The life of a grandparent: we leave in the morning for Brooklyn to join the sixth birthday celebration of our precious Louie. During that time we will bring Lucie back to her friends at Animal Inn, do pizza and movies with the family, fly kites with friends in the Sunset Park community, feast, go to worship in Manhattan the next day and trek home as the Sabbath comes to a close. There will be tears but many more laughs, chores to help with and games to play, books to read, and cuddles and kisses beyond measure. We will both be exhausted - albeit grateful - on the ride home, but only because our aging bodies are not as young as they once were. After supper and the most recent episode of "Call the Midwife," we will both silently rejoice when we climb back into our familiar bed. Such is the complex blessing of being a grandparent.The wise old priest Fr. Ed Hays - may he forever rest in peace - penned a short birthday prayer that often speaks to my heart. It is found in his delightful book, Prayers for the Domestic Church: a handbook for worship in the home.
Blessed are You, Holy Creator of the Gift of Life,
who calls us together today with joy
to celebrate the birthday of Louis.
May the real gifts of this birthday
be the blessing of a long life and good health,
the feasting and fun of our coming together
and the love we all have for you.
Happy birthday, Precious Boy,
and may God bless you and keep you this day,
and all the days of your life.
Amen.
I feel particularly grandfatherly today having done research for new ways to lower our monthly expenses (including changing phone service), communicating with the good folks at AARP about yet another Medicare supplement, cleaning the kitchen and bathroom floors, and later visiting with a younger colleague about strategies for navigating the always confusing waters of public ministry. Most of my days are about listening and moving tenderly through my various chores. I have come to trust that if I am quiet then I will meet the one who needs more space than me to share his or her story. I also am trying to leave only a light mark on each day. But now and again it is time to live into another role as an elder and share my own story. Not often, for sure. And I pray without bravado. But sometimes the moment requires a simple, clear, honest, direct, and compassionate word born of experience. Especially in this era when the Elder-in-Chief is such a belligerent and dangerous buffoon.
A group calling themselves the Elder Wisdom Circle summarized how they see the essentials of wisdom for this era. They are particularly concerned for those young adults between 15 and 35 who may not know a wise elder. As Robert Bly and Marion Woodman have documented: we live in a sibling society that abhors even the most useful hierarchies. "I use the phrase 'sibling society' to suggest a culture fundamentally without fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, or ancestors. The thinking is horizontal (for)siblings tend not to care much about boundaries and borders..." One of my favorite Bly poems, "Call and Answer," expresses his concern carefully:
For those engaged in the hard work of loving another, career-building, raising families, and trying to make sense of the complexities of 21st century existence, the Elder Wisdom Circle offers seven touchstones:
1) Listen twice as much as you talk: even the simplest souls can teach us something.
2) Always look at failure as a chance to learn: making mistakes can make you very wise if you learn their lessons.
3) Trust that the most important thing in life is love: anger and hatred close the path to wisdom.
4) There are some things in life that will never be understood: accept them.
5) Be curious about everything. As children, nothing escaped our curiosity. Rekindle and keep that curiosity.
6) Develop a value system and moral conscience constructed on love and integrity: don't compromise it.
7) The path to wisdom never ends: the person who believes he/she is already wise probably is not even on the path.
There is humility in these touchstones. Tenderness, too - along with a healthy dose of the Serenity Prayer and a whole lot of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs from the Hebrew Bible. I remember an old salt back in Cleveland telling me that his binge drinking and addiction had stunted his emotional maturation: he may have been 40 chronologically, but emotionally he was only 15. To heal and correct this arrested development required building a relationship with a sponsor: one who had already achieved a measure of sobriety as well as some practical wisdom about becoming an adult. Sponsors are not friends, neither are they spiritual directors or therapists. Rather, they are time-tested grown-ups who never put whipped cream on bullshit. In a sibling society there's a whole lot of us who need sponsors like my buddy in AA.
Cynthia Bourgeault teaches in her wisdom school that without sponsor-like mentors: a) we will idealize and romanticize our gurus or mother/father figures for a season; b) when we discover their humanity, however, and see that they too have feet of clay, we will turn on them with vengeance; and c) without help moving through these feelings of disappointment and betrayal, many will stay trapped in a repeating cycle of victimhood, adoration, disappointment, and hatred for decades. We will stay siblings rather than become elders. The wise and tender, Naomi Shihab Nye, offers an elder's clarity in her poem: "Kindness."
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Lord, in your wisdom, may it be so for us all this day.
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