Falling Upward: A Spirituality For The Two Halves Of Life

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Between these two tasks, or the two mountains, is a crash. This is where the identity that we set up in the first mountain becomes insufficient to sustain us through some kind of trial. First for the insights I most appreciated, which I think come out of long pastoral work with people seeking to grow in their faith throughout life. There are two key insights that are important: Being well into my second half of life and having read several other books on human development and spirituality, I was interested in reading this one also because some good friends recommended it. The book is well worth reading and thinking about. Fr. Rohr has many good things to say. But I found it less helpful to me than other books like it. As I've said, there are many wise and insightful words in this book, but I think it should be read with some detachment and discernment. I have a hard time accepting that everything Fr. Rohr describes as a second half quality of life, which resonates with my experience or outlook on life, is a mark of spiritual maturity. I think spiritual maturity can take different forms in different people depending on their personality and the situations with which life confronts them. Rohr's description may be one of them but I wonder if it may be just as much a product of cultural influence as he says the first half of life is. The "container" and its "contents" may not be so easy to distinguish at any stage of life, if such a distinction even makes sense. Maybe that's OK. I think I can live without it.

He writes that Jesus praised faith and trust more than love. Really? Where in the Bible did he find that?I thank God for Richard Rohr's sage-like presence in our culture: I honestly don't know where I'd be without it.' Franciscan priest Richard Rohr—author of, among other titles, The Naked Now and From Wild Man to Wise Man—has written his most sage, most important book yet. The message of Falling Upward is straightforward and bracing: the spiritual life is not static. You will come to a crisis in your life, and after the crisis, if you are open to it, you will enter a space of spiritual refreshment, peace and compassion that you could not have imagined before.

According to Richard Rohr, our spiritual lives are just like the hero myths. He even takes us through the typical pattern of the heroic journey and compares them to our stages of life.

On THE DIVINE DANCE]: Finding the sweet spot where contemporary science meets ancient mysticism, and theology meets poetry, The Divine Dance sketches a beautiful choreography for a life well-lived. In our joy or our pain, true life is always relational, a flow, a dance. (And was always meant to be.) - Bono, U2 I woke up an hour ago from a sound sleep remembering my friend Mohammed who is from Cairo. His father retired several years ago. Mohammed told me that in this “second” half of life, male Muslims become contemplative and studious. The burdens of living are lifted somewhat and they can pursue the Koran and the meanings of life and death. Sure enough, the old gentleman began to spend more time outside of the city in his birth village where he also owned all the land. He read, he talked, he saw a different side of himself.

Until we learn to love others as ourselves, it's difficult to blame broken people who desperately try to affirm themselves when no one else will.” Repeatedly, Fr. Rohr reminds the reader that “God writes straight using crooked lines,” and the both of life’s “halves” reflect the truth that we are the “writing” brought about by such Grace. I rather liked this book. And I think I can heartily recommend it to all my friends who are fast approaching "a certain age," as a writer of gently oblique phraseology - like Henry James - might put it.

Once you touch upon the Real, there is an inner insistence that the Real, if it is the Real, has to be forever." It’s easy for us to be so content in the comfortable at “home” that we never venture out and thus never truly grow and understand. All great spirituality teaches about letting go of what you don’t need and who you are not. Then, when you can get little enough and naked enough and poor enough, you’ll find that the little place where you really are is ironically more than enough and is all that you need. At that place, you will have nothing to prove to anybody and nothing to protect. I'll be honest. This is not a book I can wholeheartedly recommend. While I found a number of useful insights, I thought the "spirituality" on which Rohr grounded these more reflective of a "blend" of Eastern and Western spirituality rather than the Catholic Christianity with which Father Rohr is most closely identified. For some, that may not be a problem, or even is a plus! If you are looking for a spirituality that roots an understanding of development in classic Christianity, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant/Evangelical, that is not this book. Rohr and Morrell have given us a liberating and yet totally orthodox invitation into the life of God. This book is a celebration of the Trinity, not as bad math (1+1+1=3), and not as baffling mystery to avoid, but as the divine movement of love. The Divine Dance is an example of why Rohr has had such a profound influence on so many Christians seeking to balance reason and mystery, action and contemplation, not to mention faith and real life. - Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastor, House for All Sinners and Saints, Author, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

Rohr's message about the two halves of life ("young" and "old") is that essentially one has to fail or descend in some way before one can rise and ascend. On an obvious level, as one ages, one begins to lose strength, health, and finally life itself. Some people never recover from the experience and spend all of their time lamenting their decline and fall. I remember my mother, ordinarily a upbeat person, during her late 80's saying, "getting old is hell."There are numerous other texts, both sacred and secular, written in a similar vein, by people who’d either undergone the transition from life’s first half to its second, or were in the process of going through it. And then, of course, there are our own observations of those who are in the second half, and of those who remain forever in the first. Falling upward means, quite simply, casting off the excitement and cravings of youth, as Paul of Tarsus enjoins all those who are commencing the New Life. With that removal of extra gravity pull, we commence our "fall" (relaxing of our cares and attachments), "upwards" - into the Grace which is specific to the Second Phase of Life. Or think of it this way. During the first half, you’re building the “container” for your life: your identity. The second half is all about “filling” that container – giving your life purpose.