On The Journey To Becoming a Man

In May 2005 I was turning fifty, and I was feeling ambivalent, uncertain that I deserved a celebration or had enough friends who would join me as guests. But I remembered a lesson I had learned from living as an assistant at L'Arche, that everyone's life is worthy of celebration. So I swallowed my sense of undeservedness and said, "Let's have a big party with all the things I love: lots of friends, family, music, story, song, laughter and some fund-raising for a good cause as well. Like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, we built the party and the people came and it was wonderful.
And now I am fifty and synergy is happening in my life. The lessons I have learned, the people I know and have known, are connecting like roots under the earth, and there is a flowering at the surface of my life and fruits to share. It is with deep humility and gratitude that I recognize I am experiencing in many ways that all I am, know and can be is being put to use in the world. I truly believe this is in answer to the deepest yearning of my soul, that all I am can make a difference and I can be a sign in my own small way of God's Kingdom.
I don't know if it has taken me fifty years to become a man, but I think I am experiencing something similar to the tree that has survived so much and now finds itself a source of shade and shelter for birds and squirrels. I end this way in loving memory of my great friend and the inspired humorist Peter Rotterman, for he loved squirrels, birds and corny jokes, and we both loved song and were a little bit nuts (in a nice way).

- Tim Greenwood