A new year, a new chapter in life, a new day to pick up the pen – er, keyboard – and write away.
The new year for me – starting tomorrow – is 69. Hard to remember what I imagined this was going to feel like back in 1974 when I was 19. But here I am.
Actually, I don’t think I ever thought of what it would be like to be on the edge of my eighth decade. Old, I guess. But I am discovering it is a time of new beginnings, fresh energy (surprisingly), more creativity, and certainly more lived experience to add to the equation.
When a group of diverse people come together, they bring a lot of gifts. When a person with much lived experience reflects on their own experiences, they discover those life experiences bring a lot to the table – the rough patches as well as the glorious summits. All have much to contribute. Wisdom, we tend to call it.
However, wisdom is not the same as experience. I know people who have lived long without ever having discovered the usefulness of wisdom. How they made it this far is an act of God.
In contrast, I know young people who have much wisdom to offer. Even though their experiences are limited, they’ve learned to reflect on what they’ve discovered in life and to connect the dots in ways meaningful beyond measure.
Whether I have wisdom to share is a subjective matter, wisdom perhaps being in the eye of the beholder. But experience, especially a breadth and depth of experience, does tend to come with age. And those experiences have much to draw from.
My life has already seen many chapters – growing up, college and college ministry, living overseas, being a parent, hitting a wall of depression and dislocation, discovering life after the wall, and more. Each of these chapters has contained volumes.
The new chapter is semi-retirement. Earlier in 2023, my wife, Kim, and I downsized and moved to Salem, Oregon, a medium-sized community in the center of the verdant Willamette Valley nestled between the white Cascades and the wet Coastal Range. Kim completed her work running wraparound community-based programs for public elementary schools. I completed my thirteen years leading a statewide, faith-based nonprofit. Now we enter semi-retirement – a time to remain active, albeit with a higher degree of discretion.
My sense is life has a lot more to teach me. Watching older friends grow, well, older, I note that there are big unknown factors, especially health. Some people, such as my ninth grade French and Algebra teacher Luella Dreyer, have continued to enjoy a long and engaging life right past the century mark. Others have passed away all too quickly or are facing long slow declines in mental and physical abilities. Who knows what my future holds?
Given that I have no idea what my future has in store for me – except for a certain eternity – I will presume the next chapter to be a semi-retirement still allowing for productive output in ministry and life. There are spouse and family to love, friends to connect with, people and places to serve, new experiences to enjoy, books to read, music to hear, movies to watch, gardens to tend, trails to hike, and on and on. It is indeed a new and exciting day.
The new day means getting back to one of my great loves – writing. There are a couple more books brewing on the stove and I’m cranking back up the old blogging skill. Some friends have suggested a podcast, which may or may not be a bridge too far. We’ll see. There’s only so much new tech skill this old codger can master in a given year. One step at a time.
All that said, this writing habit needs supporting. Writing for pay is an iffy proposition, though I’ll certainly try. But living without pay is an even more iffy proposition, so I will definitely try to earn my keep.
So, I’m offering a skill I’ve been honing for years – coaching. By coaching, I mean contracting with younger leaders (aren’t they all, presidential candidates excepting?) to help them grow. Helping ministers and nonprofit leaders get to the next level in their leadership skills. Walking with students through the exhausting doctoral dissertation process.
Why not keep doing what you love, right?
For those of you just joining the conversation, this is the sixth post in my new blog series, On a Journey in the Borderlands. I’ll focus on my passion – how we are to live out what we believe in the borderlands of life, something that impacts so much else, including that nasty of nasties, politics. Living out what you believe is the heart of ethics, my academic field. And by borderlands, I mean the places where our own cultures of faith intersect other worlds of thought and ideas. We’ll explore faith, ministry, politics, ethics, justice, compassion, cultures, stories, books, movies, and so much more.
If you have a topic or question you’d like me to tackle, I won’t promise anything (I am retired after all, which means the freedom to say “No”), but you can always ask. Just private message me on Facebook or reach out to me on my website HowardKenyon.com/contact/. Carrier pigeon might also work, depending on the bird.
Want to sign up to receive the blog? Go to that same contact page on my website. Want to read posts already published? Click here.
And if you could use some coaching, let me know. Or pass this on to someone who could. I’ll have the full announcement on April 23. Watch this space.
Meanwhile this old man has a lot of living to get on with!