I recently started reading Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr. The first paragraph of Chapter 1 leads me to believe that I am going to enjoy this book immensely:
The first half of my life probably lasted until I was 36. I grew up, traveled and experienced the cultures of Europe, studied and obtained several degrees, married, had a daughter, taught in a college, and worked in churches. Each of these experiences gave me the knowledge to build an identity, or as Rohr calls it, the “container.”
The second half of my life continued from age 36 until age 63 when I served as a missionary on a university campus. Working with students from a variety of countries with varying educational degrees and helping them discover who they are in Christ allowed me to discover the contents of that “container.” The container was filled with the knowledge and experiences I had acquired, but it was bathed in what we now call Spiritual Formation, my life in God, and imparted through the relationships I formed with students.
But at age 63, I moved into a season of life that I would add to Rohr’s levels as a third: pouring out the contents of the container. As an intern director working with college graduates who have been called by God into vocational ministry, I spend each day helping them build their own identity and giving them maps so they can discover what content they are meant to hold.
It has been a life of “falling upward”, or as Rohr writes moving from “the first half of life…discovering the script” and into the second half “actually writing it and owning it”.
