Rupp Dear Heart, Come Home

The Path of Midlife Spirituality
1. Auflage 1996
ISBN: 978-0-8245-2712-9
Verlag: PublishDrive
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

Joyce Rupp shares her own midlife journey-its ups and downs-with such honesty and insight that you will surely identify with and benefit from the discoveries she has made along the way. Among them we can find wisdom in the wounds we've carried from birth onward, and these wounds can heal; past regrets must be let go lest they cling to us and drain our energy for life; the loving part of us can always out-wrestle the hating part; surprises of beauty and talent in us wait to be discovered and shared; some of what we thought to be unbreakable truth is now shattered pottery and unmendable; and our struggle to name God and to find a spirituality that enlivens and enriches our existence is less complex than we first thought.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rupp, Joyce

Leseproben

Introduction
But human beings need deepening places, too. And far too many never have any. Think about your deepening places, Meg. — MADELEINE L'ENGLE MIDLIFE IS MORE THAN A CRISIS. It is a summons to grow and a challenge to change. Midlife beckons one inward. It is a move to interiority, a passage to the deeper places where we discover our authenticity, where we realize both our limitations and our grandeur. It is here that we come home to our truest Self. We take our external experiences with us to the inside and look at our life. We evaluate our goals, hopes, dreams, beliefs, behaviors, experiences — all that has marked us and contributed to the person we have become — and we ask ourselves: “Is this the person I want to be in the future?” Midlife doesn't go by a precise chronological timepiece that automatically tells us when it is time to evaluate our lives, although most adults experience this stage of growth roughly between the ages of thirty-five and sixty. I have learned that each persons midlife journey is unique. While some midlife characteristics and themes may fit each person, there are always exceptions and unique experiences. I recall a man who told me that he wasn't “a wealthy executive who'd retired early and left a wife in order to marry someone younger.” He felt that this was the typical portrait of men in midlife and that most authors focused on the external changes of life instead of the internal ones. He was a struggling middle-class male in his early fifties who had lost his job and didn't know what he wanted in life. At the same time, he was much more focused on the inner life than on the external pursuits of a new woman or a new hobby, as many midlife men are described. Similarly, while some midlife women may be experiencing the “empty nest” syndrome, others may be like a woman in her early forties who had two young children. She was enjoying this dimension of motherhood in her life and was just beginning to discover the thrill of the spiritual path unfolding for her. She felt that her children were helping her in this discovery and that she had experienced a lot of midlife issues in her thirties. C. G. Jung recognized that what works for the adult person in the first half of life will not work for the second half. Each person s journey will unfold in a way that calls her or him to growth. Many books on midlife have been written since Jung first proposed that this period of adult growth is every bit as painful and unpredictable as the stage of adolescence. This stage is variously referred to by authors as “midlife,” “middle age,” “middle years,” or “the middle passage.” Many people automatically refer to midlife as a “crisis.” Webster's Dictionary defines “crisis” as “the turning point in the course of a disease when it becomes clear whether the patient will live or die.” Midlife is a turning point, a time when one can no longer go by the dreams and the life-approach of one's youth. To simply continue the way one has from youth onward can mean death for one's ability to grow. Midlife is an opportunity to turn toward greater life or wholeness. Webster's Dictionary also describes “crisis” as an intensely painful attack of a disease, a time of great danger or trouble. This traumatic, crucial time might also be a part of midlife, although not all adults experience it in this way. I, for one, have not had an extended time when I felt that I was in peril and in danger of completely falling apart. However, I have had times of ongoing intense struggle and spaces of life when I wondered if I would ever be happy again. I personally prefer to speak of this stage of adult development as a journey, a movement toward a new, unknown destination. Midlife is a time during which things are shifting, moving, taking a different form or shape. The midlife journey is a gradual unfolding, a time of choices and decision-making, where the person we are choosing to be is eventually revealed to us. This coming home to our true Self is not something we can hurry or force to happen quickly. In midlife, we look at who we've become. Insights, values, beliefs that we so eagerly sought and developed in our youth and carried around for years beg for our attention in dreams, irritations and frustrations, fantasies, and longings. Gradually, we sort out what we want to keep and what we need to leave behind. It is no easy task. All this “stuff” hangs onto us like barnacles. We feel undressed without these things. We think this is who we are, but we can no longer carry this clutter along with us. We must let go of guilt and shame, certain thoughts and behaviors, dreams that will never be lived in this lifetime, wounds that have created barriers to self-esteem or inner peace. Perhaps the toughest of all, we must come face to face with our mortality and acknowledge that this life as we have come to know it is passing away. Not everyone accepts the challenges of going deeper that the midlife journey demands. Janice Brewi and Anne Brennan, authors of numerous books on midlife, recognize that an adult can close himself or herself off to this experience: “One can deny that a volcano is erupting and just freeze in one's place and become a petrified, hardened fossil. One can die at forty and not get buried until ninety.”1 What Is spirituality?
The midlife journey affects all of who we are, including our spiritual path. There was a time in my twenties and early thirties when spirituality was a separate compartment of my life. I always viewed it as larger than religion but it was a sacred space that was separate from the rest of life. I felt that my work and relationships took me away from God (my personal prayer, meditation, sacred ritual) instead of drawing me into God. I had a strong God-me approach. Although I was deeply searching and longing for the Beloved, I set very specific limits on where and how I could find and commune with this God.2 It was not until my late thirties that I understood and accepted the Merton-based theory of spirituality that recognizes the life of the whole person as being in relationship with God. This relationship is not static but dynamic, always involving a constant movement of transformation. Spirituality touches and influences every other part of my life and every other part of my life touches and influences it. My spiritual life is always in process. I never come to the point where I am “finished” with it. Spirituality is not a matter of doing things right so that I can get to a place of perfection and not have to grow anymore. Rather, I am always moving into new realms of transformation. It is an exciting venture filled with mystery, one that can provide a source of nourishment and meaning. Spirituality has an ethical component to it. It influences who we are and how we are. Living authentically or ethically are vital aspects. Spirituality also has different connotations depending on our gender. Irene Claremont notes: [Women's spirituality] implies relationship in its very essence: relationship to God in those intangible fleeting moments when she is aware of a presence, whether it be in the sudden impact of a white cherry tree in blossom, or the rhythmical furrows of a ploughed field; whether it be in a moment of unforgettable union with another human being or alone in the stillness of her own silence. Wherever it may happen there is for her always relationship.3 Spirituality for men often implies more of an idea or a theory about how to live ones life. According to Patricia Hopkins and Sherry Ruth Anderson, men often place more emphasis on the ethical than on the relational aspect. These authors interviewed hundreds of women and discovered a key difference from men's spirituality in that women have not trusted their own experience. Women have looked to authority figures outside of themselves for this truth. Women are only now discovering the value of their intuition, the necessity for solitude (for which they have longed), and the need to trust what they experience as sacred in their lives, whether this be through relationships or nature or other meaningful sources.4 What About Images?
I believe that images can have a profound, positive effect on how one travels through this stage of adult growth. Images can help to name ones midlife experience and to stay more focused and centered while growing into the second half of ones life. Positive images can comfort and console, challenge and guide. They can be trusted companions during those seasons when the search for identity seems helplessly mired in the dregs of “blah-ness” and meaningless activity. Images are often associated with the emotional dimension of an event or an experience. When I have difficulty trying to name my emotional state, I often pause to allow an image to float into my consciousness. How quickly I connect my inner and outer worlds. Some of the images that have arisen during times of midlife travail are: An off-key melody, a journey with no maps, falling into a dark tunnel, standing at the garden and yelling “grow!,” an empty, waiting basket, a sharp knife slicing the air, getting my foot caught in a slamming door, a table full of unknown and untasted foods. (P.J. — Personal Journal)5 Images provide a rich resource for discovering the interior life. Mircea Eliade believed that if we are without images, we are cut off from our soul.6 “It is here, in the inner landscape, where we can catch a glimpse of the Sacred. Symbol, myths, and images are treasures of the psyche and are the very substance of the spiritual life.”7 Jean Dalby Clift,...