"When an institution is young, it is flexible, fluid, willing to try anything once. As the institution ages, risk-taking decreases, daring gives way to rigidity, creativity fades, the capacity to meet new challenges from unexpected directions is lost. The same processes at work in the demise of institutions likewise operate in the decline of individuals. “Why is it,” John Gardner asks, “that so many people are mummified by the time of middle age?” Why do some people settle into rigid and unchanging views on God and church by the time they are thirty years old? Why do we fall into a stupor of mind and spirit long before we are golden girls and boys? Is it inevitable that we surrender our youthfulness and our capacity to grow and change? Is personal renewal, the seedbed of community renewal, possible?"
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)
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