During the time I was feeling this sadness, I subscribed to a daily meditation written by Richard Rhor. One morning, as I was reading it on the number 50 bus, I found a way of making sense of my mourning.
Richard said there are two halves of life and each half has a different task.
He said the task of the first half of life is to answer the first essential questions: “What makes me significant?”, “How can I support myself?” and “Who will go with me?” He said asking those questions takes so much blood, sweat, eggs, sperm, tears and years that most of us can not envisage there is anything else to do other than find the answers to them.
But, said Richard, those first-half-of-life tasks are only the warm-up act for the work that comes next. Once we have completed the work of the first half of our lives, there is another task to do, which is altogether different.
“We often cannot imagine there is a second task, or that anything more could be expected of us,” he said. “A ‘further journey’ is a well-kept secret, for some reason. Many people do not even know there is one.”
RICHARD ROHR
Adapted from Richard’s Daily Meditation and from Falling Upward (Jossey-Bass)
Next step: Listening to the songs of angels