I found a different analysis in Father Richard Rohr’s view of the “First Half of Life.” This could be the mathematical halfway of my “three score and ten,” i.e. divided by two, or it could be my life before it was shaken or inspired dramatically. The “Second Half of Life” is best described as discovering how your ego needed deconstruction after many years of constructing it. It is not so much repentance as it is gaining perspective. Rohr says the First Half is very foundational to who we are, but is also a framework for the “false self,” which we will need to disarm for true maturity:

The first-half-of-life container, nevertheless, is constructed through impulse controls; traditions; group symbols; family loyalties; basic respect for authority; civil and church laws; and a sense of goodness, value, and special importance of your country, ethnicity, and religion (as for example. The Jews’ sense of their own “chosenness”). (Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the First Two Halves of Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 2011), p. 39.

Rohr emphasizes that the First Half is as important as the second, but it must nevertheless be unlearned to mature and know yourself better in the second half. The Second Half is the time of questioning, but not merely with curiosity, but with re-thinking who you are and how you fit into the world. This may oversimplify a complicated experience of sorting out what is now important and what is impermanent in your life. A better description of the process comes from Falling Upward A Spirituality of the Two Halves of Life, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 2011.

Today I would describe my First Half as the evangelical and tribal part of my life, when I believed in my reference group (“saved,” “biblical,” evangelical,” “charismatic,” “light-walking,” at different times in my life). During this period, I went to college, graduate school, “accepted Christ,” was “baptized in the Spirit,” and “walked in the Light,” depending on what decade you found me in.  In my First Half of Life I also resisted any challenge to my conservative evangelical faith. I remember Hamilton was more inclusive, since it had abandoned compulsory chapel and offered a non-sectarian class in religion, satisfying a religion/ philosophy requirement. I took philosophy. I have deeply regretted that since my graduation.  My first New Orientation occurred in my junior year.

In April of my junior year in college I went to Mount Vernon (NY) to visit a church, pastored by Rev. Harold Bredesen and known to participate in the “gifts of the Spirit,” i.e. speaking in tongues, spontaneous prophecies, spiritual teaching, etc. I went because the church invited all who wanted to share these gifts to visit on any Sunday evening. I remember sitting through the service, unable to truly participate, and feeling like an outsider.

I had an uncle, my father’s brother, who was a preacher in the Assembly of God Church, where the “baptism of the Spirit” was common experience. My father brought us to one of his brother’s services, and we left feeling very much like outsiders. Afterward my father gave a very skeptical verdict of the gifts we had witnessed there. He said he had heard of a Puerto Rican woman speaking in Spanish, when she claimed to be speaking in tongues.

But this time was different. Mainline churches had been reporting “baptisms of the Spirit” similar to what the Pentecostals had been doing for a century.  It was an “outpouring” of the Spirit like the original Pentecost in the Book of Acts.

At the end of the “spirit-filled service” we were invited to come up to the altar and receive prayer for the baptism, very reminiscent of the “altar call.”  Disappointed that I had not received the blessing during the service, I went to the altar, fighting back a nagging memory of altar calls.

As hands were placed on my head, I was encouraged to praise God with a spontaneous voice, a voice that suddenly broke into “tongues.”  It sounded like a Middle Eastern language I had never spoken, but I never assumed it was a message that needed to be interpreted, as some insist this “special language” should be. What this baptism meant to me was I had an unrehearsed, spontaneous language to praise God. I felt free in a way that my buttoned-down personality had never felt free.

I enjoyed that sensation for several minutes before I looked up to my praying partner and said,

“This is wonderful. Thank you.”

“It’s all a gift,” he replied. “Praise God for it.”

Of course, I went home on a high, praising God, feeling more connected than I ever had in my twenty years of Evangelical Christianity. When I got home, my parents were in bed, so I went to my room and prayed to find out if this was real. Sure enough, I was speaking in tongues again.

Unable to contain myself, I went to my parents’ darkened room to share my joy.  My mother said, “Are you sure? Is this real? We don’t know what you mean.” My father said nothing. I tried to explain, but it was late, so I said, “Good night” and returned to my room, unable to sleep for an hour.

It was not an isolated incident. When I moved to Cambridge I joined a charismatic Presbyterian church. We worshipped in the Spirit every Sunday night, but not on Sunday morning. We had a Wednesday prayer group in various homes, where we worshipped in the same way. We especially enjoyed “singing in the Spirit, which was new to me, but uplifting.

Reflecting on this “miracle,” I think it gave me an independence from my parents’ version of Evangelical Christianity, which was more important and more significant than the gift of “tongues. I was about to move out from my home physically, but I had already begun to move spiritually. This was the first “sign” that I was forging a new relationship with God.