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.

LISTENING

I have a confession to make: sometimes I don't listen very well. I have this ability to turn off the sound. Not all the time, mind you, but often enough I am deaf to what others are saying, especially what my wife is saying. It's not that I've heard it all before or I think my wife has nothing to say. (I may be dense, but I am not that foolish!) It's not that I think what another has to say is not worth listening to. It is simply that sometimes I shut off the sound and retreat into my own little world.

Then there are the times when I am listening with only one ear as it were. I hear what is being said, hear the words, the sounds, but I am not really listening. The words seem to go in one ear and out the other. My thoughts at that moment are, for some reason, somewhere else. I also do this with my wife. As you might suspect, I am often in deep trouble with my wife.

Listening is an art. It does not come naturally, at least not to me. I think we have to learn how to listen. That is not to say that there is some trick to it. Rather, we must be prepared to listen. There are those who say they can listen to someone while doing something else. I'm not sure I believe that because I know I cannot. I've tried it often enough - with my wife, of course – to know that I am an abject failure. When it comes to listening, I can’t multi-task.

There are a couple of reasons why we need to listen to others. The first reason is common courtesy. When others speak to us, we need to give them our full attention. Even if we think the other person has nothing to tell us, we need to listen. The truth is, as we have all discovered, is that we have learned more from some of the unlikeliest people than we have from those we considered founts of wisdom.

Another reason to listen is that the person talking to us has a need to talk to us. Why they have that need is sometimes not obvious. We may simply be the closest ear. But they have that need and we need to be open to them. There are many times when I have simply been the ear. Complaints were being aired because they needed to be aired. The one complaining did not expect me to resolve the issue. He or she simply needed a sounding board.

Another reason we need to listen (or learn how to listen better) and that is that a universal truth holds for all of us: we do not have all the answers. No one does. We do not know all that we need to know. And because experience is a universal teacher, the lessons others learn can be helpful to us, if we would only listen. We can always learn something, often, again, from those we least expect.  I wonder how much knowledge I have missed obtaining because I was not listening.

Maybe I am an exception. Maybe most people are good listeners. Maybe I simply needed to remind myself that if I am to truly live out my faith, if I want to be the person God wants me to be and who I want to be, I have to be able to listen to others who may be speaking God's word to me.

THE PROBLEM OF GOOD

The problem of good? What problem, you ask? We're all familiar with the Problem of Evil and we all have a problem with it, from the greatest atheist to the greatest theist. Even if we can explain evil, understand evil, know evil's insides and out, we still have to live with it and, thus, deal with it. It is in this dealing with, coping with, enduring and trying to overcome evil that causes every human being difficulties no matter what we believe or do not believe.

The truth is that the problem we have with evil is the same problem we have with good. It truly is the same problem, but we often to fail to see it that way. It is easy to see the problem we have with evil, especially we believers. It is that age-old question that has no satisfactory answer, at least not for believers: If God is all-good, where does evil come from? To put it another way: Why does God permit evil when God the all-powerful can prevent it?

The answer we give is always the same: free will. Because God created us with free will - and only God knows why God did - we are now free to do good or to do bad. And we often do bad, deliberately, with malice aforethought. Now that may be a satisfactory response to the "why" of the problem of human evil. It does nothing, or very little, to give a satisfactory answer to the "why" of natural evil like hurricanes, tornadoes and floods or to that fact-of-life of simply being in the wrong place and the wrong time. The truth is we will never understand evil fully, not in this life, no matter how hard we try, especially when we try to explain the evil we ourselves do.

Yet, what evil always seems to boil down to is that it is a God-problem. God must ultimately be held responsible for natural evils because that is the way God created this universe and God must also be at least be held as an accomplice to deliberate human evil because God created we human beings with the ability and the freedom to do evil, to be selfish and bad.

That being said (and probably also being debated: is he, meaning me, right about that or is he a heretic?), what goes unsaid is that we humans, while trying to foist at least a little of the responsibility and the guilt for human evil upon God's shoulders, so often give God little or no credit for the good we do. That is the Problem of Good. We are so often tempted to take all the credit for the good we do and take as little blame as we can for the bad we do.

We can't have it both ways. Either we give God the credit for creating us good with the ability to do bad or we take all the responsibilities for all the good and all the bad that we cause or do. I will grant that I may be making a mountain out of a molehill here. We usually do give God some of the credit and thanks for the good we do and the good done to and for us. My point is that we need to become a little more aware that doing good may come naturally simply because of the way God created us; but because we are prone to also be selfish, doing good is the result, and only the result, of the grace of God. And thanks be to God for that.

JUST BECAUSE IT'S FREE DOESN'T MEAN IT'S FRIVOLOUS

I remember that old Smith Barney (I think it was) commercial where John Houseman (I think he was the actor) used to opine that whatever Smith Barney did they did it the old fashioned way: they earned it. Nothing frivolous about Smith Barney. No freebees with them. If it is free, it really is not worth anything. We get what we pay for -- and all the rest of those sage bits of wisdom we were raised on.

For the most part those words of wisdom are true perhaps because we make them true and have learned from experience that, in fact, there is much wisdom and truth in them. The old saw among clergy is that a parish in debt is a parish alive. If there are no real money worries, the people tend to become lax. That is not always or even for the most part true, but we tend to believe it anyway, maybe because most churches always seem to have money problems. Or, if for instance, we are given a free ticket to some event, even an event with a hard-to-get ticket, we are prone to not take that event as seriously as the one we paid full price for and had to scratch and claw just to get in line to be able to purchase that ticket.

The real truth, of course, is that the most important possessions we have as far as our faith is concerned are free gifts. We did nothing, absolutely nothing, to earn them -- like life itself, like the grace of God, like forgiveness of sins, like eternal life-in-death. Yet because they are free, we often deem them frivolous in that we truly do not appreciate them for what they are nor make use of them as we should nor believe them to be as real as they are.

It is not that we take them for granted. Would that we would. We would be better off if we did. We would be more content with life and be better able to deal with the trials and tribulations that come our way.

Rather, instead of assuming that God always forgives us and living a life of The Forgiven, we sometimes cannot understand how God or anyone else could ever forgive us for something we just said or did. Instead of assuming that God's grace will always be enough, we sometimes act as if the situation is hopeless and we are helpless. Instead of believing that the bad can be redeemed, we give up hope., and so on and on and on.

The free gifts of God are simply that: free. But that is not what is important. What is important is not that we did anything to deserve or earn them. What is important is that they are gifts of God. Because of that, they can never be frivolous, or undervalued. In fact, we cannot put a price on any of them. They should be so valuable that we treasure them as we would treasure the most priceless material possession we might wish to possess.

From a human point of view, which is the only view we have, perhaps because these God-given gifts cannot be grasped like we can grab hold of the world's most valuable diamond or cannot be earned by the sweat of our brow, we often fail to realize just how valuable they are. We do so at our own loss.