Note: Reflection offered by Liz Sorensen Wessel.  Father Richard Rohr describes the first half of life as a time for building our identity, following career pursuits, gaining confidence in our skillfulness, accomplishing and striving for success, which are developmental steps for establishing ourselves in the world. 

Then one day we may awaken and wonder about the years flying by and how we've molded ourselves to the expectations of others and our culture to fit in and belong.

Along the way how far have we wandered away from our true nature?

Rohr states, “In our formative years, we are so self-preoccupied that we are both overly defensive and overly offensive at the same time, with little time left for simply living, pure friendship, useless beauty, or moments of communion with nature or anything. Yet that kind of ego structuring is exactly what a young person partly needs.”

Whereas the second half of life is a time of rediscovery, of dismantling the persona that we so carefully crafted through the years to become vulnerable and open hearted again as we let go our shield of armor.

“In the second half of life, all that you avoided for the sake of a manufactured ego ideal starts coming back as a true friend and teacher. Doers become thinkers, feelers become doers, thinkers become feelers, extroverts become introverts, visionaries become practical, and the practical ones long for vision. We all go toward the very places we avoided for the last forty years, and our friends are amazed. Now we begin to understand why Jesus is always welcoming the outsider, the foreigner, the sinner, the wounded one. He was a second-half-of-life man who has had the unenviable task of trying to teach and be understood by a largely first-half-of-life history, church, and culture.” Richard Rohr

And in the end, when all else falls away, all that we are is LOVE.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Mandala by ~liz