Assignment: "You have just retired. Use your experience as a prism to view and write about such a transition."

Terms: I recall an editor saying to autobiographers, "Those who read you are not saying, 'Tell me about you.' They are saying, 'Tell me about me, using you as a mirror.'" Fine. I will take care of the autobiographical data in 56 words:

Age 70. Retired at the University of Chicago after 35 years, but directing its Pew Charitable Trusts-funded Public Religion Project one more year. Retired as senior editor at the Christian Century after 42 years, but continuing to write for it. Continuing as senior scholar-in-residence at the Park Ridge Center and as editor of the newsletter Context.

Significant transitions, these. Can others learn from my mirror, given the accidental and idiosyncratic features of all our lives, vocations, philosophies, passages, and passions?

My late wife's oncologist once taught our family that one freedom we should not take away from others is their choice of how to cope with whatever comes. I like to think the same is true of how we deal with the major transitions. There is no prototype, template, or pattern of "stages" that fits all. But I do believe we can learn from the many mirrors of diverse people undergoing one transition, such as retirement.

At a Center for Health, Faith, and Ethics, let me start with health. Of course, there is more concern for this, especially since I am unpracticed, never having missed a day's work for ill health. I am a Lutheran, and have to say that in our language this good health was a "grace," not a matter of "works." I have no useful insights to hold up on this subject and hope to learn from the mirrors others hold up to me as I have to come to terms with bodily changes. Let me begin by promising myself more long walks and more exercise. But I know I am good at breaking resolutions. So let me move on to the second term, faith.

Eternity is closer. The end of the Apostles' Creed makes the same old sense but grows more urgent. No one has been there and come back to report and thus satisfy me with descriptions. But I trust the love of God, which is stronger than death. It is time to measure my days.

Death is closer. We are beings-toward-death and experience meaning in life because of that. My retirement party poem, by Kay Boyle, ends

Vocation remains, career pattern changes. I recall hearing gerontologist Bernice Neugarten in an interview for Second Opinion say that, inevitable physical changes aside, few things tell less about a person's being and outlook than her or his age. For me, guidance through the years comes from a sense of vocation, of calling. Life is a response to the call to the I from the Thou, a call to responsibility to others. Vocation has an individual stamp on it; each of us is irreplaceable, and we have to take pains to find out what the call means after retirement or job change.

The image that is most useful to me finds life as a book with many chapters; one turns a page for new adventures. For 35 years, my teaching schedule gave structure to the week, and that is now gone. Will I know how to pace the seasons when they no longer come divided into curricular quarters? If I thought about that, I have no doubt uncertainties would surface. Turn to:

Quotidian existence. I believe in "dailiness" and "ordinariness." I devote myself to philosophies, theologies, and practices that discourage the guilt that comes with the wrong kind of backward look and the worry that impinges if one tries to command the future. Such an approach has worked, more or less, for seven decades. I hope to have no worry about it working for a couple more.

Community. I have celebrated Friendship at book length and lifelong and hope to nurture old and new friendships now. The local congregation, town meeting, and voluntary associations mean more every year. I do not envy retirees who do not inherit or find community. A purely personal choice: Harriet Marty and I intend to stay in Chicago, loving this milieu and knowing it as our village. We hope to see our snowbird friends half of each year.

Justice. Political and voluntary associational interests should receive more attention, and I hope to reengage the city, the inner city. Nothing disturbs me more in domestic affairs than the complacency with which we, which includes me, have regarded the development of a permanent underclass and have sought and found little imagination and few resources to alter this scene. I promise to read Isaiah 58 regularly and hope to respond in faith and love. This leaves the third term of the Park Ridge Center:

Ethics. At this center for medical ethics, I have to describe myself as, professionally, "neither medical nor ethical." In retirement from most of my professional posts, I hope to learn more here from colleagues.