It's the Last Quarter

Here's to Leaving it All on the Field

My posts so far have embraced a theme — shedding. Getting rid of excess to prepare for — what’s next. So what is next?

Have you ever dreamed of leaving it all behind and starting over in a new place? Like, a new country even?

Ireland. I moved to Ireland. I am an assisting priest in the Church of Ireland, serving on the Dingle Peninsula, and stationed here—Kilgobbin. It means Gobbin’s Church. Nobody knows who Gobbin was. He or she lived long long ago, (maybe a monk?) and could not have anticipated that this architectural gem would one day bear his or her name.

I like the obscure saints best. I like it that one does not have to make a splash to follow Jesus. Don’t worry about legacy. Simply do your bit. That’s what sainthood is.

People in Ireland ask why we moved here. Funny—nobody in the US ever asked that question. They heard the news with awe. The difference perhaps is that people in the US think we moved into a Disney movie. Not to the Ireland that struggles with insufficient housing and drugs and suicide, just like every other place on earth. Except there aren’t guns. And it is drop dead gorgeous. There is that. Reason enough to feel awe. Helen and I do, every day, when we open the curtains and look out the window.

Anyway, the question nobody asks is the one I ask myself. Why, at the age of seventy-one, have I picked up roots, left all my friends and doctors behind, and taken a new job? Why not enjoy retirement?

My mother retired. Three times. I guess she didn’t do retirement well. At the same age I am now, she shed her furniture, her friends, her jewelry (I got her wedding ring!) and bought a boutique hotel and restaurant in a gritty little tourist town in Costa Rica. You’ll read more about that in the coming years.

After many, many years of self-differentiation, I have come round to embracing what I take from her. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. At age seventy-one, I still have one more quarter of a lifetime to go. It’s only one quarter. So there’s no time to waste.

In sport there is a saying—It’s the last quarter. You have to leave it all on the field. Whatever is left in you, this is your last chance to use it up.

Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death! Live!

What is your current quarter? So where/why/how do you want to live it?