This sermon was given at Stevens Chapel on August 10, 2003 by Rev. Dr. Judith Campbell.

To everything there is a season

This passage from the Hebrew Scripture is one of the most beloved of readings. It ranks with the 23rd Psalm in popularity for use in both weddings and memorial services. And the reason it does, is because like so much of great art and literature, the message is timeless.

Before I started writing this sermon I wrote the order of service and sent it off to Diane, and in doing so, I typo’d on the date, and wrote August 10, 3003. And did that ever bring me up short.

Think about it – 3003. None of us will be here, and likely nothing that we would even remotely recognize will be here. All of the stuff that we surround ourselves with that we think we can’t live without, or we will leave for our heirs to squabble over, will be less than dust. To be sure, if we haven’t blown ourselves up, and turned ourselves into space dust, some great literature and art and music may still be around. The great religions may or may not be anything we know or recognize. And short of writing a science fiction novel - which I have no intention or even remote ability to do – 3003, if it happens, will happen without us, any of us and anyone we know. That is sobering.

"To everything there is a season and a time and a purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die", and while what happens in between those two fixed points, is in some ways culturally and biologically predictable, there is a lot in the seasons of our lives that we alone are responsible for. To everything there is a season, and each season is the one we are in It’s all we get.

But like any growing thing, we have our seasons and our reasons; but it is up to us to decide if we have a purpose (under heaven or anywhere else).

Shakespeare’s eloquent and poignant soliloquy on the seven ages of man is so very powerful because it is true. Anyone who has raised a child can attest to the first three stages. Graphic though it may be, the baby, mewling and puking has no real choice; babies do whatever and whenever their little bodies tell them to do, with either end. Having a new baby gives parents new meaning to the words "total exhaustion." I don’t think any of us who have had children were prepared for those first few months of anxious and sleepless nights that come free courtesy of the new life we created. (I mean it was a good Idea at the time. Yes? To have a child that is.) But the reality of actually having a child instantly moves us into a season of maturity and responsibility the likes of which we have never known and will be with us from that first miraculous and outraged howl of life until the end of our own. And if we are responsible parents, and the greater majority of us are, we will never again make a decision which does not consider our child or children even unto our own last season. It is the way of us human animals.

Much attention has been given to the developmental stages of children. But until recently, like the last twenty years or so, very little attention has been paid to adult development. All the text books seemed to stop with the end of adolescence, possibly under the faulty notion, that if you could vote and legally drink you were - Bang! grown up. NO! I don’t think so.

Twenty or more years ago, Gail Sheehy wrote a landmark book, "Passages". Do you remember that one? In it she talked about our grown up "growing up" years. Until then few to no researchers did much of anything with lifespan development. And to be sure, the edges of the "seasons" that Sheehy delineates overlap, but the broad picture is both comfortingly and discomfortingly accurate.

In the decade of our twenties, most of us, in this culture anyway, are still finding ourselves, still being educated, or starting out on the bottom rung of a corporate or trade union ladder somewhere. We are experimenting with life styles, with relationships, moving in and out of each other’s homes and our parents homes, still "hanging out" with our high school or college friends; we have no one to please or appease but ourselves. We are accountable to ourselves, and whoever holds the college loan we are still paying off. People are marrying much later than when many of us were younger, Believe me in my business I know. Most of "my" first-wedding couples are in their very late twenties to mid thirties.

Sheehy speaks of the decade of the thirty somethings as a decade of acquisition. We get a partner, we try to get a house, we start a family. We want furniture and dishes that match. We give lavish dinner parties on our wedding china, and we start talking about daycare, good schools for our children. Many of us do our own dishes, take out the trash and mow our own lawn for the very first time. (It isn’t any more fun when it’s your own.) We just don’t have a choice. Mum or dad are probably off on a cruise, or taking a course somewhere, are not going to pick up after you. And whatever needs to be done will sit there until YOU do it. The first reality/responsibility slap! Shakespeare describes it as "Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation". The writer of Ecclesiastes talks of "the season to plant and to pluck up that which is planted".

The Forties is the decade of furthering/accomplishing/developing what we began in our thirties. We have a much better understanding of what our parents had to deal with, and we finally begin to see them as real people, warts and all; and the warts don’t bother us as much as they once did, because we find, you have a few of the very same ones yourself! If we have children, the number of children in the family is most often fixed, and we concentrate on fine tuning our jobs guiding those children. And we are thinking about wanting more leisure time, and the time when the kids won’t need us as much as they do right now. And, like adolescence, the decade of the forties is another time of questioning, particularly the late forties. Is this what I want for the rest of my life? Is this the life I want? Do I have any options? If a person, man or woman, is successful in their career, he or she might already be thinking of flex-time, or telecommuting for part of the work week. Time is passing more rapidly, and some people wake up to that fact, and adjust their lives accordingly if they can.

In my early forties, I was a single mom of two middle-teenaged boys, and I had reached the point in my life and career where I was asking myself these very questions. Is this all there is and is going to be? I was REALLY tired of teaching at Lesley. I was tired of the commute, bored with the courses I was teaching, my artwork was good but not great, and seemed to be going nowhere really important. I thought about changing jobs, but realized in the first ten minutes of that line of thinking, that there was nowhere in heaven that I was going to find a job that offered me the salary, security, benefits, (remember, I was a single mom) and relative flexibility and summers off .that the university job provided. If I was single without kids, I might have taken my chances. But, like so many men in my age bracket, I really was stuck. To leave that job, and it was not particularly high paying, would have been financial suicide. What I did was make the job more interesting for myself by creating new courses, and take the risk of cutting back my hours, so I could do more with my art and my writing. The decision was a good one, both paid off. And my kids were supervised, not that they loved it mind you. But I was very much around during their seasons of pushing their limits and mine. That paid off too!

Many adult learning and lifespan researchers will tell you that the decade of the fifties - all things being equal, and your health holding steady - is the best. "It is a time to rend and a time to sew". Shakespeare describes "the justice, in fair round belly with good capon lined, with eyes severe and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances".

If we are good at what you have been doing in your job, we know it and so do our peers and we are being well paid for it. (We have finally paid off your college loans and maybe even our mortgage!) We are comfortable with ourselves and with our bodies (Mostly) And if our marriages have survived the last decade, we find a whole new comfort and deeper love and understanding of and with our partners.

In our sixties we are beginning to divest: "A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together". Many of us will move to smaller quarters, and start giving away stuff to our kids. Clearing out the accumulated detritus of our years of accumulating because it was important then, and it isn’t now. "A time to keep and a time to cast away". Friendships are fewer, and deeper. Our bodies are beginning to divest; aches and pains and little cricks and cracks appear, where none once were. We become aware of our shortening days, and some of us do something about it. This is when folks who never went to church, after they went for the kids come back, seeking a deeper dimension in their lives that the TV reality shows, the double martinis, and the "McMansions and starter castles" exclusive club memberships cannot offer or didn’t provide. For some of us, life takes on a more intentional quality; we want to make the most of the time we have left. We want to give back; we want to share our accumulated years of knowledge and experience with others. It is when we become mentors to others, it is when, if we are so fortunate, we can afford to be charitable and we are. It is when we would much rather give than receive. And we do. It is considered the wisdom years in Eastern cultures. After a man has finished his gainful work, it is the time to write poetry, paint or savor the arts, and let all of that accumulated wisdom and experience flower in a new and deeper expression and understanding. In many native American and indigenous cultures, it is when women, after their childbearing years are finished, can be the wise ones or crones. We are now with our" spectacles upon our noses in lean and slipper’d pantaloon." We are shrinking in body but not necessarily in mind, if we are lucky. And I’m not talking about those "senior" moments that come with increasing aggravating frequency. They are part of the normal aging process. I like to think of them as "rest-stops." I’ll get there, my brain is just resting for a moment.

I am taking a water aerobics class. The leader is a lady over seventy. One of the exercises is supposed to help us avoid getting a double chin. (Too late I wailed…I prefer to think of them as a flotation device!) There are more new knees and hips in that pool than any of us were born with! Medical science would not have developed "replacement parts" if we didn’t have enough years to make good use of them.

Our seasons are getting shorter, but only we can make them better.

Sheehy speaks of the seventies and beyond, and lifespan writers tell us like the words of Ecclesiastes it is a time to seek and a time to loose. The aging process is accelerating and we are slowing down in direct ratio. But there are those who are spending so much on various snake oils to reverse the natural process that they are missing out on the beauty that is to be found in less frenetic living. And while old age is not for the faint hearted, if we are lucky, it is inevitable, and if like the tide, we go with it instead of raging against it, we can be creative and joyful and productive to the end of our days. Many studies have shown us that healthy elders who feel they have something to live for do it and live longer and more satisfying lives than those who are simply marking time, and miserable with it, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

The seasons of our lives. The ones we are in can’t be rushed or held back. There are early ones, middle ones and late ones. When we were kids, we wanted to look and be older, be cool, be sophisticated. Once we were all of those things, we worried about how to pay for it, how to keep our marriage together, how to be good examples for our children, and how to find the time to enjoy all that we had accumulated.

We look at a stressed out teenager and tell him or her, "relax…these are the best years of your life"…(One of the great urban lies!) Very few of us would willingly go back to our teenaged years.

Or tell a new parent to enjoy that colicky screeching kid because they are babies for such a short time and they will probably fling something nasty at you. It is why we are supposed to have our children in our twenties and thirties. It’s the rearing season.

Each of our seasons have their positive and negative aspects. It’s part of the package we are given at our birth. Rites of passage continue throughout our lives, they do not stop at our coming of age, our first menstruation, our first voting election, our first beer or menopause, or when we lose a parent or our best friend to death. How we negotiate our passages, and how we reach out to others along the way is what makes a life challenging and worth living. And a life worth remembering when we have taken the final journey.

I’m in my early sixties. It is likely that I might have written this sermon somewhat differently if I were in my eighties, and I hope I get the chance; I don’t think it would be all that different. I would add the next twenty years to my chalkboard, and if my health is manageable, and if I am sensible and practical, if I manage my health, I will be, God willing, slower, grayer, baggier, just as full of enthusiasm, just as bossy and irritating, but, brain cells permitting, still learning and still growing. The women in my family are all like this. It’s a good heritage, but it’s also a lot to live up to.

To everything there is a season and a time and a purpose under heaven.

…and it is now.