A Reason to Grow Old

This morning, thinking again about a lovely event I attended last week, I realized another perk of living a long life: you get to see your children retire. You might even get to sit and listen while people you don’t know talk about them and their accomplishments. You get to listen to them as they attempt to evaluate their own history.

My daughter Jan, who is my second child and not yet old enough to qualify for full Social Security, is calling an end to a forty-year career as a university chaplain. And when I talk with her I get the impression she is not looking back but is full of plans for what she wants to do now. More than one seminary has invited her to teach, but no thanks. She wants to rest. Travel. Write. Publish. (Her files are full of things she has written through the years: prayers, reflections, newspaper columns, course and lesson plans, devotionals, sermons, life stories.)

It makes me remember when I was at this same place in life. Leaving what seemed to be my life work, proud of what I had done but aware of what I failed to do, could not do. The price I had paid. And looking forward to what I might do still. Now, because I know that the years I have had since “retiring” have been full of work and growth and accomplishment, I can only envision that my children’s will be the same. So hope and dreams still dominate our perspective.

But first we pause to celebrate.

Elon University in Burlington, NC, honored Jan with a reception, held in a tent to make it unnecessary to bring a lot of people into a building. The wind blew something fierce, snapping the side of the tent with sounds as sharp as gunfire. Handsome young men and women served beautiful Middle Eastern food and drinks. People came early. People came late. Students. Faculty. Friends. They hugged her and told her what they liked, what they will remember about her. One person looked her in the eye and said, “You are remarkable, the way you always open doors, never close them.”

There was a short program with several planned speeches. Near the beginning the presider mentioned that Jan’s mother was present, and I got a surprisingly hearty burst of applause, just for being her mother.  Jan’s accomplishments were enumerated. In ten years she had turned Elon University into a national model for interfaith chaplaincy. She had contributed significantly to the improvement of relationships between groups of people in the city.  She had blessed the student body and staff with her vision, her beautiful prayers on every occasion, her composure in crisis. One speaker, recognizing that Elon’s collaborative way of working, requiring all parts of the university to pull in the same direction, requires endless meetings with inevitable debate and disagreement, said, “I have never heard her speak a word in anger or say something bad about another person.”

A parent cannot hear such things without feeling proud.

And, truly, our children’s accomplishments are a part of ours. Because I gave birth to Jan, because I gave her a particular life, taking her to live in the Middle East, where a Muslim child became her best friend for life, where she learned how to be different while the same, unprejudiced and loyal, how to see the basic things beneath the superficial, how to be brave and scared to death all at once. Though it was not a conscious intention and therefore no feather in my cap, I made her a citizen of the world. No, I think that is not right. I just gave her the opportunity. And she took it.

Ten years ago Elon University in North Carolina appeared to pursue her, and when she read their goals, saw that their intention was to train young people to be exactly that, citizens of the world, she realized, “This is what I was born to do.”

Elon wanted all students, whatever their faith or lack of it, to receive respect, community and spiritual nurture. Then, in 2011, there was Jan and another Christian chaplain. Now there is a staff of 18, and a multiplicity of student organizations: nine Christian, two Jewish, one Muslim, one mindfulness and two interfaith dialogue groups, an interfaith living-learning community and a Barefoot Dialogue program in which students learn to engage transparently, respectfully on difficult topics. Encouraging and celebrating this are eight annual religious and cultural festivals, and an annual interfaith student conference. No wonder the spiritual life building, finished under Jan’s supervision, has become one of the busiest structures on campus.

Some of this I took from an article in Interfaith America, published by Interfaith Youth Core. It also mentions that she has twice served as president of a national organization of chaplains and claims that she may be the longest-serving chaplain in the nation, doing it all at Yale, Hollins and Elon. Forty years in campus ministry is not common!

Our own growth and our children’s happens in a context and, for most of us, makes sense when seen as part of the trends and opportunities to which we have been exposed. This is one reason why our sons and daughters seem to stand on our shoulders. They can be what we are and more. They can even refuse to be what we are and become something better. I remember the Lebanese Druze grocer’s wife who marveled that, “Our children are smarter than we are.”

Of course. That’s what we have to boast about. That’s why we want to grow old.