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Later Life Brings Spiritual Searching for Many Having shaped the '60s and '70s with their seeking, baby boomers then let their spiritual side rest quiet for many years. Now experiencing another major life transition, some boomers are letting religion change their wole lives.Everyone knows the baby boomers proved themselves avid spiritual "seekers" in the '60s. Not all really were, of course, but those who looked for life's deeper meaning did so with such remarkable verve that they defined an entire era of history with their psychedelic trips, Volkswagon buses and experiments in communal living. However, as flower power gave way to family and responsibilities, the path to enlightenment became less important than the road to financial stability. Opting out of the counterculture, these reformed hipsters fell more or less in line with traditional work/family arrangements and little more was heard about their spiritual pursuits.Now, with their parents passing away, their children raised, their careers winding down, and the designation "senior citizen" not far behind, many of these baby boomers are again in transition. Confronting their mortality more seriously than ever before, they are returning to the spiritual quest with new urgency. For some this impulse becomes an enrichment of their spare time: they scour the religion section of local bookstores, or enroll for weekend seminars with well-known gurus. For others, the swing back to metaphysical interests amounts to a second vocation.One 54-year-old consultant abandoned her job to join a Buddhist seminary. She wanted to try, she said, to be as useful to the world as possible - a concern that wouldn't have surfaced in her youth. A former Wall Street lawyer in his early fifties says he never bothered to keep the Sabbath day holy until 1997. Work had been the driving ethic of his life, but the death of his father made him wonder about the meaning of life. A stint volunteering at a Mexico AIDS hospice convinced him there was no going back; he abandoned his high-paid, high-stress life and enrolled in Episcopal Divinity School.Three decades ago, clergy were ordained at an average age of 27; today, that age is 35 and continues to rise. It seems an increasingly material world has indeed wooed most of our youth, but the same things that attract young graduates initially can repel them over time. Seventy-two percent of Protestant ministers nationwide, in fact, started out in a different career; a third of students at the Jewish Insititute of Religion of New York had careers before enrolling. For many baby boomers, age and experience have deepened whatever spiritual interests they once held. Their disillusionment with other pursuits adds clarity and insight to their studies, making them ideal students. Baby boomers have always wanted to change the world, but years have added resonance to their protests about the state of the world and the need to promote peace. Back To Mature Market News → Go To The GenerationTarget.com Mature Market Bookstore → |
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