Reflections on
Turning 80
September 7, 2026
Next Thursday, September 10, 2026, my twin brother and I
will turn 80 years old. Yesterday I led worship at Monroe Congregational United
Church of Christ, a church I served as pastor for nearly 13 years some years
ago and of which my wife is now the pastor. I had written a sermon for that
service, but as I was driving to Monroe something occurred to me. I had
previously given a sermon titled “Reflections on Turning 60” at that Monroe
church, and I had given a sermon titled “Reflections on Turning 70” at the
other church I once served, First Congregational Church of Maltby. So all of a
sudden I wanted to ditch the sermon I had written and instead give some off the
cuff remarks on any wisdom I may have learned in 80 years of life. So that’s
what I did, and I think it went well. Although there is no written text at all
of what I said, I want here to try to capture some of those words for this blog
though I develop these ideas more here than I could while speaking to a
gathered church congregation as part of a worship service.
It’s been quite a ride. I was born the second and smaller of
premature twins. The doctors who attended my birth told my parents I wasn’t
going to live through my first night. Obviously, I did. There have been various
turning points in my life. My first wife Francie coming to be with me in 1972. The
birth of my son in 1974. A year in Soviet Russia 1975-76. My completing my PhD
in Russian history in 1977.The birth of my daughter later in 1977. My
completing my law degree in 1981. More than 20 years of law practice that ended
in severe burnout and depression by 1997. My obtaining my Master of Divinity
degree in 2000. My call as pastor of Monroe Congregational UCC followed by my
ordination to the ministry of Jesus Christ in 2002. Francie’s death later in
2002. My marriage to Jane in 2004. My retirement from active ministry at the
end of 2017. Quite a rollercoaster of a life, or so it seems to be as I look at
it in retrospect.
They say wisdom comes with age. I’m not at all sure that I’m
all that wise, but I did share some thoughts with the Monroe congregation this
morning that I think are worth recording here. I told them of three bits of
what I think is wisdom that I have learned in the course of 80 years on this
earth. Here they are:
First. The most important work any person can do is to
discern who they really are, then do what they can to live into being that
person as fully as possible. Not to be the person your culture has formed you
to be. Not to be the person your family expects or demands that you be. Not to
be who your ego wants you to be. Not to live for success, or wealth, or power,
or prestige. No, the most important work anyone can do is to discern who they
really are and then get on with being that person.
It’s harder than it may sound to discern who we really are. We
are all formed by the culture in which we grow up. That culture, or at least
the still-dominant culture of my home country in which I grew up, tells you who
you are supposed to be. It tells us men in particular that we are supposed to
be breadwinners. We are supposed to be successful, with success measured by the
acquisition of wealth or power or both. We’re supposed to make lots of money.
We’re supposed to be strong or at least to appear to be. We’re supposed to be
self-sufficient. It still tells women that they are supposed to be wives and
mothers. Or it tells them that if they work outside the home, they are supposed
to be subordinate to the men in their workplace. It tells them there are roles
that are appropriate for them and roles that are not. We cannot avoid the
culture in which we grow up, and we cannot avoid the ways in which that culture
makes us who it wants us to be never mind who we really are.
So how do we discover who we really are? Sometimes that
discovery begins with some kind of crisis. It may be a radical change in the
circumstances of one’s life. It may be a great personal loss. It may be
learning through painful experience that you aren’t being who you really are.
It almost always takes a good deal of inner work. It takes dream analysis. It
may take the help of a really good psychological therapist, preferably, in my
opinion and experience, a Jungian one. It can happen in many different ways,
but perhaps it will help if I use myself as an example.
When I got my PhD in history in 1977, I knew that I was very
unlikely to get a college teaching job. There just weren’t any openings to
speak of in the mid-1970s. So I went to law school. I began practicing law in
1981. At first I found the practice of law in a big downtown law firm almost
unbelievably exciting. I was damned near high on it. Yet I was never all that
successful at it. I worked for three different downtown law firms and didn’t
make partner at any of them. That, however, didn’t spark my quest for my true
self. I left downtown and tried to run my own law office in the suburbs
beginning in 1992. That went well enough for a while, but by 1994 I was running
into real trouble. I was finding it extremely difficult to do the little bit of
law work I was able to bring in.
So in the next three years I experienced two episodes of
inner work that changed my life. In 1994 did a Jungian psychological exercise
called active imagination. In that exercise you basically clear your mind and
ask yourself a question about whatever it is that has been troubling you. I
asked myself: “Why am I having so much trouble practicing law?” With absolutely
no time at all having passed a voice from deep within my bellowed: “You’re not
a lawyer!” Well, I knew that was ridiculous. I argued with the voice. I said I’m
sitting in my law office. It says Thomas C. Sorenson, Attorney-at-Law on the
front door. But once again came the voice: “You’re not a lawyer!” So I asked the
voice what I was. It immediately said: “You’re a preacher.” Well, that was
about the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. Still, I could tell there was
no point arguing with the voice though I also knew that what it was saying made
not one lick of sense. I ended the exercise and went on trying to practice law.
I tried for three more years, and I did it with no success whatsoever.
Then, in early 1997, while I was seeing a Jungian analyst
regularly, I had a dream. I was walking across a beach toward an open, endless
expanse of water; and I was wearing wingtip shoes, the kind of shoes I wore
then I dressed up as a lawyer, say for going to court. I came to the edge of
the water and stopped. Then the dream ended. My Jungian analyst knew
immediately what the dream meant though I took me a while to figure it out. I
had gone as far as I could go as a lawyer. Some open expanse lay before me, but
it wasn’t yet clear just what that expanse was or where it would lead me.
Where it led me was to seminary though I couldn’t at first
have told you why. As part of my seminary training I did a year of pastoral
internship during my second year of
study. In the course of that internship I at long last discovered who I really
am. I am a Christian church pastor and preacher at heart. At least
professionally speaking, that is who I really am. Thank God that from 2002 to
the end of 2017 I was able to live into being that person. That’s the first big
of what I think is wisdom that I gave the Monroe church this morning though in
much abbreviated form. Do whatever it takes, no matter how hard it may be, to
discover who you really are, then get on with being that person.
Second. I told that congregation this morning that love is
the only thing that makes life worth living. It is what makes living the life
of the person you really are worth living. Living that life brings great inner
satisfaction; but without love, life is empty. Life is lonely. Life is
incomplete and a person is unfulfilled. I know this truth because I have had
the love of my parents, of two women whom I have loved and to whom I have been
married, and of my two children and their five children. The happiest days of
my life are all connected with love. The day Francie came to be with me. The
day my son was born. The day my daughter was born. The loss of Francie, when my
love changed into grief. My marriage to Jane. The love of two people for each
other is simply the best thing there is—and it doesn’t matter what their
genders are. Love needn’t and shouldn’t be restricted to one’s life partner or
even to one’s larger family. It can extend to others and even all of God’s
creation. In any event, love is what makes life worth living, and nothing else
ever can or does.
Third. I told that congregation about God’s love. I told
them what I am convinced is the most important truth there is. God loves each
and every person who has ever lived, who is alive today, or who ever will live
absolutely. Unconditionally. God relates to us in grace to vast we can’t even
begin to understand it. And we don’t have to earn it, not that we could if we
had to.
The Christian churches have, for the most part, done a
despicably bad job of preaching and teaching that truth. They say you have live
the right way and not the wrong way or God will damn you. They say you have to
believe the right things and not the wrong things or God will damn you. And
it just ain’t so! God calls us not to earn grace, for what you earn is
payment not grace. God calls us to open our minds, hearts, and souls to the
unimaginably immense grace that is already there in and through God. Then God calls
us to live into that grace by living lives of grace toward all of creation.
So that’s what I told that congregation in Monroe as I
reflected on turning 80. I don’t claim to be all that wise by myself, but I am
convinced to the marrow of my bones that these three things are the wisdom the
world and everyone in it needs. I have come to know and express them through a
life that has been quite a rollercoaster. It has involved a lot of study with
many people much wiser than I am. These truths ground my life and get me
through even the hardest of times. I pray that, perhaps, they can do that for
you too.
