Midlife challenges us to develop our ability to change and to improvise. It also involves slowing down and making peace with the fact that we cannot control the universe. These are all alluded to in Barbara Cawthorne Crafton's (The Sewing Room, The Almost Daily eMOs: Mostly Reverent eMails) latest installment in her ongoing spiritual memoirs.
This author knows plenty about change. Injuries from being hit by a car brought on persistent pain which over the years has been aggravated by severe arthritis. After her ministry at Saint Clement's Church in New York City was cut short by a serious heart condition, she has had to improvise a new life.
We identify with the author's account of her own huge battle against egocentricity. It crops us everywhere. Perhaps it is just part of living in one of the most competitive cities in the world. Anyway, in a yoga class Crafton finds herself embarrassed about her stiffness: "I hadn't realized how important it was to me to be more flexible than other people. How important it is to be more everything than other people. How tiresome. I wonder idly if there is ever to be any end to my egocentricism. Probably not. The yoga teacher tells me to imagine myself bathed in soft white light. Good idea."
Whether writing about hummingbirds, her husband's secret of eternal youth, gardening, smoking, cats, or being a grandmother; Crafton is still trying to make sense of things at midlife. Everywhere she looks are clues of Divine involvement. "God transforms things," she writes. "We just show up and do our best."
