Alive at 75
“Lord, teach us to number our days so we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
“I have learned to be content in whatever condition I am in.” Philippians… I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
THE INNER MAN & WOMAN. Near the land of 75, I recall a conversation with my grandfather, Robert Morgan, aka Pawpaw, when he was mid-80’s and I, mid-30’s.
A couple years after our beloved Mimi, his life-companion for 60+ years, had left this life, Pawpaw was staying with us in Decatur for a few days.
While reminiscing, Pawpaw said in passing, “well, no matter how old you are, you still feel the same on the inside.”
Screech!!! Conversational brakes! “Wait a minute, Pawpaw, I’ve never thought about that. You mean on the inside… you feel the way you always have?”
“Well, yeah,” he chuckled, “You may not do all the things you used to, but you still want to.” He was amused that what was obvious to him, seemed such a surprise to me.
Near 40-years later, I attest Pawpaw was right. We may not look the same on the outside, the way we used to, but we still feel pretty much the same inside. I recall my friend Marc’s comment that the older he got the more he appreciated how the mirror fogs up when he got out of the shower.
Best I can tell, our lives and loves are just as, maybe even more, precious to us as ever. In part of my pastoral work at Canterbury United Methodist, I get to hang out with a lot of delightful 80 & 90-something folks, who I think will also affirm this bittersweet truth.
CREATIVE ACCEPTANCE. In SEASONS OF STRENGTH: NEW VISIONS OF ADULT CHRISTIAN MATURING, Evelyn and James Whitehead write about what they call ‘creative acceptance’ of ourselves:
“Each of us probably know a few people who are deeply comfortable with who they are. Neither resigned nor overachievers, they are doing well what they can, quietly aware of their own limits and needs. Such people are at ease with themselves, and perhaps, best of all, like themselves.
“I may even sense some of that movement in myself. I find that I can only work ‘this’ hard. I wish I were stronger and could work as long as some others around me, but I cannot, and that is acceptable to me.
“I acknowledge ‘this’ is how I look – not taller, not more attractive, or youthful, not with more commanding presence. I look like ‘this’ – and that is acceptable, too. Actually, better than acceptable: this is who I am and I like it.
“There are recurring certain fears and doubts that seem to be me. I once assumed effort and years would rid me of them. Now, it seems they are with me for the duration. So I will make the best of them….” (p.104)
Here are some reflections about me (at best mildly interesting) that I hope will spark you to look at such in you. Self-honesty can help us all find that hard gained, yet finally grace gift of, self-acceptance.
By the way, energizing self-acceptance is polar opposite of energy sapping self-centeredness. The former opens us more to others; the latter closes us off from them.
I am prone to be an over-talker. My grandfather Arnold McKinnon, aka Papa Mack, had a deadpan, desert dry wit. He would say, “Bill, don’t ever pass up a good chance to keep your mouth shut.” From time to time, he’d nod, “That was another good chance you missed…” Believe it or not, even though I really try not to pass up those good chances, I still miss many.
Word person. Early on, I think from my mother and my Uncle Bobby, I learned to love books. Words emerge that help us understand what’s going on inside us and around us.
At the heart of my joy of being a minister is the role of encourager. That happens through relationships and words. My reading and reflection for words in my writing, teaching, or preaching are aimed at encouraging people for the God-thing of using their strong times well and persevering through their hard times. Any day I sense something I have said or written has encouraged someone, that is a good day.
I guess it is a relative thing. I admire people who seem naturally more comfortable in their own skin, than I feel in mine. Not sure if they know something I don’t. Or I know something they don’t.
It has taken a bit of getting used to, creative acceptance, that once you no longer have as important position as you once did, you are not quite as important to some people as you thought.
But happily, bonus: many long-time friends and colleagues endure, some new ones have emerged, and many rediscovered in the last few years around Canterbury and with touching base with folks in churches I once served.
I realize more than ever that I have always been surrounded by people I love and who lovingly put up with me. That’s Dianne front and center and a host of others on earth and beyond this life. Most of all, I guess it still surprises me that we can love or be loved at all – a beyond our own doing grace thing. Of course, there are the dogs and their embodiment of unconditional love. Maybe a cat or two.
DIVINE NON-CHALANCE. In A ROOM CALLED REMEMBER, in a chapter entitled, “All’s Lost-All’s Found”, Frederick Buechner wrote:
“We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go…. I know no more now than I ever did about the far side of death as the last letting go of all. But I begin to know that I do not need to know, and I do not need to be afraid of not knowing. God knows. That is all that matters.” (p. 189)
Seems like I have always, even from childhood, had some awareness that we die – hopefully later instead of sooner.
For myself as a person and pastor, the death of my dad when he was 48 and I was 24 was transformative.
Early in adulthood then, I discovered how love and grief are inextricably intertwined in our lives. Sometimes hard-coming, through those stages of grief, there comes a gratitude for the real lives and loves we have.
I’ve shared what I call a working definition of grief: Grief is the God given healthy process by which we can take the untakeable and go on after the un-go-on-after-able.
I have observed that the little phrase in the Apostle’s Creed “I believe in…the Communion of Saints” is not provable in an argument but validated in experience.
Those we love who have completed their earth lives are not through with us and we are not through with them. Their presence and love continue, often helping us see things about them and ourselves, we were not prepared to see until now.
Pawpaw and a host of others bless me as I do the morning dogwalk, drive in my car, and see them in my dreams. Are they in us or around us? Don’t know. Just real to me.
It helps re-enforce what my then BSC college chaplain Don Shockley called ‘divine non-chalance’. That seems to be what Frederick Buechner is describing in the above quote..
I guess preachers as much as anyone can get plenty antsy about what’s next. In the meantime, there are enough joys and complications to keep us busy. And by grace, without denying the antseyness, most times we can do our time trusting the mystery who got us into this life can get us out.