Bloom Where You're Planted, Revisited

Earlier this week, I was on my every-other-day 52-minute 3-mile walk around the neighborhood, and as is often the case I was having an internal discussion about a topic of interest.  This time the topic happened to be Identity Politics convoluted with Critical Race Theory and how it manifests itself in current culture through protest rallies led by Black Lives Matter activists and others.  Des Moines is no stranger to these events, although they have gotten considerably less violent of late, thank the Lord.  In addition to that, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month just ended, Pride Month just began, and just this week the Governor of Iowa signed into law a bill that forbids the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools in the state.  It reminded me of a quote by T.S. Eliot:

"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important ... they do not mean to do harm ... they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."

Which, of course, is the opposite of what the Bible suggest that we do, as laid out by Saint Paul in Romans 12:3:

"Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to [...] you."

All this made me think of my own origins, those of my children, and those of others in many different demographic pockets in the community, as wide and varied as they can be.  How do we properly relate to one another across those demographic pockets?  How responsible are we for which segment we are in, and what responsibility do we bear for the welfare of those in other segments?  As I walked, my thoughts began to take on the form of a TED talk, complete with PowerPoint presentation, something like this:

• We don't choose our origins.  When we come into this world, we have no control over the situation into which we are dropped.  We do not choose our race, sex, ethnicity, place of birth, citizenship, parentage, genetic makeup, hair/eye color, our family's relative wealth (or lack of same), siblings, extended family, home environment, community, school district, etc.  We are simply dropped in to a situation with no opportunity for input.  For which of all these things are we responsible?  None of them!  
• We don't choose anyone else's origins, either.  All other people in the world are in the exact same predicament that we are - placed into a situation over which they had no choice or control.  They are not responsible for where I was placed, nor I for anyone else.  So... who is responsible?  King David in Psalm 139:13-16 makes the argument that God is responsible:

For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. 

I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Marvelous are Your works, and I know this very well.

My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, 

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all my days were written in Your book 

and ordained for me before one of them came to be.

• If we object to our placement, we should take it up with God.  Isaiah 45:9-10 and Romans 9:20-21 give us some perspective on that sort of conversation, however.  Tread lightly when objecting to God about the nature of your existence!  Any one of us could have been placed by God in another body, another situation.  Blaming someone else for our predicament is safer than blaming God for it, so that's what we do.
• We are responsible for what we do with our placement.  The parable Jesus taught about a landowner, some servants and their responsibilities reveals a lot about this.  The story from Matthew 25:14–30 goes like this:  

For it is just like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted them with his possessions. To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent—each according to his own ability. And he went on his journey.

The servant who had received the five talents went at once and put them to work and gained five more. Likewise, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the servant who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money.

After a long time the master of those servants returned to settle accounts with them. The servant who had received the five talents came and presented five more. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’

His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master!’

And of course we know that the two-talent servant also doubled the master's investment, and got the same affirmation and praise.  We also see that the two-talent servant did not object to getting less resources than the five-talent one.  He just did what he could with what he had, and was rewarded for it.  It did not go nearly as well, though, with the one-talent servant; he got rebuked and tossed out on his ear.  Although, it could have gone just as well with him as with the other two servants.  The amount of resources each was given at the start was not the issue.  What they did with what they were given was what mattered.  This idea also applies to temporal as well as material resources.  As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in The Fellowship of The Ring:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

• We become responsible as we reach adulthood.  This happens attitudinally at the age of accountability (12-13) where we must decide whether we will be surly or positive, upset or grateful, unwilling or cooperative.  Circumstantially, our responsibility kicks in at the age of majority (18-21) when we are on equal footing before the law as with any other adult.  Up until this point, life has dealt us a certain hand of cards; God placed us, and others affected us by making choices for us.  Now it is up to us to make our own choices and bear the consequences for them.
• We must play the hand we are dealt.  Once we become responsible, now the burden shifts to us to make the most of what we've got to work with.  How will we know whether we have done better than someone else, if our situations are so very different? In the game of duplicate bridge, you can actually know that.  Multiple players are given the same hands of cards, and each plays the best they can.  Whoever achieves the highest points is judged the best player. Except life isn't like that.  You can't play someone else's cards for them - only your own.  Comparison with others and what they made of their circumstances is foolishness.  No one can judge us but God.  Romans 14:4, 10-13 puts it this way:  

Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. [...]

You then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written:

“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,

‘every knee will bow before me;

    every tongue will acknowledge God.’”

So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. 

• Our goal is to make the very best life out of our placement.  Everyone, each human being, regardless of the situation into which they were dropped, regardless of who influenced them and how, is ultimately responsible as a free moral agent to make the best of it.  Period.  And what does "very best life" mean?  Rising above our circumstances for one thing, whatever they are.  Helping others do the same, for another.  In the end, what matters, what we will be judged upon, is giving God a good return on His investment in us, such that we hear His "well done!" when we pass from this life to the next.

What we don't need is Identity Politics to measure our success or failure in life for us, to level the playing field among us, or to tell us who is responsible for what we did with what we were given.  Identity Politics cannot supply for us a scorecard for our life as in duplicate bridge.  

As David said in 1 Chronicles 21:14, 

"Please, let me fall into the hand of the LORD, for His mercies are very great; but do not let me fall into the hands of men.”

 God will tell us how we did when we see Him face-face.  And God will judge all, with righteousness.

Is "Retirement" A Biblical Concept?

Great question!  However, if it's answers you are looking for, keep looking... all I have are conjectures and inklings.

An old friend of mine (emphasis on old) always used to tell me that the concept of retirement is not discussed anywhere in the Bible, therefore retirement is not Biblical.  Hm.  That never seemed quite right to me, so I have mulled it over as the decades have rolled along, and I still don't think he was right.

And never mind that as of this writing I am 5 weeks away from retirement!  Of course I have a vested interest in a counter-argument to his thesis!  But stay with me here as we look at a few passages, and we'll see if this idea makes sense.

As a preface to that review, though, let me just say that as of the 2nd week of July, 2021, I will have been employed full-time for 45 years.  (46 years elapsed time since my first full-time job in July of 1975, but one of those years was spent in college finishing up my Bachelors degree, so that doesn't count as time employed.)  The first 7 1/2 years were spent in various property & casualty insurance jobs, another 34 years in various actuarial jobs within that same sector and the last 3 1/2 in the banking sector.

"But, you're only 65", you say.  "Shouldn't you be working longer?"  

And I say, longer than what?  If a young person today goes from high school to college and on to grad school, coming out with some sort of professional designation like a CPA, for example, they would be about 25 when entering the marketplace, right?  If they worked until age 70, that would be 45 years of full-time work, and a ripe old age to retire.  Seems about right.  So what if I started working at 19 and got my Masters and my professional designation along the way while working full-time. So what? It's non-linear, yes, but it amounts to 45 years of work nonetheless.  

In the Old Testament, 40 years was the number of a generation, a number representing fullness of time.  Judges and Kings were frequently described as ruling for 40 years, and then another ruler took over.  Sometimes they would rule a little longer, which was a sign of God's blessing on them.  So I'm good with 45!

And lest you think that lifespans have changed significantly since then, think again.  Here's Psalm 90:10:

The days of our lives are seventy years;

And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,

Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;

For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Last I looked, the current actuarial tables (pre-COVID) list a global life expectancy of about 72.8 years (with post-COVID Americans sitting at about 77.5; slightly longer for females, less for males). So it seems that the ancient Israelites with their Kosher dietary laws had a fairly modern expectation of what a lifespan would be.  Plus, recent research shows that increased life expectancy mostly comes from infant mortality going down.  We all still fade out in our 70s & 80s.

In Leviticus, when it came to valuing workers for the purpose of temple taxes, men not in their prime years (20-60) were expected to be less productive when it comes to manual labor, and so were assessed less:

3 if your valuation is of a male from twenty years old up to sixty years old, then your valuation shall be fifty shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. 4 If it is a female, then your valuation shall be thirty shekels; 5 and if from five years old up to twenty years old, then your valuation for a male shall be twenty shekels, and for a female ten shekels; 6 and if from a month old up to five years old, then your valuation for a male shall be five shekels of silver, and for a female your valuation shall be three shekels of silver; 7 and if from sixty years old and above, if it is a male, then your valuation shall be fifteen shekels, and for a female ten shekels.

We could certainly digress into a discussion of the difference in valuation due to gender (no doubt recognizing the difference in body strength when doing manual labor), but that's not the point here - this is a discussion about valuation based on age.  And what you notice is that, taking an adult male for the 40 years between ages 20 and 60 as the baseline for full productivity, you get the following:

Age Range    Valuation    Percentage

  0 to   5              5              10%

  5 to 20            20              40%

20 to 60            50            100%

60 plus              15              30%

The older males were seen as less productive for manual labor than youths were, implying that 70% less work would be done once a worker was past 60.  (It should be noted that females had less of an age penalty percentage applied to their valuation as workers, perhaps because of the nature of the labor they typically took on. But again that's beyond the scope of this discussion.)

Personally, I find it interesting that the US Military expects retirement (even in the Reserves) to occur at age 60 (unless one is a flag officer, and then that limit extends a few more years). 

In I Timothy 5:9, we also read that "no widow is to be enrolled on the list for support unless she is at least sixty years old ..." with the implication that older women will have a harder time supporting themselves, as their capacity for work is diminished.  

So age 60 (out of 70-80 total) seems to be a good time to dial things back.  We wind up then, with 20 years of growing up, 40 years of productive labor, and another 10-20 years of winding down.

But another example is even more restrictive, and this one is from active service in the Temple, no less.  Give a listen to this passage:

Numbers 8:23 The Lord spoke to Moses: 24 “In regard to the Levites: From 25 years old or more, a man enters the service in the work at the tent of meeting. 25 But at 50 years old he is to retire from his service in the work and no longer serve. 26 He may assist his brothers to fulfill responsibilities at the tent of meeting, but he must not do the work. This is how you are to deal with the Levites regarding their duties.”

Wow.  Okay, so mandatory retirement at age 50? And only a 25 year work span instead of 40 years?  No explanation here is given - it just is what it is, but we can certainly assume a little longer training period before entering the priesthood might be needed. But the compensating factor is that the older priest, the retired guy, is encouraged to assist his brothers.  Maybe this is the model for service in the Kingdom of God - you give the younger guys a little more time to mature first and you allow the older guys to ease out of the workload a little earlier, but still keep their hands in and continue to be useful as they age.

After all, aging is no joke. As they say, it's not for sissies. And if there ever was a passage that makes that clear it's Ecclesiastes 12:1-7.  To wit:

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets— before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. 

Hebrews 8:13 tells us clearly that "what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear".  In the marketplace that is certainly a truism!  And I for one am ready to stop working for a paycheck.  

However, that doesn't mean for me a life of self-indulgence and leisure.  After all, if I am a servant of the Most High God, He who never sleeps or slumbers, then there is no "off switch" for my service.  I never punch out for the day, I am always on call, always a servant of God, even when I'm asleep.  I may no longer have an earthly master to serve, but I do have a Heavenly One, and I must apply myself to His service with whatever zeal my body and mind allow.  From that work I will not retire, and the paycheck for it... is eternal!

Love is Pure Gold, and Time a Thief

 Where has the time gone?  On this blog, at least, the year 2020 fell into a hole and never emerged from it.  And just as well, yes?

Now, though, it is a new year, with hopeful news about crawling out of the hole carved by the COVID-10 Pandemic.  For yours truly, I now have internalized shot 1 of 2 (Pfizer), and am one shot and another 2 weeks away from immunity, whatever that turns out to be.  There is a profound sense of freedom looming just weeks away.

What's more, my wife and I have both selected retirement dates and have informed our employers of the same.  A similarly delightful sense of looming freedom has resulted from that!  Not all the final boxes are yet checked, but we trust that God is in the details, benevolently lining circumstances up to provide a smooth transition.

New life stages are on the way!

As my father-in-law has often said, there are 3 stages to old age:

• the Go-Go 60s
• the Slow-Go 70s
• the No-Go 80s

and we are smack in the middle of Stage 1, ready to Go! Go! Go!  Although as life expectancy lengthens, I think those convenient decade spans may be shifting out about 5 years (or at least I hope so!), such that we can go-go until 75 and slow-go until 85, etc.

Which puts me in mind of a lyric from a fine song by Kurt Weill, Speak Low, which says in part:

I feel wherever I go that tomorrow is near,

Tomorrow is here and always too soon.

Time is so old and love so brief;

Love is pure gold and time a thief.

(I like the Boz Skaggs version, personally)

Time IS a thief.  It steals your looks, your health, your vitality, your mentality, your speed, your resources, your relationships (eventually) ...

and yet, it can give as well as take.  The last 12 months have been a gift of more time at home, and a deepening of relationship.  God bless quarantine!  I have not had to commute up north for almost a year now, and may never have to again.  And if this unexpected time together has deepened and lengthened love on the way toward the threshold of our golden years, then that old thief, Time, has had a change of heart, giving back some of what it has taken.

 

Re-embracing an Old (and Restorative) Habit

Since the late 1990s, I have engaged in the practice of taking an annual spiritual retreat of 2-4 days, usually in Fall around my birthday.  At some remote and private spot, often at a Franciscan or Benedictine center, I will hole up for a few days with some devotional materials and other reading material, engaging in reflection upon the past year and thinking ahead to the upcoming one.  The purpose has always been to disconnect with what pushes me along from day to day, week to week and month to month, and see things from another perspective - hopefully God's.

Henri Nouwen said: "Solitude is the furnace of transformation.  Without solitude, we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self."  The false self is the persona we inhabit in our busyness, the one who interacts with others in haste under the pressure of deadlines and expectations.  There is another self, an authentic self, buried underneath all that haste and pressure, who will not come out unless these is calm and safety.

Jesus, too called his disciples to " 'Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest awhile.'  For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat."  (Mark 6:31)  Doesn't that sound like the pace of life we face routinely?  There's hardly even time for lunch, much less get decent rest.

Unfortunately, since the disruption of September 2017 (about which the interested reader can learn in previous blog posts), I have not felt the freedom to take the necessary time away to disconnect and reflect - until now.  That, I think, is testimony to how much better life has become since my last post!  The last time I blogged was 6 months after initially changing jobs and having a second residence seven hours away from wife and home.  Not long after that post, my employer agreed to let me work one week per month from our home in Iowa, such that now I spend only 70% of my time each month up north in what we call our pied-à-terre.  That, plus another 14 months on the job, and opportunities for ministry in both locations, has given us more confidence that we can sustain this arrangement until we finally light fire to our mortgage, roughly 2 1/2 years from now (God willing).

So now, more well adjusted, better acclimated and slightly less harried, here I am at a Fransiscan retreat center even further north into the lake country of  Northern Wisconsin (which is roughly anything north of US Hwy 8).  Still accompanied by some devotional materials and other items to read, I've had a chance to walk a bit through the rainy forests surrounding Trout Lake, and revel in the brilliance of Autumn in the North Woods. (photo evidence below.)

As I walked and marveled at this literal cathedral in the pines, I found my arms raised in praise to the One who fashioned the earth for His and our pleasure, and in Whose presence are pleasures forevermore.

From the soft yellow-green of the poplars & birches

To the russets and browns of the oaks and ferns

And the maples' spikes of orange, yellow, red

Set against the black trunks and deep piney green,

This forest is like the bush of Moses:

Aflame but not consumed!

And my heart magnifies the Name of the Lord,

Who makes every ground sacred ground by His presence.

The Confederacy of the Humbled

Well, it's been awhile, has it not, dear reader?  Nearly 6 months, if memory serves.  You may rightly ask "Have you been too busy to write?"  And I would say to you... yes, and no.  I certainly have had time to post something, but have honestly been trying to absorb my circumstances here - and that has kept me mentally and emotionally busy, such that what there was to say... wasn't clear.

Not that it's that much clearer now, but I am marking a sort of milestone - six months on the job - and as most of you know it's about the time when the learning curve has started to flatten and you have begun to understand things.  Life in the workplace was pretty stressful in those first 6 months, not to mention the personal life part and its stressors.

When I was contemplating taking this role, the head of the organization said "Give it 6 months; you'll know."  So we agreed to review things in 6 months on a weekend away with my wife of 42+ years, the ever-captivating Diane.  It's coming up in a couple days now, and we will examine how the last 6 months have gone. This first 6 months living apart has been both difficult and encouraging.  On this weekend away, we will try to ferret out what has gone well, what needs to change, what is critical, and what we can live with.  I expect that the weekend will result in a proposal for my boss (and his).  May God grant acceptance of whatever we put forward.

One of the things that has characterized my last 6 months has been study and reflection on how God works in my life through circumstances.  I have time to read, and long for fellowship outside the four walls of this 585 S.F. apartment.  So I have wasted less time while here, and have invested time in reading and in group Bible studies which get me up and out, away from the internet and cable.  (Oh, and I don't actually have cable here.  Internet, yes, but I use a digital antenna, and subscribe to Hulu and Netflix via a Roku device.  Much less expensive and a lot more hipster.  :)

In my reading time, I have been enjoying a book that the Missus has recommended from her book club - A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.  Delightful!  There are several favorite quotes that I have marked but perhaps the most personal and profound is this one, about something he calls the Confederacy of the Humbled (of which I am a lifetime member, regularly reinforced by circumstance.)

[... ] the Confederacy of the Humbled is a close-knit brotherhood whose members travel with no outward markings, but who know each other at a glance. For having fallen suddenly from grace, those in the Confederacy share a certain perspective. Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condecension with an inward smile.

That, dear reader, is right on the money.  Would that each of us could learn this lesson early and often.  I understand now how valuable humility is and how unreliable human affirmation can be.  There is a verse to an old hymn that I go back to often to remind myself that human approval is fickle; it is God's approval that matters, no one else's.  It goes like this:

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art

So as I continue in a less than desirable situation, trying hard to make the best of it, to find the silver lining in it, I will embrace the humbling & look to God for comfort.

12 Days On

... in my new job.  The "drinking from the fire hose" part is past now and I believe I am absorbing things.  My boss has passed a few things my way to own (with careful supervision, of course) by way of a couple of projects to lead and a couple of regular reports to create, and I'm already out of things to do.  I'm at a hard stop while I wait for him to answer questions and provide feedback.  So in an effort to keep me busy while he figures out what to give me next, he is going to sign me up for on-line training for a professional credential.

This is one of the issues with reporting to a high-ranking executive.  He's busy!  As he passes me things to take off his plate, he will become less busy, but to pass me things requires that he take time which he doesn't have to show me what he wants done.  Classic Catch-22 scenario.

In other news, it's much snowier up here.  Daily brushing & scraping of the car windows is required.  Fortunately by mid-February I will be in an apartment with underground parking.  Yay!  But until then I scrape. 

The Hamburger Helper routine is going well.  One batch makes two dinners, alternating with pre-cooked sausages (brats, cheddarwurst) on the off days. Maybe I should branch out into frozen pizza...  Of course there is a side salad, maybe some cottage cheese as well.  All to be able to enjoy eating ice cream right out of the container at night while watching the local news & weather.  Mint chip.

Breakfast is a rotation of 1) gruel (steel cut oats, chia seeds, frozen fruit steeped in almond milk & plain yogurt overnight), 2) grits and a protein shake, and 3) eggs & toast.

Subway is my destination after work, to pick up their daily footlong for lunch the next day.  On the weekends, it's Chunky soups or ham & cheese on multi-grain.  When I get into the new place, I will be able to walk to work and walk home for lunch, so Chunky soups every day!  Woo.

I have to say, thank God for video calling (Google Duo).  I thought I'd hate it as I don't like phone calls very much.  But it's a Godsend, literally.  We couldn't have done this 10 years ago, but with that technology, the 7 hour drive separation is bearable.  I think we actually talk more now than we did when I was at home.  :)

Oh, and I guess I failed to state that since my last post, we did decide to try to finagle keeping the house in Des Moines.  It's an experiment, that's for sure.

And that's the news from up north.

Chapters of Life

For a long time I've been fiddling with a concept of how the various stages of life commonly break down into 12 periods of seven years each.  

Each period corresponds to a particular month of the year, beginning March 1 (when we begin expecting new life to emerge from the dead ground), and ending on February 28 (the end of winter and the shortest, coldest month of the year).  

Those months also cluster into quarters of three months each, which also correspond to a larger phase of life.  A couple of days ago, I assigned verbs to the months and quarters which to me characterize the main activity of those periods.  

Finally today I put together a diagram which portrays those periods of life as books on a bookshelf.  I would imagine that selecting a couple of key stories about your life from each of those periods would produce a pretty good autobiography.  

Hm.  Maybe I'll do that.  After all, by next Autumn I'll be heading into the "concluding" period, and shortly after that comes a period of sharing with others what you've learned in life.  If I can commit to writing the first 9 periods now, then the last quarter should be easy to put a pen to, even for someone who is nearing the end of the journey, about to fill up the bookshelf.  :)