a hope dashed

It's a bit hard to believe, but I'm turning 40 in about a month. ("Nooooo!" Heather wails.) And the other day, I started wondering if I was having some sort of mid-life crisis.

I was mulling over a frustrating conversation, and I guess I began to realize that it had been a hope or dream of mine to one day be recognized as an important thinker. It's embarrassing to admit. I guess it was just that I spent so much time thinking, and came to a few conclusions that seemed pretty important and good, and perhaps I wanted someone (or lots of people) to notice. Appreciate my probing and incisive intellect. Maybe I'd argue with important theologians. Anyway. I realized that now it seems, with where I am and what it looks like I'll be doing, that that little hope will probably never be fulfilled.

Of course I know it's not a very noble hope, and I've told myself enough times that I don't really want that. And I think I really don't. But I guess there's still some emotional attachment to childish self-aggrandizing hopes.

Considering this, though, I remembered that I've often told others that if we truly have a deep understanding of something, we should be able to explain it to anyone, on their own level, in the language they understand. So perhaps the bigger challenge that is before me is to be able to share some of these good and important conclusions with the people who come here, who are very far from theologians. Who would probably laugh at theologians. Who have little patience or respect for big words and big theories that don't have much to do with the day-to-day challenges they face.

That seems to me a worthy challenge. And one that won't gratify any remaining desires for attention or appreciation by "important" people. This also seems much closer to what Jesus used his (divine) intellect for—not for impressing theologians, but for preaching good news to the poor.