After Troy

Tennyson’s Ulysses exhorts his mariners to make another heroic journey with him, “to seek a newer world.”

Apparently one go-round with Circe, the Lotus-Eaters and the Cyclops, among others, didn’t quench his thirst for adventure. Even his trip to Hades didn’t satisfy him. He misses being the center of attention, no longer Athena’s pet.

Home after many years, he discovers he’s bored.

And after striving mightily to be reunited with his family—even when the beautiful nymph Calypso offers him immortality, and her lovely body—he refuses, preferring his wife to an immortal.

But once home, he finds Penelope has become “aged” and his son, though dutiful, is not the heroic figure his father was.

Even worse, his subjects no longer know him, the mighty conqueror.

When Athena establishes peace at the end of the Odyssey, there seems little point to the existence of this great warrior.

As I flip through the latest issue of the AARP bulletin, I am sure the editors would sympathize with his plight.

Although not praising heroism directly, the picture they present of age is one of vibrancy, of getting things done, the very qualities that Ulysses so admires.

In the AARP bulletin, we are treated to picture after picture of well-dressed people in their “golden years,” living in lush retirement homes, bicycling, playing tennis or golf, taking cruises, and enjoying wonderful sex (courtesy of Viagra).

But what about the others? The sick, the poor, those discounted by society, for they surely age too.

I guess they’ll just have to find God.

It tickles me that God can be viewed as a consolation prize.

Yet isn’t that the point of religion, comforting the destitute and needy?

For the “good news” of the Gospels is God’s presence, both within us and

without us.

So perhaps it is the outcasts—with whom Jesus spent so much of his time—who have the inside track on true transformation.

So, difficult as it is, let us try to give thanks for our illnesses, poverty, and imperfections.