Faithful? Free? So What?

“Theories become instruments, not answers to enigmas in which we can rest.”  So wrote William James a century ago in lecture entitled “What Pragmatism Means.”  So what?  Precisely.  So what?  James was saying that anything we learn should not make us satisfied, grinning like a cat in the sunny patch on a wintry floor.  What we come to know should . . . must make a difference in how we live our lives.

Complacent, smug, self-satisfied.  I belong to two groups that can with some validity be seen this way: those retired with savings and those “saved” by faith.  Retirement is something I hesitate to write about.  It’s like a female voice rising from a room full of Catholic clerics.  I feel like an outsider, someone no longer going to work, no longer being validated by an albeit perhaps smaller-than-desired paycheck, no longer engaged
in a community on a mission.  If I write about my life in retirement, working readers might look at me as . . . complacent, smug, self-satisfied.  I recall a perfect Sunday morning some years ago, our first in our then-new life in the suburbs after thirty years in Detroit and Gesu parish.  Invited to move from our home on Warrington, where we had raised our kids and served as block captains and, in a way, anchors, we now would live at Manresa Jesuit Retreat House in the safety and comfort and quiet of northern Oakland County.  We followed the mostly white-haired members of the 8:00 Mass congregation into a perfect spring morning, the sun rising over the reflecting pond of the “stone chapel” that was more like a mini-cathedral.   Some of the white-hairs were gathered in a little gaggle at the foot of the steps, men in suits and shiny shoes.  They were talking about the joy of golfing every day.  I wanted to barf.  Still working in the city, still caring and feeling the needs of the poor there and the struggles of those in the trenches, I found this joy in daily golf complacent, smug, and self-satisfied. 

Retired for just over a year now, I do not golf.  But my beard is turning white.  When we retire, the work we did goes on, accomplished by someone else.  We learn that we were, after all, replaceable.  Perhaps that is why we are tempted to create a validating myth about ourselves, that we have earned the right to rest and enjoy ourselves.  It salves the wound of uselessness.  So you don’t need me?  Fine!  I’ll just play golf!  And so, contrary to James’ call to pragmatism, we retirees in our uselessness are tempted to rest in our answers to life’s questions, and grow crusty.

Often when I write about faith, I write about belovedness, about the state in which we live in which we are loved by God.  I write about the harmony, the peace that comes when we realize that.  But what comes of this peace, this harmony?  What comes of the freedom of leisure?  James says that if they are real, they will serve not as answers but instruments.  I think of Bill and Billie, of how their faith and their retirement find them becoming instruments of hope and rebirth in Brightmoor.  I think of the gaggle of us in Gesu parish that moved into the city with our freshly-minted degrees determined to put them to use.  Now most of us have moved from our homes, most of us closer to grandkids, further from each other.  But what we continue to have in common is that we are free, and we have faith. 

James’ challenge seems clear to me.  We have faith, and we have freedom.  So what?  Do we use them as instruments or rest in them?  

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.