"So how are you enjoying retirement?" "What do you do with yourself these days?""Got any plans?"
These are tricky questions. Not because they are meant to be but because of the assumptions that shape them. At first I resisted the denominator "retired", because I have no intention of retiring just yet. But that sounds like incipient denial, I'm not that old….yet! But it isn't that. It's to do with an underlying vocational pull towards those so varied areas of life and those diversities of gifts and the always to be looked for opportunities which together with inner motives and accumulated experience make up my life past, my life present and life into whatever future lies within the purposes of God.
Now that last phrase is the important one; "within the purposes of God". What I do with myself these days isn't the straightforward question those who ask it (with kindness and interest) think that it is! What I do with myself is an even more interesting phrase if I simply insert a space – What I do with my self. Over the years I've tried to resist the assumption that what we do defines who we are. So on Facebook I am a former College Principal, but I'm also a former and present Baptist minister; a husband, a father, a friend, a brother. I'm a writer, a scholar, a preacher, a gardener, a reader – I do tapestry, take photos, cook the most amazing lasagne, rice puddings and Moroccan chicken. All of these I do with my self, and as I do them, the self that I am changes and grows.
What I have found as I've thought about all this during a two month sabbatical is that what every one of us has done in all these layers and episodes of life, has been and goes on being the raw material out of which, day by day, we are being shaped and formed into who we are becoming. That present continuous "becoming", should warn us against a fixed, static definition of who we are; we are more than what we have done, and our identity is a dynamic, growing but changing continuity held together by our choices, decisions, circumstances seen and unforeseen, and that nexus of relationships with all those folk who move in and out of our lives.
Vocation is an important way of living our lives; it has for me a defining Christian urgency. I am called to be me, but a self committed to following Jesus faithfully, living under the rule of Christ. That's true whether I'm preaching or cooking, laying turf in my garden or taking a funeral, stitching and working a tapestry or accompanying people in their lives as they try to discern and live into the patterns and purposes of God. You don't retire from what is a chosen way of life, and whatever else Christian faith is, it is a Way, a way of life we have both chosen and to which we have been called.
So what am I doing with my self these days? Taking time to think, to let the last few years settle and begin to fit into a life lived self-consciously Godward, with more or less understanding of what that means. These words of C S Lewis have helped me to trust God's creative faithfulness, and to believe that it is the grace of God, often undetected at the time, that slowly or quickly, gently or fiercely, persistently and patiently, works away at the envisioned objet d'art that is each one of us :
"All that you are…every fold and crease of your individuality was devised from all eternity to fit God as a glove fits a hand. All that intimate particularity which you can hardly grasp yourself, much less communicate to your fellow creatures, is no mystery to Him. He made those ins and outs that he might fill them. Then he gave you a soul so curious a life because it is a key designed to unlock that door, of all the myriad doors in Him."
The photo is of one of our roses,another unique presence, called and created to be beautiful for a while……
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