Resolution for 2024: Being Generative

Happy 2024 to all!

The great psychoanalyst Erik Erikson said that if a person doesn’t become generative somewhere between the ages of 50 and 65, then they begin to enter a period called “estrangement” when one pulls oneself away from one's very self and from the rest of the world. Essentially your life continues to be about building your own personal tower and living there—protected from the world. On the other hand, becoming a generative person means becoming one who generates life for the next generations and not just for themselves.

Being generative is my resolution for this year. That includes my work helping to make the Community Cafe and the Wills Creek Museum realities in Cumberland (watch for an events page updating progress on these two projects soon). It includes staying in touch with friends and family as well as reaching out to build new relationships. It means taking care of body and soul so that I can have the energy to do this work. And it means capturing my experiences over a lifetime of ministry--particularly South Africa--to illuminate for others ways to be generative in one's communities and the wider world.

So, in my January and February podcasts, I will move forward to my time in South Africa and tell the stories of the places and people that helped to teach me to be generative. Although I learned some of this generativity from my family and early communities, South Africa is where I truly learned this way of being in the world. I'll return to my call story within these experiences from time to time and more directly discuss the call in March and April.

Please find the latest podcast--just posted yesterday--on Being Generative-- by clicking on the podcast heading on the Home page. The first podcast is about Camp CTK, the camp that my husband and I founded in South Africa.

I leave you this week with a photo of South Africa wildlife and a poem for the New Year

by Anne Hillman

We look with uncertainty

Beyond the old choices for

Clear-cut answers

To a softer, more permeable aliveness

Which is every moment

At the brink of death;

For something new is being born in us

If we but let it.

We stand at a new doorway,

Awaiting that which comes....

Daring to be human creatures.

Vulnerable to the beauty of existence.

Learning to love.