NICKY GUMBEL AND THE FORKS IN THE ROAD
There is an old saying: “If you want to make, God laugh, tell Him your long run plans.”
Often, we have dreams about how our lives should go: Get into a good school… graduate and find a job and profession that brings us satisfaction and meaning as well as a nice salary…fall in love with Ms. or Mr. Right…buy a beautiful house in a wonderful community…have 2.71 children who grow up and are highly successful…and our children get married and make us beaming grandparents…etc.
But then our lives take that unexpected twist of “fate,” and we pick up that wild card: The divorce we weren’t expecting…the medical diagnosis from hell…the layoff from the company…the investment that went south faster than you can say Sam Blackman-Fried…children, shall we say, not following our script…or obtaining our dream, and finding that we still feel empty and hollow.
Nicky Gumbel
Nicky Gumbel has faced several of these unexpected forks in the road. Nicky’s father was a highly successful young lawyer in Germany during the 1930s. The fact that his father was Jewish did not exactly help his career when Hitler the Nazis took power.
Fortunately, his father was able to escape Germany and come to Great Britain, where he served in the British Intelligence during World War II. After the war he became a leading barrister in England. During one of his cases, Nicky’s father had meetings with a female lawyer from the other side. After the trial was completed these two barristers fell in love and were married.
Nicky grew up in a family of wall-to-wall lawyers. He graduated from Trinity College in Cambridge University, and Nicky proceeded to become a lawyer. There was, however, a serious problem: He did not like it—or feel satisfied— as a barrister.
But Nicky also faced a second crucial fork in the road. He was a die-in-the-wool atheist and several of his best friends— who were also at one time atheists— had started really becoming interested in spirituality. Nicky started reading many different books about spirituality. He also turned to the gospels and was amazed to find that he felt a big hole in his soul was starting to be filled.
He started thinking about Jesus as his teacher and guru. Joining a church was an unexpected turn for Nicky, as was telling his family that he wanted to leave the law and become a minister. Nicky earned his Masters of Divinity from Wycliffe Hall at Oxford University, and was ordained as a minister and priest in the Anglican Church.
But this was not the last unexpected fork in the road that Nicky faced. He became, in effect, the senior minister at Holy Trinity Brompton Church in London. In this urban spiritual community, he faced many people who had a deep spiritual hunger, but they were not exactly inclined to buy traditional religion hook, line, and sinker. Many felt deep scars from organized religion.
Once again, something happened that was not in Nicky’s game plan. He became one of the founders— and primary public face— of something called The Alpha Course. This program has been designed to help people meet in groups and share about some of the really big questions that we all face, including: the meaning of life, practical spirituality in dealing with key difficult issues that we all face, and helping others grow and thrive.
Nicky at first believed that the Alpha Course might be something that a few Anglican churches would sponsor in England. But soon he found that many non-Anglican churches in other denominations wanted to sponsor Alpha Course groups too. Then, the Alpha Course groups started appearing in many countries around the world and many of these groups were sponsored by organizations that were not churches.
There are Alpha Course groups in workplaces and prisons. The. Alpha Course material has been translated into 110 different languages, and over 24 million people have been in Alpha Course groups.
Nicky saw another major unexpected change in his life. He never saw himself as a published author, but he wound up writing several bestsellers that are in many ways related to the Alpha Course. Two of these books include Questions of Life and Searching Issues.
We have at Unity in the Seven Hills several groups that fill a very similar role as The Alpha Course. First there is the Unity Rubber Meets the Road Group which you can either attend in person or online. This group meets every Tuesday at 10:30 AM. The Unity Rubber Meets the Road Group Looks at how we can apply spiritual principles to face the potholes in life that many of us go through. Members of the group share actual problems that they are facing and we learn and experience spiritual ways to face these challenges as opportunities for more spiritual growth. If you are interested in joining this group— and I hope you are— please send me an email (rbelous5@gmail.com) and I will get you the information you need to attend.
We also have A Course in Miracles Group that meets on zoom on Wednesdays at 7 PM. In many ways, this group it’s looking at many similar issues as the Alpha Course. If you are interested, send me an email to the address listed above and I will get you the zoom invite information.
Let me mention a third U7H group. It is our One to Oneness group that also explores many of these issues. The group is currently exploring the Tao Te Ching.
I really believe that such groups as The Alpha Course and the three examples I gave above of groups meeting within U7H can really help us in our spiritual walk. It does take a village, or as the Beatles put it: We “get by with a little help from our friends.”
Recently, there has been another unexpected fork in the road in Nicky’s life. Recently, he pointed out that, when the British equivalent of Social Security started, the retirement age when it kicked in was 70 years old. But British life expectancy on average was in the 50s. However, this has really reversed and now the retirement age is in the 60s and life expectancy is in the late 70s.
Nicky thinks that it is useful to consider our lives on average as being divided into three periods. The first period is growing up, education, and getting started. The second period is an adulthood Work, Family, and Community.
Now, many of us will face an extended third period in our lives where we will be out of the paid workforce. Nicky is concerned many people in the third period will become depressed and not find meaning joy during this last period.
For this reason, Nicky has been working on something similar to the Alpha Course for senior citizens. The goal of these groups will be to discover ways to soar during the last third of life. I believe that this will become an even more important concern given demographic trends
I think Nicky’s life clearly demonstrates how these unexpected forks in the road are so important. We can thrive and grow from experiencing these twists and turns. We can make what is before us be for us!
