While digging in the dirt earlier this week - and baking bread yesterday - I started to sense a quiet congruency to my days. There is an order and rhythm to my world now that seeks to strengthen our deep yearning for sanctuary. Some may know that for the past four years it was evident that my calling to be a pastor was over. St. Lou Reed liked to say, "Stick a fork in it cuz its done!" And in my heart I knew this to be true. There was a finality to bringing this part of my vocation to a close - a clear emotional and professional dividing line between now and then - that was definitive. Sometimes, too, it was harsh and jagged.
What I didn't know then was that God wasn't finished with me yet. Leaving a Taize liturgy on our last night in Montreal, Di said, "You're not done with ministry yet. It may be time to get out of the local church, but you're too energized by what we just experienced (quiet, contemplative worship in candle light) for all of this to be over. You may think you finished, but something new will arise out of all of this that will take you into a whole new way of being." It was yet another encounter with one of my favorite verses from Christian scripture - St. John 21: 18 - where the resurrected Jesus tells the broken hearted Peter:
Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.
As is often the case, she was right. And what I recognized in the dirt and the dough of this past week was that now I am living into the contemplative ministry I have ached to embody for over 25 years. One of my favorite David Crosby songs confesses: "It's been a long time coming..."
When I entered into retirement, I drew an emotional line separating what had been from what might become. I knew I was finished with the realm of church and open to a season of solitude. What happened, however, was something very different. We went on retreat about this time last year to the Eastern Townships of Quebec. In the stillness, in the Abbaye de Sant Benoit-du-Lac, in conversation and in quiet prayer we discerned that the next twelve months were to be a "year of beholding." A time to look for what God was already doing in our lives rather than searching for something new.
This took me deeper into my connection with L'Arche Ottawa. And family. And gardening and baking and writing. This beholding also took me deeper into the work of spiritual direction. Eventually, moving slowly with lots of silence, I grasped that the Spirit of God continued to lure me deeper into a new/old ministry of presence. A ministry not ruled by the obsessions and fears of institutional churchianity, yet still wildly shaped by the living presence of Jesus. A ministry that encourages a counter cultural resistance to that which is cruel, cynical, and cold through cultivating compassion, creativity and contemplation. A ministry that is small. Like Holly Near once proclaimed about herself: "Imagine my surprise!" Fr. Richard Rohr put it like this:
It seems we all begin in naiveté and eventually return to a “second naiveté” or simplicity, whether willingly or on our deathbed. This blessed simplicity is calm, knowing, patient, inclusive, and self-forgetful. In the second half of life you are strong enough to hold together contradictions in yourself and others with compassion, forgiveness, and patience. You realize that your chosenness is for the sake of letting others know they are also chosen. As we grow in this wisdom, we realize that everything belongs and everything can be received. We see that life and death are not opposites. They do not cancel one another out; neither do goodness and badness.
Some things, they say,
one should not write about. I tried
to help my father comprehend
the toilet, how one needs
to undo one's belt, to slide
one's trousers down and sit,
but he stubbornly stood
and would not bend his knees.
I tried again
to bend him toward the seat,
and then I laughed
at the absurdity. Fathers and sons.
How he had wiped my bottom
half a century ago, and how
I would repay the favor
if he would only sit.
Don’t you-
he gripped me, trembling, searching for my eyes.
Don’t you––but the word
was lost to him. Somewhere
a man of dignity would not be laughed at.
He could not see
it was the crazy dance
that made me laugh,
trying to make him sit
when he wanted to stand.
When I entered into retirement, I drew an emotional line separating what had been from what might become. I knew I was finished with the realm of church and open to a season of solitude. What happened, however, was something very different. We went on retreat about this time last year to the Eastern Townships of Quebec. In the stillness, in the Abbaye de Sant Benoit-du-Lac, in conversation and in quiet prayer we discerned that the next twelve months were to be a "year of beholding." A time to look for what God was already doing in our lives rather than searching for something new.
It seems we all begin in naiveté and eventually return to a “second naiveté” or simplicity, whether willingly or on our deathbed. This blessed simplicity is calm, knowing, patient, inclusive, and self-forgetful. In the second half of life you are strong enough to hold together contradictions in yourself and others with compassion, forgiveness, and patience. You realize that your chosenness is for the sake of letting others know they are also chosen. As we grow in this wisdom, we realize that everything belongs and everything can be received. We see that life and death are not opposites. They do not cancel one another out; neither do goodness and badness.
Given this blessing, it feels prudent to extend our year of beholding much like the Blessed Virgin Mary who looked at the birth of the holy with awe and held all these things in her heart. We are not going to try to sell the house this year. Again. We are going to create a small terraced garden for flowers and assorted vegetables and herbs. We are not going to make any big, new plans. We are going to deepen our time with L'Arche Ottawa. We are not planning any big adventures; rather more time to grow closer to children and grandchildren. And do a little more listening in spiritual direction. And perhaps write a few more songs. Life, ministry, vocation, calling and time now feels a bit like this poem by David Mason called "Fathers and Sons."
one should not write about. I tried
to help my father comprehend
the toilet, how one needs
to undo one's belt, to slide
one's trousers down and sit,
but he stubbornly stood
and would not bend his knees.
I tried again
to bend him toward the seat,
and then I laughed
at the absurdity. Fathers and sons.
How he had wiped my bottom
half a century ago, and how
I would repay the favor
if he would only sit.
Don’t you-
he gripped me, trembling, searching for my eyes.
Don’t you––but the word
was lost to him. Somewhere
a man of dignity would not be laughed at.
He could not see
it was the crazy dance
that made me laugh,
trying to make him sit
when he wanted to stand.
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