and should be equal in the sight of one another. We are all sinners in God's sight and should be seen as all sinners in the sight of one another. But, as we know, as any orthodox person will tell us, there is sin and there is The Sin - and we all know what that Sin is these days, don't we? There is truth and there is The Truth. My perception is that those who call themselves orthodox mean that they have a handle on The Sin and The Truth.

The problem, I believe, these days in the church and, I dare to say, in the political world in which we live, purports to be over The Sin to which every other sin pales in comparison. Those who are orthodox know The Truth about The Sin and they are willing to divide the church (and the country) over it, and are doing so, thank you very much. I wonder what God thinks. I wonder what Jesus would say, Jesus, who hung around with the best and the brightest and the worst and the so-called dregs of humanity and never made any distinction between anyone.

The truth of the matter is that the truth is being obscured behind the rhetoric of orthodoxy: “We are the true believers (Republicans, Democrats, etc)”. It always has been and always will be. The truth is that the real issue is not orthodoxy or Gospel truths. The real issue is about power. It always has been and always will be no matter how much anyone protests otherwise. That is THE TRUTH.

TAKE LOVING NOTICE

One of the great pleasures I have had all my life is to have been blessed, and continue to be blessed, to live in parts of the country where there are four seasons. Sometimes the winters are too long. Sometimes the summers are too dry or too wet or too hot. Sometimes the springs are too short or too cold. Sometimes the falls are not as pretty as I would like. But I get to experience and revel in the changing of the seasons, and not only to enjoy the changes but to live in and through them.

The anticipation of the seasonal changes is always important, especially when the season we are in has become just a little too much: too long, too cold, too hot, too whatever. What is more important than the anticipation is the living in the moment. Because even the moment, no matter how much we may dislike that moment because we are too tired of such moments, is worthwhile.

A longtime cyberfriend Molly Wolf wrote this a while back and it still holds true: "C.S. Lewis got it right: God wants us to live in the present, not the past or the future, because this present moment is as close as we're ever going to get in this life to what Eternity is like. The Market, the geese -- the river flooding, two kids intent on their sandbox play, a cat sleeping with her tail over her nose and her paws neatly bundled, two blanketed horses standing side-by-each in a field, an old woman dozing on the bus, two young lovers swinging hands and giggling, a drift of leave, a tangle of flowering maple: we are given such an endless number of God's creations to take loving notice of; and taking loving notice leaves us with such happiness and peace. What on earth keeps us from spending more time at this business of loving notice, when it costs absolutely nothing and gives us so much?"

What indeed! If the truth were told, however, we allow too much to enter our lives which will distract us from living in the moment and taking loving notice of all that surrounds us. Personally, I never really want to rush the seasons, yet I find myself rushing through the seasons. And in my hurry to get to who knows where, I miss so much of that which will add meaning and depth to my life right here and right if only I would stop. If only I would stop, not just to smell the roses but to take loving notice of them, even a long and loving notice.

To take loving notice means that I have to look beyond the beauty of the flower and the aroma that it gives off. It means that I have to come to the realization that the rose, this rose, was created by God because God loves me and gives it to me for my pleasure and enjoyment at this very moment in my life, a life that it often seems that I am rushing through.  To take loving notice means to know and see and understand the love that is at the basis of all that is good and Godly that surrounds us.

The season is changing. We are moving from fall to winter. Now is as good a time as any and perhaps better than most when we can make and take the time to take loving notice of all that surrounds us, the changing of the leaves, the nip in the air, the shortness of the days – what we seem to take for granted but really should revel in and give thanks for. 

FOR ALL THE SAINTS...TO REMEMBER

Dag Hammarskjoeld, one-time Secretary-General of the United Nations, once observed: "In our era the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action." Dorothy Day, that great Roman Catholic Social Worker, observed "When they call you a saint, it means basically that you're not going to be taken seriously." If they were and are both correct, where does that leave us?

First of all, they remind us that there is nothing we can do to become holy, but we cannot become holy without doing something. Doing good works is no guarantee in and of itself of growing in holiness, but we cannot grow in holiness without doing good works. Holiness is a by-product of doing what our faith demands, namely, loving God and neighbor and self with our total being. That, in essence, is the basic message of the Bible whether we realize it or not.

Love is a transitive verb. It demands action. We love in deed, in doing loving actions. When we love actively, we grow in holiness. When we grow in holiness, we become holy, saintly. Saints, of course, at least in this life, are not totally holy nor are they totally sinless. Saints are human, just like you and me. Granted, we would probably never consider ourselves saints, at least not on the order of Peter or Paul or Francis of Assisi or Mother Theresa. In fact, we probably would never even consider ourselves a saint. I mean, how dare we, sinners that we are! But we truly are – both sinners and saints, as incomprehensible as that may seem.

Dorothy Day reminds us that when we live a saintly, holy life, we will not be taken seriously. Others may admire our good works, but they will think us to somehow be a little off center, even foolish. The Apostles were considered fools, I am certain, by their friends and family and colleagues for dropping everything and chasing after some itinerant preacher. “Are you crazy?” they asked. Francis was considered out of his mind for giving up a comfortable, rich life to walk naked into a life of poverty.

So, too, when we do good deeds, holy acts. Our motives will certainly be questioned by those not prone to giving of themselves to others. They will assume that we do what we do from some ulterior motive for some hidden or perceived reward and not because we truly want to do good and live a holy life.

Well, so be it. But the awful truth is that they are absolutely correct. There are indeed times when we do good works for selfish purposes. It is also the truth that there is always something good for us in our good works for others. No good and holy act is totally and purely selfless. Nor can it be.

All Saints Day, which we just celebrated, is a reminder that we are all saints in spite of our sometimes less-than-pure motives. It is also a reminder that we all do good acts because we are holy people no matter what others think or believe.  Finally, it is a reminder that we can never cease doing good until we are called by God to be a Saint Forever.