Aging Curves

Two weeks ago, I wrote a bit about what I learned from Cicero about aging. Today I share a bit more, this time from Arthur C. Brooks’ “From Strength to Strength.” I found this book to be rather fascinating. The title tells the tale of the book, commending his readers to pass over from a strength characterizing the first half of life to a strength dominating the second half.

The strength of the first half is marked by the acquisition of “fluid intelligence.” This intelligence is requisite for establishing and expanding a career. The capacities attending this intelligence are as varied as the vocations that occupy us. They include creativity, concentration, and such – skills needed to break ground. He provides a graph noting how these skills develop early in a career and then decline nearly as quickly, with a kind of plateau established by mid-career or so. This accords with the observation that many scientists, for instance, make major breakthroughs early in their career. The curve shifts slight from career to career. So, for instance, mathematicians peak at about 22 years into their career, while poets do so at 15 years. This doesn’t mean that poets and mathematicians are not productive later in their career, but the work is harder and the successes smaller.

The second strength Brooks discusses is that of “crystalized intelligence.” This way of knowing comes with strength for integration and the ability to use acquired knowledge. In contrast to fluid intelligence, which is strong at solving abstract problems, crystallized intelligence is good at application, and is marked by the wisdom that is acquired by experience. The curve for crystalized intelligence starts low and slowly begins to grow at about the time the fluid intelligence curve is starting to descend. Crystallized intelligence stays at a high plateau late into life.

The point Brooks makes in the book is that too often we get caught in careers needing the kind of energy and intelligence of the first curve, and so people too often experience a kind of frustration. He commends us to jump from one curve to the other – in other words, to move into places where your wisdom and capacity for integration can be used.

I must admit I like graphs that demonstrate what seems to reflect my experience. Things that were second nature to me once now take a bit more effort, even while I can now negotiate situations that once were more troublesome with a relative ease. Luckily for me, I am in a career that can utilize both kinds of intelligence.

Of course, not all people have options in career choices, but may find more meaning in the work in churches, mosques, and other volunteer opportunities by moving from curve to curve.

Hanging in the Balance

These last few weeks have been a bit chaotic. A few extra bits to do here and there were further complicated by my going to the American Academy of Religion. This is a massive meeting of scholars of religion and theologians, and was held in Denver this year. It was the first in-person AAR for me since 2019. I always have a little bit of AAR regret just before going, wondering why I do this as I rush to get everything done before leaving. But once I get there, all regret falls away as I experience intellectual stimulation and meet friends old and new. This was especially true this year as I ran into people I have not seen in person since before the pandemic.

Of utmost importance for connecting are the evening receptions – a highlight in many ways. Of course, the panels and presentations are great as well, and I heard some profound papers. I gave one on the topic of sin and shame, and one on friendship as well. I received helpful feedback that I can incorporate as I move these toward publication. All told, it was a rich experience. But I was glad to get home again, as I always am when I am gone away.

As one might expect, there was plenty on my plate upon return, and the first couple of days were packed. Thankfully Saturday gave me a bit of breathing room, which I relished. I spent the morning doing a bit of over-due marking but was able to spend the afternoon making bread. There is something astoundingly satisfying about this. So much of what I do has very few tangible deliverables. Making bread is something rectifies this for me. Also, there is nothing quite so enjoyable as eating fresh bread.

I spent the evening doing some painting, which I have not done for the last little while. I have had a few conversations with people who do art, but not fulltime, and we remark how life-giving making art is, but it is too often the first thing that we let go in order to meet deadlines etc. Luther said that when he was especially busy, he spent more time in prayer. I think we can add to that wise advice the admonition to be more attentive to art when life gets chaotic. Art, for me, is a practice of self-care – allowing me to spend time with me, without an agenda.

As I think about Saturday against the horizon of my time away, it brought into relief the importance of balancing time with others and time on my own. I am increasingly aware of the need to keep that balance in check. Missing out on one or the other weighs heavy on me, and others I assume. Of course, balance will look different for different people. Moreover, I suspect that many of us will have experienced that Covid has altered that sense of balance.

In a world that valorizes progress at all costs and makes busyness to be a virtue, balance is a life giving, if not counter-cultural, way to be in the world. Hanging in the balance, finally, is what thriving really looks like.

On a Sling and a Prayer

This week Santa Maria made her way from slip to cradle, via a magical flight expedited by a crane. For long-time readers of stillvoicing, this has been described in earlier posts. In fact, I have likely written about it many years, as I do again this year! In part, this is because the sight of a boat floating through the air is quite unlike anything.

Since our marina is a not-for-profit club, members assist on lift-out day. This year I was part of the compound sling crew, a first for me. I have now cycled through all of the volunteer positions on the dock. This crew receives the boats and assists them as they land in the cradle, a metal structure holding the boat upright. Fittingly, my shift began with the arrival of Santa Maria. It was nice to see her settled for a long winter’s nap.

Owners of boats are asked to tie four lead lines to their boat, two at stern and two at bow, about 15 – 20 feet in length. As boats soars from lake to compound, these lead lines stream from the boat like strings from a balloon. My job was to grab one of the lead lines, along with three other sailors-come- dockhands. We would pull a boat this way and that as the crane operator and his helper communicated by radio. Often we would need to spin the boat 180 degrees to get stern straight and bow in place. I have to say that it is an incredible experience to grab a lead line and move a boat thousands of pounds, suspended in the air. It is as easy as a pushing a partly full wheelbarrow, even though I know that this boat would pulverize me were it to fall from its slings.

Once the boat is nearly in place, the cradle was fine-tuned left and right, back and forth. After the keel touches the base of the cradle, the cradle pads are raised to an inch from the hull of the boat. Then the crane operator lets the boat come down with all of its weight and the boat meets the four or more pads. One of us would then jump on the boat to release one side of each sling so it could come out from under the boat. Another would guide the slings as the operator raised them up to the sky to make their way over to the next boat.

A couple of time I remember staring at these slings slipping away into the cerulean sky speckled with spectacular clouds, and my breath simply left me. It was so beautiful, utterly transfixing.

Yesterday we returned to the boat to wrestle the motor off the stern of the boat. This was more of a Sisyphean effort. The gentle tugging at the lines of an airship on their way to their cradles on Wednesday seemed so far removed from Saturday’s cradling a motor close to my core as I pried it from its summer station and eased it into the wheelbarrow for its journey to my house, its winter home.

I am struck by how different these two labours were, and yet they were both labour – both blessing me with the gift of living into my body and being reminded that movement, and sweat, and satisfaction, and even momentary frustrations are gifts of the Spirit that sustains both the strenuous grunt and the bewildered gasp.

Slivers of Sabbath

I have just finished the first week of my sabbatical, which means that I have 51 more weeks left of this marvellous opportunity. This seems like a passage of time that will last forever, but I know from past experiences that this period flies by. So, I am working at being quite intentional about using it well.

I have had a number of people ask me about a sabbatical, and what it means for me in my work situation. I explain that for six years of work, one half year at full salary, or one full year at 80 % of salary is offered professors who make application. The concept of the sabbatical is biblically grounded in the notion of a day’s rest for seven days of work (Exodus 20:8-11). The word sabbatical itself comes from the Hebrew word for seven, or seventh and from there became associated with rest. But to reference the theme of rest alone is not quite adequate when it comes to describing the sabbath I am on.

The board of the institution where I work anticipates that my sabbath will be a time wherein I do some research to develop skills in service of teaching and to advance knowledge in my area of expertise. A sabbatical is not for laying on the beach for 52 weeks. I found some funding from an outside source that will support my research in considering how schools of theology might respond to the 60th call to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which calls upon theological colleges – among other things – to prepare ministers of religion and practioners of spiritual care of the “need to respect Indigenous spirituality in its own right.” This is an important commendation that is more complicated than first appears, and so demands a careful accounting of what this might mean in the context of any given school, and the theology that shapes its mission. I will spend a good bit of my sabbatical looking at this, but that is not all I will do. Over the last six years, I have accrued a good bit of nearly completed papers etc. that warrant some editing time and such. Sabbatical will partly be a time for some catch-up.

But I also need to remind myself that the ancient practice of doing less for the sake of more is a spiritual discipline. Recharging the batteries is a necessary practice in becoming whom I need to be for students, my colleagues, our institution and my family. I need to practice rest. Of course, doing nothing is counter-cultural. We are all defined by our jobs, assessed for our productivity, and valued for our contributions. This, unfortunately, is too often parlayed into a way of being that is thoroughly dismissive of the need to take a break, to slow down, and to do nothing for the sake of those times that demand my all. This sabbatical needs to be a time for me to lean into the discipline of pausing so that I might encounter the holy anew.

My life, like most – I suspect – is shaped by chunks of time divided up into fractures of “busy” bordered by ten minutes here, and five minutes there: waiting for the program to load, or the cars to move, or the meeting to start. I hope that this sabbatical will train me to embrace these fractures of time as a gift for the intentional practice of sabbath: to use the traffic jam to think of the blessing my life has accrued; to use unexpected down time from the computer to look out the window and monitor the cardinal; to use the waiting time before a meeting to notice my colleagues around the meeting table, to give thanks to God for them, and to find a way back into that space of attending to the divine. It seems, then, that a sabbatical isn’t only about re-grouping but more about re-shaping. I do not know, then, where this will lead, but this is part of the challenge and joy of the next 51 weeks, and hopefully beyond.

About Right

For those of us who live north of the Equator, in climes in which water freezes in winter months, now is the season of preparing boats on the hard. “On the hard” for those who may not know the language of sailors and such, is the antonym to “in the water.” It is, indeed, a sweet season.

Yesterday my wife and I were down doing a little work on Santa Maria. Last month I put in a new water tank since the last one was filling the bilge as fast as I could fill the tank. Water issues have shown up in other places as well, and so my wood-worker wife opted to rebuild a couple of walls that had been ruined. She works wonders, and her carpentry skills were put to task. Yesterday we put these walls in place. She also plans on varnishing the hatch boards, which we have been staining, and while she cut a temporary hatch (so we could take the regular boards home) I cleaned the hull.

I like cleaning the hull. It brings me a deep joy. When my mother (whose blessed memory I honour today!) had me clean anything as a child, I would never have described the experience with the word “joy.” But yesterday I found myself grinning as I wiped away a winter’s worth of grime. As I washed and polished, I wondered about this pleasure: why this joy? Perhaps it is because I do so much work that brings so few concrete results that I see. Perhaps it is because the action itself is a cypher signalling changes in the season. Perhaps it is because I simply enjoy being outside, or the gentle curve of the boat, or the back and forth with my wife. It is probably all of these and more. But as I worked I thought a little bit about the gift of physical labour: how it puts us in touch with our bodies, how it teaches the gift of patience and perseverance, and how it reminds us that those who preceded us knew nothing of the many luxuries we take for granted. There was no heat without wood being hewn, and no food without laboured fields and snare set trails and animal husbandry. Of course, food is still worked for but most of us are distant to the physicality of this truth.

But to return to the mystery of my smile, above all I think this task takes me back to my parents, who valued hard work and meant to teach their children that it is a gift. Of course, I do not want to sentimentalise labour – remembering that many ache from bodies broken by harsh conditions. But still, I am happy for the occasion to remember those who tried to teach me to find some pleasure in work, and so to know that sweat on the brow can be a blessing as well as a curse.

As I caressed Santa Maria with water I imagined the one, after whom the boat is named, caressing her own beloved child, and finding joy in her work. Then I thought on God too, who most certainly – from time to time – cleans this ship that we are, and so I imagined God with a gracious grin and wet hands and a deep joy, and that seems to me to be about right on Mother’s Day.

Steeling for Snow

I shoveled the walk
yesterday, leaving my snow
blower to rest, warming
up to its summer
hibernation. I settled
on the old fashioned scrape
of metal against concrete –
content with the push and pull
of these two, their force
felt in the vibration of
the wooden handle,
occupying my hands.

This steel shovel, so much heavier than its burden,
is a solid reminder of the days before plastic
when we lived a little closer to the earth.

The snow blower was
bought to hedge my
bets against heart attacks
and such. It is much
appreciated and yet some
days the nearly silent to and fro
of shovel sits well with
the serene snow about to go –
even though it only just arrived,
from far too far for me to
put it back from whence
it came.

Restore, Recycle, Remember Revisited

Some of my readers expressed interest in the results of my “Restore, Recycle, Remember” project.  So here it is! Unfortunately, I only took a “Before” picture of the credenza.  You see it in my basement, not quite yet full of sawdust- although it was more sandingdust since little sawing was involved in this project.

 

The desk was in rougher shape, but both were basically wounded and worn.  My guess is that they had not seen any varnish, oil or care for some 30 years.  Here is the credenza in its new home.

What you see is the result of furniture stripper, sanding, light staining and Tung Oil.  I first tried varnish but was not happy with the results.  I am pleased with this look, which seems fitting for my office.  Below is the top of the desk.  Check out the beautiful wood choice by the artists/woodworkers who first made this.

Below is a bit broader picture of the desk in its setting.  You might not see, but I have left the desk for books, and made a little computer table for the side.  It is made of a piece of glass found at Goodwill for $5.00 (Canadian!  Cheaper in the USA!!).  A set of legs was found at the Restore (an arm of Habitat for Humanity) for $ 15.00.  On the ledge behind I have set another piece of glass (this one $ 3.00) sitting upon ten four inch cylinders of wood.  These cylinders are slices of a large branch that came down from our maple tree in the ice storm this last December.  This allows me the luxury of stand up computing without investing hundreds of dollars in a desk with adjustable heights.

This was a most exciting and invigorating way to spend my July.  I learned a lot, much of which does not admit expression, but allow me this single summary:  honest work that taxes the body sometimes salves the soul.