OldSoul.blog

It’s been a topsy-turvy fortnight that just might be turning things right way up! 

I’ve been through a challenging period. For starters, I’ve had the flu – and a pretty nasty strain it was too, even though, having recently turned 70, I’ve also had every vaccination known to science: ‘flu, shingles, pneumococcal, and a COVID booster. Additionally, I’ve been engaged in a waiting game with a range of medical professionals as we seek to discern the best way forward for my ongoing cancer treatment. And in a further layer, I’ve entered the final week of my fractionally-small part-time employment, meaning that, come the end of June, I will be completely unemployed for the first time in nearly 60 years! The flu sapped me of energy, and the interminable waiting for results and consultations and scans and case conferences in the medical process engendered a sense of powerlessness, and it all left me feeling weary and lethargic. For a couple of days, all I could do was lie on the couch and wait – for outcomes, for healing, for restoration.

As one who who likes to be busy, it wasn’t easy being forced to do nothing! As one who likes to be in control, it wasn’t easy being subject to the timeframe of an uninvited virus! I know I’ve written previously on the value of taking space and creating stillness for personal wellbeing, but it’s a very different thing when stillness and inactivity is not a choice made by you but a choice made for you. After the first couple of days, during which I wasn’t able to think much at all, I found myself feeling anxious about my lack of productivity, my lack of activity, my social isolation, and even feeling guilty at the time that I was ‘wasting’.

Then, in a series of serendipitous coincidences, I began to recast my predicament.

A Facebook friend shared a post from Steve Biddulph (parenting guru and author of Raising Boys) introducing his Decade of Farwell blog in which he reflects: the proper role of old people is to safeguard the world for the young. They support, counsel and keep watch.  That started me thinking, and scanning the book titles in my now-significantly-reduced library: Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward, Bob Buford’s Half Time, Diarmid O’Murchu’s Incarnation, Matthew Fox’s Order of the Sacred Earth, and so many other books that I had read, but perhaps not integrated. They began to inform my present predicament in a way they hadn’t on first reading. I guess I was simply in a different space back then. 

In the midst of this reverie, I made another unexpected discovery – I came across the text of a sermon I had preached a few years ago, based on the story of Jesus’ visit to the home of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42). It’s a familiar story and sometimes used by preachers to affirm the value of reflective practice in a world of activism (Jesus is said to criticise the ‘busyness’ of Martha in favour of the ‘stillness’ of Mary). I had taken a different tack in my sermon, suggesting that Jesus’ issue with Martha was not her busyness but her anxiety (Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things[v.41]).  I scanned through my old sermon and noted a fascinating parallel. Well not so much a parallel, perhaps, as a diametric. We all have both Martha and Mary within us – as it should be – and the pathway to wellbeing is finding our own unique rhythm, the balance of activism and contemplation, of busyness and reflective practice that makes everything alright for us. Don’t get ‘worried and anxious’ about how to find that balance, simply go with the flow. You will know best what gives balance to your life – be sure to give yourself permission to pursue it! 

What I began to understand, in the midst of my forced change of pace and my reading and reflection, is that the rhythm of my life is changing – not just in the flu-driven short term, but in the long term as I transition from the autumn of my life to the winter of my life (hope that doesn’t sound too morose), and I have a choice: I can fight the change of rhythm or I can integrate it. I can view it as an imposition, or as an opportunity. Life is slowing for me. Once that may have felt like a negative, like an aimless or frustrating encumbrance. But I am slowly finding the wisdom to discern the opportunity, the promise, the grace that it holds for me and perhaps for those amongst whom I live and move.  

As the flu symptoms clear and I make my return to productive life I am grateful for the opportunity that I have to reorder that life. To claim a new rhythm for this season of my life, a rhythm that depends less on quantity and more on quality. It will still be important to be productive, but the quantity will be much less important than the quality. It’s not about how many articles I write for my blog page but rather the quality of the content in what I do write. It’s not about how many people I get to spend time with, but about how well I listen to, care about and encourage those with whom I do spend time. As Biddulph notes, those of us who reach the age of retirement have a responsibility to share our life experience and our accrued wisdom with those around us, not as pompous old fools who think we know it all, but as fellow pilgrims who are learning to sit in a place of peace, and joyful celebration of being alive now, so that we bring harmony and calm, not agitation or polarisation, to what we do. Rest when you need to rest. Accept that some things are best done slowly, and we don’t know what will make the difference.  

It is a gift to find oneself free of expectations, deadlines and contractual agreements; to find that all time is discretionary. The challenge is to ensure, as far as possible, that the choices about how to use that time are wise and life-giving for me and for others. I’ve written this piece in the first person, but I dare to hope that you will see it is as much about you as it is about me, because we really are all in this together.

I think of my five grandchildren and the world they are inheriting from us. What can I offer to support them as they negotiate both the horror and the beauty of that world? Do I have anything? Of course I do! And what a privilege it is to be afforded the opportunity to engage with them, and the time to do it well!

David Brooker

20th June 2024