Phase II

Prophetic thinking is the capacity for healthy self-criticism, the ability to recognize your own dark side, as the prophets did for Israel. Without failure, suffering, and shadowboxing, most people (and most of religion) never move beyond narcissism and tribal thinking (egoism extended to the group). This has been most of human history up to now, which is why war has been the norm. But healthy self-criticism helps you realize you are not that good and neither is your group. It begins to break down either/or, dualistic thinking as you realize all things are both good and bad. This makes all idolatry, and all the delusions that go with it, impossible.

-Richard Rohr, Daily Devotion 6-22-2016

Adapted from Falling Upward, A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

When I was 20, I honestly had a hard time imagining that I would live to be as old as I am now. Twenty year old me would have found this very scene preposterous: sitting in my comfortable office at the church where I serve as a pastor, where I get up in front of crowds of people and talk about God and stuff, where it is my job to comfort people who are hurting and challenge people to live with a higher awareness of God's purpose in their lives, where it is my job to deal with the weekly (daily) task of exegesis of the text of Scripture and of the life of my congregation.  But perhaps more than any of that, 20 year old Mark would have a hard time fathoming the 12 year old boy sitting on the couch playing video games and waiting for me to take him to robotics camp.  20 year old Mark wasn't really interested in having kids, in fact, I would say he was probably considered it to be a fate worse than death, which is why he figured he would probably kick off at around 30 rather than become a father for the second time in two years.  20 year old me didn't know what it was like to lose people you thought would always be around.  20 year old me didn't have any idea what sort of tragedy lurks out there in the world.  And yet 20 year old me was a pretty pessimistic and angry young man for some reason, with very little hope for the future.

Twenty year old me had never thought of shadowboxing as a spiritual practice.

Twenty year old me was extremely dualistic.

Twenty year old me was incapable of recognizing let alone being challenged in his own idolatry.

Fortunately, I hope, that young man had a chance to grow up.  Thanks to that process, this 41 year old man recognizes, as he peeks over the horizon into middle age, that the process of growth is not always easy, but it is always necessary.

I suppose, if I accept that I'm hitting the transition between first and second halves of life that Rohr is describing, I'm somewhere in the prophetic movement of life, having left the dualism and strictures of the law somewhere in the rear-view mirror.  Hopefully I learned those lessons well enough that I can remain a dependable citizen of life while not becoming too rigid.  I feel that's where I am, having escaped the conservatism of my youth, which for me was far too rooted in anger and self-righteousness, I have been trying to live and preach a message of grace consistently.

I'm not always sure I'm being prophetic, but I do know that the shift angered some of the people who liked me the way I was, and that probably is evidence of some sort. I feel like being a prophet is more about having questions than answers. I'm pretty sure I have not yet become wise, although I aspire to that someday.  Someday I want to be like Eugene Peterson, who just sort of oozes the wisdom of a long obedience in the same direction, and whom I blatantly plagiarize, or Richard Rohr, who afflicts me daily with these devotions that challenge the very foundations of the idols that I apparently still have.

The thing is though, even though I recognize how far I have come in two decades, the main thing that I attribute that growth to is a simple awareness that I am utterly over-matched in almost everything I do.  But the remarkable truth that I have come to see is that failure teaches us more and helps us grow faster than success.

So maybe that's where this absurd feeling of hope that I have been having lately comes from.  I am looking around at the world, at our church, at our nation, at all the really horrible things that are going on, from Donald Trump to the crisis in the Middle East, and I am thinking that perhaps, as Paul said, these are just the birth pangs.  What if our entire world is stuck in the place where I was personally at twenty? Dualistic, idolatrous, violent, angry, hopeless, and what if all of that has to fail in order for something new to be born?

What if the next adaptation in the evolution of our species is not some physical mutation that gives us greater brain size or fewer digits or whatever.  What if our next step is a spiritual step?  Isn't that essentially what Christ taught us?  The way of the cross, moving beyond the small, legalistic categories that constantly lead to conflict and wars, moving beyond self-interest into something called love.

It seems impossible, or at the very best unlikely, that we will ever collectively make such a jump, but then again, me being the father of a 12 year old seemed the same way twenty years ago, and we have so much more time, and God never stops creating.