Ever notice how your eyes have to adjust when you move from a light room to a darker one? It takes the eyes longer to make out shapes, figures, and people.

Going through a transition in life into a new phase is similar. You can’t quite make out the new images and shapes of faith you need to adapt to. You truly must become a new person.

For most of us, God calls us to new shapes of faith throughout our lives. Sometime, those new shapes are simply a rolling over from our last shape of faith. Other times…, not so much. Deeper faith is always a challenge.

And, there is no going back to the way you were. NO WAY. Your only way out if forward. It’s like going from the light into the dark. You need time to adjust to who you will become now.

Retirement is definitely a move from light to dark, where the future is not so clear. Things will take time to become clearer.

So, whatever you are going through now will have to face new images of you, new ways of seeing things. The shape of your faith will have to adjust to this new reality.

Some of the things we will have to change are—

1. How we use our time.

2. Deciding what our new priorities should be.

3. Changing friendships, meeting new people.

4. Adjusting to a lower income.

5. Becoming more just-the-two-of-us.

6. What it means to be Christian in this new Quantum Era.

As I’ve aged things I did not understand in my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s are now making more sense. You will find that in your life as well.

Progressive perspective.

If we do not adapt to these new realities we will become stuck in our old ways. There may have been safety there— But we cannot stay there.

Adapt. Adjust. Become something other than who/what you were. Jesus had to when he came to earth.

Find hope my friend, in the God Who knows you,

Gary

NEXT– thoughts on moving beyond.

I Am Waiting

BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

I am waiting for my case to come up

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America

and wail

and I am waiting

for the discovery

of a new symbolic western frontier

and I am waiting

for the American Eagle

to really spread its wings

and straighten up and fly right

and I am waiting

for the Age of Anxiety

to drop dead

and I am waiting

for the war to be fought

which will make the world safe

for anarchy

and I am waiting

for the final withering away

of all governments

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming

and I am waiting

for a religious revival

to sweep thru the state of Arizona

and I am waiting

for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored

and I am waiting

for them to prove

that God is really American

and I am waiting

to see God on television

piped onto church altars

if only they can find

the right channel

to tune in on

and I am waiting

for the Last Supper to be served again

with a strange new appetizer

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting

for the Salvation Army to take over

and I am waiting

for the meek to be blessed

and inherit the earth

without taxes

and I am waiting

for forests and animals

to reclaim the earth as theirs

and I am waiting

for a way to be devised

to destroy all nationalisms

without killing anybody

and I am waiting

for linnets and planets to fall like rain

and I am waiting for lovers and weepers

to lie down together again

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed

and I am anxiously waiting

for the secret of eternal life to be discovered

by an obscure general practitioner

and I am waiting

for the storms of life

to be over

and I am waiting

to set sail for happiness

and I am waiting

for a reconstructed Mayflower

to reach America

with its picture story and tv rights

sold in advance to the natives

and I am waiting

for the lost music to sound again

in the Lost Continent

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day

that maketh all things clear

and I am awaiting retribution

for what America did

to Tom Sawyer

and I am waiting

for Alice in Wonderland

to retransmit to me

her total dream of innocence

and I am waiting

for Childe Roland to come

to the final darkest tower

and I am waiting

for Aphrodite

to grow live arms

at a final disarmament conference

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting

to get some intimations

of immortality

by recollecting my early childhood

and I am waiting

for the green mornings to come again

youth’s dumb green fields come back again

and I am waiting

for some strains of unpremeditated art

to shake my typewriter

and I am waiting to write

the great indelible poem

and I am waiting

for the last long careless rapture

and I am perpetually waiting

for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn

to catch each other up at last

and embrace

and I am awaiting

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “I Am Waiting” from A Coney Island of the Mind. Copyright © 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation, www.wwnorton.com/nd/welcome.htm.

Source: These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1993)

Tag: poetry

New Eyes of Faith

I am waiting

I Am Waiting

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I Am Waiting

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