What has not changed. . .

Although retirement is a tricky word that is sometimes used to mean you don't have to do anything, the reality is that your vocations continue and retirement has little bearing on them.  For example, I have and will remain brother to my brother and retirement does not affect that except, perhaps, to give me more time and opportunity to exercise that vocation more fully.  I am and will remain husband to my wife and, although we see more of each other throughout the day, the vocation remains the same and retirement has little bearing upon it.  I am and will remain father to my three children and retirement does not change that -- although it might give me more opportunity to live it out with them.  I am and will remain grandfather to my two grandchildren and retirement is, at least in their eyes, a bonus since my accessibility will be greater for them both.  I am and will remain friend, neighbor, citizen, etc... and these callings are not much affected by whether you remain working or are retired.  Most of all, my calling as a child of God, flowing out of my baptism, is not in any way lessened or negated by the term retirement.

We frame too much of our lives in terms of what we want to do and too little in terms of what we are given to do.  A vocation is a calling and as such it conveys a sense of duty.  You are not a child or brother or spouse or parent or grandparent when you feel like it but always until you or they die.  I know that there are those who say you get to be a grandparent.  It is cute but too cloaked in sentiment to be useful.  A vocation is not what you get to do but what you are given to do.  It is a duty and it does involve a cost and it does require a sacrifice.  You are that sacrifice.  Your time, interests, priorities, and such take a back seat to those whom you serve in Christ's name in your various vocations.  In one sense, the only thing you are really giving up is the paycheck (hopefully replaced by pension, investment, and Social Security).  The stereotype is me time but the reality is something very different.  I know I have not yet become a man of leisure.  I do not expect that I ever will.  This has nothing to do with means but everything to do with relationship.

The hair stands up on my neck every time somebody delights in telling me that retirement means I will be busier than ever before.  We are not talking about busyness.  Vocation is not layer upon layer of busy work but begins and ultimately ends with relationships that remain until death -- yours or theirs.  I am no longer a son to my father and my mother because my parents have died.  That vocation ended.  Vocation is not filling up an appointment book but living in covenanted relationship with others -- again, a relationship which does not live in the realm of how you feel about it but duty, service, and calling.  I picked up the vocation of grandparent even before losing them and ending my vocation as a son.  Yes, I understand that this means you have additional obligations laid upon you.  This is not, however, like a calendar filling up  with things you want to do but never could before.  It is, in fact, about duty and calling that is sorted out before the coveted self-indulgence that too often passes for retirement.  The working of beating down the attitude of "me first" (a term born of Eden's fall rather than God's creation) continues in retirement just as it did when you were receiving a paycheck for your labor.  How disappointing it is when we presume that retirement allows us the childish pursuit of self unconstrained by duty, love, service to, and a calling for others.  The great regret of the heaven born in baptism is not that I did not get to do all I wanted to do when I was "alive" but that I did not even begin to see how my life was serving God and my neighbor in need until it is pointed out by Jesus -- having done it to the least of these My brothers, you did it to Me.  Perhaps we spend much to little time on the Table of Duties and too much of it trying to fence in a life behind the wall of the commandments.