On Approaching 50

I will celebrate my 50th birthday in less than two weeks. I am happy to say that I can honestly use the word "celebrate" to mark the occasion. I saw a t-shirt in a novelty shop the other day that was black and had the words "Oh crap, I turned 50." I considered buying it, but decided against it as that does not correctly communicate how I am feeling.

My feelings are more properly expressed in a passage from "All the Pretty Horses" a novel by Cormac MacCarthy. The main character, John Grady, is listening to the matron of a wealthy Mexican family tell the story of her youth. It is a story of captivity, rebellion, and hope bounded by the institutional walls of society that kept a young woman from realizing her dreams. The story revolved around one night many years  earlier when a young man had cried for her soul.

She tells Grady, "That night I thought long and not without despair about what must become of me. I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily. I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it. That the desire was the thing itself. The thing itself. I could think of nothing else of which that was true."

As I crest this hill I find myself facing a new dawn rather than a sunset. I feel invigorated with courage from having turned away fear, embracing opportunity, and taking up the challenge to be a person of value. I am finding the courage to love, to share, and to savor more than ever before. I feel more alive, more aware, and more spiritual than ever before. I no longer need to fear what I do not know because I am in awe of what I have yet to learn. 

I have for a long time resisted the forces of fear and its minions, but the piece that I have been missing or at least have previously failed to fully embrace is courage. Not a macho bravado, which is merely a mask of fear, but courage as a spiritual experience that is greater than faith or belief. It is a constancy independent of fortune that I am consciously allowing to bloom in what has been a void.

As I approach fifty years of age, I consider myself the most fortunate man in the world, richly blessed with family, friends, health, and opportunity. I am humbled, excited, and eager to see what lies around the next bend in the road.

Thanks for reading.

Inauguration Day 2009

This is a day for memories, hopes, and dreams. A couple of my strongest memories regarding Presidential events include the televised funeral procession for John F. Kennedy. I was three years old and unable to understand the gravity of the situation. The funeral was on a Saturday and I remember my disappointment that cartoons were not broadcast back in that era when cartoons were on television only one day a week. I know now that a lot of hopes and dreams were buried on that day with the young man who personified the potential to let go of the fears that gripped our nation during the 1950's. Fears generated by the Cold War and manipulated by the likes of Senators Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. 

Another vivid memory is from 16 years ago and the first Inauguration of Bill Clinton. He was the first President to take the oath of office for whom I had voted. I don't remember the words as much as I remember the emotions I felt while listening to Maya Angelo recite the poem she wrote for the occasion. I remember using it in my sermon the following Sunday. 

The 16 years since that day have been difficult. First, from witnessing the disappointment of the Clinton years in terms of political partisanship and his personal failings. Second, from suffering through the eight years of Clinton's successor to the Oval Office, who must go down in history as the worst President in the history of our nation. Eight years ago there was the zealous talk of a permanent Republican majority that sounded a lot like the rhetoric coming out of Germany more than 70 years ago in reference to the future of the Third Reich. Thankfully, both of those regimes had much shorter lives than their deluded visions.

My joy on this day is tempered as our nation struggles to remove itself from the muck of a political, foreign relations, and economic meltdown even worse than that of the Great Depression.  However, the flame of enthusiasm is growing with the televised images of the throngs of people, especially young people, in attendance for the Inauguration ceremony of Barack Obama. 

I find myself hoping this is a day that is meaningful and memorable for my three sons, especially for the oldest two, both of whom voted for Obama. I believe that Obama will be the President that Clinton should have been and Kennedy could have been. A President who energizes and inspires people of every generation with his vision, wisdom, competence, and impeccability. A President who restores a proper sense of community spirit, social and corporate responsibility, political and personal ethics.

My hope is that eight years from now we are all looking back on the greatest eight years in the history and I wish our new President all the best.

I will be attending ALISE in Denver later this month.

Reading my first book by Cormac McCarthy, "All the Pretty Horses." I like his voice.

Working on an application for a Publication Grant from the American Theological Library Association.

Aw, shucks, Ohio State loses to Texas. By Thursday night least 3 one-loss teams are going to claim the championship, but only Utah is 12-0.