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Monday August30, 2004 Volume VI Number 35
by Ken Kemp
y buddy Doug walked across the stage and received his doctoral hood ten years ago now. I was there, joining in the celebration. Dr. Doug is a career pastor; but now is equipped at a new level. His focus of study was spiritual formation in men at mid-life.
Thankfully, new demographics have extended the watershed turning point of mid-life out further on the time-line. TIME Magazine, this week, invites us to live beyond a hundred years and offers some suggestions on how to do it. Many of us, according to demographers, will.
Crossing over at mid-life is kind of like passing over the great Continental Divide. It’s been awhile now since I passed over that summit. (If not, I’ll live to be at least a hundred and fourteen.) Up to that mid-point on life’s journey, all the snowmelt and rainfall and spring water runs back in the direction behind you, to the ocean from whence you came. Then when you hit the pass at mid-life, climb over the ridgeline and proceed downward into new territory, the flow switches direction and now runs ahead – toward that other ocean that you know is out there waiting, but you have yet to see. In the first stage, you are pre-occupied with what you left behind as the water runs back towards the start of your pilgrimage. Then in the next, past the ridge, you think about what’s ahead as the streams run forward and down the hill.
It’s a paradigm shift for most of us, mid-life. Dr. Doug experienced it, and studied it. We had long good talks about it this week.
For Doug, there is a spiritual dimension to the transition. The change, he believes, is different for men than women. And it generally hits women a little later in life. But there are clear similarities. Perhaps it is a spiritual awakening. We become contemplative. Reflective. We savor. We muse. We reminisce. We seek significance. We see meaning.
Men get restless about the time they grow weary of playing the roles required to progress professionally. Women don’t really have time to think about it until the youngest child packs up the last of the children’s rooms and moves on into a world of independence. In both cases, men and women turn to the yellow pad and tear off the old pages, dog-eared and filled with scribbles and notes and reminders and schemes and plans until we flip down to the first clean, blank page. We brush it off with a stroke of the hand, just in case there’s any residue. We want a fresh, clear start. And there, we imagine. We dream new dreams. We feel new emotions. Romance makes a come-back.
We start writing on that blank yellow page. We make journal entries. New thoughts take shape.
You somehow want to communicate your discoveries with that younger generation – but they aren’t really impressed with your insight. There’s much they don’t understand. Yet. But they will. You know it because you’ve already watched them learn the old lessons you had to learn yourself at their stage. And just like you back then, they fully believe they are the first generation to encounter these things.
You - you’re getting the perspective of the generations now. And into mid-life, over the crest and then beyond, you long for something that will last. You reconsider your values. You re-align priorities. You are writing a new chapter.
Accumulation doesn’t matter much anymore. Quantity isn’t nearly as interesting as quality. The pursuit of wealth takes on entirely new dimensions. In fact, your definition of wealth is transformed. You prefer richness to rich.
And it’s here at mid-life that spirituality blossoms into something multi-dimensional. This is by God’s design. Dr. Doug teaches the disciplines taught in the Scriptures and discovered and embraced by believers for centuries. You have an appetite for the bread of life. You are thirsty for living water. The powerful teachings of Jesus make more sense. Redemption is required - mandatory, in fact. Sanctification – cleaning it up – looks like a good idea.
You realize that spiritual conversion is far more than a guaranteed seat in the heavenlies. True spirituality is entering into the very presence of the One who created and sustains it all. Something mysterious draws you in. It energizes you. It calms the fears of an unknown future. It sustains you in times of crisis. It gives you a sense of purpose in the face of tragedy.
You are satisfied with nothing less.
The old friends who laughed and played and dreamed and shared the confusion over where it all might lead, wondering where we fit and what it means, those friends now are way more than acquaintances. They are fellow sojourners. Compatriots on the trail. Companionship becomes fellowship.
I met with six of them, my fellow sojourners, along with Dr. Doug, and my mentor Dr. Ted this week. Lingering over a long lunch, we talked about the years ahead. We reflected on God’s goodness. We talked about vocation.
I’ll never forget it.
Post mid-life.
Bring it on.
* * * * * * *
People ask why our son, Kevin, decided to make his first home as a married man Seattle. I believe it has something to do with one of our favorite vacations.
Family vacations - you know, mom, dad and the kids - are now history. The children are no longer children, even though they will always be our kids. Those trips we took are now part of the archives – archives of photographs and video tapes and memories tucked away somewhere in the gray matter.
Yesterday, we retraced one of our favorites, right here in the Pacific Northwest. The memories are rich.
I’ve probably spent more time than I should collecting home videos. I do believe that most of our twenty five years of child-rearing can be replayed from the library of tapes. I would go home after a trip and edit those things, adding sound tracks, and in the production, relive the moments. It had a way of cementing the memories, reinforcing the images, familiarizing me with far-away places in ways I’ll recall for the remainder of my days, I suppose.
So as Carolyn and I, now a pair of sentimental grandparents, wandered around Port Townsend, poking in and out of shops and galleries and book stores, and out on to the pier and up the stairway to the top of the bluff and around the neighborhood of historic Victorian homes, many of them built during the Civil War and shortly after, we could almost hear the children giggling and running ahead of us and posing for pictures on the wicker chairs on wide porch of a gracious old house.
And then out to Fort Worden, fortified even before the city was incorporated, to protect the Puget Sound from invaders. There is an old Lighthouse on the Point, still standing as a beacon, warning ship captains and crews of a dangerous land mass protruding out from the hills into the bay, a rocky obstruction that if unnoticed, would tear open a hull, and ground your vessel forever. And just between the lighthouse and the forested knoll, is a massive old concrete bunker. In the bowels of the structure are large store-rooms, dark and damp and dank, once used to house vast stockpiles of munitions and explosives. And up on the deck, gun mounts and turrets, designed for colossal canon, big enough to sink enemy ships at long range. From the sea, as ships approach the Puget Sound from the Straight of Juan de Fuca. By design immense bunker would remain unseen, invisible, undetected, until you heard the canon fire. And then - it would be too late.
As you stand on the old abandoned structure, open now to the public, and peer out to sea from the hidden observation deck, and view the great span of waterfront one hundred eighty degrees from East to West towards the North through a narrow and wide opening, you can only imagine the days when the threat was real and the ordinance at the ready.
It was here that the children played so many years ago, running up and down the steps, and deep into the chilly dank rooms without light, their steps and their voices and their laughter echoing off the concrete walls, daring to turn the corners and explore deeper into the scary darkness, pretending to be in the throws of battle, the enemy just around the corner, taking a shot here then there with pointed fingers as weapons.
As Carolyn and I explored those nooks and crannies again, watching other children play as ours did, hearing their voices echo from the darkness, the video tapes replayed in our minds and hearts, and we remembered the days that are gone forever, but not really.
They are a part of us now.
So when Kevin grew up, and found a woman with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life, he chose to come back here, at least for now, where adventure and imagination ran free, where the gardens bloom big and the trees reach high and the coastline never ends.
I think I understand.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
As a leader, you may have awhile to go before mid-life comes along, as it inevitably will. If you haven’t yet reached that summit just know this – there are rewards waiting for you there that are rich indeed.
If, like me, you are well into mid-life, you’ve experienced that spiritual awakening. You may not have thought of it in those terms. Welcome it. Embrace it. Explore its meaning. Know the Source. Seek out the Designer.
It’s for real.
Dr. Doug teaches a college level course on the subject. Because he’s my friend, I’ve received some of the benefits of the material without the otherwise mandatory matriculation. Here’s a hint – it involves age-old disciplines like prayer and meditation and contemplation and wisdom literature and incendiary fellowship and learning how to worship. It requires friendships that go well beyond mere acquaintance.
As a leader, you need all this. Me, too.
Back on those vacations, as you chased those children up and down the trails and along the beaches, you knew you were part of something larger, but only now its becoming clear.
On the backside of the Continental Divide, the water still flows.
There really is joy in the journey.
Posted in Seattle
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2004
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