My previous post ended by bringing up a topic that I’ll call simply “shrinking time”—to be together with Cathy, my wife and best friend; shrinking time to be with my children and grandchildren; shrinking time to be with my three “oldest” friends as well as with all the friends that I value; shrinking time simply to live–and that evokes several sub-topics which have risen unbidden, but persistent.

The first of them has to with shrinking capabilities in this shrinking time—limited mobility, mental capacity, ability to travel. Aging, as the saying goes, is not for sissies. In Frederick Buechner’s picturesque description, “For the majority . . . it’s like living in a house that’s in increasing need of repairs. The plumbing doesn’t work right anymore. There are bats in the attic . . . and there’s a lot of creaking and groaning in bad weather. . . .”

So my mobility is limited, due to usual stuff—spinal cord issues, arthritis, balance not so good, etc. I do what I can—workouts at the YMCA on appropriate equipment, yard work that I’m able to do, exercises at home, and so on. So, Yes, I’m grateful for what I can still do, but I’m sharply aware that the shrinking time almost surely means I’m working to maintain the status quo, that things likely will not get better, and might get worse.

I’m grateful for an active mind and, again, do what I can to maintain it. But the gut fears of losing mental capabilities—memory, cognitive impairment, dementia, Alzheimer’s—do loom out there as possibilities, and I must confess that I’d rather not live at all than to live with the “bats in the attic.”

And then there’s travel, both domestic and international, which my wife and I both love with a passion. Personally, since that first time, at 38 years old, completely unprepared for the opportunity that presented itself—never had lead a student tour anywhere, never been out of the country, didn’t speak the languages of Switzerland—but I parked my ignorance, jumped at the chance, and that experience became “the spark that lit the fire.” I have been absolutely smitten for the rest of my life with the joys of eye-opening, enriching travel, especially international, with multiple trips over the years encompassing 20 countries and dozens of students. My wife and I fell in love with Australia and especially New Zealand on our first trip there and we devoutly and passionately hope to go one more time, our fifth, when it’s safe to travel. Again, my limited mobility makes any travel more difficult and potentially more restricted—not a happy thought—but we will hope and plan!

And, finally, there are those looming questions about “ultimate matters” particularly relevant to those of us who, by any standard, are in the process of “aging out.” While these are not new issues for me, they have clearly arisen in sharper focus as I have passed 84—increased thoughts about death; a sharper consciousness that “the finish line” is closer, more wonder about what is on “the other side,” if there is an “other side;” the existence, or not, of a “Supreme Being.” But, interestingly, these thought are not depression inducing—they are about curiosity, about wanting to “know” rather than just “believe.” At bottom, I think, they are about the perennial human search for meaning.

I mentioned in the previous post my awareness of how many of my friends of a similar age share the same “wonderings”—whether we agree or not—regarding these Ultimate Questions about life, about death and what does or does not lie “beyond.” As a case in point, I share the following poetic lines, written by one of the “oldest” friends I identified in the previous post as “T,” and Jim, but better and fully known by many as Jim Thomas:

And from where did I come?

Was it from nothingness I cannot remember

Or an empty void?

Or from a world of wonder that I cannot comprehend?

And when this quest is over,

Will I return to that void?

Those beautiful and profound lines, with their poetic expression of “ultimate questions,” illustrate the truth that the effort to understand, to paraphrase Brand Blanshard,  is not a passing whim or foible; it is central to the very nature and existence of humanity. We do it because we can’t help it, because the enterprise of understanding, ancient as humanity itself, is what has carried us from somewhere in the slime to the lofty but precarious perch where we now rest. It has made us what we are, and alone can make us what we might be. It has always been with me and was part of what drew me to philosophy, but this 84^th birthday, for some reason, has sharpened my continuing search for meaning in the “ultimate” sense.

So, I don’t pretend to know what, if anything, lies beyond this life, but it is, as my friend Jim Thomas so hauntingly expressed, one of the most tenacious of human wonderings and longings.  I know all the theological and philosophical arguments, but none of them is so persuasive as thinking about the several of my dear friends and members of my family who have passed from this life. In no sensible world can such fair spirits as these be exhausted by a mere three-or-four-score and however many years.  Of course, that opens the door to the issue of whether this is, indeed, a sensible world, and I’m guessing that question will hang around in my brain as long as I do.

That said, for some of us, “of a certain age,” being more conscious of our mortality can mean trying, just in case, to take some of the “end of our life” burdens off of loved ones—planning funerals, writing obituaries, checking wills, being more carefully in touch with family and close friends, etc. I must say that I have become more aware of such tasks and those are things I am doing.

Finally, no surprise, one of this birthday’s “gifts” has been the ever-haunting question about the existence—or not—of a Supreme Being, an Ultimate Reality, God-by-whatever-name, or, in John Claypool’s attractive phrase, The Great Mystery—that “Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans” as Rudolf Otto expressed it in The Idea of the Holy. Although I have written about this before, I must be clear, based on my epistemology, about “knowing” and “believing.”

• Knowing is something we have personally experienced, primarily through our five senses, reflected upon, and which our rational mind has processed, ordered, and confirmed. Such knowledge is not absolute, undeniable, unchanging truth, but it is what I can say that I “know.”
• Believing is a choice we make because we have come to accept it by inference from our experiences, by a rational argument from some assumption, an intuitive conclusion, or even a hope that it is true.

So I may choose to “believe” and, in my best moments, I am inclined to do so—but I cannot “know.” Then how do I even get there? Guy Sayles once remarked that he thinks that “believing” includes an “existential stab-in-the-dark (or at least in the twilight)” which is like ‘trusting’ or ‘faith-ing’ or ‘risking’.”

I agree, but perhaps here is one empirical/rational/intuitive place to start: either the universe had no beginning—even the “Big Bang” had to “bang” Something—or it was initiated by a Supreme Being that had no beginning. So I can “choose to believe” that the natural world is “dependent,” not utterly self-sufficient, and that the conclusions of science are the “ways of an Eternal Being” that we have partially charted.

It is fair to ask, as I have, “so what?” How do I experience or touch this mysterious Being and what difference does it make?  I have had numerous moments in my life when I have been “touched” and overwhelmed by experiences in the natural world itself—in its massiveness, its splendor, its awesomness—but also through art, music, and human relationships that could be described as “spiritual.”

But if believing in God matters, there must, for me, be a connection to human need, and If the “near side” of The Great Mystery is available, I believe that human lives and relationships at their best provide one supremely important place where we might touch it. I tend to come back to the life and teachings of Jesus as the measure of “the best.” Post-birthday conversation with one of my close friends at a weekly lunch confirmed that I am bonded to the model that Jesus provided by valuing above all human persons and human relationships. I lean toward the assertion that in his life and teachings, and in those whose lives try to model him, we have the opportunity to touch “the near side” of The Great Mystery.

In the province of my wishful heart, I lean toward resonating with these quotations from Leslie Weatherhead. Although I have posted them before, they are too relevant to these “turning 84 reflections” to ignore, and so I close with them:

• “If God is only a myth, a wishful thought, a projection of human fatherhood, a phantasy of infant thinking, then the atheists are right. But I have had moments which do not make sense unless God exists . . . . It may be only in the love of another human being, the gratitude of one we tried to help . . . the solemnity of the evening sky, the trust of a little child, great music if our mood is right, or great poetry or great art, the sound of a church bell far away, the silence in the lonely hills. . . .
• There are still many things I cannot understand and many things that frighten me. . . . I have had experiences that make me doubt, and even tempt me to cynicism so that I attempt, for days, to leave God out of my life. . . . And then, warmed of heart by some contact with love, by some word of another, . . . or even by the glory of a summer morning, or the quiet music of the sea at night, I come back, . . . . and once more I know that all is well” (The Christian Agnostic, pp. 362, 364).

Stay tuned and we’ll see what 85 brings. . . or 90 . . . maybe!