On Disturbing the Universe

You have no doubt heard about the mid life crisis. Perhaps you have even had one. I did at mid life. However, what’s more critical to me at this stage of my life is more appropriately called a late life crisis. And, lo and behold, I’m having one of those right now!

Am I in the right place? Do I need to retire nearer to my son and grandchildren? How do I live a fulfilled life while facing so many health challenges? Why did I move away from my best friend? How do I give back as I have always done now that my ministry career is over? Is it over? Is there more I could be doing? Should I write more, cook more, paint more, garden more? What in the world do I do with myself?

I recently read a book by Sue Monk Kidd,  When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions. I was stopped in my tracks by her words:

For some months I had been lost in a baffling crisis of spirit. Back in the autumn I had awakened to a growing darkness and cacophony, as if something in my depths were crying out. A whole chorus of voices. Orphaned voices. They seemed to speak for all the unlived parts of me . . . I know now that they were the clamor of a new self struggling to be born. I was standing on the shifting ground of midlife, having come upon that time in life when one is summoned to an inner transformation, to a crossing over from one identity to another. When change-winds swirl through our lives . . . they often call us to undertake a new passage of the spiritual journey.

I am there. Not in midlife, but in late life, and it is for me an existential crisis of spirit, definitely the time of “a new self struggling to be born.” To be sure, there are unlived parts of me, and I want to understand what exactly they are and how I can coax them to life. The ground beneath me is shifting, calling out to me to cross over from one identity to another. An inner transformation is most definitely in order for me, but how do I begin? Where do I begin? These are the questions of late life. And the symptoms? Dragging out old photos, very old photos. Looking up old friends. Examining your grandmother’s vintage jewelry. Scanning school yearbooks. All in a useless attempt at making the present as meaningful as you remember the past to be.

I sometimes agonize over my current life, wishing to dream just one more dream and to make it a reality. I worry about the future and wonder what the years ahead will bring. I want to still be relevant. I want to keep trying to change the world just as I used to. I want to stir things up and make waves in the quest for justice, just as I did in the past. I feel as if I have only two choices: to languish in the present or to find a way to be the me I used to be. And yet, something tells me that there is a third choice that involves some sort of transformation and the renewal of life, not as it used to be, but as it can be now, in the present season.

It is a quiet agony that I am experiencing. It happened to me when I came upon an unsuspecting darkness buried in late life and met the same overwhelming question that Sue Monk Kidd met: “Do I dare disturb the universe?”

My family could be scandalized if I found new life. They might wonder if I had taken too much of a medication. They might worry that I will do something inappropriate. They might know that I simply do not have the kind of energy required for dreaming big, new, important dreams. And they would be mostly right.

And yet I refuse to measure out my life with coffee spoons. It’s way too safe for me. It’s not who I am, and I am completely convinced that there are unlived parts of me looking for a way to come to life. I have no idea what that would look like. I have no idea how I will manage to pull it off. But I need to disturb the universe. And the universe needs some disturbing!

May God guide me on the way, pour blessings on my dreams, and show me just how I might disturb the universe.