I turned 40 yesterday.
It felt a bit anticlimactic, almost like the cusp of a “second adulthood”—likely due to being in school again (at least until May when I will, Lord willing, finish my MDiv). I’m in a season of constrained possibilities, waiting to see what opens up around the bend. I’m less looking back over where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and more anticipating what comes next.
I’m sure I’ll feel more reflective this summer when some more mental and emotional margin returns, but yesterday—a foggy, ordinary Wednesday of making sandwiches, taking kids to school, going to work, writing papers, etc.—I was able to choose to simply be thankful here in the middle.
Age is, really, an artificial marker of life’s inflection points. It is rooted, however, in the swirling of planets, the movement through space and time. Like Indiana Jones quipped, “It’s not the years. It’s the mileage.” But in spacetime, it’s always both. In any case, I’m glad to have traveled thus far, thankful for family and friends who’ve carried me, and praying for what the next leg of the journey holds.
It also felt like a good day to re-connect with this Mary Oliver poem, “Forty Years”. Since it was published in Poetry when she was 51, the “forty years” might refer more to her writing life to that point than age, but it has always resonated with me as a writer. Trying to speak of what is real, what is outside of our control, always feels just a little bit contrived, just a little bit arrogant, and not always possible.
Even so, the effort has always felt worthwhile—even vital to my survival.
Five years ago, reflecting on Oliver’s words, It came to me that the humility she’s expressing in the face of ineffable nature can also be a two-way street—that the failure of language to comprehend the world is not an excuse to give up the chase. Given her body of work, and the fact that she even bothered to write about the struggle in “Forty Years”, it’s a sentiment that I feel certain she’d be on board with.
I wrote this as a response to her work:
Thirty-Five After Mary Oliver thirty-five years the mountains and forests have called loudly my name and I have tried to follow their forceful impetus running toward looming hills looming woods with leaps and strides looming closer till not one day was less to me than inundating discursive full of wonder its pale dawn showing through the curves of the fog behind condensated windows all the misted host of the Blue Ridge thirty-five and again this morning as always I am freed as the thought comes forth small yet delightful and I am feeling that language is not like a river is not a tree is not mountains but is the thing pulling them out of the void wholly continually from eternity and I breathe back humble metered praise.
Creation and language are inextricably bound together. It’s only natural to sing of it, to write about it, and, sometimes, to sit in silence and awe before it and the one who made it. The beauty and wonder of the world has power to draw us out of ourselves into something more interesting than our tumultuous inner worlds, in some real way saving us from ourselves.
Here in the middle—in this season of life—looking up, looking out on the world is as much a spiritual discipline as anything else.
So good - what a wonderful way to mark 40 with poetry written and read and reflection! Inspiring.