David Roper: Leaving work behind can be a good thing

In Homer's Odyssey, battle-weary Odysseus sets sail for Ithaca, his island home off the coast of Greece, after years of fighting at Troy. Along the way he encounters the goddess Circe who tells him he must go to the underworld to consult the ghost of an old prophet, Teiresias, from whom he would gain wisdom for his last years on Earth.

Later, on the edge of Hades, Odysseus does indeed meet the seer who instructs him: "When you get home É you must take a well-made oar and carry it on and on, till you come to a country where the people have never heard of the sea and do not even mix salt with their food, nor do they know anything about ships, and oars that are as the wings of a ship. I will give you this certain token that cannot escape your notice. A wayfarer will meet you and will say it must be a winnowing shovel that you have got upon your shoulder; on this you must fix the oar in the ground."

Odysseus was to leave his oar - the sign of his vocation - in a far-off place where people had never heard of the sea or his sea-going exploits. Then, the prophet promised, "Your life shall ebb away gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people will bless you."

Battle-weary Odysseus had faced adventure after adventure for years as he tried to get home. Yet though "hackney'd [bored] in business, wearied at that oar," he was still striving to find meaning in his sea-going endeavors. Thus, leaving his oar in a far-off place becomes a vivid metaphor for leaving his work behind. Only then can he "ebb away gently, full of years and peace of mind." For most of us, however, leaving our work behind can be more difficult than it sounds.

I have a friend who, until this past summer, was a veteran pilot for a major airline. We happened to run into one another the day he reached mandatory retirement age. "Last night I made a very difficult landing in a snowstorm in Chicago with several hundred lives in my hands. To my crew and passengers I was a god!" he mused. "Today I'm hardly anyone at all." Most retirees can identify. Retirement not only robs us of our work, it may also rob us of our self-worth, for much of our identity is tied up in what we do.

It's significant to me that one of the first things people say when they first meet is, "What do you do?" which is another way of saying, "Who are you?" and thus we define one another by our vocations. I wonder how we would respond if, on meeting us, people would ask, "Who are you?" I'm not sure many of us would know what to say, because without our work, we don't know who we are.

It's not surprising, then, that retirement frustrates our sense of self-regard. We're no longer needed; we're not in demand. We have no colleagues to impress and no one to command or control. We're left out of the circles of power. Our advice is no longer sought. We're nobodies. As Tolkien's hobbit Merry said to Treebeard, "We get left out of the old lists and the old stories."

But what if we view all these losses as a good thing? For losses, properly understood, become the means by which we gain more of God and find rest in His love for us. There is really only one necessity in life: resting in the love of the One who is Love itself. "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

Truth be known, our vocations will never bring wholeness and satisfaction, no matter what we've achieved. While work is part of the created order, and God does bless the work of our hands, our anxious endeavors will never bring us the happiness we crave. Rest and peace come only from living in the love of God.

We should then welcome retirement, for in it we're releasedÉ

From anxious thoughts how wealth may be increased,

How to secure, in some propitious hour,

The point of interest or the post of power...

Safe from the clamors of perverse dispute,

At least are friendly to the great pursuit [of God].

William Cowper

Put another way, retirement provides an opportunity to purify our hearts. A pure heart is an undivided heart in which there is but one desire: to be loved by God and to love Him in return. In that love we possess the joy we sought but never found in all our years of work or play, and thus, like Homer's Odysseus, we may ebb away gently, "full of years and peace of mind."

David & Carolyn Roper co-direct the work of Idaho Mountain Ministries, a ministry of clergy care. David is the author of 14 books. The most recent: "Teach Us To Number Our Days." His musings are archived on http://davidroper. blogspot.com/