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

by Richard Rohr

it compares, it competes, it conflicts, it conspires, it condemns, it cancels out any contrary evidence, and it then crucifies with impunity. You can call it the seven C's of delusion, and the source of most violence, which is invariably sacralized as good and necessary to “make the world safe for democracy” or to “save souls for heaven.”

This is what our team falls into with the concept of equity and race when one does nor readily accept to use the proscribed language.

Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go; split people see and create splits in everything and everybody. By the second half of our lives, we are meant to see in wholes and no longer just in parts. Yet we get to the whole by falling down into the messy parts—so many times, in fact, that we long and thirst for the wholeness and fullness of all things, including ourselves.

Is it possible that those of us who struggle with the proscribed language of equity and race do so because we are in the sec ond half and looking for wholeness rather than separateness?

What looks like falling can largely be experienced as falling upward and onward, into a broader and deeper world, where the soul has found its fullness, is finally connected to the whole, and lives inside the Big Picture.

You probably have to have met at least one true elder to imagine that this could be true.

the great difference between transformed and nontransformed people. Great people come to serve, not to be served.

Many others rightly criticized me for who I really was, and revealed to me my shadow, which was always painful but often very helpful. But in all cases, it became apparent that their responses said much more about them and the good or bad quality of their own mirroring than about me at all!

Not-so-mature people will mirror their own unlived and confused life onto us, which is why they confuse and confound us so much, and why they are hard to love.

I must remember this when I take things people say too much to heart.

Much of the work of midlife is learning to tell the difference between people who are still dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you as you really are.

I doubt whether this kind of calm discrimination and detachment is much possible before your midfifties at the earliest.

No surprise, then, that I found a deeper sense of self at this juncture.

The only meaningful, helpful, and humble question is “Is it objectively true?”

The small self cannot see this very easily, because it doubts itself too much, is still too fragile, and is caught up in the tragedy of it all. It has not lived long enough to see the big patterns. No wonder so many of our young commit suicide.

My mom. So many of our teenagers. Almost me. Once.

Just remember this: no one can keep you from the second half of your own life except yourself. Nothing can inhibit your second journey except your own lack of courage, patience, and imagination. Your second journey is all yours to walk or to avoid.

If you don't walk into the second half of your own life, it is you who do not want it.

For Scotus, God does not create categories, classes, genuses, or species, but only unique and chosen individuals. Everything is a unique “this”!

An example of the limits of science.

Spiral Dynamics is a theory of human consciousness that claims to “explain everything.” In fact, it is quite convincing and helpful in terms of understanding at what level individuals, groups, nations, and whole eras hear, process, and act on their experience.

many progressive people still think “bipartisan” is as high as we can go.

Merton's descriptions of the terms “true self” and “false self” have become a foundational piece of modern spirituality, and have clarified for many what the self is that has to “die” according to Jesus, and what the self is that lives forever.

I never understood this before!

missing

fundamentalism and atheism, which suffer from the same deficit.

Wondering what st this means.