The Second Decade: 1958-1968

(Second in a series of life-reflections in the week before my 60th birthday.)

I have a hunch that for the most part our second decade is the one that sets so much of our lives in motion. It is the time when we set out on the discovery of ourselves and our potential place in the world. For me, this was the decade where death became real- and even intimate...

• Dad's brother, Uncle Carl. I was 11. Uncle Carl was neat. He worked for the Erie Lackawanna Railroad. We looked forward to seeing him. That's about all I know about him. He died suddenly in his sleep as far I remember. Again, we did not go to the funeral. We stayed with a neighbor. My 8-year old brother and I were felt, again, to be too young. The sadness of that was that two years later we had to attend our first funeral. Carl was 58.


• Mom. I was 13. She went into the hospital in November to try to find out what was wrong. They operated, found colon cancer, and closed her up. There was nothing to do but wait. She was gone by mid-February. We went to the funeral and the three things I remember are
  1) I bought my first suit and tie.
  2) I didn't want them to close the casket, just in case.
  3) Carl's widow, Aunt Mabel, told me I shouldn't smile at people when I said "Thank you" for their comments and condolences.
  Mom was 48.


• Dad's Father, Pop Pop. I was 15 and it was six days prior to JFK's assassination. He got sick, probably pneumonia, and died. He had been active, taking daily walks until a week or so before he got sick. He was 87 having been born in the centennial year of 1876.


• Dad. He lived six and a half years after his brain surgery on my 10th birthday. The tumor was benign but slowly grew back, as they expected. He actually spent the last year and a half of his life in the Veteran's Hospital in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. It always seemed like an endless drive to go visit him. His sister Aunt Ruth had moved in with us when Mom got sick and she remained our guardian. Dad 59.
  

It was also the decade when spirituality and faith began first to seep and then pour into me and my pilgrimage truly began...

• Bar Mitzvah on my 13th birthday. My mother was Jewish, of course. The war bride who probably shocked the home town more than just about anything else in those days. I had started Hebrew school when I was 11, I think. I would take the bus to Williamsport after school and then back home after class. There was something exciting about it. It was like finding a place. I didn't know much about it. Just learning Hebrew. We did not go to synagogue at all. Never. Until August 5, 1961 when I had my Bar Mitzvah and became a Child of the Law. I never went again until I was out of college and a Christian. Oddly, I remember the passage that the Rabbi used for my text and preached on:
  
  Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.


• Becoming a Christian and being baptized a couple months before my 16th birthday. An even longer story, better told in detail in another place. The short version is that my friend Dallas and his family invited me to go to church with them. They had been asking for a while on and off. Finally I said yes. It was the last week of June 1963, about 17 months after Mom had died. I skipped the next week and then started again. It was a very independent Baptist church. I went forward and was baptized at the end of May 1964. I was now truly part of a community. I didn't feel different, an outsider, any more.
  
  God had finally broken through into my soul. Jewish and Christian. I don't use words like "completed" or "messianic Jew." They both are part of the great stream of faith that I jumped into with both feet and still flow with.

And naturally

• A summer science program at Southern Illinois University and taking the train home by myself. It was between my 10th and 11th grades.
  
• High School graduation
• The first two years of college
• Radio (listening, being a disk jockey and newsman, manager of the college radio station)
• Playing trumpet in the band
  
• Rock and roll
  
• My first drink - and first drunk at the same time - at age 19
• 1968- no words needed.
  
• Kennedy, King, and Kennedy - with nothing more to add
• And finally, the beginnings and escalation of Vietnam.
  

Death and spirituality. The second decade of this life. There developed an intimacy with both. As I write this and look at the list I am overwhelmed by how much happened in that 10 year period. Some of the things above are common to my generation of early Baby Boomers. Others were my unique path to walk. Put together they set a tone for my life that lasts to this day. Among these are:

• The intimate awareness of death. Sometimes morbid and fearful, sometimes just a presence. The result has been an ability to minister in those difficult situations and not run in fear from them. Death is as real and present as life. As a result I absolutely insist on enjoying life. This life. As I have discovered over the 44 years since both my parents have died, life goes on. I will enjoy it- and make a difference while I am doing it.
• The absolutely positive fact that God is real and present in my life. I do not live by bread alone. I have tried not to live by bread alone. I don't always hear or feel or taste those words that come from the mouth of God, but I know they are there even when I have ignored them and tried my own way. God is patient and will not leave me. Period.
• Social justice and pacifism and the futility of war all came out in this period. They have not changed.
• My love of music was born in this decade. It has never abated and only increased. (Yes, I am even listening to music from iTunes as I write this!)