One Man’s Experience

Just when Bill Prindle thought he understood the arc of his life, it bent again in a direction he hadn’t anticipated. After decades of spiritual seeking and men’s work, he was still being undone by flashes of anger that revealed unfinished business beneath the surface. What he discovered is something true at any age: the next stage of growth often begins where we are most uncomfortable -- and most honest. 

The year I turned 74, I found out that I had more work to do, even after some 40 years of men’s work. I had met Richard Rohr at 60; I was in his Second Half of life journey, having spent 30 years growing up and 30 finding pieces of my true self. But with my parents gone and my children grown, a ‘third half’ of life had opened up. What was I going to do with it? 

I was no longer drawn to church, though I had spent almost 40 years in congregations as a youth and in my middle years. So I doubled down on my earth-based practices, wilderness wandering, medicine wheel, fire circles and such. But it was my anger that led me to the next doorway on my inner journey.

Though I was ‘old enough to know better,’ I would still blow up at odd intervals, usually over not very much. I could see the pain I was causing, and I wanted to do something about it. At my retreat with Fr. Rohr, I had overhead men talking about men’s rites; I wasn’t drawn then, but I did lurk on the mailing list. When I saw the 2024 Shrine Mont MROP listing, I finally signed up. 

MROP invited me through an anger doorway into a place of grief, where I felt my father and his father’s grief. I became an ‘apprentice of sorrow,’ as Francis Weller calls it. And I was soon led to the EROP at Johnsonburg, NJ last spring, going deeper into grief work. 

My Illuman journey has transformed my ‘third half’ of life into a Fourth Quarter. I continue to explore this realm called elderhood, supported by my Illuman brothers through Councils, Awaken, and other gatherings. 

Howard Thurman said: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” This work makes me feel more alive.