Today is my 35th birthday. It feels more momentous than any birthday I’ve yet had. I’m not sure why.
For the last few months, I’ve been aware that the next big one is 40. I remember my mom’s 40th birthday so clearly. We all made a huge deal of it. Lordy, lordy! Stephanie’s 40! We sang that refrain for a month at least. My mom seemed so old to me then; I couldn’t imagine 40 years of life. Now it seems young. I know: Welcome to the Club.
Shortly before my grandmother’s death, I asked her if she thought of herself as an old woman. She smiled and said, “Not at all. Sometimes I look in the mirror and think ‘Who is this old woman staring at me?’ I still feel 18 inside.”
Still, it’s not just the age that feels momentous. This year feels momentous. This saying goodbye, though certainly not quietly or easily, to the collective horrors of 2020. I never thought I’d cry reading ordinary news articles about diplomatic phone calls or treaties, but I do. I can’t read the paper without tears at what once seemed routine, uninteresting events in the life of global politics.
But this bigness, this feeling of something, I know not what, pushing its way up from the soil of my life–this is different, personal, new. It feels like freedom.
My whole life, no matter what was happening around me, I have rarely felt truly at ease. Sometimes there were good reasons for that dis-ease, but often there weren’t. Often I’ve just lived with this slight internal awkwardness, this conviction that my context is just a little off the shape of my life, that there’s just this small amount of friction that over time might wear me thin.
To put it another way, I’ve been keenly aware of my differences from all the people who surround me. I’ve carried around that cliché though no less real feeling that if others really knew what was inside, they probably wouldn’t want me to stick around. And the fact that I so intuitively cover over that internal experience with cool self-assurance (I once had a therapist tell me, when I’d produced a grand narrative for some pattern of self-sabotage, “Wow. That is beautiful!” Then she paused and said, “But maybe it’s not as neat as all that.”) has only heightened my awareness of internal dislocation.
All of that to say, I don’t feel that today. I’m not sure the last time I really felt that. And today I believe that life could continue without that feeling. I could choose not to live in that place anymore. I could choose to believe that I do fit in my own life.
A few years ago, I read the following from Thomas Berry:
Unfortunately Western religious traditions have been so occupied with redemptive healing of a flawed world that they tend to ignore creation as it is experienced in our times. Consequently one of the basic difficulties of the modern West is its division into a secular scientific community, which is concerned with creative energies, and a religious community, which is concerned with redemptive energies. So concerned are we with redemptive healing that once healed, we look to be more healed. We seldom get to our functional role within the creative intentions of the universe.
Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, p. 25
Berry is obviously writing on the macro level, but I so identify with his words on the level of my own life. For fifteen years my entire spiritual life revolved around the black hole of my own primal woundedness. I spent those years actively engaged in healing work. I went to therapy, spiritual direction, and Al-Anon. I prayed and wrote about my own wounds and the process of healing from them. I let God and other people love me into wholeness, or into the recognition that my wholeness was never conditional to begin with.
But about two years ago, it stuck me that I have healed from that woundedness. Full stop. Never completely, of course, but enough. Enough to move on to something else, to, in Berry’s words, “get to [my] functional role within the creative intentions of the universe.” And for the last two years I’ve felt a little lost and a lot disoriented in doing just that. I have been, without ever specifically naming the process, reorienting my sense of self and my experience of God. It’s why I stopped writing. It’s why I gave up my knitting podcast. It’s why my personal prayer has been here, there, and everywhere.
The fog feels as if it’s lifting. I am not afraid. I don’t feel shy or awkward or disjointed. I feel alive and free and awake. And while my brain tells me that this, too, shall pass, I choose to live with the feeling of freedom and newness on this new day of this new year of my life.
I’d like to end this post with a beautiful tied up package of whatever my functional purpose is within the creative intentions of the universe. The truth is, I still have no idea. I’m still rather disoriented, still rather obtuse. I suppose the different feeling this morning is that I feel okay feeling disoriented. I feel safe in my own obtuseness. I feel free to let myself wander around in my life, trusting that God is wandering with me. Or perhaps God is the wandering itself.
To put it another way, I feel like myself today. And I feel very glad to be me.
A Little Fire 
Brother Aidan. it is my birthday too! Except that I am twice as old in years as you are – 70. Thank you for sharing your words of insight, using Berry’s words, “get to [my] functional role within the creative intentions of the universe.” I have been looking forward to today, oddly enough, feeling like I’m poised on the edge of something, not being able to express the reasons why, and you have just put it into words! Thank you, and Happy Birthday!
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How delightful! And Happy Birthday! All the January 26th folks I know are wonderful people! Glad my ponderings have been helpful to you, too.
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Happy Birthday, Aidan!!
Thank you for all of your glorious gifts. Your timing (and the Holy Spirit’s) is always perfect.
Miss you and I look forward to the next time our journeys cross.
Peace, joy and hope,
Rhonda
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Thank you so much, Rhonda! I hope you’re healthy and happy in this new year!
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My experience is that life unfolds and we say a series of yes’s during the unfolding. Or we say no. I’ve been grateful for the grace to say yes to some very hard things and that’s been the most liberating thing of all. Go figure. Happy Birthday!
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Thanks, Janet! Yes, I think the yeses to the hard parts are just as important as the yeses to the joyful ones.
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Happy Birthday, Aidan! More to come later…
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Thank you, Hannah!
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Happy Birthday, Aidan! I can relate to much of what you have said about the whole change in perspective that can occur when there has been enough healing. As you said, it is never complete, but to me it has felt like looking at the world through freshly cleaned windows after having never seen it so clearly before.
I am glad you are glad to be you!
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Thanks, Melissa! I love that image. I’ve worn glasses since I was in second grade. And every time I get new ones, I’m always amazed at how clear and detailed the world has suddenly become.
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Happy birthday Aidan. I wish you every joy and happiness x
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Thank you, Helen!
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Aiden,
Happy Birthday! Mind was on the 22nd – my 74th! You continue to be right where God wants you. Your sermon on Sunday spoke to me and to a new special person in my life! Thank you for being who you are and where you are!!
David
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Happy Birthday, David! Glad the sermon landed!
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I love this! You have shared the Good News with grace and courage, as you live it. Imperfectly, with great love.
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Thank you, dear friend.
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Happy Birthday, Aidan! Thank you for sharing this gift on your birthday. Your willingness to share the vulnerability and journey of being human – with all of its blessings and bumps – makes it easier for the rest of us to do the same.
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Thank you, Nina! It helps me, too.
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Happy Birthday! A Birth Day is a chance to enter our personal new year with lots of possibilities/opportunities and hopefully leave some unnecessary /outgrown baggage at the dumpster. Wishing you a year of exploration and contentment.
P.S. your sermon struck a chord with me as I struggle with the uncertainty of these times and the less than sexy work of day to day faith.
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Thanks so much, Merri. Yes, you’re right–birthdays are a wonderful opportunity to release and to receive. I’m trying to do both this year. I’m glad the sermon resonated with you. I think I needed to hear it more than anyone else!
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Oh, Happy Birthday, dear dear Aidan! I am a knitter from afar who enjoyed your knitting podcasts when you were making them. You are such a delightful special soul and I wish you the very best of days! Much love to you!
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Thank you so much, Gina!
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I have just read all this today, the 27th. Thank you for sharing. From the dizzy height of 80 next month, one thing I have learnt is that with Gods help, we can cast off the old, accept the new and move on to better places ever day
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Amen, Denise!
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A belated happy birthday, Aidan! Over the years I’ve grown to appreciate the insights and perceptions that come with “later birthdays”…35, 40, 50, even 60. Sounds like this year is one of those memorable “later birthdays” for you, which is good to hear. Prayers that the wisdom and insight of the day unfold for you in life-giving ways over the next year!
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Thanks so much, Matt!
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“But about two years ago, it stuck me that I have healed from that woundedness. Full stop. Never completely, of course, but enough. Enough to move on to something else.”
I’m just coming to this myself, during pandemic. It’s very new, to not feel weighed down by the past and its characters.
I spend virtually no time with other live humans–it can go days, sometimes weeks without an interaction, although we Zoom and talk and pray and things. Some of us have started wondering if we will even want to get together once we are able. Solitude has become normal, and wonderful. But…
as we start to move outside again, I am looking forward to discovering where my new autonomy may lead me. Perhaps to familiar haunts, perhaps to new ones. Whatever, I will be free.
Miss you and the brothers and the gardeners immensely!
Love, Hannah
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It’s so good that there are blessings in the midst of this pandemic. Otherwise we’d all be drowning–as so many of us actually are. You’re living the hermit life, Hannah! Though I look forward to your being able to come up here again!
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So do I! Being inside places of worship, and getting my hands into the dirt, will work wonders.
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Happy birthday Aidan! I read this on your birthday, and again today. I don’t have any wise words to share, but I’m grateful that you share the gift of your life with us.
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Thank you, Kelly. I was just thinking of you, and then I saw your comment in my inbox. Talk about the Holy Spirit! I hope you’re well!
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