Getting older, wiser? 

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to us.
    -Leon Trotsky
When the first grey hair appears on our head, it is a
critical juncture in life. We go to the mirror with a
sinking feeling of dread and try to pluck out the evidence
- one here, two there. But the more we pull out, the
more seem to come in.

I tease my friends by asking which of them would like to
relive their adolescence. It always brings a groan. Youth
has a lot to offer, but so does the experience of age. 
In India, there is a joke about a man going to a barber and asking, "Do you have anything for grey hair?" 
"Yes," the barber says, "respect."
Just because we don't have wrinkles or a grey hair, we
are not necessarily alive in the fullest sense of the word.
Real living comes from making a contribution to life.

This is the paradox of life: when we cling to the body, it
loses its beauty. But when we do not cling to the body
- and use it as an instrument given us to serve others
- it glows with a special beauty, as we can see from
the lives of many great saints and mystics. When our
consciousness becomes pure, even the body begins to reflect
its light. ~Eknath Easwaran
My eternally young, firecracker of a  little wife, Leslie, is celebrating her 54th birthday today. This occasion has caused me to draw back and consider this stuff called old age, er uh, maturity. (Not that Leslie is old!)
One of the things that I earnestly desire as I grow older, and my gray hair and beard continues to get grayer and grayer is, that as I grow older, I grow in wisdom.  Father Richard Rohr, one of my favorite authors, as he considers men dealing with aging in his book, "A Man's Approach to God", talks about the phenomenon of a "mellow seventy year old". We normally expect 70 year olds to be crotchety, and set in their ways. The mellow 70'er is just the opposite. The mellow seventy year old man is one who can "sit on the dge of the family and offer it security and caution..." 
I aspire to this as I approach the older years.( I am already an AARP member!) Rohr goes on to say that the wise old man "doesn't stifle others with his closedness and rigidity, dogmatic political opinions or an 'Archie Bunker' worldview." Wisdom "offers a worldview that is both safe, and adventurous". 
We as a church will become more civilized and akin to the Kingdom if we as older male adults see it as our mission, our central task--to offer mellow wisdom to the young fathers in our community. I seek, and with hope will continue to seek-mellow wisdom. I desire to lose the rough edges, and "the need to be right". The humility that comes with mellow wisdom takes the edge off, relieves group and individual anxiety, and brings about greater overall strength in the Kingdom community.
Mellow wisdom...that is a characteristic that I want to grow.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You can do it! Yes you can.

Image
I claim to be an average man of less than average ability.I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith. -Mahatma Gandhi So, are you willing to give it your best? In this transformation of the small i's to the Real I, the essence, are you willing? to do the Work? Resolve to awaken to the inner motivations of the small self within. Observe yourself. Put some separation between you and your small self/ego. Observe your own behavior, thoughts, actions, motivations. Let the Spirit filter the way you respond to stresses from outside. For the Word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two edged sword, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart-----------your heart! Who is The Living Word? The logos? You know.
Read more

Baylor has need of Christ’s wisdom

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can not serve both God and Mammon.” We ( Baylor - as a university community which says its follows Christ) have blindly served mammon, with the other schools in Texas…and look where it has taken us. Now money is driving the conference groupings even more than before- in 1995. Where will this lead? Texas—that is the University of Texas at Austin, is the driving force of the ‘we deserve more money’ movement. Fair enough, that is as it probably should be. UT is a dominant force in NCAA athletics. It is a secular school. It has absolutely no ties to the Gospel, other than the Gospel’s influence on our culture. Although far less in influence, the same goes for our militaristic land grant school, and our state’s other outpost, which defies description. But Baylor—why do we follow them? We say we are of Christ . I question that. Especially ...
Read more

Handling God's blessings with care

It is permissible to take life's blessings with both hands provided thou dost know thyself prepared in the opposite event to take them just as gladly. This applies to food and friends and kindred, to anything God gives and takes away. -Meister Eckhart In order to live in freedom, we must learn to accept a temporary disappointment, if necessary, when it is for our permanent well-being. Sometimes, when we want to eat something that appeals to us, or when we want to eat a little more than is necessary, we can't help feeling disappointment as we push away from the table. We cannot help thinking that we could as well have stayed on for five more minutes of pleasure, forgetting that it would probably be followed by five hours of stomachache at night. The right time to get up from the meal is when we want just a little more. This is real artistry, real gourmet judgment: when we find that everything is so good that we would like to have one more helping, we get up and walk away. ~Easwa...
Read more