Edgework

In his book, Falling Upwards: The Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Richard Rohr asserts that normal spiritual development comes in two stages within a person’s lifetime. In the first half of life it is our task to “…build a strong ‘container’ or identity,” while in the second half it is to “…find the contents that the container was meant to hold.”

In the first half of life we are mostly concerned about surviving successfully. Our culture is mostly situated in and supports us in what we see as our primary task: “…establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life.” But, says Rohr, if we want to progress to the second half of life we must pay attention to the “…task within the task” which involves, “… purifying our intentions and being honest about our motives.” However, turning our focus to this second half of life usually doesn’t happen until we experience some kind of fall or failure. And, not surprisingly, what emerges in this second half usually doesn’t fit well into the container we have been building in the first half.

It is no wonder that the church and its institutions are generally not interested in moving people into the second half of life. By their very nature, institutions prefer to move from success to success and so leaders within these establishments tend to think along the same lines. So when they stumble or fail the tendency is to retrench and soldier on in the only way they know. Triumphalism is not comfortable with suffering, uncertainty, paradox and mystery – all realities that one generally encounters in the second half of life.

During our growing up years we basically become the product of who got to us first. We internalize the voices of parents, teachers and religious leaders who understandably emphasize obedience to their authority. Often these internalized voices are mistaken for the voice of God for the rest of life. Those internal tapes keep playing as we advance in age. It is no wonder, then, that we all have a propensity toward not growing into adult faith and life. As far as we are concerned we have learned all that is necessary for faith and life by the time we are young adults. So learning new perspectives and changing our worldviews later in life feels like a betrayal of our early mentors and even a betrayal of God.

Those who, by whatever confluence of failure, brokenness, loss, pain or perplexing circumstances, are propelled into the second half of life begin to feel more comfortable asking difficult questions and doubting that their early mentors in fact provided them with all they ever needed to know. They begin opening themselves up to the possibility that there is much more to learn and experience. They start to cooperate with God’s creative power as they move past their black and white world of certainties. Faith becomes an adventure instead of a defensive posture as the “order” of the past moves through a time of “disorder” and eventually towards “reorder.” As they move from the world of “either/or” thinking to “both/and” thinking they become willing to live with unresolved paradoxes and to “fall into mercy.” And they gradually begin to realize that they are not losing their faith but finding it as they start discovering their true selves in God.

Unfortunately, not only does the church community often discourage a move toward the second half of life, frequently people who choose to remain in the first half of life react harshly to those who are moving on. Desmond Tutu tells of how “…he was hated and threatened and attacked by people who put all of their identity into their black and white thinking of what they thought was God’s will.” Richard Rohr comments about this phenomenon: “To such people, those like Tutu who have entered into the morass and mystery of human life and history and come out on the other side with a larger identity, with larger questions and therefore larger answers, always look like sinners and heretics. Since first-half-of-life people can’t understand people at higher levels of consciousness, they judge them to be wrong, heretical, sinful and even dangerous.” I know this to be true from experience.

But what has come as a comfort to me is the affirmation that a move toward the second half of life should be seen as a normal course of development as a believer continues to “…grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). In many ways this movement describes precisely what happened to me in the wake of my burnout in 2002 that left me with a broken body and without gainful employment. For a while I certainly went through a time of “disorder” in which the standard answers to faith and life questions didn’t work for me anymore. But I was fortunate to encounter a fellow faith-traveler who had begun moving to the second half of life, so we could encourage each other along the way.

It has been helpful to realize that first-half-of-life people are naturally critical of anyone who moves toward the second half of life because such movement threatens to de-legitimize the securities to which they are clinging. So I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that many of my fellow pilgrims of the past have written me off and turned their backs on me. I don’t deny feelings of loss and pain, but I understand their need to distance themselves from me. So I keep holding them in my heart without any grudges. On the other hand, I am indeed grateful to find myself at the heart of a faith community in Altona that understands and affirms the need for Christ-followers to be open to a move from the first half of life to the second half.