The Still Point

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…


Today my grandson, Joseph, is thirteen years old. Eleven years ago there were only a few of us who thought he would have even a 2nd birthday.

Kathy Roberts says that the word for Joe is “centered.” She used to run a mental health circus and so knows well what “centered” is, because she saw so much of its opposite. I think maybe Joe got through his liver cancer because he was already centered, even at 15 months of age. If not, when he had gone through three surgeries and a year of chemotherapy, that left him 2 pounds lighter on his 2nd birthday than he was on his 1st, the cancer experience had centered him. He survived because he had found “the still point in the turning world.” [1]

As I took Joe and Brigid home from school Tuesday, she said she’d had an assignment to write on someone she admired, and she had chosen Joe. Brigid herself is highly admirable. As a 16 year old sophomore she is a straight A student, a 99 percentiler on the PSAT, on her high school’s Quiz Bowl team, the Lay Leader of our church, and a HS Ambassador and Marketing Intern for hercampus.com magazine. She’s also an older sister. Older sisters think that any little brother is annoying. [I have an older sister I still go out of my way to annoy.] For an older sister to admire a little brother, he must be truly admirable.

The emotional task of old age is what Erik Erikson calls Final Integrity v. Despair. If you can say, “I accept my life, just as it was, joys and sorrows alike,” that’s integrity. If you can’t, that’s despair.

We reach Final Integrity by working back through the other stages we all have lived, through memory and life review. We review the middle years of Generativity v. Stagnation, the young adult years of Intimacy v. Isolation, the teen years of Identity v. Identity Diffusion [no center], the tween years of Industry v. Inferiority, the childhood years of Initiative v. Guilt and Autonomy v. Shame and Doubt, and the infant times of Trust v. Mistrust.

So far, I’ve done Generativity/Stagnation successfully by saying, “What’s wrong with stagnation?” I’ve also done Intimacy/Isolation by opting for Isolation as a good thing, since there are no committee meetings in Isolation. Of course, UP here, it’s Iceolation.

Now I have to learn to accept my adolescence, just as it was, joys and sorrows alike, so I can go on toward Final Integrity. Now I’m ready for Identity/Diffusion. So is Joe. His task is to learn who he is as a young man. My task is to learn who I am as an old man.

I can’t identify myself any longer by what I do, because I no longer do anything. I can no longer be a human doing. I must learn who I am as a human being. Someone asked me recently how old I am. “75 going on 13,” I said. [2] Joe and I will work on identity as human beings together.

Joe became my hero when he was just fifteen months old. Now at thirteen years he will be my guide. I shall watch as he wades through the snows of adolescence, centered on that “still point in the turning world,” and I shall place my feet carefully in the steps in the snow that he has made to guide me.

JRMcF

1] You can read more about Joe’s cancer experience in the new edition of “Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them.” It’s also available in Japanese.

2] Today is also the birthday of Ed Tucker, the famous “Friar Tuck,” the church cartoonist. He’s also 75 going on 13. Happy Birthday, Ed.

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

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{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

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