A life worth living

“Keeping busy?” is the question which often gets asked of people who look over 65 or so. Perhaps the person asking it reckons that the over 65 year olds have nothing left to live for, apart from filling the dreadful abyss left by the ‘busyness’ which has been taken from them through retirement – voluntary or otherwise.

The question is loaded at both ends. On the one, for the person being asked and, on the other, for the one asking it, who may be worrying about their own impending retirement and the spectre of idleness which it raises. In both cases, it leads into far deeper questions which pertain to the meaning of life itself. These are the questions many people face in retirement or possibly, as a result of adversity, much earlier on in life.

We do not live, in the fullest sense, by keeping busy.  Neither, for that matter, are we truly rich when we have simply made a lot of money or acquired power or status, which are only of use to us in this lifetime, in any case – if they last that long. There is still that part of us which achievements and attributes fail to satisfy, or ‘reach’, to allude to an advertisement from the seventies for a well known brand of beer.

Retirement focuses this truth, until now only vaguely apprehended, into reality. Left to ourselves, we are faced not so much with the past (although the past is significant in shaping our thoughts about the present) as with the present moment and with infinity itself which is couched in the present moment, though it does not begin there. Having to be still and resisting the need to be busy allows us a glimpse of infinity, also called eternity, and eternity might be like when our very brief lives enter into that ultimate dimension.  It begs two further questions; will we be wealthy in the only way which matters in this infinite dimension? In other words, will we have lived richly towards God? And will we have lived gratefully?

So the question we are faced with is whether or not we are living, in the fullest sense of the word, rather than just keeping busy. By living, I mean has our creaturely life been in tune with the greater life of God’s creating Spirit, with his generosity and joy, as well as with his grieving over the violence and greed which are the cause of so much suffering for human beings and creatures alike?

The creative ‘rush’ that makes for fulfilling work is of a piece with the energy of a creating God. Have we, in our working lives, ever sensed this and been grateful to him for it? And if our own working life has been demanding, but unrewarding and uneventful, have we sought that creative God in our colleagues and helped them to develop their gifts wherever possible?

Gratitude ought to inform the whole of our life, not just that part of it when we were in work, because gratitude is about meeting God at the deepest level of our being. Gratitude is also at the heart of the meaning of eucharist, and we are called to live eucharistically. In other words, we are called to live richly and gratefully towards God at whatever stage of life we happen to have reached.

We are also called to be open to what is good in retirement, even if it does not, on the face of it, feel very rewarding. When we consciously live like this, we are able to discern or know God meeting with our own spirit, so making retirement creative in the fullest sense. We are not just getting through another day by keeping busy, because each day is the beginning of a whole new phase of creative living.  

Breaking the Rules

I don’t usually blog on a Sunday. I try, usually unsuccessfully, to have a Sabbath break from the computer. It is a difficult rule because, like millions of other users of the internet, the computer has accustomed me to a fast staccato rhythm of life. Slowing down the rhythm and easing the tempo brings withdrawal symptoms, including physical ones, because, like most people, I am in some measure addicted to this keyboard and the particular freedom it brings.

Not checking the internet or writing blog posts on a Sunday is both a liberation and a constraint. It liberates me for other things, like gardening and being fully present to other people, but it also constrains by denying the immediate satisfaction of a certain hunger. But today, as I break this self-imposed rule, because the coming week will be busy and afford little time for blogging, I feel liberated. Is this because writers have to write, so that breaking the ‘no computer’, and hence ‘no writing’, rule releases pent up creative energy, and hence stress? Or is it because self-imposed rules, or any other rules which are mindlessly adhered to, seldom fulfil their purpose? I think it is a little of both.

 Breaking rules is not just a matter of reclaiming freedom, however that is conceived. It is also a matter of discerning truth. This begs two further questions: How do rules help us to come to terms with who we are? And how can we know that a rule is self-defeating and ought therefore to be changed or abolished?

The second question really takes precedence over the first. Yesterday, I attended a very moving First Communion Mass in a Catholic church. There were about 300 people there. Being an Anglican who was once a Roman Catholic, and so not by nature a rule breaker, I spent the first part of the Mass trying to come to terms with the fact that there are regulations which forbid me to receive communion in a Catholic church. I felt like a person invited to a banquet who is shown all the civilities but not served any of the food, until I noticed that everyone was moving up to the front to receive communion, including a number of people known to me who were not Catholics. Everyone, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, were just helping themselves to the food which they knew they needed. I breathed a prayer of relief, feeling somewhat silly in doing so, and melded into the queue.

 The whole situation reminded me of a remark once made by an Anglican bishop, “No Church can keep a good God down”. Forbidding the reception of communion by people who are not of a particular denomination is a rule which is self-defeating, and so devoid of purpose, as are so many rules which forbid and exclude people from experiencing God’s love in whatever way they can.

Breaking the wrong rules in the right way can be as tough as keeping the wrong rules for the wrong reasons and that is why I addressed the second question before the first. So, to return to the first question, it is when we step over the boundaries of misconceived notions about tradition, the Church and certain kinds of loveless ‘morality’, and recognise our overriding hunger for God that we really come up against the truth about ourselves. Recognising this truth about ourselves frees us into creativity because it gives us permission to own our hunger for something more than the material and the mundane.

Being human means being hungry for something more than bread, as Jesus himself taught. He taught this because he knew that our humanity is sustained and informed by our hunger for truth. Our hunger for truth, as Saint Augustine found, along with a number of later philosophers who came at it from an entirely different direction, is the passion which makes us fully human. It is inextricably bound up with who we are and with all our other partially admitted longings. Together, they make up our need and hunger for truth which is also a hunger for God.

Once we recognise our hunger for God, it becomes easier to discern which of the rules we set ourselves need to be kept without question and which are in fact obstacles or impediments to satisfying this hunger. Some of the best rules need to be broken from time to time, or dispensed with altogether. If they are not, then the rules simply add to existing layers of guilt and neurosis rather than freeing us from them. The same holds for rules which contain, clip or limit real creativity. These need to be constantly kept under review, and broken as an when needed, as I am finding in writing this blog post on a Sunday.

Ultimately, all life is about creativity.  We are only fully human when we are being creative, but being creative is not the same as being ‘productive’.  Creativity is not a currency. It is life itself. This is what Jesus is talking about when he says that he is the way, the truth and the life. He is talking about the recognition of something necessary and familiar and yet entirely new and strange, the voice of the shepherd which the sheep know and recognise, offering them a way in to the place where they will find real food, where they will find the kind of truth which liberates.

He is not saying that only people who recognise his voice in a particular way, by adhering to certain terms and conditions, can be part of his flock. Rather, he is telling them how to recognise what is counterfeit and destructive. He is inviting those who are prepared to trust him to walk with him and, in so doing, to break quite a few ill-considered or self-imposed rules. He is also teaching them that the truth which is of God never stands still. It grows and shapes itself around the needs of the times, so it requires new rules, or boundaries, boundaries which allow it to flow unimpeded into the hearts and minds of those who hunger for it, which is all of us.