Life's Great (and Changing) Questions

In his book A Resilient Life, Gordon MacDonald tells a story about teaching at a conference for church worship leaders:

"When I first entered the meeting room, I was startled to realize that almost everyone present seemed to be a twenty- or thirty-something person ...

"These men and women were charged (and presumably gifted) with designing and leading worship for their congregations. That meant they selected songs and Scriptures, said prayers, and in general, attempted to escort people into the presence of God through acts of reverence. They had better know their audience, I thought: who the people were, how they felt, what their hopes and dreams were, and where they sensed or feared their lives were headed."

And yet, do we know our audience(s)?

MacDonald shared with the worship leaders about the small group he and his wife attend, made up mostly of people their own age. The group meets once a month simply to share a meal and tell stories about what is going on. By the time they are done, everybody has a basic sense of the important issues in each other person's life. And one topic that never fails to come up one way or another is death.

"I could almost sense their incredulity. When you are in your twenties and thirties, you rarely talk about death (at least not regularly, in a small group) unless it has been pressed into life through sudden tragedy.... "

Similarly, for a substantial number of people in our churches, says MacDonald, death is one of the most important and frequently considered subjects. The young people he was teaching, on the other hand, seldom think about death. They are concerned about careers, willpower, and relationships, he said - subjects that have little interest for him personally.

"How are you going to usher people into the presence of God if you don't know the questions that form the big pictures in the hearts of the various generations you are leading? I suspect that there are different questions for every age in life, perhaps every decade. Knowing them helps us to deal with people sensitively, and it gives us a better understanding of how to build a larger view of our own lives. ... You won't be asking the same questions ten years from now that you are asking today."

Twenties

People in their twenties are asking questions like these:

What kind of person am I becoming? What will I do with my life? What is it I really want? Where can I find people who will welcome me as I am? Can I love, and am I lovable?

"Twenty-somethings are becoming aware that they can no longer get away with irresponsible or unsocial behavior. Life patterns, habits, and personality quirks need adjustment if one is to get along. So the question, what parts of me and my life need correction? arises.

Thirties

As people move into their thirties, the questions may shift:

"Since there is usually an expansion of responsibility and no expansion of time, thirty-somethings find themselves asking the question, How do I prioritize the demands being made on my life?

Loneliness can start to be a significant issue, especially for men. Gone are the opportunities to simply hang out with one's friends for hours on end.

"Old friends have drifted away; often, new acquaintances simply do not have the time to build the satisfying relationships that were part of the younger years.

"The spiritual questions no longer center on the ideals of youth but on the realities of a life that is tough and unforgiving.

"Thirty-somethings find themselves asking, why am I not a better person?"

Forties

For many, entering their forties means entering dangerous, uncharted waters:

"The complexities of life further accelerate, and - this is worrisome - we begin to recognize that we can no longer fob off our flaws and failures as youthfulness and inexperience."

Many at this age feel trapped, and may fight disappointment in themselves and the ways their lives have turned out. This is a good time in one's life to take a sabbatical, stripping down one's lives to the bare bones and evaluating one's life journey, perhaps plotting a new course for the second half.

Similarly, those in their fifties, sixties, and seventies see different questions rise to the surface:

Fifties

Why is time moving so fast? How do I deal with my failures and successes? Who are these young people who want to replace me? What do I do with my doubts and fears? Will we have enough money if problems come?

Sixties
When do I stop doing the things that have always defined me? Why do I feel ignored by a large part of the young population? Do I have enough time to do all the things I've dreamed about? Who will be around me when I die? Which one of us will go first? Are the things I've always believed in capable of taking me to the end? What have I done that will outlive me?

Seventies and Eighties

Does anyone realize or even care who I once was? Is my story important to anyone? How much of my life can I still control? Is there anything I can still contribute?

Conclusion

"I was struck with how little we know about each other across the generations. And how important it is to understand what questions form the larger pictures of another's life. This is the pathway to resilience: knowing what's up ahead, what we are likely to face, where the possibilities and obstacles lie."

What do you think, do these questions resonate with you? He has more to say about each age than I have shared here. I found this a helpful chapter. Certainly I've seen these threads in my own life, and it's good to look ahead.

What he doesn't really address is how then one can effectively lead a mixed-generation worship service, small group, or congregation. I seldom find myself in groups that only include people who are in my own "decade." Nor, I think, would I want to be.

(Quotations from Gordon MacDonald, A Resilient Life, pp. 47-58)

Looking Back on Lessons Learned & The Problem with Experience

Looking Back on Lessons Learned

Wednesday morning I spent some time looking through my journals from 2002. I was living overseas for about a year on “sabbatical.” It was also a time of rather intense personal growth, both because I’d taken off from my regular job for a season for just that purpose, and because if I wanted to survive in a cross-cultural situation, I knew I'd have to dig in and pay aggressive attention to my surroundings and my own feelings and how I was responding to both.

Found it somewhat helpful, but also painful, to see my day-to-day experiences from that period and how I processed them in those journals. I don’t do that as much anymore. I haven’t been growing at that aggressive rate, either. Hmmm, connected?

Of course, opportunities to talk about what life was like for me, in English, were rare. That was another reason I journaled so avidly. I couldn't talk. Or at least not much more than babytalk. As a single person and a beginning language learner, I was discouraged from spending much time with teammates or other English speakers. Hard, but good. So I did a lot of writing.

I also realized that I still have some of the same problems as I did there and then. I'd like to do a better job at anticipating them and facing them down when they come. Well, I have different ways of processing things too. And these days life is not nearly so dramatic, most of the time... That's fine with me.

The Problem with Experience

One of the things I struggled with then seems to have more and more a place in my life as I get older. In fact it seems part of the cost of getting older. Simply this: Others seem to think that you know what you are doing.

Something about my personality encourages this, and age exacerbates the effect.

Now, there are pros and cons to that. It does open doors so I can serve people in ways I might not otherwise be able to consider. But it can also mean others treat me as an omni-competent person and take my contribution for granted. I don't get as much affirmation, encouragement, or recognition as I think I would if I were younger, newer, or more obviously struggling to accomplish the things that I do. I don’t like that. I really like to be appreciated and affirmed. (Publicly, if possible!)

I think one helpful response is to reevaluate where I find my significance and identity. Just who am I trying to please, and why?

You know, there may not be so many opportunities to get affirmation, encouragement, and recognition as once there were, but there are more and more opportunities to GIVE it in a meaningful way, aren't there?

I don’t think this dynamic is unique to me. Is this part of how it feels to be a parent? Oh, dang, do you suppose I'm turning into a grownup?!

Searching for...

Here are some of the funny things that bring people to this website... according to Google Analytics, the tool I use to see who's reading and how they get here.

So as not to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, I'll distort the search terms just a bit.

poe*ms about losing cell ph*ones

song*s we sang in sch*ool in the 40's

how many w*ords in a 20 m*inute talk (I get this one, or variations on it, a LOT)

ca*leb-project-eur*ope (I also get this one a lot... should probably figure out why. My friends who once used this name no longer wish to be associated with it, I believe)

fun*eral sermon medita*tion

hand m*otions to john jac*ob jingle*heimer sch*midt

The top terms that have led people to this site in 2009, though, are these:

theo*logy of listen*ing

screams * in the des*ert

short Bi*ble studies

Iso*bel K*uhn

tel*ling se*crets

I'm glad that the theology of listen*ing is something others are searching for. Maybe I should revisit some of the posts people land on and adjust how they are linked and organized.

I'm still interested in writing something for publication on the "listening" topic, though I don't know who might want to publish it.

What brings people to your site? Do you know?

July Reading Roundup - Part 1: Fiction

(See also part 2 - nonfiction)

I think I'm done reading novels for the month. (Perhaps I could finish a few other things in my life if I got out of the family habit of saying "just one more chapter..."!) Here's the list.

The Man in the Queue, by Josephine Tey

Sometimes I wish our library had a section for books written before I was born – both the out-of-print and hard-to-find gems, and the things that have really kept their value even to the point of staying in print throughout the decades. Josephine Tey is great. This 1929 mystery introduces her main sleuth, the winsome Inspector Alan Grant.

Forest of the Pygmies, by Isabel Allende

I’ve always thought I ought to try reading something by Isabel Allende. Now I wish I hadn’t. Perhaps I’d have lower expectations if she weren’t such a “famous writer.” This one may not be her best: just happened to be on the shelves and looked accessible. At any rate, it’s part three of a series featuring a couple of teenagers who (I guess this is realistic) think they are different from everybody else and have the whole world figured out, and that nobody understands them – except each other, of course. When trouble comes (this time on an African jungle safari), they outwit all adults on the scene using their convenient magical powers. I found them very patronizing and annoying.

The Christian missionary in this story was particularly two-dimensional and unpleasant, which was odd since the author apparently dedicated her story to the man on which he was modeled.

Silence, by Shusaku Endo

“Shusaku Endo is Japan’s foremost novelist, and Silence is generally regarded to be his masterpiece.” It tells the story of a seventeenth-century Portuguese priest who goes to Japan, illegally, at the height of the terrible persecution that was destroying the Christian community of that nation (which once numbered 300,000). It’s a very moving exploration of what it’s like to be a foreigner working in a very different, sometimes wonderful and sometimes hostile situation, where the deepest commitments of your life are seriously questioned by those around you.

One thing really bothered me. A chief aim of the government leaders at this stage was to destroy Christianity in Japan by forcing influential Christians to recant their faith (by trampling on holy images). Some were brutally tortured. The Portuguese characters in this book found themselves in an excruciating situation: Though they desired to lay down their lives for the Japanese, their resistance to apostasy meant many Japanese died for them. The torturers put it on their heads: apostatize, and we will let these peasants live. The only way to be like Jesus and show mercy on the people was to deny Jesus. What would you do? None of the characters point out that it’s the torturers who are destroying the Japanese Christians, not the missionaries. So frustrating. But I’d certainly recommend the book.

It’s haunted by the absence of God: in these terrible situations, why is God silent?

Remake, by Connie Willis

“It’s the Hollywood of the future, where moviemaking’s been computerized and life-action films are a thing of the past…. Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe are starring together in a remake of a A Star Is Born, and if you don’t like the ending, you can change it with the stroke of a key.” Creative, interesting, and chock full of tribute to classic movies.

Not bad, but not her best either. So I strolled over to the Connie Willis shelf in our library and picked up D.A., my all-time favorite. It’s short: you can read it in less than an hour. But really fun. (Meg says her favorite CW book is Lincoln's Dreams, and many are the fans who favor To Say Nothing of the Dog.)

Seaside, by Terri Blackstock

Christian novella about two sisters, both operating under a great deal of stress and somewhat jealous and resentful towards one another. “And what neither of them realizes is how their frantic drive for achievement is speeding them headlong past the things that matter most in life.” Their mother (whose life has recently taken a more spiritual and sane turn) realizes they are just the kind of women she always encouraged them to be, and regrets it: “I taught you to run the treadmill and now I want to teach you to get off,” she says. So she invites them to spend a week of vacation with her and goes so far as buying their plane tickets, then watches them fight over the phone because neither is getting away, willingly (and somehow there isn’t any cell phone coverage at their Florida cabin!)

I enjoyed this novel and am a bit challenged – as I am by the stories and examples of several around me – to think again about my sometimes-rocky relationship with my own sister.

Jane Austen’s Charlotte, by Julia Barrett

When Austen died she left notes or drafts for this novel, now fleshed out by Julia Barrett. The colorful Parker family has a dream: they want to see their community on the Sussex seaside become the next great, fashionable watering hole. Like some other Austen tributes this one tries too hard to recreate her style and plays up things that she probably took for granted. I had to Google the “bathing machines” and “dippers” who operated them, a Victorian/regency excess that went out of use in later years. This book moves slowly and has a large cast of characters; we do not see the leads very much.

This book did get some really terrible reviews on Amazon, I see now (though they liked the other 'completion' of this novel, titled 'Sanditon').

Once I adjusted my expectations I enjoyed it as bedtime reading. Charlotte herself is a houseguest, a young woman from inland farming country invited to stay with the Parkers. She sees through them yet is charmingly loyal to her hosts and (of course) meets her future husband before we’re done.

The House of Bilquis, by Azhar Abidi

“A haunting novel about a mother and son and the emotional consequences of leaving home.” What happens when an aging Pakistani aristocrat, comfortably surrounded by her servants, realized her foreign-educated son is never coming back? Samad has married an Australian girl and plans to stay in Melbourne. He invites his mother Bilquis to join them, but it would mean leaving everything she knows – or, that is, what is left of it, because the Pakistan she once knew is slowly disappearing. Recommended.

This Place

Friday marked fourteen years since the day I arrived in Colorado.

I did not think much of the place back then. I was accustomed to the wildness and wet of the Pacific Northwest. Compared to the Olympic and Cascade mountains, the Rockies seemed so brown and barren.

I complained – vociferously – about the lack of water. For five years of my childhood we lived on an island in Puget Sound. Most of my years in Washington I’d seen water every day; it was part of the landscape.

Here in Denver – well, there is a river that runs through town, but it’s far too hemmed in and has no beauty to recommend it. There’s no ocean. Most lakes are man-made. Even now, I find a sunset with no beach, no waterfront, somehow lacking.

But somehow, without even noticing it, I fell in love with Colorado.

It was probably the sunshine that hooked me first. Almost every day is partly to mostly sunny, year-round. Sure, there is snow, but not so much as people think; not in the city, anyway. It doesn’t stay on the ground very long. Lots of times it doesn’t even melt, but tidily evaporates and leaves the pavement dry.

Everything is spread out, and open, and spacious. Few places have traffic problems. You don't feel closed in. It's not flat, like some parts of the Midwest where you can see forever but there's nothing to see. Here, it's not flat, but it's open. Sometimes people from other parts of the country have a hard time with that: they feel exposed. And all this space, well, it may seem wasteful.

Colorado’s best feature may not be its mountains, or its prairies, its people, or its wildlife, but the broad, fascinating expanse of sky that stretches out above it all. It’s really our dominant feature, much more so than the Rockies.

The sky here is big. It has "presence." You notice it.

Colorado has great clouds. All kinds and forms and shades and colors. And they all have shape to them, piling up, spreading out, catching the light.

Not like the Northwest where you have more a “cloud cover” than “clouds.” I know all that cloud cover provides the moisture that makes the Northwest such a green growing place, a fruitful garden.

I would like to see more of that here, it’s true.

But you can’t really have it both ways.

So, I’ll choose to look up and enjoy the sky overhead.

watermelon watermelon watermelon

"I bought watermelon today," the roommate informed me. (She's been on a special diet. On Monday she welcomed dairy back into her life. And she's still rejoicing over fruit, added back two weeks ago.)

"I bought watermelon so cute I want to NAME them!"



This is a seedless "pureheart" miniature (pedigreed?) watermelon. You can watch a video about how these are Fruit of Legendary Perfection, here.

This one is pretty adorable, I had to agree.

Nevertheless, Greenie went under the knife last night.



Wouldn't you like a piece?

Book Club Report

Quite a few years back Barb M. started a book club for the women of our dear-departed organization, and some of our friends. It was great fun...

We met on Friday or Saturday nights at different people's houses and always had a big meal - usually coordinated with the book we were reading - and the wine flowed rather freely. So did the laughter and levity. A number of the women in the group were mothers of young children and enjoyed the chance to get out with friends.

Like most such groups, this one included a mix of avid readers and those who wanted a bit of a push to read. Both types enjoyed the lively conversations that ensued.

When core members of the group moved away we found it difficult to continue, and eventually more or less gave up.

Several of us met in March 2008 to discuss having a women's book club once again, or to relaunch the old one. We discovered that it was easier to schedule meetings and to pull off logistics if we met in some neutral location (no one would have to cook or clean!) We've been meeting at a local coffee shop from 8-10 on a Saturday morning, when few other things are scheduled. We gather about every six weeks.

Factors that affect our choice of books include:

1. Quality (we like things that are well written and enjoyable, and not sleazy)
2. Length (we avoid things that are too long)
3. Availability (most of us get the books from the library)
4. Content (e.g., we have all traveled fairly extensively and enjoy reading things with an international flavor)
5. Familiarity (it's good if one of us has already read the book, but not all of us! That way we'll be stretched but not into places we are unlikely to want to go)

We read both fiction and nonfiction (though the nonfiction tends to story, e.g, memoirs)

Here are the books we've read in the last 15 months or so. (Go to "Search this blog" for my response to some of them.)

Khaled Hosseni, The Kite Runner
William Young, The Shack
Philip Gourevich, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
Ron Hall and Denver Moore, Same Kind of Different as Me
Robert Cormier, I Am the Cheese
Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Anne Lindbergh, Gifts from the Sea
Anne Tyler, Digging to America
Greg Mortensen and David Relin, Three Cups of Tea

So... Any suggestions for future reads? Our next one is Harry Bernstein's The Invisible Wall.