“My wife likes to say there are two kinds of people: those chasing pleasure and those running from pain. Maybe she’s right. I don’t know. What I do know is this. Pleasure helps you forget. But pain, pain forces you to hope. You tell yourself this can’t last. Today could be different. Today something just might change.”
Spoken by Russell Crowe in the movie, “Tenderness.”
“There are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. We have to choose which one to follow.”
Spoken by Jessica Chastain in the movie “The Tree of Life”, soon to be in theaters
The problem with fifty-two is that it’s not forty, the dividing line when you realize for sure that you’re not a kid anymore. On the other hand, it’s not sixty-four, either, which thanks to Paul McCartney is time for reflection. Therefore fifty-two is the true middle age, mid-way between realization and reflection.
Algebrateacher
Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.
One of the difficult conversations I have had with my eldest daughter is over the potential for having a final answer, specifically a final answer to a religious question. She has asked me, “Don’t you want an answer?” or words to that effect, and I’ve said no, not really. In fact, whenever I get close to an answer about anything, I find great pleasure in all of the questions it spawns. This irritates her; she’s at that time of life where independence requires firm convictions and those convictions need firm defense. Patience with ambiguity is a bit much to expect from her.
I understand her frustration. She’s twenty and is already in the early stages of the I-know-everything mid-twenties. She’s a Religious Studies major at her university and her hungry curiosity is being fed by her classes and her experiences. Her deep involvement in the Jewish community (she’s led Friday night services for the last two years, she has two jobs as a Sunday School teacher and Jewish company representative and was further hired as a consultant on a marketing project, she’s a “founding mother” of her Jewish sorority, so on and so on) means she is definitely leading a religious life. Maybe she’ll be a Rabbi; maybe she’ll be a Cantor. It would be nice if some non-profit company or foundation hires her in some representative or marketing capacity when she’s graduated. Let her travel and see things and mature and make some money for a while. Frankly, I think they’d be fools if they didn’t, but then I’m her Dad.
I’ve decided to be more amused than insulted by what she’s told her mother, which is that she thinks it would be wrong to marry interfaith. Or maybe she just said doesn’t think she wants to. I wonder if she’s had difficulty explaining to others, maybe herself, that her Dad is a Christian who doesn’t go to church; in fact, her Dad is a member of her home Temple’s choir. There were no issues while she was growing up. She and her sister are both Bat Mitzvahs, both were confirmed, both were religious school teachers’ aides and we celebrated Passover and Hanukkah. We do have a Christmas tree each year (my wife always says it’s because of me but that’s just cover) but as I meet more and more Jews my age or younger, I find that lots of Jewish families have Christmas trees. Hey, they’re pretty.
Anyway, she’s wrestling with all the great questions and trying to make intellectual sense of the world’s religions, particularly her own, at an age where I had difficulty trying to decide what record to play next. That’s not to say I wasn’t deeply intellectually curious at twenty; I just wasn’t trying to decide anything. I was taking it all in. Therefore, I don’t know how or when I should give any advice to her; she’s doing things inside her head that I didn’t do until later. It’s pretty empty to say, “Don’t decide anything now. Wait until you’re older,” when the issues are so intense and intensely personal. I have thirty-plus years of intellectual and religious experience that she doesn’t have, but who is to say that she isn’t ahead of me right now?
Heck, I am wrestling with all the great questions and trying to make intellectual sense of the world’s religions and I’m 52. However, I’m comfortable with what I can’t defend and it’s not because of a lack of intellectual rigor. It’s because stopping and pulling it all together would take too much time, time that I don’t have right now. See me after the high-stakes California State Tests are finished in May or perhaps when the school year is winding down in June.
In the meantime, I’m just taking it in.