On
Turning 40
May 2, 2004
Rev. Paul Beckel
First
Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org
[I
was met at the door today with a serenade. What a nice surprise! In the spirit
of fairness, I’m going to have to ask those of you who conspired in this to
stand now and sing what you sang to me. (They sing, somewhat reluctantly: “Old
man look at my life, I’m a lot like you were....”) Yes, let’s hear it for Neal
Young! ]
In
a couple of weeks I will turn 40.
Talking with a lot of you about this I find that no one seems to think
it’s a big deal. I don’t need to get strung out about it. OK. Someone told me
that they started to be more relaxed at 40. That sounds wonderful. Imagine:
Paul Beckel relaxed.
It
was spring, 1964. Here are some order of service covers from that season.
[Sorry—the projected images were too large to fit into this document.] Things
were different, and not so different. Some pretty avant garde graphics...and
explicit religious pluralism [world religious symbols]. Hints of future
chalices. A Mother’s Day rose. More flowers...given their due as religious
icons; may it ever be so. And a prayer of Socrates.... This pair is
interesting: one very traditional image of church & family, praying hands
& a quote from the Psalms... and a few weeks later, a rather
counter-cultural expression: the big question mark.
40
is a good time for looking forward, and
looking back. Is it then, a turning point? Is it a time of transition, or
a time of putting down roots?
[Again from the archives: this was copied directly
from the spring 1964 order of service:]
Statement of purpose: (In unison)
Love is the doctrine of this church;
The quest of truth is its sacrament;
And service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge in freedom,
To serve mankind in fellowship--
Thus do we covenant with each other.
GATHERING HYMN Turn, Turn, Turn
CHILDREN’S FOCUS You’re Only Old Once, by Dr. Seuss
Summary: A typical visit to the doctor for an old
guy: getting poked, ogled, slightly humiliated, extensively pilled, and
thoroughly billed. This story was especially fun because those over 65 came
forward to hear it, instead of the “kids.”
RESPONSIVE
READING “The
Marks of a Mature Religion” [from spring, 1964]
A mature religion will be free, knowing that growth
can take place only where the human spirit is unshackled. A mature religion will
not be afraid of freedom. It will not shut up the seeking spirit of man in a
prison of creeds, nor fetter it with infallible, know-it-all hierarchies of
experts, nor chain it to a single source of Truth. It will lay open all the treasures of
inspiration and knowledge to man’s spirit.
A mature religion will be growing, constantly revising man’s
understanding of the universe, himself, and of Truth in the light of his
growing knowledge.
A mature religion will go beyond the negative to the
positive, beyond tentativeness to conviction, though it will constantly
re-examine even its most cherished convictions in the light of new truth. It
will know, not only what it is against, but also what it is for.
A mature religion will go beyond indifference to a deep and abiding
concern. The liberal’s religion can be considered fully mature only when he has
learned to be much more deeply concerned than at this moment for its success,
its spreading abroad to touch the lives of all who desire its help.
A mature religion will practice, not a passive
tolerance with respect to its great sister faiths, but an active cooperation in
good works and the appropriation and assimilation of all that is best in them
unto itself.
A mature religion will meet the needs of the whole man, emotional as
well as intellectual, and give the feelings of the heart full scope and
expression under the guidance of the alert and informed mind.
A mature religion will be concerned with society and
its problems as much as with the individual. The individual cannot be saved
apart from his society, but only within its context of struggle for
righteousness, justice, brotherhood and peace.
----Victor V. Goff
Is
turning 40 a time of settling down or uprooting? Making do with what you’ve
got? Or breaking out into a time of radical honesty? There’s a story for every
stereotype.
John
Lewis turned 40 in 1958. He had spent the early part of his career as a
geologist—moving around the U.S.—looking at potential sites to drill for
oil. But about this time the oil boom
came to the Middle East. And the American oil companies found that it was
cheaper to buy oil than to search for domestic deposits. John and Rose
considered their prospects... and moved their children Rob, Howard, and John Jr.
to Wausau... where John became manager of the Ben Franklin store.
Lillian
Hoppe has lived her entire life in a home her father built on Miller Avenue in
1905. At the time, this was the far southern reach of Wausau, a block south of
Memorial hospital (Can you believe it? They had two hospitals!) In 1920,
the year that Lillian was born, another home was built just up the block, where
I now live.
Lillian
turned 40 in 1960. Her father had just died and Lillian had assumed
responsibilities for the household. She worked full time as a secretary at the
Federal Land Bank (making loans to farmers); she was also Secretary of the
Board of The Universalist Church, and she sang in the church choir. With all
this, and a lot of activities at the YWCA, she didn’t think much about turning
40.
Jim
Peck did it in 1964. It was his 12th year in Wausau as a physical
therapist. This was a new profession and Jim was the only physical therapist in
town. In fact there wasn’t another one between Wausau and Superior. Jim had
been thinking about moving to other communities in Wisconsin, but he remembers
being reluctant to do so because none of the communities he and Barb looked at
had a Universalist church. This was his 4th year teaching Sunday
School (he and Bob Geisel took turns every other week).
Kathy
Schmirler turned 40 in 1989, the year before her mother died. Her advice: tell
the people you want to tell / that you love and appreciate them.
For
Karen Pleuss, it was 1990. She had felt pretty established at this point in her
life, teaching high school health, and coaching volleyball. Then her son Adam
was born, and Karen took a year off. When she returned and didn’t want to coach
any more, she got bumped to elementary school. She was upset; she thought it
was unfair. It turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. She
says: do the things that scare you, you might be pleasantly surprised. Karen is now a physical education teacher
with an extracurricular jump rope club which has repeatedly outgrown its space;
she now has 165 jumpers.
Diane
Walker says she felt fine when she turned 40 in 1998. She was happy with her
work, her family, her health, and how she looked. What struck her was seeing
the written report of her annual check-up. It began with these words: “Middle-aged
woman....” That was a wake-up call. She realized that, regardless of how she
felt, this was how she was perceived. A new reality... oh well.
***
It’s
said that decade-marking birthdays are hardly noticed by people who have
reached the goals they’ve set for themselves at that point in their lives.
Otherwise, these birthdays can pinch.
My
high school basketball coach wanted us to improve our shooting, so he created
prizes we could win for sinking so-many consecutive free throws. That got us
practicing, but I never got to the first rung on the prize ladder. Last summer I put up a hoop above the
garage. Once in a while I’d try to shoot
consecutive free throws; I vaguely recalled that 10-in-a-row earned a t-shirt.
I tried and tried, and still did not succeed. When it warmed up a couple of
weeks ago, I thought, “It’s now or never.”
I tried for several days and couldn’t hit more than 3 or 4 in a
row. Finally out of the blue I got a
string of eleven. I was ecstatic. I ran inside to call my old friend Charlie,
with whom I hadn’t spoken for years. He
was the big star in high school, coached college ball and is now an athletic
director. Surely he would remember how many in a row we needed to sink. “Well,
Paul,” he said, in his encouraging coach’s voice, “eleven’s pretty good... but
I want you aim a little higher... see if you can’t shoot your age... I think,
for the t-shirt, we needed at least 20.”
Charlie
and I had a lot of time to practice our free throws back then. As Catholic
seminarians at a boys’ boarding school, we didn’t have a lot of outside
distractions. Perhaps not in basketball, but I’ve come a long way since
then. For example, I’d like to imagine
that I have matured religiously. One significant step in this direction
occurred simply by leaving the cloister, stepping out into the world...
experiencing the boundless goodness of creation... and sensing intuitively that
this could never be the sole domain of one religion.
Shortly
thereafter I had a conversation with a conservative protestant minister, and I
innocently mentioned that I was taking a World Religions class. He quickly
warned me not to be distracted. It’s like this, he said: “The people who are
experts at detecting counterfeit money... do they get their expertise by
studying counterfeit money? No, no. They study and study and study the real
thing. And only when they’ve learned every line of the real thing do they ever
look at anything else, and then they can spot a fake every time.” Somehow his
advice sent me in exactly the opposite direction. I cast off religion altogether, and my
odyssey continued.
I
completed my pre-medical work, got married, earned a degree in philosophy, had
a child at age 23. I got divorced. I
turned to history, art, music, and politics to sustain me through these years,
these changes. But the words of St. Paul, in his “Letter to the Romans,”
remained with me. He wrote, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not
do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” I do not do what I want, but I
do the very thing I hate.
Maybe
it wasn’t St. Paul’s words, precisely, that ran through my mind. But it was
that sentiment, more or less, that began to resonate with me in Neal
Young’s grunge rock song, which essentially cried the same cry: “Why do I keep
Fucking Up!!!???”
St.
Paul carried this cry of despair to the absurd conclusion that there was no good at all in himself... that humans
are vile and irredeemable. I couldn’t accept that. On the contrary, this is
about the time I stumbled into the First Unitarian Society in Minneapolis,
where I met Jane, and discovered still another version St. Paul’s and St.
Neil’s lament. This one, in the hymnal, has more of a blues-y tone. It goes: “I
wish I knew how it would feel to be free; I wish I could break all these chains
holding me. I wish I could say, all the things I could say, say ‘em loud say
‘em clear, for the whole world to hear. Say ‘em loud, say ‘em clear, for the
whole world to hear.”
As
I thought about my odyssey this week, and reviewed some of my old journals, I
came across something from 14 years ago. This was a turbulent time and I only
remember having no idea what I wanted to do with my life. But here in writing
was a list of goals, for 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years. It’s amazing to see this today... a comprehensive
list of financial, career, material, educational, family, personal, and health
goals. Almost all of which I’ve met.
***
You
might have noticed that John skipped over several pages of You’re Only Old
Once. I didn’t know if the kids could take the numbing repetitiveness of
the endless physician visits that our hero actually endured.
I
recently learned that I have slightly high cholesterol. I’ve adjusted my diet
accordingly, mushing some tofu into just about everything I eat. I’m not
whining. I know that this is only the tip of the ageberg. But if this is what’s
coming....[?!] This week I had an awful sore throat. In the grand scheme of health problems this
is pretty minor, but it struck me because each pill I took to combat the
problem was excruciating to swallow. The decongestant. The Motrin. The vitamin
C. The zinc... This on top of a multivitamin and an antidepressant that I
started to take a few months ago when the absurdity of life no longer seemed
funny.
Madeleine L’Engle writes: “When we were
children, we used to think / that when we were grown-up we would no longer be
vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability.”
In
high school Latin I learned the word adolescere: to grow up, increase,
mature, become established or strong, to reach one’s peak, or manhood. Our
English word “adolescent” is derived from this root. But for the Romans you
were adolescens from about age 20 till 40. That is, basically, until you
became old.
One
way or another, it’s clearly time for me to move beyond my adolescence...and
turn my attention to the next generations.
For now, it’s time to stop climbing the ladder. I’ve got everything I
want in life. My family rocks. My
community rocks. My job rocks. I like
what I do. I like where I do it. I like who I do it with. I have no desire to
rise to a higher level of incompetence. I desire to do what I do, here, very
very well.
What
will it mean to leave my adolescens behind? I hope it doesn’t mean that
I stop growing. But I hope that I can be mature enough to let go of some of my
generational angst. For example, I hope to be able to accept the fact that the
next generation doesn’t care about Watergate, Vietnam, the nuclear freeze
movement, the civil rights movement (or the Bee Gees, or REO Speedwagon). I
don’t really mean that they don’t care... But these are not their issues. We do need to pass on our history, but we
also need to move on. I don’t suggest that we move on blindly. The principles that shaped us through our
own generations are relevant and essential. But now we must apply what we
learned in earlier years to today’s issues. We need to stay open and accessible
to whatever tomorrow’s leaders see,
with their own eyes.
***
A
responsive reading used on a Sunday morning back in the spring of 1964 was written
by Digby Whitman—an old friend to many still here today. He wrote about
children, and how much more perceptive they can be than adults, with their open
eyes and sense of wonder. The reading
bemoaned how much adults can miss...
then prayed to retain the spirit of the child.
This
is weird. I am one of the children for
whom you had such fond aspirations. You prayed. My contemporaries and I were
born. / We matured. Now we all pray
together to retain open eyes and a sense of wonder.
***
What
else was going on in this congregation 40 years ago? The Wausau Daily
Record-Herald reported that Rev. Carlton Fischer had recently resigned and
a ministerial search committee had been appointed, consisting of: P.F.
Carspecken Jr., Gerald D. Viste, E.D. McEachron, Robert Shannon, Mrs. Arthur
Hanson, Allen Abrams, Mrs. Laurence Johnson, Mrs. Ralph Wehlitz, and Miss
Harriet Curtis.
In
the interim year, the congregation was lay-led. There’s nothing to indicate who
was writing the Sunday orders of service, but something about the writing
style—which oozes grateful curiosity—makes me think it was Phil
Carspecken. Whoever it was began the
year by noting the challenges of being without a minister, and fearing that
“the dedicated layman, without whom churches often fail, might have
disappeared!” But Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Wehlitz gave sermons, as did Mr. Jack
Williams, Gloria Seegert, Earl Kent Jr., Mrs. James Smith, and many
others.
In
the spring of 1964, president Robert W. Gunderson wrote to the congregation to
say that their ministerial candidate, Rev. Joseph Nerad, age 40, would arrive
in May to preach 2 consecutive weeks, with his wife and two of his three
children. A couple of months later, the next president, Dr. George Andrews,
confirmed Rev. Nerad’s call, and noted: “We now look forward to a summer of
relative rest, though during this time planning will continue for the coming
year [which] will mark our 50th year of the present church
building.... Cleaning, painting, and repairing will go on during the summer in
order to preserve the excellent physical plant with which we are favored....
This work, plus the increase in various operating costs... will necessitate an
increase in the church budget, and a corresponding broadening of the base of
financial support of the organization.”
***
Joe
Nerad stayed just a few years. He was followed by Rev. John Robinson, who
served from 1969-1973, before moving on to a small church in Kirkwood, MO. He
served that church for 27 years, while it grew into one of the largest
congregations in our movement.
Continuity
and change. Both are real. Both are illusory. Continuity and change. Each has
advantages and disadvantages.
A
few months ago I preached about “Perfectionism.” I quoted the gospel of
Matthew: “Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.” But instead of
“perfect,” another legitimate translation of the Greek is, “be mature.” Now that
is something to strive for. Not so overwhelming. What is it to be mature?
Marilyn vos Savant writes: “It’s when you stop doing the stuff you have to make
excuses for and when you stop making excuses for the stuff you have to do.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes that in middle age,
one experiences things very similar to early adolescence: “discontent,
restlessness, doubt, despair, longing.” But in middle age, these are
“interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often
misinterpret the signs; one accepts them...as growing pains.... But in the
middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one
interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching
death.” Discontent, restlessness, doubt despair, longing...life signs!
As
I turn turn turn forty, I find that the same lessons keep returning to me. They
come around and around until I learn them. Like the toy top that I keep in my
office for kids to play with. The spinning top can represent both change and
constancy. It is constantly turning, but
staying in place. I guess the turning
keeps the top in balance. I hope I
can remain so playful, so balanced. And you too: may we not be afraid to keep
turning, into ourselves.
CLOSING HYMN Wake,
Now, My Senses #298
BENEDICTION
This responsive reading—from
Thomas Wolfe’s, You Can’t Go Home Again—was used in the spring of 1964 when Mr. Phil Carspecken was the speaker. His
theme was “Intimations of Immortality.”
Some things will never change. Some things
will always be the same. Lean down your ear upon the earth, and listen.
The
voice of forest water in the night, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot
meadows, the delicate web of children’s voices in bright air -- these things
will never change.
The glitter of sunlight on roughened water,
the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in
harbors;
The
feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, add something there that
comes and goes and never can be captured;
The thorn of spring, the sharp and
tongueless cry---these things will always be the same.
All
things belonging to the earth will never change---the leaf, the blade, the
flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again;
The trees whose stiff arms clash and
tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the
earth---all things proceeding from the earth to seasons;
All
things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth---these things will
always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go
back into the earth that lasts forever.
Only the earth endures, but it endures
forever.
The
tarantula, the adder and the asp will also never change. Pain and death will
always be the same.
But under the pavements, trembling like a
pulse, under the buildings, trembling like a cry, under the waste of time,
under the hoof of the beast, above the broken bones of cities,
There
will be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth
again, forever deathless, faithful, coming into life again like April.
[Bonus
quotes!]
To mature is in part to
realize that while complete intimacy and omniscience and power cannot be had,
self-transcendence, growth, and closeness to others are nevertheless within
one’s reach.
Sissela Bok
The change of life is the time
when you meet yourself at a crossroads and you decide whether to be honest or
not before you die.
Katharine
Butler Hathaway
In middle age we are apt to
reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate
regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are self-made.
Kathleen Norris
The great thing about
getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.
Madeleine
L’Engle
Tis a Maxim with me to be
young as long as one can. There is nothing can pay one for that invaluable
ignorance which is the companion of youth, those sanguine groundless Hopes, and
that lively vanity which makes all the Happiness of Life. To my extreme Mortification I grow wiser
every day.
Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu (1712)
One of the signs of passing
youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take
our place among them.
Virginia Woolf