Tuesday, June 20, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Adulting
Ron Rolheiser has been through a long recovery from cancer, and as always, he doesn’t know what’s around the next corner. Many years ago we sat in his office, uninvited but welcomed, while he was eating an apple and talking about the expensive cancer treatment he had recently decided to accept.
So far it’s worked out well. He continues to travel the country and even the world with his very special workshops and conferences, several of which we have attended at the recently closed Kings House in Belleville, Illinois.
In his life and work, Fr. Rolheiser has had to accept adult duties time and again. And he talks about how difficult that is for all of us.
Our culture lacks parents and elders. But nobody wants to assume those roles because to assume them is to admit we’re no longer children ourselves, and we don’t want to do that.
I recognize this in myself, but when my mom died two years ago and Margaret’s mom died three months ago, both at age 99, I felt a sea change in my thoughts. One reason for depression after all the parents are gone must be what I felt: “I have no idea how to be in charge of all this stuff.” Neither Margaret nor I are executors of our parents’ wills and estates, but the panic and clueless feelings was still there.
You know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ: that for your sake he became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich.
Our pastor Matt talked about the incomplete reconciliation between him and his dad. Then his dad. His mom had already passed. “No more parents,” he said. “Can’t fix this one. Too late.” Margaret’s dad died when she was barely a teenager; my dad died in 2002. No more parents for us either. Whatever was left unfinished between us will mostly stay that way.
It was true for us as parents with our children, Rolheiser says: “We’re supposed to be carrying the children, not asking to be carried ourselves.” Some parents are better at delegating that carrying task to their kids, some are worse. No matter. One of my favorite short counseling suggestions has always been the simple description. “Hey! You’re the dad.” Or the mom. Don’t get mixed up about that.
The Lord gives sight to the blind. The Lord raises up those who were bowed down; the Lord loves the just. Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I notice that owning and accepting my aging life involves not only my body (patch, patch, patch) but also my willingness to mean it when I say, “The buck stops here.” I will help, I will stand up to the task. Rolheiser continues …
Our minds and bodies become scarred in a way that will set us apart from the young. We’ll have stretchmarks, bent bodies, anxious hearts, the stoop that comes with carrying burdens, grey hair, wrinkles educed by worry, and probably some middle-aged fat as well.  But we will be the elders, the mentors, the teachers, the adults, the parents, the mums, and the dads that our society so sorely misses.
That’s the right thing to do, and it’s worth it.
(2 Corinthians 8, Psalm 146, John 13, Matthew 5)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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