mortality in another guise

What is it with birthdays? We make a big deal out of them, since our cluture has such self-focus, time and money to do so. in much of the world, people know only that they were "born in the spring" or "the year of the famine." amazing what our culture has done to turn the birthday, like the wedding, the anniversary of darn near anything, into a consumer heyday with its concomitant boost to the economy.

when tony was a kid (born during the depression), the big excitement for the day was that he was taken into San Francisco to a restaurant (think it was named Bunny's) for his favorite birthday meal: waffle, whipped cream and strawberries. taking the electric train in his younger years, the family (too poor to own a car) would make their way to Bunny's and this was just as much a fabulous tradition as an annual trip to Hawaii. Perhaps it is more in the love expressed in the midst of poverty that created the value over the amount of money spent, the degree of "bragging rights" that the event created.

So now another sweet man turns fifty. Just discovering his own heart and his own great potential, it's a milestone that reminds us that there really isn't much time left on this planet; with the number of recent demises, it becomes a mental sticking point!
(however, Alese Coco is back at home and until Saturday, when she has chemo again, she is a happy girl...from expected death to expected normalcy in two weeks. Think her parents have a taste of their own mortality from the emotional duress they've suffered?)

So, we age. Unless (as tony used to say) we keep on choosing to grow, to learn, to do what is perhaps uncomfortable but always broadening to our minds, our souls, our horizons, we grow old quickly. our biological age does not matter, for we are so inclined to focus on our own comfort, our own control of the situation, our own agenda, that the brain hardens, the body turns to mush and we discover too late that we have chosen age through choosing ease.

Rich Mullins' theory was that the greater the weight of sin that we carry, the longer we carry it instead of choosing forgiveness, the older we become. In the song, "Growing Young," he pointed out that the ability to weep, to forgive and to be forgiven are God's paths to an eternal youth, to an eternal growth and joy. The prodigal of his song was already old, already dying, tho he was chronologically just a youth. More than a cautionary tale, it's the description of the path to the grace and peace our inmost being craves, the source of a love that will not let us go, drop us for the next big thing or leave us in the lurch--ever.

And that is the nub of birthdays. for God's kids, they never have to stop! Mortal here, yes. But who we are on the inside--that person that laughs and has certain ticklish spots and loves pistachio ice cream--that person is the one who goes home to Papa God to live forever, in an expanding universe of infinite interest...where we keep growing, delighting in His love--truly forever young.