AARP Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

by Richard Rohr

Various traditions have used many metaphors to make this differentiation clear: beginners and proficients, novices and initiated, milk and meat, letter and spirit, juniors and seniors, baptized and confirmed, apprentice and master, morning and evening, “Peter when you were young…Peter when you are old” (John 21:18). Only when you have begun to live in the second half can you see the difference between the two.

Each generation has to make its own discoveries of Spirit for itself. If not, we just react to the previous generation, and often overreact. Or we conform, and often overconform. Neither is a positive or creative way to move forward.

Thus the first journey is always about externals, formulas, superficial emotions, flags and badges, correct rituals, Bible quotes, and special clothing, all of which largely substitute for actual spirituality

You need to struggle with the rules more than a bit before you throw them out.

The first-half-of-life container, nevertheless, is constructed through impulse controls; traditions; group symbols; family loyalties; basic respect for authority; civil and church laws; and a sense of the goodness, value, and special importance of your country, ethnicity, and religion (as for example, the Jews' sense of their “chosenness”). To quote Archimedes once again, you must have both “a lever and a place to stand” before you can move the world.