On turning 40

Equality and inequality in the time we get in life

Perhaps the only way the world is fair is that we all get 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “That is where equality in so many ways ends,” wrote E. Carrington Heath. That observation has come back to me many times, with needed perspective and inconvenient truth. 

Thinking about this after I celebrated my 40th birthday on Sunday, it stands out to me that while we may have an equal number of hours a week, it is vastly unequal how many years each of us gets. It’s unfair also. As much as US society wants to imagine that if we follow a diet, exercise daily, pray fervently—or you name it—we will live a long life, that’s simply not the case for everyone. 

None of us chooses our genetic makeup, and we often can’t change what we’re exposed to in our environment. A few weeks ago there was a day when Chicago had the worst air of any city in the world. As Canadian wildfire smoke blew into our atmosphere, our air went above 250 on a 500 point scale—with 500 being the worst. Learning about the air quality index, I was even more alarmed to see how bad our air quality is on days when there aren’t warnings. 

Yesterday my cohousing community spent 90 minutes in the basement, like many of our neighbors in our county, because of tornadoes. The toddler enjoyed the surprise extension of bedtime, but the rest of us were uncomfortably aware of how quickly disaster could come upon us.

When I was born in the early 1980s, my father was an organizer for the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, called SANE. The threat of widespread nuclear devastation was very real. As a preteen I read books about the suffering of Japanese people for decades after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. I grew up knowing that there were world-ending perils, and I also lived my life. And the world didn’t end. 

Looking back four decades later, I’m not sure yet if it is a hopeful thought. Maybe humanity will come back from the brink of destruction again this time. Or perhaps it’s too late, even if behavior changes as climate change harms an increasing number of people, including wealthy Western ones. Or maybe humanity will yet wipe itself out with nuclear weapons. Who knows?

I definitely don’t. For that reason, I’m grateful for the years I’ve lived. It’s natural that many people have mixed feelings about turning 40, or even dread it. But gratitude is truly what I came up with as I thought about how I’m feeling. (A funny way to put it, I know, but at 40 I’ve stopped trying to change my quirks. Also, Enneagram Ones know what I’m talking about.) 

Yet turning 40 is sobering, what with being roughly the midpoint of the current life expectancy for a North American. During twelve years of hospital chaplaincy, I’ve accompanied people of widely varying lifespans. I’ve honored a request from a grieving woman to bless the body of her child, miscarried at 15 weeks gestation. I’ve listened to bereaved families tell their stories of an elder who lived past 100. And many losses in between. I count myself lucky and blessed for every chance to bear witness to someone’s life. Including mine, four decades so far.

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Book update

My manuscript for What You Sow Is a Bare Seed: A Countercultural Christian Community during Five Decades of Change has an anticipated release date: August 15! I’ve submitted my final corrections, and now I’m making an index. I hope to see the cover design soon.

Last week a dear person from the Community of Christ, Judith Anderson Glass, died in her early eighties. I’m grateful for the time she took to share her memories and reflections about the Community with me, and for the articles she published in the Community’s publications, Stance and the Lenten Booklet. They are part of the legacy of a remarkable life.  

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Reading & listening

What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma, by Stephanie Foo, (Ballantine Books, 2022). Foo expertly weaves together first-person narrative with her interviews with researchers. She creates a readable (if painfully rough at points) account of what we know about the effects of trauma repeated over years and the treatments that can open a way to heal. 

The Long Afterlife of Libertarianism: As a movement, it has imploded. As a credo, it’s here to stay. New Yorker. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells. New Yorker June 5, 2023 issue

Reckless Disregard: A revered Supreme Court ruling protected the robust debate vital to democracy—but made it harder to constrain misinformation. Can we do better? By Jeannie Suk Gersen. New Yorker. May 22, 2023 issue

On childhood birthdays, I loved putting Stevie Wonder’s record Hotter than July on the turntable and playing “Happy Birthday.” In addition to its activist history (it was part of the successful campaign to make the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday), its chorus is way more fun than the traditional birthday song.