The Age of Aquarius
I was just thirteen at the ‘Dawning of the Age of Aquarius’. This infectious song still seems to permeate western culture with its moon-struck optimism and idealism. Freedom, peace, innovation, equality, rights and justice are the bi-words of a boom that refuses to go bust. The teeming collectives, in their passion for change, reject the status-quo and expect nothing short of upheaval. Deconstruction has been Declared, and the Charter has taken flight.
The news, in pages like these, is full of it — stories about the quest to be on the right side of history. But while the past is crushed and brushed aside to make way for the new, we cover up the troubles that corrupt this new milieu and bury the blessings that have been our inheritance. I would rather live in the Light of another dawn, where every nook and cranny is made known.
This is where I stand, neither to the left or to the right, but feet feeling their way through the middle, between the past and the future, between the good and the bad, between certainty and doubt. I seek a posture of tolerance and conviction, neither wishy-washy or dogmatic, and I rest in the knowledge that God’s grace has been and is at work, in spite of and through our postures.
It’s a principled stand (thoughtfully taken), but it’s also a happenstance (worth exploring). I was born smack dab in the middle of the baby boom. I am the eldest of seven, five of whom burst forth before the boom ended. My mother is also the eldest, so that puts me at the front of the second generation pack. Responsibility!
My parents immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands separately, in 1953, and married two years later. So, when I was born (exactly nine months later), they and the 21,000 who came with them, had been away from ‘home’ for only three years yet — hardly enough time to assimilate. Presto! Out of the gate with a second language.
I was born in Sarnia, one of the few places where immigrant pastors managed to coral everyone into one denomination, the Christian Reformed Church. Unity! A detour to Clinton in the early sixties put me under the pastoral care of the first of two mild-mannered Slofstras. My teenage years were under the spell of Rev. Heinie Venema and Rev. Melle Pool. Kingdom! They also encompassed the first of two church starts (Redeemer and Jubilee) and experiences of setting up and worshipping in a gymnasium. Adapt!
My father came to Canada as qualified teacher and a church organist. But his countrymen did not pay very well, so he floated through Presbyterian, Lutheran and Anglican denominations playing for pay. Ecumenism! Our recroom in Sarnia featured a two manual pedal organ and a drum set, side by side, and my father’s and brother’s playing have been among the most inspired I’ve known. One in the Spirit!
In Sarnia Christian School, I had my dad as a teacher. But in public high school I Iearned to be in the world, not of the world. My youth coincided with the heyday of AACS/ICS family conferences, and I went to university in Toronto to be close to the heart. And that’s just the first eighteen years.
All of this and much more have caused me to take note of the old and the new in a world that is teetering unnecessarily at the edge of an abyss. I prefer the long view and join with the Cloud in proclaiming the Age of Grace.