Six years ago this month the members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Shenandoah valley moved from our little country church, barely a quarter of a mile to the south of this location, into this Building.
On Sunday May 23 of 2004 we held a wonderful dedication ceremony featuring the late Forest Church as our speaker. Truly, a good time was had by all.
Nine months before that, in August of 2003, I began my service as your minister. I led my first Sunday morning worship—I believe it was "T-Shirt Sunday"—on August 25.
Fast forward through over 200 sermons, several memorial services, weddings, child dedications and glorious social events and as we do every Sunday morning we are again gathered in worship on this beautiful May morning, 2010.
I will preach my last sermon as your minister on Sunday, June 26. During July I will be around and available for ministerial emergencies and then on August 1st I will immediately become the previous minister.
After seven years of preaching, counseling, aiding and abetting, visiting with you in the hospital and in your homes, attending meetings, sharing suppers, covenant groups and lifespan faith development offerings, my relationship with the congregation will come to an abrupt end.
An Episcopal Rector, Parke Street, once observed, "From the time I announced my (in his case) resignation at St. Margaret's, through my final Sunday...the comparison of terminating with a parish and dying occurred to me often. While the congregation went through emotions analogous to having a significant person die, my emotions were those of a person dying."
Street went on to say, "Throughout the time I felt a mixture of emotions. I felt sadness at the prospect of separating my life from the lives of many who had been significant persons in my life and at separating from a community that had been nurturing me. I felt a mixture of anticipation for a new adventure and some fear of the unknown."
After seven years of preaching, counseling, aiding and abetting, visiting with you in the hospital and in your homes, attending meetings, sharing suppers, covenant groups and lifespan faith development offerings, my relationship with the congregation will come to an abrupt end at the end of July.
As I ponder this coming separation I am reminded of a serious, if somewhat tongue in cheek, poem that goes like this:
Comes the day when life stops.
Sometimes abruptly. Unscheduled. Unplanned.
The calendar full of appointments for tomorrows not to be.
Large things, like tickets bought but not used.
Like dinner parties for which invitations have been mailed, responses received.
Like speeches scheduled and project deadlines agreed to.
Small things, like clothes at the dry cleaners.
Like a small stack of phone messages to be returned.
Like two lamb chops thawing for tonight's dinner.
No one's Day-Timer lists "Death -
all day Wednesday" as the final appointment.
["Sudden Death and the To Do List" from A Theophany, Please] T by Cynthia B. Johnson:
But in truth, on August 1st, our life together will come to an abrupt end.
Another writer, Roy Oswald, who has studied this same phenomenon among churches and ministers echoes Street's words when he writes: "Sometimes leaving a ministerate, especially a good and faithful one, can feel like nothing so much as a death.
A minister has for some number of years been pouring energy into a relationship with a congregation, and now that relationship is ending.
The relationship has been rich and complex, marked, as any relationship will be by strengths and weaknesses, to be sure, with the balance hopefully towards the former.
Now in the congregation there is sadness, perhaps anger, maybe a sense of rejection, certainly a measure of grief.
The departing minister often shares some of the sadness and sense of loss even as these feelings are mingled with expectation of what lies ahead.
One temptation on the minister's part is to mask the pain of this loss with excitement about a new position and its possibilities, or the anticipated pleasures of retirement; another is to flee as quickly as possible and to let others clean up whatever mess or hurt is left behind.
But ministers who have sat with the dying and their families know that such illusory denials do not work. And they are not what God intends when partings come."
In the past several weeks Nancy and I have had conversations with many of you about our future and the future of this congregation. After we share what thoughts we have given to both being retired and conversation inevitably drifts around to what our relationship will be with this congregation. Sometimes the conversations go like this.
"So, Henry, what will you do next?"
And I usually reply that in the immediate future Nancy and I have plans to do some traveling and visiting and that in October I would begin to give some serious thought about what I might do next with my life. Although to be honest, right now, the thought of not doing is mighty appealing. But I imagine that October will be spent sorting out what comes next.
The next questions usually deal with Nancy and My relationship with this congregation. And here is where it gets difficult and awkward and I don't mean to single anyone out so if what I say next seems directed at you, it most seriously isn't.
But sometimes after stating the obvious, that we can have nothing to do with the church or the congregation for the entire interim process and for a sufficient period of time for the next called minister to be settled and well loved, well get comments such as, "But of course you'll attend the auction, that's not a church event; or you'll still come to church on Sundays; or if there is a place in our sharing supper...covenant group...volunteer project....fill in your own blank...you can participate in that, right?
Unfortunately, the clear answer is no we can't.
Just as Bob Hughes, this congregation's previous minister, and Paul Boothby the most recent interim had no contact with the congregation that I might establish my own ministry here at UUCSV, I am under professional guidelines not to interact with the congregation after I depart.
It is sad but true the most common complaints made by one minister against another involve retired ministers acting badly.
When a minister becomes a member of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers" Association that minister enters into a covenant with all the other Unitarian Universalist ministers. When it comes to leaving a congregation, here are the expectations for the departing minister.
1) All ministerial and professional relationships and responsibilities of the minister with the congregation will end as of the effective date of the dissolution;
2) that the minister will not be involved in any way in the selection process of either the interim or the next installed minister. Neither will he or she be involved in any way with the selection of any search team or minister nominating committee;
3) that the minister, after leaving, will not become engaged in conversations with church members or staff which, in any way, offer opinions or criticism about the life of the congregation or the performance of the interim or any subsequent installed ministers;
4) that any desire on the part of members of the congregation for the departing minister to participate in congregational life or services should be discussed not with the departing minister, but with the interim or subsequent installed minister;
5) that the departing minister may participate in a wedding, a funeral, or child dedication only by invitation of the interim minister or installed minister, who shall be the officiant.
While these rules might seem draconian there are in place to assure a smooth transition from one ministry to another and to allow each congregation to move on in new and exciting directions.
Christine Robinson and Alicia Hawkins in the book Heart to Heart write:
"Consider this...our lives contain as many goodbyes as hellos, and not just to people. We say goodbye to our college years, to projects, to events. We say goodbye to tasks, jobs and to people as they change. The parents of a five year old will have their daughter living in their house for a long time to come, but as they write the last words in her baby book, they must say goodbye not only to her as a baby, but to themselves as the parent of a baby. When you leave a job, you say goodbye not only to coworkers and clients, but also to a part of your life, and perhaps even to the social role of being an n employed person. Sometimes we say goodbye with glee, sometimes with true sadness; but many goodbyes are emotionally significant transitions in our lives."
When I think about endings, I often think about the way Hollywood has portrayed endings in its movies. How often does the hero ride off into the sunset, we assume to live to fight another day. How often does the scene fade away with the young couple strolling arm and arm down the flowered path...or into the unseen bedroom.
These ending are left intentionally ambiguous because it allows the viewer to create his or her own reality of what will happen next. Will our hero move on and mop up the bad guys in whatever town he comes to next? Will our young loves live happily ever after or will they start to find fault with one another, learning too late that each is subject to all of the messy foibles of being human?
Again, Christine Robinson and Alicia Hawkins tell us "a good goodbye is not only a sad acknowledgement of change, but also an opportunity for gratitude and for finishing any unfinished business of the relationship. It is when we say goodbye that we realize what we value this person for and what gifts she or he gave us. If we share that, the other person is likely to share in turn, so that we hear what gifts we gave...If we are well practiced in saying goodbye, we will find all our goodbyes a little easier, including the final goodbyes we say before we die."
I hope that we—you and I—can make good use of our remaining time together. I hope we can share memories of our times together. Let us tell the stories of our accomplishments and not forget to share those things that didn't go so well.
Let us remember those who are no longer with us while celebrating all the new fresh faces that we greet each Sunday.
Let us celebrate the work we do together at the Volunteer Farm, in the Coalition for Racial Unity, for Habitat for Humanity, for the Blue Ridge Food bank, for the Valley Interfaith Council, and for all those individual efforts that bring our ideas of justice, equity and compassion to our neighborhoods and our communities.
Then, let us resolve our mistakes, our hurts, our misunderstandings and our imperfections. As a friend of mine once observed understanding is the beginning of forgiveness. Please understand that I brought to my ministry all the faults and imperfections of my life and character and I will forgive you for not showing up to set up chairs or volunteer to teach RE; or join a committee; or be the first million dollar donor.
Oak has observed that one of the tenets of my ministry here has been to promote the notion of the beloved community. We can be a beloved community if we trust one another, if we feel safe, and if we care for one another in both good times and bad.
It is in our relationships with one another that we grow our souls and deepen the soul of this congregation.
And let us find ways to bless and celebrate our time together. I don't mean by parties and social gatherings (although those are good, too) but let us find ways to say amen to the work we have done together.
Sundays when I give the benediction I really do feel as if I am sending every one of you on your way protected, if only a tad, from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
And so it is. Not so very long from now I will step down as your minister. In some ways I suppose it will be the worst of days and the best of days. There will be sadness on both sides of the pulpit. Sadness for Nancy and me at losing a community that has meant so very much to us; that has nurtured us, and cared for us. That has shared our joys and supported us in our sorrows.
We have made friendships among you that will remain with us all the days of our lives and we hope that each of us—and to some extent our daughters Kathryn and Kristina—have left lasting memories with each of you.
Howard Thurman once said that, "There is something incomplete about coming to the end of anything." We will each carry with us the memories of the others. We will each have in our hearts a fragment of the lives of all we have touched.
For all of the varied reasons that have brought us together for these seven years we are thankful. For the blessings we have given to one another we are thankful. Together we have made life just a more enjoyable.
"No one's Day-Timer lists "Death -all day Wednesday" as the final appointment. But in a real sense on Monday, August 1st we will go our separate ways. By then we will have celebrated and grieved and by then we will have said all our goodbyes, and by then we will be ready to start our new but separate lives and we will learn to celebrate both what was and what will be.
So let me close with this thought from Mary Oliver:
We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two
Housed as they are in the same body.
Amen and Blessed be!