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By Dr. Bruce T. Marshall
September 25, 2011
Reading
There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the
past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it
will change the political structure only as its final act. It will
not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully
resisted by violence. It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and
already our laws, institutions and social structure are changing in
consequence. It promises a higher reason, a more human community,
and a new and liberated individual. Its ultimate creation will be a
new and enduring wholeness and beauty — a renewed relationship of
man to himself, to other men, to society, to nature, and to the
land.
This is the revolution of the new generation.
Charles Reich, The Greening of America
Sermon
It was the year 1967, early summer. I was 19 years old, had just
finished my sophomore year in college and was preparing to go to
Germany and Austria for six months of study abroad. As I made the
rounds visiting high school friends, one mentioned that a new
Beatles album had just come out. At the time, the release of a
Beatles album was an event, but I hadn’t yet heard so I asked, “How
is it?” “Pretty good,” she said. Turns out this new album was Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
As I made my way through Europe during the following months, Sgt.
Pepper’s followed me around. I would be walking down some little
Medieval street when one of the songs drifted out of an upstairs
window. Or in the middle of a city or hanging out in a dance club or
bar. Meanwhile, back in the States, it was the Summer of Love. In
San Francisco, of course, but all over too. Love was changing the
world, and my generation—the baby boomers: we were the vanguard. It
was the “Age of Aquarius” when “peace would guide the planets and
love would steer the stars.”
It was a great time to be young, and being young conferred a certain
status, even authority. People listened to us just because we were
young. “What do the young people think about this?” they would ask,
and we would try to find something to say. We were out to change the
world and at least some of the older generation looked to us to
point the way. It was “the revolution of the new generation,” as
Charles Reich put it in his book, The Greening of America, which
sought to put into words and concepts what this generation stood
for.
In the midst of all this, there was a cute little Paul McCartney
song from Sgt. Peppers, When I’m 64. None of us thought about being
64 back then. That was the charm of the piece; it was so
other-worldly. “When I get older, losing my hair.” “Doing the
garden, pulling the weeds, who could ask for more?” “Grandchildren
on your knee: Vera Chuck and Dave.” C’mon. That couldn’t be us!
Well, whatdaya know? As of last month, I am 64. I haven’t lost my
hair; that particularly genetic program hasn’t yet kicked in. But
“out ‘til quarter to three?” You’ve got to be kidding. “Doing the
garden, pulling the weeds?” Yep, I do that. “Grandchildren on my
knee?” We baby boomers were slow to marry, slow to have children.
Vera, Chuck, or Dave don’t seem to be on the horizon, but you never
know.
Now that I am 64, looking back—instead of 19 looking ahead—how does
it appear? What have I learned between then and now? What’s
different? What’s the same?
● ● ●
I remember in a previous church when our music director said to me,
with some shock and wonder, “My birthday is coming. I’m going to be
60!” Then she observed, “I don’t feel any different.”
At the time I was in my 40s; the 60s—let alone 64—was off on the
horizon. But her comment had the ring of truth. “I don’t feel any
different.” Well, she certainly looked like she was 60. I mean, she
might have been surprised, but I sure wasn’t. I guess I had always
figured that we feel about the same as we look. That when we look
young, we feel young. When we look middle-aged, then we feel that
way. And then when we’re old, we feel like that body looks: the one
in which we are then living.
But now I can tell you as a newly minted 64-year-old, that’s not how
it is. Well, yes, there are some aches and pains that I didn’t have
in earlier times. And as I add still more years in the future, I
know that I’ll walk more slowly and carefully, and I’ll have to be
more measured in my activities. But those are all externals; they’re
not me. They’re not the me that is at the heart of myself, if that
makes any sense.
What becomes more apparent as I grow older is that there’s something
inside that’s just me, and it’s not tied to my physical appearance.
When we are young I think that who we are and what we look like are
more intricately tied together. So if you have a bad hair day or the
outfit doesn’t work, you can kind of fall apart. But now I have to
check in a mirror every once in a while to remind myself of what I
look like. “Oh, yes, I remember. That’s what I look like now.” But
then I forget again.
I am aware of this when I talk with someone. Yes, this is a physical
being in front of me, with both beauties and frailties, whose body
might be beaten up by the stresses and strains of living. But
there’s someone else in there too: an essential person, the one who
doesn’t feel much different despite the passage of time. And every
one in a while, I’ll catch see that essential being: in a smile, a
unique expression, a way of moving that this person seems to own.
I’ll realize, yes, that’s who he or she is, above and beyond the
pressures that are put upon us to look a certain way and despite the
things that have happened to this individual’s physical being.
There is a word for what I encounter. That word is soul. Soul: the
essence of a person. That part of yourself that’s always been there
and that remains even as things change. As times change, as our
environments change, as our bodies change, that essence—the soul—is
still there.
Is this soul immortal? I don’t know. But as I enter my 65th year, I
am more aware of it, more comfortable with it. It is reassuring that
deep inside myself is some part of myself, some essence, that
doesn’t have to prove anything. That just is.
● ● ●
Here’s another surprise, something that most of us don’t expect,
certainly something that I didn’t anticipate at age 19. Indeed if
you tell this to, say, a teenager like I was back then, most likely
that teen will reject it outright, “It’ll never happen to me!” If
you are a teen here this morning, I’m about to tell you something
that your peers almost certainly don’t know. So you’ll have a jump
on them.
This is it: someday you will become your parents. It can happen at
different moments in your life. Such as, if you have your own
children. You’ll hear something come out of your mouth—words that
have never been a part of you—and once they’re out and cannot be
reclaimed, you realize, “Oh my God, I’ve become my mother.” Or, your
father. Or maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of yourself—an expression,
some movement—and it will look familiar and then you’ll realize
where it came from. Or you’ll find that your physical features that
used to be so distinctly you, rearrange and then you’ll look in a
mirror and see your parents faces staring back. Or values and
attitudes different from those you have so carefully cultivated;
they will start to seep in and at some point you’ll realize their
origins.
These days I’m aware of how sometimes my voice sounds so much like
my father’s. My values have always come from my mother, but I also
sometimes encounter a reflex action that is dismissive of new
situations, and I know where that comes from too. It doesn’t matter
if we have had problems with our parents or whether we totally love
and adore them, it comes as a shock when our own psyche starts to
blend with what has come before. Maybe we aren’t as unique as we had
hoped to be.
The same principle applies to other aspects of our heritage. The
communities in which we grew up—my Midwestern-ness turns up in me
every once in a while. Our ethnic heritages. The religions of our
childhoods. It’s all part of the context that shapes us. It’s all
family.
My point here: it just is. That’s something maybe I’ve finally
learned now that I’m 64. Might as well not fight it. It’s going to
happen. Like those things we vowed when we were young that we’d
never do—and then one day we found ourselves doing those very
things. Relax. It’s part of the wheel of life. It’s going to happen.
● ● ●
Here’s something else that’s going to happen. By the time we’re 64,
just about everybody knows this. What’s going to happen is bad
things. Live long enough, and we will experience bad things.
We know this, but we also don’t know this. Because when it occurs,
we are stunned. “I didn’t really think bad things were going to
happen to me.” We lose a job; we get dumped by a girlfriend or a
boyfriend, we fail to reach a goal, something in our bodies give
out, there is a death of someone close to us. Particularly the first
time we experience the death of someone we assumed would always be
there. We know these things happen but are stunned when it actually
happens to us.
There’s a short essay by a Unitarian Universalist minister named
Clarke Wells that I find myself going back to. It’s called, A Letter
to My Sons, and in it he offers his own insights gained from years
of living. He wrote, addressing his sons, “You will undergo someday,
unless you fake it or dehumanize yourself, pain deeper than you
believe is possible to experience. You will bear unspeakable grief.
I hope you endure and I commend to you during those periods long
walks, cursing, planting tulip bulbs, Bach, and holding close all
night to someone who gives a damn.”
I bring this up not to emphasize the bad news of living. What
matters now that I’m 64 is that this is something everybody shares.
The worst part about those bad times is the feeling that I have been
singled out for abuse. That everybody else has it pretty much just
fine. Now that I’m 64, I realize that’s not true. I realize that
everybody’s got something going on.
I find that realization healing, even liberating. So when the bad
things come along, I can just deal with them, without that other
layer of feeling singled out. And with a sense of commonality with
my fellow travelers on this earth. Some of life’s richest moments
occur when we join together to help each other through the bad
things.
There is a corollary to the “bad things happen” principle. That is,
“good things happen.” This can also be a surprise, maybe even a
bigger one. You kind of expect that your life is going to keep on
going the way it always has, and then you meet a person and
something clicks. Or you find an interest, a project, that
unexpectedly engages you. Parents experience the wonder of their
children, which you don’t really know about until it happens. Or you
catch a glimpse of a sunset that glows yellow and orange and red. Or
a full moon in a clear night sky bathes the world in an entirely
different kind of light.
Now that I’m sixty-four, I’ve had my share of good things happen,
unexpectedly good things. I also find that the range and variety of
experiences I consider “good things” is expanding. It doesn’t have
to be the life-changing moment to be certified as a good thing. Now
it’s more ordinary times, simpler experiences, that bring gratitude
and appreciation for the good that life has to offer.
The song of crickets on an early fall evening. Discovering a bakery
with really good pastries where you can eat outside in the warmth of
the sun. A tomato plant with glowing red tomatoes. A crate full of
orange pumpkins. Bagels and lox for breakfast on a day when you
don’t have to rush off and do anything else. A walk in the cool of
the morning. A really good book that pulls you in and alters your
view of the world for awhile. A call or an email from an old friend.
All these are good things. The difference from the perspective of
being 64 is that I notice them now. When I was younger I mostly
didn’t; now I find that I do.
● ● ●
On October 29, 1941, Winston Churchill, then prime minister of Great
Britain gave a speech at the Harrow School in Northwest London. It’s
become well-known though the details have altered in the telling.
The story I heard is that it was a commencement ceremony at which
Churchill was the featured speaker. He stood up and said, “Never
never never never give up.” And then he sat down. End of speech.
It’s a great story. But I did some research and found that it didn’t
quite happen that way. The context was the early dark years of World
War II. Britain had endured and just barely survived the Blitz of
German air attacks. What Churchill really said was this, “...for
everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period—I am
addressing myself to the School—surely from this period of ten
months, this is the lesson: Never give in. Never give in. Never,
never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never
give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield
to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the
enemy.”
The point stands, another lesson from 64 years of living. In things
that matter to you, deeply, don’t give up. If it matters, stick with
it, stand by it.
However, there is a caveat. Actually the “never give up” principle
only works with this caveat. Which is, “Pick your battles.” I have
seen people run headlong into trouble and refuse to give up even
when whatever was at stake didn’t matter anymore. I’ve probably done
it many times myself. If there’s anything I’ve learned in church, it
is, “Pick your battles.”
There are battles out there that are not worth fighting, lots of
them. Like when the guy cuts you off in traffic, do you really need
to sit on your horn and tell the world about how unhappy you are
about this situation? Because, really, nobody cares.
But on things that matter—things that are essential to the core of
your being—to your soul: don’t give up. Amidst the setbacks and the
obstacles and then also times when you start to feel silly for
keeping at it, never never never never give up.
● ● ●
One more thing: what about “The Revolution?” That is to say, the
revolution in consciousness that my generation promoted as ushering
in an age of liberation, harmony, understanding, deeper humanness.
The Age of Aquarius. What about that? We were going to bring people
together in peace and love, build communities, overcome the tribal
hostilities of the generations and unite each other by drawing upon
common hopes and aspirations. We were not going to squander our
potential amidst the disappointments of everyday life. We weren’t
going to trust anyone over the age of 30 because, in our view, they
had mostly given up or given in. We were going to realize our full
potential as we also showed the world how to live with
authenticity—truth and beauty.
Looking back upon my generation from the vantage point of a
64-year-old, I have to admit that we were naïve and arrogant, a
dangerous combination. But we were not completely wrong.
True, we have not ushered in an era of peace and love. War and
violence continue unabated, injustice eats at the fabric of our
society as it does throughout the world. Suffering is a daily fact
of life for much of the world’s population. For many people on this
earth, daily survival is a far more pressing concern than are peace
and love.
But something else I know after 64 years on this planet. We need
dreams, we need ideals, we need something to strive toward. And even
though our efforts get derailed—time and time again they are
defeated—we still need those dreams. The generation of today’s
64-year-olds—well, it’s not monolithic. After all, today’s Tea Party
is mostly populated by white male baby-boomers. But anyway, an
element of my generation had a vision: a world united in peace and
harmony. Even though it hasn’t come to be and even though it ignored
the realities of much of human history, still it was a vital dream.
And there have been victories: moments of connection, moments of
deepened understanding, moments in which people managed to reach
beyond the divisions that keep us apart. Those were worth living for
and still are, even as the next generations pursue their own dreams,
ideals that might be different than ours.
Serving as a I do as a chaplain in the Riderwood senior residence
community—where people still legitimately refer to me as being
“young”—I see that those who do best in their final years are those
who hold onto hopes and dreams and desires. Who are engaged with the
world, who maintain a sense of who they are at their essence, who
don’t give up.
So I guess that’s the final thing I want to say in this sermon about
turning 64. Vera Chuck and Dave have never quite shown up, at least
for me they haven’t. But I’m not giving up on the dreams of that
era. They still give me something to reach toward, to believe in, to
bring spirit and energy to my days.
The African American poet, playwright, and social activist—Langston
Hughes—put it this way.
“Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken-winged bird
that cannot fly.
“Hold fast to dreams
for when dreams go
life is a barren field
frozen with snow.”
● ● ●
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