We All Fall, But If We’re Lucky We Fall Upward

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(OPINION) I knew an older preacher once whose main complaint was that he sometimes had to deal with a few parishioners who were, in his words, “so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good.”

I took him to mean there are some Christians who’ve ventured into some foreign territory where the day-to-day concerns of practical or even church life hold little claim on them anymore.

They can’t work up a head of steam about getting new windows for the sanctuary or changing the oil in the church bus or arguing over who is or isn’t deserving of baptism.

They don’t care about such stuff. They prefer to spend all day hanging out with Jesus, if they can.

Since it’s a pastor’s job to see that the more mundane tasks are addressed, and since every pastor needs volunteers eager to help get those things done, such spiritual goofballs can seem of little practical worth.

Today I find myself in a related quandary. I’m a pastor myself who needs to ensure the church carpets get cleaned, the lightbulbs changed and the water bill paid.

On the other hand, over the past 20 years, I’ve increasingly become one of those sappy folks my preacher friend complained about. I often fear I’ve become so heavenly minded I’m no earthly good.

Recently I listened to the audio version of a marvelous book that helped explain what’s happened to me and to various spiritual seekers across the millennia, not only in Christianity but among virtually all major faiths.

The book is Richard Rohr’s “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.” I’m now reading the print version.

I mention Rohr in this space periodically. He’s a Franciscan priest who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico and has written more than 20 books.

He’s among a handful of contemporary Christian writers who resonate for me. He’s not for all tastes, as he admits — but he’s helped me make sense of the transitions in my spiritual journey.

In “Falling Upward,” he divides our lifelong spiritual quest into what he calls the first and second halves of life.

These halves don’t necessarily align with chronological age. You might encounter a 30-year-old who’s already reached the second half, and you regularly find 80-year-olds stuck in the first half.

But according to Rohr, who draws in part on the work of the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the first half of life is universal and necessary. We all spend time there.

In the first half, we’re working out three overriding concerns: our identity, our security and our sexuality/gender.

We’re finding our way. We’re preoccupied with succeeding, proving ourselves right, protecting our career, establishing who is or isn’t part of our religious sect, devising rules by which we can exclude others who don’t measure up to our standards.

In short, we’re controlled by what Rohr calls the fear-based preoccupations of the lizard brain. Again, this is natural.

Then, at some point, something happens. Unfortunately, it’s usually something cataclysmic: a professional meltdown, a moral disgrace, the death of a loved one, the addiction of a beloved child. Maybe multiple things.

Whatever form it takes, it’s so agonizing it destroys our previous ego-driven assumptions about ourselves, our core group and God. Our foundational truths turn out to have been illusions. This is the “falling” of the book’s title. Such a fall can destroy us if we let it.

But it also can serve as an upward call. People who are (take your pick) very fortunate, very blessed or very perceptive sometimes find their apocalypse mysteriously — and counter-intuitively — moving them onto another spiritual plane. The old concerns fall away. New, better things come.

Having lost everything, such people are no longer afraid of losing. They don’t care about defending their turf because they no longer have a turf. Having had their former beliefs demolished, they don’t assume they know everything — or anything.

Having been rejected by folks they used to hold dear, they find it easy to reach out compassionately to other rejected people. Having been failed by their institutions, they’re content to meander quietly along their own path.

They begin to see themselves as mere atoms in an infinite whole, as connected to the entire web of creation rather than as country club swells or Lutherans or Americans.

And they discover an overwhelming sense of God’s serene, unconditional love. It’s as if the good Lord not only didn’t desert them after all but was drawing them to this happier place so he could welcome them home.

In a sense, I agree with my late preacher friend. When you run into second-half-of-life people, it’s hard to get them ginned up about the carpet or the bus or even a hot-button political issue. Such matters don’t interest them anymore.

They’ve taken up residence elsewhere. They’re not trying to fix everything; they’re OK with who they are, where they are and with who everybody else is, too.

Why, they’d just as soon sit around all day praising God. They’ve fallen upward.

Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.