As he's entered middle age, Franciscan Father Richard Rohr, who has been riding the spirituality circuit for more than 30 years, has started to think about life in halves: the first dedicated to establishing boundaries and a sense of self in one's own group, the second to opening oneself to a more universal vision of the world.

Rohr is quick to point out, though, that you've got to have the first before you pass into the second. "We need to begin ‘conservative' with clear boundaries, identity, a sense of ‘chosenness,' " he writes in his newsletter Radical Grace. "Then as we grow older, we should move toward more compassionate, tolerant, and forgiving worldviews."

Rohr's own first and second halves have been full and busy. In his first half he founded the charismatic New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati in 1971 and the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1986. Today, though still a popular speaker and author, Rohr spends more time alone, living in a hermitage behind his community.

Rohr became a Franciscan friar in 1961 and was ordained a priest in 1970. He is a prolific writer and popular speaker on male spirituality, scripture, prayer, and other topics, and is the founding director of the Center for Action and Contemplation. His most recent book is Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation (Crossroad, 2004).

You've said that spirituality is different in the two halves of life. What do you mean by that?
In a nutshell the task in the first half of life is the development of identity and boundaries. One must develop a necessary concern for the self: "Am I special? Am I chosen? Am I beloved?" Unfortunately it often takes the form of "Am I right?" leading to either/or thinking.

This accounts for much of our contemporary confusion, it seems to me. The first half of life is concerned with the container; the second with the contents. But most people become preoccupied with the container.

Can you give an example of a first-half-of-life person?
Let's look at a typical military school cadet. Who would not admire him? His pants are creased; his hair is cut; he's clean; he's polite; he's on time; he loves God and country. If I need to hire an employee, give me a West Point cadet. He'll do what he's told. Great stuff, but don't for a second call it the gospel.

But, unfortunately, I think we have. For many of us, that's what it means to be a Christian, and that not only misses the point, it openly obstructs it. Remember what Jesus said: "Your virtue must surpass the virtue of the scribes and Pharisees." It's a virtue of sorts but not yet what he is talking about.

A mere concern for order, purity, identity, self-esteem, and self-image is necessary to get you started. You have to have an ego to let go of your ego. You have to have a self to die to yourself, but the creation of a positive self-image is not the issue of the gospel. Quite the contrary. That's probably why Jesus did not start teaching until he was 30 and seems to have almost exclusively taught adults.

Once you teach something like "love your enemies," you're not talking about tit-for-tat morality anymore. That kind of thinking is not understandable to people still involved in the tasks of the first stage of life. In fact, it appears dangerous and heretical to them.

How does someone move from the first half of life to the second?
The two stages are not primarily chronological, although they can be affected by chronology.

Normally there has to be a precipitating event that leads to transformation. I call it the "stumbling stone," using a biblical term. Your two-plus-two world has to fail you, has to fall apart. Business as usual doesn't work. Usually that involves something very personal: suffering or failure or humiliation.

The fair-haired boy or girl who just dances from success to success will easily stay in the first half of life forever. I think that's what Jesus means by saying that it's harder for a rich man to enter the reign of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. It's a strong statement.

Thomas Merton wrote about new monks coming in and said he thought that since the Second World War American parents had tried to keep their children from any negative experiences. He recommended that monasteries not accept anyone who had not gone through a spiritual crisis. He argues that they weren't ready for religious life. In fact, he thought the monastery's job might be to facilitate a spiritual crisis for many of the monks.

If you are lucky, God will lead you to a situation you cannot control, you cannot fix, or you cannot even understand. At that point true spirituality begins. Up to that point is all just preparation.

Does suffering always lead to the second half of life?
Not always. Sometimes it just leads you to circle the wagons of your own little group. It depends on whether you deal with your suffering in secular space or sacred space.

The secular response to suffering is to fix it, control it, understand it, look for someone to blame. You learn nothing. Unless suffering pulls you into sacred space, it doesn't transform you. It makes you bitter.

In sacred space, if you can somehow see God in it, suffering can lead you to the universal experience of human suffering, even identification with the suffering of God. At that point, you're moving into the second half of life. The questions are now more mystical than merely moral.

Are you in danger of idealizing suffering?
Yes. But I'm not saying go out and search for it. Suffering is inevitable, and if you can be convinced that it is a teachable moment and not something to run from, you're doing yourself a great favor.

There are really only two paths to transformation: prayer and suffering. But because few of us just walk into a wonderful journey of surrendered prayer, you can really say there is only one path, which is suffering.

That's why Jesus talks about the Way of the Cross so much. Until your nice, coherent interpretation of reality has been beaten up a bit, why would you let go of it? Some form of suffering is the only thing strong enough to destabilize the ego, in my opinion.

What specific experiences can cause this to happen?
Loss of a job can be a big one, especially if you're very invested in your work. Death, of course, is the biggest of all, especially the death of someone close or an unjust death. A major humiliation is another way. I know a lot of priests who have come to God through being accused-rightly or wrongly-of sexual abuse. The public persona isn't there anymore, so who am I now?

Moral failure is a common biblical pattern that leads to the second half of life, as we see very clearly in both Peter and Paul. Somewhere along the way my own moral failures have the power to get me to finally fall into the mercy of a loving God. If I lied to that person or I used that woman, I have to ask myself, "What kind of person am I that I did that?"