For several years now, a great many changes of mind and heart have been insinuating their way into my imagination. Perhaps I should come clean and confess that I no longer see or hear or feel as I once did about a great many things. Some of you who knew me best when I was a twenty-something or thirty-something may be surprised at what you read here. Others, the wisest amongst you, will have seen what was coming from a very long way off.
1.
When I was young, I dreamed of writing a revolutionary book of theology or philosophy that would fundamentally change its reader's hearts and minds. Now I know that I will never write such a book. Or, if I were by some miracle to produce such a tome, I know it would sink like a stone into obscurity because the practice of reading such books is almost gone.
When I was young, I dreamed that youthful enthusiasm and imagination would fundamentally change the political landscape so that a new era of peace with justice could emerge. Now I know that the powers of greed and entropy are far more entrenched than I could have imagined. I also know that the vast majority of young people have been recruited by those very powers, whether they are aware of the fact or not.
3.
When I was young, I thought that the world was my oyster and that I would die a prosperous and comfortable man. The key to my future, I surmised, was education. Education would lift me from the poverty in which I had grown up, and release me into a prosperous future in which I could do whatever I wanted to do and be whatever I wanted to be (to paraphrase the Master's Apprentices). Now I can see that I unconsciously pursued the kind of education that would render me rich in words and ideas and values but poor in things.
When I was young, I imagined that I would remain healthily capable, competent and energetic well into my seventies. Now I know that growing older means coming to terms with the fading of one's powers. Now I know that ill-health can shatter one's dreams and bring them to naught.
5.
When I was young I imagined that serving Christ was a glorious thing, a praiseworthy thing, a making of oneself into a powerful centre of moral authority that would draw whole communities into its thrall. Now I understand that following Christ is about being despised, rejected and rendered anonymous. It is about becoming an object of scorn for both monster and moralist alike. It is about losing oneself entirely.
All of which is to say that, for me, the world is not at all as I imagined it would be when I was young. I am no longer the 'promising young leader' that some described two decades ago. I am a person whose hopes and dreams lie in ruins under a towering rubble of self-deception, ill health, and Christian realism.
For all that, and most likely because of all that, I find myself able to give thanks. I give thanks for my wife Lil, for the way she has stuck by me with tenacious love over 25 years. I give thanks for my daughters Erin and Gretel, who continue to be the light of my life. I give thanks for my mum and dad, who walked this way before me. I give thanks for the treasures of Christian faith - baptism, bible, prayer and eucharist - which continue to sustain and comfort me. I give thanks for friends who love me loyally even when I am being a dick. I give thanks that I have a roof over my head and that I can still string two words together. Two words may now be all that Christ requires.
