Two Tasks

Richard Rohr:
There are two major tasks in the human spiritual journey. The task of the first half of life is to create a proper container for one's life and answer some central questions: "Who am I?" "What makes me signficiant?" "How can I support myself?" "Who will go with me?"

The task of the second half of life is, quite simply, to find the actual contents that this container was meant to hold and deliver. in other words, the container is for the sake of the contents. Problematically, the first task invests so much of ourselves that we often cannot imagine there is a second task, or that anything more could be expected of us.

Source: Radical Grace, Vol. 23, No. 4, the Center for Action and Contemplation