Today (December 14) is my 60th birthday. As many say on reaching a certain age, “It doesn’t seem possible.” Another one is, “Where have the years gone?”
I knew a wise old fellow who at the time was 81. He explained why time seems to accelerate the older we get. He said at 81, a year is only one eighty-first of one’s life. A year isn’t a very large chunk. However, at 20, it is one twentieth of life. Imagine a year at age 5!
So now, I’m at the next of the zeros (or zeroes, if you wish). One might think of these as the “big” birthdays. I am one of those. We can no longer say, “I am in my fifties.” Or, “I am in my twenties.” We know it’s just a number, but it still seems to be a time of reflection.
Truth be told, I don’t feel a day over 59!
Lately, I’ve been thinking about where I was on each of the zeros. That is, where geographically and where emotionally and spiritually.
I will start with 10 years old. I don’t think of this as especially significant as the others, since I had little choice regarding where I was. I can say I was in fifth grade in Virginia Beach. I’ll just leave it at that, since I want to move on to places where I had some say-so.
At 20, I was a junior at Middle Tennessee State University. I thoroughly enjoyed college. It felt like a whole new world opened before me. I was stifled and bored in grade school. There was very little that interested or challenged me. But after high school, I was set free.
I turned 20 in December 1984. 1984 was a pivotal time in my life. That was when I really delved into spirituality. Something about the Bible—earlier in my life, it seemed flat. But now, it had become filled with depth and light. I ventured into people like Thomas Merton and mystics of various traditions, like Zen, Buddhism, and the Sufis (mystical Islam).
And speaking of “delved,” I also began in a new found way, my exploration of marijuana. I never used it simply in a partying sort of way. It actually was part of my spiritual journey. I found how books could carry a deeper meaning. My appreciation of music was revolutionized. And I am convinced the Holy Spirit guided me—until the Spirit didn’t. Eventually, I felt a need and desire to move on.
Through all the twists and turns, the written word became illuminated by the living Word.
[My favorite of the wedding photos. It seems I’m waiting for Banu to step into the light.]
I turned 30 in, yes, December 1994. By this time, I was at Eastern Baptist Seminary (later renamed Palmer Seminary). I was in Philadelphia. This was three months after getting married to Banu. Clearly, 1994 was another pivotal moment in my life. (Even more so than 1984!)
Like college, seminary was entering a new world. Except this time, I was immersed in the faith. I had gone to an Assemblies of God college in Lakeland, Florida, but I found myself wanting an even more profound submersion.
But, Banu. I had never imagined getting married. If I ever toyed with the thought, I figured it would be a woman from Latin America or Japan. It turned out to be someone Turkish—so I was splitting the difference!
There’s the old cliché about the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Banu is a supremely excellent cook, so I guess in my case the bromide had some truth.
But it was love. I had never experienced love as intensely as I received from her. (Even more than from dear old mom!) Banu loved me into loving her.
Eleven months after my 30th birthday, another major pivotal event occurred. In November 1995 after an absence seizure, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which turned out to be malignant. So there followed surgery, radiation therapy, and seven rounds of chemotherapy. I came to call 14 November 1995, the date of my surgery, as BC and AD. “Before cancer” and “after diagnosis.” (I thought it was funny, if no one else did.)
I turned 40 in December 2004, if the month wasn’t already clear by now. Banu and I had served as pastors in a church in Stapleton, Nebraska at the end of the 20th century. Now we were in Jamestown, New York, having arrived in the year 2000. 2000 carried a sense of apocalyptic feel to those of a certain age.
I enjoyed being a New Yorker! I especially loved, and still love, the weather. I loved the winters. Jamestown gets plenty of lake effect snow—o joy! On a side note, the nine consecutive years we lived in the house in Jamestown remain the longest I’ve ever lived in a single dwelling.
[Our dog Duncan, just enjoying another snowy day.]
I have told Banu I began learning to be a pastor in Nebraska. Jamestown was where I began putting it into practice. I want to stress “began.”
Part of being pastor is that one picks up new interests along the way. For me, one of those was becoming a fan of hockey. One of our parishioners began taking me to see the Buffalo Sabres. For most of the early 2000s, they were a good team. (They’ve had a playoff drought since then!)
Moving on, age 50 (December 2014) saw Banu and me in Corning, New York. By this time, we had moved to the Finger Lakes, having been pastors near Keuka Lake in Pulteney and Hammondsport. In 2011, we went to Corning, which was our first gig as interim pastors. I liked Corning, but the church was, well, let’s say beset with various problems. The stress especially took its toll on Banu. Her physical well-being suffered.
A month after my birthday, we left and took what turned out to be a sabbatical, of sorts. We spent the next year in Tennessee with my mother, who had a number of health issues. After a year we returned to New York, serving as pastors for two congregations. We retired as parish pastors at the end of 2023. The plan was to pursue our ministry in Tennessee and Florida, but long story short, it didn’t work out.
We returned to New York in September. This is where we have always felt at home.
So, 60 years old. It feels like a beginning. This entire past year has felt like a beginning. I won’t deny the sense of loss, of ambiguity, of maybe even failure. Perhaps the saying is true: the only way out is by going through. We are no longer pastors, at least not in the way we have defined it before.
It has taken a while for me to embrace the leap of faith placed before me. How does that sound? A leap that I have gradually approached!
Still, despite whatever negative thoughts, impulses, spirits that would imprison, I join with my sisters and brothers in celebrating that “we are more than victorious through him who loved us” (Rom 8:37). We are more than conquerors. The prison doors fall open.
[Hope and joy, courtesy of NightCafe]
And there is joy. And there is humor. The devil fears joy. The devil hates humor.
Brian Doyle speaks of humor in The Thorny Grace of It.
“Humor will destroy the brooding castles of the murderers and chase their armies wailing into the darkness. What you do now, today, in these next few minutes, matters more than I can tell you. It advances the universe two inches. If we are our best selves, there will come a world where children do not weep and war is a memory and violence is a joke no one tells, having forgotten the words.”
Through all the zeros of life, let us take joy in the indescribable gift we have been given.
Happy Birthday (belated now) and thank you for this journey through your experiences and memories. My husband and I enjoy sitting down on our birthdays and noting the memorable things of the year. It also helps in charting the course forward. Bless you and your writing. At some point would love to read more about your recent moves and your return to New York.