GROWING UP IS A DISEASE [W, 5-6-26]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of A Failed Grown-Up—GROWING UP IS A DISEASE [W, 5-6-26]

 

My highly competent and distinguished colleague, Rev. Randy Robinson, told me, as he was getting to retire, that when he was a young pastor, he looked up to me as one of “the fathers of the church.” Oh, if he had only known.

Makes me think of a continuing ed conference I attended. The main speaker was a newly elected bishop. The president of the near-by seminary had gone to the airport to pick him up. They had been students together earlier at a different seminary. “Hello, Bishop,” said the president. “Hello, President,” said the bishop.

The seminary president said, “Then we laughed like hyenas and finally said, ‘Where are the grown-ups when you really need them!’”

When you get to my age, you know that there are only two kinds of people: Those who think they are grown up but aren’t. And those who know they are not but are still trying to become grownups…

…or maybe a third type: Those who have given up on ever growing up.

As the saying goes, “Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is not.”

When I was a nineteen-year-old, preaching at three different churches every Sunday, I thought I was quite grown up. After all, I had the backing of the church. Why would the District Superintendent subject those poor people to my pulpit ponderings if I were not grown up?

Growing up is a disease, and I had an early-onset version of it. I had to grow up young. I became a major financial support of my family in my teens. I dropped out of high school to work in a factory to get my family off of welfare. Older people in those days respected that sort of thing. They praised me, and talked to me like I was one of them, like a grown-up . I had no way of knowing then that most of them were not grown up, even though they looked and talked like they were.

There were hints. Old men who whistled at young girls. Old church ladies who laughed at fart jokes. Old preachers who told those jokes.

But I assumed those were anomalies. When I got old, I was sure that I would not do things like tell waitresses and store clerks that I qualified for the good-looks discount, because I did not do that sort of thing when I was young.

I was a grown-up for a long time.

I finally got over being grown-up. I think it was my cancer surgery and year of chemotherapy that did it. My first oncologist predicted that I would live no more than “a year or two.” That sort of sobers you up. I realized how much of my life I had wasted, being a grown up.

So, I’ve given up on growing up. It’s too much trouble, and not much fun. As Jesus said, “I’m here. Let’s party.” [John 10:10.]

John Robert McFarland

“Let us read and dance—two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.” Voltaire