stepping into the next challenge with trust...

My hearing is going away. Not completely, mind you, for I can still hear many things reasonably well and a few things up close very well. Like the music I play these days; I hear that with clarity and nuance. But soft sounds? Or the gentle questions my grandchildren ask on crowded city streets? The low, rumbling insights my wife tries to share next to me late at night? The breathy banter of some women? The rapid-fire confabulations of some men? The confessions carefully spoken to me in an overflowing coffee house at lunch? The semi-garbled utterances of British detectives on the mysteries I love? The coyotes in our wetlands? The first returning birds of spring? The clicking of my turn signal in the car? Not so much - and with decreasing clarity. 

This isn't news to those who know me: its been failing for the past 15 years. Too many rock and roll concerts and performances in crowded bistros, mixed with the genetics of my clan, doomed me from the start. But the time has come to own this part of my aging because it is getting worse - and needs help. I read a poem this morning, "To See It" by Laura Foley, that clarified this complication for me.

We need to separate
to see the life we’ve made,
to leave our house
where someone waits, patiently,
warm beneath the sheets;
to don layers of armor,
sweater, coat, mittens, scarf,
to stride down the frozen road,
putting distance between us,
this cold winter morning,
to look back and see,
on the hilltop, our life,
lit from inside.

My life, lit from the inside and examined on a cold winter morning, is blessed. I am safe and alive. I am reasonably healthy and loved. My eyes work. I have learned to bake bread and make fatoosh. I visit regularly with those I love. I am making music again with trusted artists and friends. I have the time to connect with my L'Arche Ottawa community on a monthly basis. And am able to do a bit of spiritual direction, too. I read voraciously. I have time to pray. And walk. And share a measure of love with our wounded dog, Lucie, who is as tender and neurotic as any animal ever brought into life on God's gracious, green earth. I know that I am blessed.

There are dilemmas, to be sure, including unpaid medical bills and our hope to sell this house and move closer to the Brooklyn clan. This past year has also been a learning experience in reduced income. But problems such as these are just details to be managed. They are not of my essence. What I am confronted with, however, is how to incrementally practice tenderly owning my mortality. This has required some serious theological reflection and prayer about what I really believe concerning life beyond life. I still fret about this a bit inside, but both my head and heart are coming to trust that if we come from the core of God's love in the beginning, then that is where we will return in the end. This is the lifeblood of the Paschal Mystery. Henri Nouwen once put it like this: 

There comes a time in all our lives when we must prepare for death. When we become old, get seriously ill, or are in great danger, we can’t be preoccupied simply with the question of how to get better unless “getting better” means moving on to a life beyond our death. In our culture, which in so many ways is death oriented, we find little if any creative support for preparing ourselves for a good death. Most people presume that our only desire is to live longer on this earth. Still, dying, like giving birth, is a way to new life, and as Ecclesiastes says: “There is a season for everything: … a time for giving birth, a time for dying” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2). We have to prepare ourselves for our death with the same care and attention as our parents prepared themselves for our births.

There is no “after” after death. Words like after and before belong to our mortal life, our life in time and space. Death frees us from the boundaries of chronology and brings us into God’s “time,” which is timeless. Speculations about the afterlife, therefore, are little more than just that: speculations. Beyond death there is no “first” and “later,” no “here” and “there,” no “past,” “present,” or “future.” God is all in all. The end of time, the resurrection of the body, and the glorious coming again of Jesus are no longer separated by time for those who are no longer in time. For us who still live in time, it is important not to act as if the new life in Christ is something we can comprehend or explain. God’s heart and mind are greater than ours. All that is asked of us is trust. (More about this in the days to come.) 

Simultaneously, while coming to trust God's eternal love more thoroughly - and this is still a work in progress - I must also discern how best to use whatever time and diminished energy remains. And fundamentally this means letting go of anxiety. It may have helped me in my professional life - it certainly compelled me into a host of social justice projects from time to time - but I can no longer find any blessing or beauty in anxiety. It feels like a premature death. Perhaps the very antithesis of trust (or faith.)  Another poet Ellie Schoenfeld, put it like this in "The Other Poet."

The poet explains exactly
what her poems are doing on a variety of levels.
I am jealously impressed.
My poems go places
but send no postcards––I have no idea
what they are doing. They do
whatever they want to.
I give them curfews
but they wake me in the middle
of the night, they interrupt meetings
and other situations where I have no time
for them. They hang on me
when I am on the phone.
They do not keep my secrets
and sometimes they lie.
They can be sullen and withdrawn
or explosively obscene.
I think my poems have problems with authority,
conduct disorders, attention deficit.
The other poet is like the parent
with the bumper sticker about their honor student
while I am speeding along
to get to the correctional facility
before visiting hours are over.
I try to give my poems direction.
They tell me they have cleaned their rooms
but we both know it's not true.
After all these years of therapy
we still don't understand each other.
I write a poem and think
"What the hell is that?!"

Taking time for regular contemplation and silence has helped me own just how often I've been ensnared by anxiety. Sadly, I know it all too well. When I came face to face with this four years ago on an extended sabbatical in Montreal, my soul demanded a change. It was crucial to go deeper into both acceptance and surrender in pursuit of serenity. (Some prefer the word relinquish to surrender and that works, too.) This first led me out of full time ministry. Now I have been welcomed into retirement. But here's what I have discovered: letting go pf my externals hasn't automatically healed the wounds within. In St. Luke's gospel, after Jesus teaches his friends to pray what we know as the Lord's Prayer, there is a fascinating story about demons, the restorative power of God's love and the work we must do in pursuit of God's peace.

Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are (hurting), know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (And after some other questions, Jesus said this.)When an unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ When it comes, it finds the old house swept and put in order. So it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and this latter condition of that person is worse than the first.” (Luke 11)

Like much of my spiritual maturation, I first heard this passage unpacked in an AA meeting. The speaker was clear: unless we regularly fill ourselves up from the inside out with grace, our wounds will lead us back into even greater pain. Nouwen also wrote this: 

When we enter into the household of God, we realize that the fragmentation of humanity and its agony grow from the false supposition that all human beings have to fight for their right to be appreciated and loved. In the house of God’s love we come to see with new eyes and hear with new ears and thus recognize all people, whatever their race, religion, sex, wealth, intelligence, or background, belong to that same house. God’s house has no dividing walls or closed doors. “I am the door,” Jesus says. “Anyone who enters through me will be safe” (John 10:9). The more fully we enter into the house of love, the more clearly we see that we are there together with all humanity and that in and through Christ we are brothers and sisters, members of one family.

But it is not automatic. It is a gift, true, but it must be received, embraced and honored. If I am to honor this gift, I need to do something about my hearing loss so that I can be fully present with those I love. So I can continue to walk the streets of Brooklyn with Louie and respond to his multiple questions. So I can keep on rockin' in the free world. So I can be present to the beauty of L'Arche. And share a measure of love in this weird era of fear and hate. 

I think David Bowie got it right when he said, "Aging is the extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been." I am now slower. And covered in white hair. I am a little less interested in judgment and a lot more open to listening and conversation. I worry less about how others look at me and practice welcoming those who often feel shut out a little more. I am less affluent but take more naps. I bake more bread and count more pennies. My hope is that when this race is run I might be more like a wizened and wise old John Prine at the end of his career who clearly found his way to let go and let God. It is one of his best songs ever!