(An excerpt from my latest book, The Years of Ripening, part of the essay on “Identity”)
Ever since quite young I have searched my interior landscape for “the meaning of life.” The endless pieces and layers that consist of myself often intrigue me. I marvel at how they form the substance of each human being in our unique development. What constitutes a person and how do they get to be who they are? Such a big question, one that follows us into elderhood and pokes at us to get our attention.
We often meet mystery when we gather the many fragments that shape the nature of our existence, the beliefs and viewpoints that take hold as we mature and reside among these layers. These principles and values form the framework of our personhood. In late life, if we are willing to explore the wonderment of who we are and the beliefs we’ve gathered, we can gain a sense of what our life has meant and how to embrace it.
What life-principles have you counted on for your integrity? How much of that continues to be relevant as your future years shrink in number? Do some of the professed truths and secured attitudes require examination? What grounds your love and sustains your faith? How does this influence your living? When I peer into these questions for myself at my age, I notice how differently I view a good portion of what I once believed about divinity and structured religion. The God of my youth no longer looks upon me as unworthy and having to “shape up.” Now I relate to a Great Love moving through the universe, dwelling in ways I cannot explain but choose to accept with my whole heart. While I continue to be connected to my religious tradition, I no longer feel compelled and confined by its compulsory dictates if they do not reflect the teachings and spirit of Jesus.
When we think about our personal identity, we may discover that some of our questions do not have answers—and we slowly accept this unsolvable reality. Gerald May came to this conclusion after a long and painful period of depression and treatment for cancer. In The Dark Night of the Soul, May wrote: “It is a slow and sometimes painful process of becoming ‘as little children’ again, in which we make friends with mystery and finally fall in love again with it. And in that love we find an ever increasing freedom to be who we really are in an identity that is continually emerging and never defined. We are freed to join the dance of life in fullness without having a clue about what the steps are.”
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Jungian psychologist Jane R. Prétat suggests: “To accept ourselves and our lives as they are is a lesson we would all like to learn.” This is surely the result of what Job experienced as he questioned the meaning of his existence after a thundercloud of disasters rained down on him. The simple statement of 42:17 in the Book of Job, “And Job died, old and full of days,” tells us nothing of the layers of his journey unless we have read about those years in the book’s revealing chapters. They are filled with success and failure, consolation and desolation, struggle and acquiescence.
Job ended his life in peace but not before he examined his assumptions about life. Only then did he calmly surrender to mystery and give a humble bow.
Abundant peace,
Joyce Rupp
