Of Love and Death – Retirement and a New Ethic of Rainbow Shoes

Today, this combo Valentines Day/Ash Wednesday of 2024, I renew my blog after a 10-year hiatus. I’ll use Lent as my excuse to reconnect with writing as a spiritual practice, and I do so noticing an interesting juxtaposition of Love and Death today.  It feels like a pair of new shoes.

The photo depicts my new shoes that arrived yesterday. I love them. They are comfortable and colorful – two values I hold in high esteem. Getting a new pair of shoes feels like I’m readying myself for something new, some new journey or pilgrimage to begin.

I retired as of the first of the year. That’s something – certainly a new era in my life is beginning.  I feel like I’m putting on my new shoes – one foot goes into the shoe called Love, and the other goes into the shoe called Death.  That sort of sums it up.

I’m finding my praying and meditations these days circle around how I might manifest both my own and God’s love in the world. Noble, I know, but not as easy as one might think. As a newly retired clergyperson, I'm exploring a new sense of identity without the leadership responsibilities of institutional church employment. I’m waiting to see where God’s love will nudge me, and how I might express it in ways that are unmediated by institutional roles and expectations and are more authentic to my truest self.  In some ways, it’s more like taking OFF my shoes and standing barefoot and vulnerable, tender skin to rocky earth.  I'm afraid my free and unfettered feet might hurt a bit.  There's some comfort to institutional, well-formed traditions and roles. But, like old shoes, they may have lost their shape and support that's needed in this new era.  It's really hard to love oneself and others (and God for that matter) when your feet hurt.  So, LOVE is a good impetus, invitation, and preparation to venture forth with vulnerability and authenticity. Be sure you have some good shoes.

Death is the other shoe…the shoe that will finally drop.  Ash Wednesday is of course the day we Christians get the wake-up call that tells us we’re all going to die and we’re really not much different than the dirt beneath our shoes. I guess its good to be reminded of that at least annually.  In retirement, I’m finding, death is drawing a bit closer and actually has taken on a bit more form and shape: a shadow that appears just out of the corner of my eye, a serial killer (literally!) that may be hiding around corners, ready to jump out and surprise me with some unwanted news of how fragile my body really is.  

So today, I’ve put on these two shoes.  Like the colors on my new shoes, they merge and flow together to create something quite appealing when I look down.  I wonder what this era of my life can be if I live a new ethic of the imminence of death focusing and intensifying love, and love being the catalyst to transform the fear, pain and finality of death.  The yin and yang of rainbow shoes on my feet, love and death, stepping together in a graceful dance.