Our Winter Solstice meeting at Tom's last night.  Local food and meats from the air, water, and land cooked by fire.  Elemental, my dear Woolly.

As is our way, we finished off a fine meal and several messages from the TCOs, (the chosen ones) with a lengthy discussion of what to do at our retreat.  We might have gotten away earlier, but absent Woolly Charlie Haislet weighed in with an idea for the retreat, The Existence of God.  Response to that prompted a conversation that went on until 11:00 PM, late by Woolly meeting standards, but about right for a near Solstice event.

As the conversation wound its way through looking at where we've been, favorite books, and fatherhood as other possibilities, it began to pick up juice when we batted around the idea of elderhood. What does it mean to be an elder?  How do we live into that role, or, become an elder?  What about retirement, too.  We talked a bit about an old chestnut, Do we have a responsibility to other men?  To the broader culture?  It seemed to take on added meaning in this context.

I threw in Erickson's seventh stage and agreed to send out some information on his developmental theory.  See below.  I take developmental theory heuristically rather than proscriptively, so if the shoe doesn't fit, don't bother to put it on.  Still, for me, the 7th and 8th stages both seem relevant to this question.  Developmental stage theory posits the necessity of passing through each stage before proceeding on to the next.  This has always seemed too neat to me. Also, I don't know about the cross-cultural validity of these stages, but, Erickson is a white, American, educated male so his ethnocentrism is our ethnocentrism.  The first entry here gives Erickson's entire theory in summary with the basic challenge on the left, the ages involved, the primary learning, and the possible pathology.

The rest of the entries let you come at it from slightly different perspectives.

The source for each of these is the hyperlink.

A.  Erik Erikson's theory of human development posits 8 stages of life. This paper gives special attention to the adult stage of generativity vs. stagnation. A review of recent research provides new concepts that can be added to Erikson's chart of development in the form of 7 psychosocial conflicts that give breadth to the central crisis of generativity vs. stagnation. They are inclusivity vs. exclusivity, pride vs. embarrassment, responsibility vs. ambivalence, career productivity vs. inadequacy, parenthood vs. self-absorption, being needed vs. alienation, and honesty vs. denial. Each conflict is connected to one of Erikson's other stages of development. Given this framework, case studies of leaders could provide further knowledge about generativity as the intersection of society and the human life cycle.

B.  One way to understand the changes my grandfather went through is by looking at the psycho-social crisis of generativity vs. stagnation. Between the ages of 35 to 60, people will find themselves "responsible for maintaining the world." (Neuman and Neuman, 1991, p. 554) Their world has settled into a permanent career, life partner, family etc. They are expected to give of themselves to maintain this and the larger world. This is a new and often times daunting task. Like all psycho-social crises, flexibility and adaptation are essential in successful resolution. When this happens, the person is seen as generative or giving. Stagnation occurs when they are overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the world and lack the flexibility to adapt. Generativity 

Generativity is an adult’s concern for and commitment to promoting the well-being of youth and future generations through involvement in parenting, teaching, mentoring, and other creative contributions that aim to leave a positive legacy of the self for the future. In Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, "generativity versus stagnation" marks the seventh of eight stages, the stage typically associated with midlife. Generativity is a complex psychosocial construct that can be expressed through social demand, inner desires, conscious concerns, beliefs, commitments, behaviors, and the overall way in which an adult makes narrative sense of his or her life. Theory and research on generativity are described in detail in a book edited by Dan McAdams and Ed de St. Aubin, Generativity and Adult Development: How and Why We Care for the Next Generation (APA Press, 1998).

C.  Researchers at the Foley Center have designed a number of measures for assessing individual differences in generativity among adults. Included among these are thematic coding schemes for assessing generative imagery in descriptions of life goals and accounts of past experiences and self-report questionnaires measuring generative concerns and behaviors. Initially funded by grants from the Spencer Foundation to Dan McAdams and Phillip Bowman (University of Illinois, Chicago), studies have examined the relations between generativity and (1) subjective mental health, (2) religious and political involvements, and (3) patterns of parenting among both Euro-American and African-American adults. Researchers have been especially interested in exploring the life stories of both Black and White American adults who score especially high on generativity measures. The findings of these studies converge on a prototypical life narrative form to which the life stories of highly generative adults often conform. Termed a commitment story, this narrative brings together six themes: (1) a sense of being advantaged in early life, (2) witnessing the suffering of others, (3) moral steadfastness and continuity, (4) the power of redemption to reinforce progress in life, (5) conflicts between agency (power) and communion (love), and (6) articulating prosocial goals for the future.

The Redemptive Self 

A central idea in the commitment stories constructed by highly generative adults is redemption. In a redemptive sequence, an affectively negative or bad life-narrative scene is followed by an affectively positive or good outcome. The good ultimately redeems or salvages the bad that precedes it. Redemption is a central idea in all of the world’s major religions, and it has assumed especially interesting and characteristic forms and qualities in American cultural history. Many American adults today see their lives in redemptive terms, or seek to narrate their lives in ways to suggest that some form of redemption will ultimately prevail.

Researchers at the Foley Center have examined the prevalence and correlates of redemption sequences in people’s life narrative accounts, and they have compared those findings to what they have learned about the opposite narrative form – that is, contamination sequences, wherein extremely good life narrative scenes suddenly, and sometimes dramatically, turn bad. Whereas redemption sequences in life narrative have been associated with generativity among adults and with self-report psychological well-being among both adults and students, contamination sequences have been linked to reports of depression, low self-esteem, and a sense that one’s life is incoherent. Dan McAdams' new book, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (Oxford University Press, 2006), describes psychological research on redemptive life narratives and explores the meaning of redemption in American history and culture. The theme of redemption is also a central idea in the criminology research conducted by former Foley associate Shadd Maruna, and described in his recent book, Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild their Lives (APA Press, 2001).

"To every thing there is a season, and time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace." -Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

The Winter Solstice is close.  The sun set at 4:32 today and, though there is still a flare of cold northern light in the west, we will soon be in the dark.  

The Woolly meeting at Tom Crane's is tonight.  After some further thought, here's what I put in answer to his assignment.  He asked, "Consider yourself to be the Chosen One.  Write on a Christmas Card why you have come to this place and this time.  What is your message?"

Not having any Christmas cards since I haven't sent one in twenty years I put my response on a card with a Chinese painting and a quote from the Dao De Qing.

I have come:

to kneel before a Lady Fern,

to greet my neighbor the 'possum with joy

to wander beneath the Milky Way while yearning to run across it to Paradise

to wrap myself in the Winter Solstice night

and to dance in the Beltane sun

to be, and, then, not to be

The meeting at Crane's always presents a problem for me.  I get lost in the western suburbs.  Something about that lake and all those windy roads.  He lives in Shorewood, near Carson Bay.  It would be simpler but he always takes the December meeting, which, since it always falls on the 3rd Monday, also falls near the Winter Solstice.  And, since we meet at 6:00 PM it means it is always dark by the time I get to Minnetonka Blvd.  I'm a landmark type navigator coupled with a bit of the male vector style.  This works much better when I can see, but after dark both my spider sense and my landmark memory get dulled.  Twice I have wandered long past 6PM into the labyrinth.  Since this is a very upscale neighborhood there is, of course, no one to ask for directions.  Kate and I are also the only two people in Minnesota without cell phones--by choice--but I admit in this situation they could prove useful.  Anyhow it's an adventure.

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." - Confucius

Paul's 60th today.  Got up late and arrived for the 400 tusk salute.  

Mary Broderick has set a retirement date.  She's thinking it through.

Paul's party had so many people.  Folks from St. Mark's, the Woollys, and, I imagine, the neighborhood.  He gathers people to him with Texas charm and genuine caring.

Tom's assignment for the December Woolly meeting is:  Consider yourself to be the Chosen One.  Write on a Christmas Card why you have come to this place and this time.  What is your message?

Here's my first pass:    In a polluted time and in a rich and powerful place I have come to give voice and shape to an American Shinto .  The kami of North America need our attentive care and our reverence.

Warren introduced the topic of legacy at his meeting in September.  The pirate theme table cloth was still on the table from his 62nd birthday party.  We discussed the pros and cons of legacy, whether it mattered.  If it did, what we would express as our legacy.  Warren had material about the Ethical Will.  The topic felt important because it touched this last third of life that most have entered, yet we were unable to reach any consensus.  Perhaps that was inevitable.  

This last Monday Paul offered the topic of Elderhood, how do we enter it?  Charlie Haislet read some poems suggesting accountability, responsibility, and agency as key elements.  Frank said he decided long ago to live as a child since maturity looked like a real burden.  Odie said he thought Frank demonstrated qualities of the elder. 

I found myself outside the consensus, Tom, too, I think.  Most of the Woollies felt becoming an elder was something  you could do, or that you became because of something you wanted to happen.  Bill said it a bit differently in that he indicated living authentically as the criterion for becoming elder.  My feeling is that becoming an elder is something bestowed upon you by a family, a community, a tribe.  Not all old people become elders, Warren took some exception to this assertion, and if they don't then it makes sense to examine the process by which one person has the designation and others do not.  Sort of like prophets in the OT.

Paul felt that being an elder meant you could your truth without apology.  I hope  you feel that way all the time, at any age.  As he spoke his truth at a retreat over the weekend, a person suggested we write a book.  It's a good idea and I wish I felt called to do it.  Still, my pilgrimage manuscript will contribute. Mark suggested we all write a chapter.  This idea will take a while be borne I imagine.

Our second meeting in Charlie's place in the Warehouse district.  Stefan, 2 Charlies, Bill, Paul, Frank, Scott, and Warren came.  Charlie served a meal with ingredients from within 30 miles of the Twin Cities.  This is, apparently, the same radius Brenda of Cafe Brenda uses for her farmer's market near the new Guthrie.  The reading selection was Omnivore's Dilemma.  I haven't got it yet from Amazon.  Your book is in the mail.

We missed Tom Crane, Mark Odegard, and Jimmy Johnson variously located in Wisconsin, Honolulu, and Hecla, South Dakota.  

The conversation focused us on the imponderable questions of "modern" agriculture, a discussion reminiscent of many smoke filled evenings in the sixties.  Then, the topic was the back to the land movement.

The view from Charlie's rooftop patio, as the sun fell, had all the glitter and gleam of an urban romance.  The new library's wing jutted luminous over the books.  The basilica had lights in its new copper spire.  Caesar Pelli's Norwest Bank Building, lit and beautiful on its own, bounced back toward us from the glass curtain wall of the IDS.  The weather, cool and dry, the sky clear and filled with stars.  Just the place for a conversation about corporate farming, the just plain weirdness involved in farm subsidies.

Stories were told:  Stefan's dad's earlier experiment with chicken waste combined with alfalfa in silage, then feed to beef cattle.  The beef tasted like chicken.  Bill Schmidt's passionate defense of an older, more soil and organism friendly agriculture.     

Every one came last night except Frank:  fractured hip, Warren:  phoning Lebanon and Israel (see this AM's paper), and Jimmy:  herding cattle to the shade somewhere outside Hecla, South Dakota. A long social hour, through almost 8 o'clock,  consumed two bags of chips, a bowl and a half of just picked sugar snap peas, 2 pounds of potato salad, 7 cheeseburgers, 1 without, 5 Italian sausages, and maybe 4 unfortunately scarred skin on weenies.  

Later Charlie Haislet read Wendell Berry's poem about the grace of wild things, as he read the gold finch sang.  Hemerocallis and liguria and a few firecracker lilium bobbed and swayed in a gentle breeze.  Incoming winds had lowered the dewpoint, humidity, and temperature to just right.  We discussed Thomas Berry's book, the Great Work, had some disagreements, but, as Tom pointed out, creative tension is the engine that drives the universe.  So might it be with us, too.

A brief presentation on the Anoka Sand Plain, its formation, and current reality started us off.  I offered a defense of the local, the where  you are.  Paul, who helped so much with the gardens, asked why I thought it was important.  Retold the Iroquois medicine man story, and the distanced from nature notion, then pointed to the grace of wild things in W. Berry's poem, but, agreed most with Paul later on when he said, "It's where you are."  

Enjoyed having everyone over.  Thanks to good training from Kate I had the place cleaned up pretty much before I went to bed.  Surprised at getting up today at 10:00AM!  It takes a lot out  of this little introvert to get ready, execute, wrap up.  Still, it was worth it.  I'll work out later today and chill until then. 

Ode's send off.  A canoe filled with oak leaves, bulrushes, an empty turtle shell.  Ode with a red blindfold.  We pushed him into the lake where he drifted for a time, hands held high over his head.  Later, we gifted him, and he us, as we have done all along, but this time with focus on his departure.  Sad, sweet.

Also, on the drive up, I realized a curious (unproductive) psychodynamic.  Over time I develop a mild paranoia toward person's in authority.  I want them to like me, but I distrust them when they finally accept me.  My dad, whom I wanted to trust, to love, betrayed my confidence and trust by ejecting me from home.  My mom died young.  So, the closer an authority figure gets to me, the more I become worried about their impending betrayal or abandonment.  Thus, I spend a lot of time scanning my enviornment for cues as to how certain people feel about me.  If I get even mild hints of frustration or annoyance, I begin to develop a sense they no longer like me, want to have anything to with me, will sooner or later reject me.  I'm glad I have this in focus right now.  It may help.

Out to Mark's by 2:00PM.  They've had a crazy day, selling thousands of dollars worth of stuff.   Mark is high, "Ecstatic, up, high.  Ever since I got up this morning."  I imagine some of it is the lifting of the daily grind, at least in the old mundane sense; leaning back now into the arms of the future, buoyed by Elizabeth and some serious cash reserves.  When I left, I told him I was sad, and happy.  "Me, too," he said, and walked back into the house that is no longer his house.

Mark Odegard's moving sale happens today.  He and Elizabeth have sold the house, invested the money, and are ready to take off  Hawai'i, then the American West, and, perhaps, in January, China.  I wanted a poster, but also felt the need to meet with the docent class at 10:30, so I wrote Ode a note:

Mark,

I want to buy one of your Marine posters.

I’m not sure I’ll be there much before 1PM , since I have a meeting at 10:30 in Minneapolis .  If it looks like you’re going to sell out before 1, could you hold one back for me? 

This is my way of having a concrete memory of you. (even though I know you’ll be back.)

CBE
A bunch of locals are coming over at 9, but
let me tell you what I am going to do. . . .
ODE

"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear." - Bertrand Russell

A fair summary of our conversation.  More later.

"If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; if we begin with doubts, and are patient, we shall end in certainties." - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180AD) Roman Emperor

I stand with Marcus Aurelius.  He is of that fine tradition of skeptics who insist on subjecting their beliefs and the beliefs of others to radical doubt, not to dismantle or diminish either, but to test the truth value of both.  Having an open mind does not mean creating a sieve.   This perspective does not require the scientific method, though the scientific method requires it.  Here's the way I frame it.  

I take my current beliefs to be the case.  For now.  For now means at any time someone could challenge the logical coherence of my beliefs. (please note faith is another matter) or the facts upon which I base them.  In fact, I try to subject my own beliefs to questions of coherence and congruence with reality as I perceive it.  I stand ready to readjust my beliefs or outright reject them if facts or logical coherence come into question.

Simply because an idea is attractive to me does not mean I will choose to believe it.  When I evaluate new thoughts, my first response is critical and hesitant.  Though I will jettison even the most dearly held notions, until they prove inadequate, I won't.  Thus, new ideas have to demonstrate clear superiority to me.

Let me give you an example.  I took vows of ordination in 1976.  In them I agreed to promote the "peace, unity, and purity of the church" and to serve the church with "intelligence, creativity, and love."  I meant them.  These vows had their binding roots in a certain understanding of the nature of God and, secondarily, a certain understanding of the nature of Jesus as the Christ.  When, in 1981, I adopted Joseph, I began to test those understandings against a lived reality.  I loved Joseph, since I adopted him sight unseen, he could as easily have grown up in Bengal.  Had he grown up in Bengal he would have been Hindu.  As a Hindu, he would have been outside the circle of God's love, and outside the pale of salvation offered through God's son, Jesus.  Well.  This no longer made sense to me.  Joseph, the boy I loved, would have been the same person as a Hindu or as an American, if I could easily imagine myself loving him in either circumstance, something was wrong with the theological doctrines to which I had sworn fealty.

This fact and this problem of logical coherence gradually dissolved the bonds of my ordination vows and I had to pull away.  

Tonight at the Black Forest:  Tom, Warren, Bill, Frank.  Tom and Warren left early.  Bill and Frank and I stayed for awhile discussing Chardin, the upcoming Ireland trip of Frances (Proinnsias), the raising of children, and the magical act of transubstantiation we all witnessed.  Before Tom and Warren left we marveled at the Southwest:  Suncity, the cadillac desert, the unchanging seasons.  Had an interesting conversation about whether Suncity is a community or not.  Warren said, yes, people he's talked to believe a new community forms out of the people who move there.  I said, no.  It doesn't have the multi-generational juice required of authentic human community.  Later, Bill and Frank and I decided that a group of people who wait to die with others waiting to die consists of something, but not a community, because community requires the next to each other realities of birth and death, childhood and old age, maturity and adolescence.  It is only in this latter community that the ongoingness of our species affects the communities total life.  Or something like that.

Frank looked tired last night.  Hope it's just pre-trip rushing to get things done.

Stefan sent out this poem as relevant to our meeting last night.  It's one of David Whyte's.

Frank's topic tonight, mysticism.  two good stories.  Ode.  The Fijian elder, protocol person for the Fijian museum, who, when asked by Ode to explain what was happening between two villages who blamed recent deaths on each other's black shamanic magic, said, "You cannot understand.  You are a white man, not Fijian.  You have the gift of critical thinking; we have our ways.  We know these matters, magical matters, because they are our way.  You cannot understand them."

Lloyd, a friend of Frank's:  "When I was young, about six, a strong medicine man died.  The strongest one I ever knew.  I lived in the house where he used to live.  As they put him in the ground, they had a scaffolding up, you know the old ways.  It was at the peak of a hill.  I saw faraway, about 2 or 3 miles, a black swarm.  It looked like bees.  But the swarm kept coming.  Birds.  Black birds going in and out, a vortex, like a tornado.  Finally, they came to the medicine man's grave and for five minutes they swirled and turned, a vortex over his grave.  Then, they flew straight up, so high you could no longer see them.  I talked to my mother later and she said, 'Oh, yes.  They came to take his soul to heaven.' Ever after that I've believed. (in the spirit world, powers beyond our knowledge).

Margaret McNally had the mass of Christian burial at Gill mortuary today, St. Patrick's Day.  A good day for an Irish lass to enter the gates of heaven and see the beatific vision.  Tom, Frank, Stefan and Lonnie, Bill and Regina, Paul, Scott and Yin, Warren, and I attended.  Spoke with Warren about the era we are in, "More funerals than weddings and it only gets more so."

I find it increasingly odd to sit through things like the Catholic mass.  It seems I've pulled back to a place where the evocations and prayers all seem an elaborate, yet still homespun garment for human suffering.  The notion of Margaret entering heaven and having a beatific vision, of her being dead to us on this earthly plane but alive before God, the whole notion of the sacrifice of the Eucharist.  The soft, doughy priest in white with a gold chasuble, a bit effeminate with words for his homily said often with different names inserted.  "We feel sad, tears come, we might feel angry, fearful. (he did not say, happy.)  She has ended her suffering and gone on to a better place."  

The confidence, literally, the faith with us in the congregation, that the words he spoke fell on the ears of a community of shared belief when, really, it was anything but.  Charlie and Frank have angry push-away stances from Catholic childhoods.  The bulk of us Woolly's rotate somewhere between pagan and mystical; our metaphysics no longer connects at all with the transubstantiation of the mass or the waiting of the body for the second coming or the up draft of souls headed to St. Peter's great book and the lustrous gates. 

Yet, as I found with Luis Morales Man of Sorrows Wednesday my heart was, as Wesley would put it, strangely moved.  The image of this man, abandoned by friends, betrayed by a close friend, facing crucifixion and its painful, long death, alone and contemplating his fate touched me.  His existential condition at that moment speaks to me more than the whole crucifixion/resurrection business.  Here he sits, the imminence of death symbolized by the cross which intrudes into the painting from his right, he sits, has hand elegant against his chin, his eyes turned down, a bit of blood leaking onto his forehead from the crown of thorns.  Yes.  He is, us.

How often during our life do we sit down on the couch, in a favorite chair, perhaps a church pew or meditation center, and know our end.  What it will mean.  The sorrow it will bring to those who love us?  How often during those times do we feel abandoned by friends, alone on the small raft of our single life, afloat in the vast universe of eternal time.  In that his passion reflects the real experience of our lives Christianity continues to have force for our lives of faith, regardless of our metaphysic.

As sometimes happens.  Reverberation from the retreat...not positive stuff either.  Though I heard things that reaffirmed my sense of who I am--comfortable in my skin, a teacher, a student.  Yes, indeed.  But Mark threw a clinker into the mix.  I create problems to solve, he said.  Later, he wrote challenges, but I talked with Kate about it and she thought he probably meant projects I take on like correcting all the driving mistakes in my proximity.  Ouch.  

So, I went from there and imagined my quick trigger reactions to Charlie Haislet, my being crabby about the food.  Sometimes just short tempered in general.  Yep.  That's me, too.

Still, the part that bothers me the most is that Ode sees my projects as problems I've merely created to solve.  I responded to his note saying I see myself, in a modest way, as a public intellectual.  I don't choose my interests randomly and I do choose things that seem important to me and that will have a more general importance to others:  Lake Superior, Liberalism, a Liberal Way, Islam, the Great Wheel, Art History to name a few. 

It's an old refrain in my life.  I recall Kristina Pearson, so long ago, "You can't possibly be interested in all those things."  The word all had a certain turn of the tongue.  

Then, there's Kate's recommendation, also long ago, to focus on one thing in my writing, like Celtic fantasy.  Probably a wise idea.  But, Tina, I really am interested in all those things.  The best way I can describe it is to say that I lead a valedictorian's life.  Valedictorians, according to a study I read, rarely set the world on fire though many get Ph.D's.  The very mindset that creates valedictorians, a wide ranging interest, almost precludes the pursuit of a problem or an area until new thoughts are wrung from them.

A part of me wishes I had that kind of laser focus, my area.  But, I don't.  Instead, I have several areas where I have modest amounts of knowledge:  biblical scholarship, running congregations, philosophy, anthropology, the way cities work, gardening, art history, lake superior, the Celts, ancient history...and more.  It's just the way I seem to hang together.  Ah, well...