Seasons of Life

        We are in the middle of one of the more significant seasons of the year.  It is actually a season in a season.  The current climate season is winter with its shorter darker days, colder temperatures, inside activities.  But overlaid on that is the holiday season which actually started as early as late October in the stores this year.  Everyone seems to deal with seasons in unique ways.  Some people wait with expectancy for the season to come which includes a sense of anticipation, excitement, mystery, and hope all mixed together.  For others though it is the opposite; a time of fear, anxiety, stress and dread.

 

As I am now firmly planted in the second half of life I am very aware of seasons. There are physical and cultural seasons that we all traverse but there are also the personal seasons of life; those times in our lives where we move into a job/career, geographic location, family context or financial condition and then out of the same. These seasons often have a ‘stacking’ element where they tend to compound each other.  They are subtle in how they grow upon us, we are often unaware that we are actually in a season until it is past and we look back on it.

One of the hardest things about seasons is to let them be a season.  It’s hard to let go of them.  The seasons of consolation provide rich blessings that we want to linger in and revisit.  The seasons of desolation are difficult because they bring pain, despair and devastation leaving a lasting mark on us they haunt us well after they have passed.

The ancient book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3 talks about seasons.

A Time for Everything

3 There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

⁹ What do workers gain from their toil? ¹⁰ I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. ¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. ¹² I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. ¹³ That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. ¹⁴ I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

   

At my age I have experienced most all of these thoughts.  As we look to the new year its good to reflect on the seasons of our lives

Contentment

In a consumer based world, the success of the economy is based on those consumers buying more and more.  The money then goes back into the economy and gets turned over and over as it filters through the rest of the economy.  The last recession/depression we went through was largely based on consumers opting out of buying because they were concerned about having enough income to pay the bills etc.  That 'break in confidence' caused the market to slow down and ultimately collapse.  That is how capitalism works and it has been pretty successful for a long time.

The problem with it from a spiritual basis is that it is foundationally a 'greed and envy' based program.  I want to have what my neighbors have. Advertising has captured the thought by telling us that we can’t be happy without the latest car, clothes, toothpaste, or vacation destination and we believe that.  We go to great lengths to consume whether we have the resources to do that or not.  We use our 18% interest rate credit cards, where we pay the minimum balance and which continue to grow at rates far faster than we can handle them.  The old adage ‘my expenses ALWAYS equal or exceed my income’ is leading many to bankruptcy, foreclosure and a great deal of financial pain.

          The remedy to all this is the Ignatian concept of contentment.  It’s being satisfied with what you have and where you are.  It is not being swayed by the world telling you that you aren’t happy. It is about being in a place where you can accept where you are, not in a fatalistic sense, but in a way that allows for God’s work in and around you.  My desire is to be content and to avoid those situations that try to play to my greed, envy and avarice, especially during this Christmas season.

Family Soccer Leadership Lesson

I had the privilege of spending time with our son Peter’s in-laws for Thanksgiving this year.  We had a time of reconnecting, great conversations, amazing food, some games and some physical exercise.  The family has a tradition of playing soccer after dinner on Thanksgiving Day.  With all that I ate during the feast I was very much in to a game of soccer.  I haven’t played soccer for at least 3 decades (that’s 30 years) but knew I could hold my own.  I have been working continuously since I was in the Air Force and am in pretty good shape.  This provided an opportunity to show everyone else what good shape I was in.  It felt good to keep up with the grandkids, and the other adults.  I could still block, steal the ball, made a score, use some strategy all the while NOT collapsing or falling down too many times.  I made a few scores and a few good steals and advances.

After the game I paused to think more about what had happened during the game.  Peter’s brother-in-law Brian was an excellent soccer player.  He was masterful in his footwork, passing, strategy and agility.  He seemed to be all over the field and I had a very hard time getting by him or taking the ball from him.  What was even more profound was that he only attempted two scores.  Not that he didn’t have the opportunity to make many more because he could have made multiple shots.  He spent most of his time setting up the kids to make shots,  helping them score, advance the ball, look good against these adults.  He was more concerned about their success than his own in spite of the fact that he probably could have won while being the only man on his team.  It was a sobering realization.  My need to prove myself often at the expense of others and his excellence deferred in favor of those who were not as gifted.  I couldn’t have missed the mark any more than I did.

It was a great lesson in leadership.  Dying to self and allowing others to get the glory was not in my thought processes.  Trying to get credit and admiration at the expense of those who are less gifted was a pretty dark response.  Having to prove myself to those who already know and love me was at least sad and at it’s worst pathetic.  How often have I done that as a leader in those areas where I am more gifted?  I look back on most of the times in my life where I could have let others shine and I realize that I just didn’t have the maturity to let that happen.  Shame on me…  

Black Friday

             Each year we come through the Thanksgiving/Black Friday combination I am aware of the contrast between those two days.  On Thanksgiving it is a gracious time of giving. Giving thanks for what God has done the previous year, giving away part of ourselves to others who are less fortunate and giving love and fellowship to friends and family.  We spend time together, enjoy a meal together, maybe watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade, football games, or an old move together, talk a walk, play a game, and generally put all of the other busyness of our lives aside. 

              Black Friday has now crossed over the line into Thanksgiving night.  People leave their families to stand in line for a good sale, sometimes the store opens at 9 PM, or midnight or 6 in the morning. These people are willing to stand or sit outside in the freezing weather to buy that one thing that they can’t do without.  When the doors are open there is a frenzy of people pushing, shoving, and accosting their fellow shoppers to get the best deal first.  Contrasting that with how poorly the economy is doing I can only imagine the debt these people are taking on to buy these items that may only be used a few times and then they are discarded.  In the case of electronics the toys we are buying are destined to take us away from our loved ones into a world of isolation, detachment and limited human contact.  

The greed, envy and selfishness that comes with this new ‘holiday’ has devastating implications for individuals and families.  It is clearly one of the darkest sides of our capitalistic society.  The ‘system’ loves it because it pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy.  It is often the day where losses turn to profits and it predicts how well the economy will do through the end of the year. 

I don’t partake in Black Friday for lots of reasons; 1) I’m not much of a shopper anyway, 2) standing in line for a long time while it is cold is not appealing to me, 3) I am not fond of crowds in any situation but especially in retail stores, 4) the greed that wells up in me is not healthy for my spiritual journey, I find that I can easily go to bad places in that environment.  We all need to reflect on our deeper heart issues related to this time of year.  Is it one of thanksgiving and gratefulness or one of greed, getting the best deal and beating others out for it?

Life is Not so 'Black and White' Anymore

It was so much easier when life was black and white, there were very clear answers to the problems that we faced.  ‘The bible says’….and we quote a favorite scripture that puts the other person in their place.  How do we navigate the inner discussion we have when we don’t measure up to our own standards?  How do we deal with the hidden secret sins that prevail in our lives?

Life used to be so black and white.  There were right answers and wrong answers to everything.  My Dad always had the right answer, or at least he thought he did? That was partly because he was Dad, he was part of the ‘Greatest Generation’, and just the overall sense that he had to have the right answer (whether he did or not).  There was an interesting point that happened when I was in my 20’s.  I went to college and started hearing different ideas about what truth was.  In some cases they directly contradicted what Dad had told me.  It was a time of great confusion.  Who was right?  Was it Dad who I depended on and trusted or this college professor who was educated and should know the truth?  It started a series of questions and inquiries that forced me to look at things much more critically.    In addition those answers that I was so convinced of were proven false or at the very least flawed.  

            Have you found that what used to be so black and white to you are more shades of gray?  I think age does that.  The more I live my life; I see that there are many more nuances to situations and problems. For me it comes from more experiences with life, seeing other people’s pain and struggle and realizing that I could just as easily have been in their situation.  Once I realize that there is another point of view, all of my curt answers come up short, they are less than valuable and often quite ignorant.  

The political season has illuminated these dichotomies in a more profound way.  The ‘inconvenient truths’ of people experiencing pain, challenges, opportunities and struggles has impacted me deeply.  I would like to have everything in a nice, neat, black and white package. It would be so much easier, require so much less of me, and unfortunately, leave so much more devastation than an honest, grace filled, incarnational approach to these problems.  I want to do this well but find it is very difficult.