Category: Personal reflections

Sleep, blessed sleep

sleep not foundFor quite a few years, I didn’t sleep well. In the year when I turned 50, I found myself waking up ridiculously early, often at 4:42 AM (What’s that all about, I ask you?). My doctor said that this kind of thing happens for men over 50, and not to worry about it, but …. if I really couldn’t sleep, he had a pill for me to take. It might be addictive, so he said, but a good night’s sleep was even more addictive.

Well,that worked for a number of years, right through my time of retirement. If I didn’t take the pill, I woke up in the middle of the night (4:42 again!), and couldn’t get back to sleep. Lack of sleep made me cranky, unfocused, and generally less than fully functional. So — I went on taking the pills right through my retirement. For all my time in Manitoba, my doctors renewed the prescription without question. I was officially diagnosed with anxiety, which may in fact have been the truth.

Then last year I retired and we moved back to Alberta, and we had to find new medical care. The doctors here looked at my 15-year history on this medication, and would not renew it. It was addictive! Ouch.

Last fall, I had to learn to sleep again, without the pharmaceutical aid I had relied upon for years. It was hard. For a while, I found myself waking up even earlier than in the early years — 3:30 AM was not uncommon. Sleep deprivation became the law of my life.

But things change. I found a different, non-addictive and non-prescription, chemical sleep aid. It has helped me learn to sleep better, and often to sleep undisturbed until 7 AM or later. That may not sound much to some people, but for most of my working life, I set the alarm for 6, to be at work by 8. Now… I don’t often have to up for anything much before 9. So sleeping later is a bonus, and more and more a blessing.

Sleep is a wonderful thing. Sleep deprivation is a curse. I have seen this in the lives of many people. Being able to sleep as much as one needs is a real blessing, and it is only in retirement that I have really been able to enjoy this.

Finding myself able to sleep so late (yes: 7:30 AM is late in my books!) is a real blessing. Realizing that I can, and often do, sleep this well, is one of the things that makes me realize that I may really be retired — in the best sense of the word.

Now… I invite you to listen to Eric Whitacre’s wonderful choral ode to sleep:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WhWDCw3Mng

Did I have anxiety? Maybe, but you’d have to ask my wife to get the goods on that. What I do know is that I have let go of a lot of things in the past year, and I have realized that I have much less to be anxious about. I go for coffee after Sunday services, and enjoy the camaraderie of other parishioners. I look around the room and see our stipendiary clergy earnestly in conversation with people, and see the anxiety on their faces. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just the way the church order things, by putting heavy stress on a few “special” people. I wish for my colleagues that they may find the joy of SLEEP — blessed sleep, and may know the joy of knowing that God’s work does not depend entirely on them.

One Year In

Yesterday was a significant date for me, and I almost let it slip by. One year ago, on June 23, 1013, I handed in my keys, and ended my tenure as the Rector of St. Matthew’s Cathedral and the Dean of the Diocese of Brandon. It seems very far away now, but as readers of this blog may realize, it took some time for that distance to take shape.

A lot has happened. Much of it has been good, but there have been some bumps along the way. I spent a lot of time in the fall re-living and re-thinking my time in Brandon, until my dearly beloved challenged me (gently!) to let it go. She’s a wise woman. It’s not healthy to live in the past, as I told many people over the years. Still, it’s one thing to counsel people through grief, and quite another to live through it yourself.

And that’s what I now recognize this past year to have been: it has been a grief process. All the standard aspects of grief (aka response to loss) have been present — except perhaps for denial. It was hard to deny the reality of the change when we were living 1,200 km away from the scene of our previous life. But all the rest were there, including most recently some depression. There have been days in recent months when I have woken up saying to myself “…another b****y day!”

But…
Things change, and indeed things have improved. I have come to recognize in myself the prevailing pathology of clergy: the need to be needed. That thirst hardly needs to be slaked when you’re the Rector of a busy parish, but when I spend most days at home, it became almost overwhelming. Solving the problem simply meant finding meaningful things to do in the church and the community.

That’s happening now, with involvement in leadership or supportive  roles in Vocal Alchemy, the Memorial Society of Edmonton and District, Holy Trinity Anglican Church, and Education for Ministry in the Diocese of Edmonton. That should keep me busy, and involved with people as much as I need. We’re glad to be in Edmonton, part of a vibrant faith community, close to our family, and with time to do the things we really want to do.

Now… when am I going to find time to start writing that book?

 

Home? And home again.

 

My spouse and I went back to Brandon this past weekend for the first time since I retired last June. It was a very quick trip, squeezed in between commitments here in Edmonton, but it was not a short trip. Our total road time was over 25 hours, somewhat  inflated by poor weather in Saskatchewan on Monday morning.

JourneyThe purpose of the trip was to attend a wedding. The bride had joined the choir as a choral scholar at St. Matthew’s Cathedral three years ago, becoming in time not just a paid singer but an active congregant. Her fiance came with her in the second year. It was a joy to be asked to celebrate their marriage with them and old friends.

On the Sunday morning, we decided that we had to go to church at St. Matthew’s. There is something of an unwritten rule that departed clergy should steer clear of the previous place for a while, but we really wanted to see some people. Besides, the parish is still between rectors, so I was hardly stepping on the toes of my successor.

I left a happy, healthy parish, and I found that not much had changed. A few people had left, but there were also a number of fresh faces in the pews, along with (hallelujah!) a substantial contingent of children. Most things were much the same, with a few things now done a bit differently, but the folks we talked to were still the same great people whom we had come to love over our 10½ years there.

DSCN0165A big difference for me was sitting in the congregation for a Sunday for the first time ever, realizing just how long a building it is, and how far away is the celebrant at the Eucharist. It might have helped my ministry there if I’d taken some time to sit in the pews — but that’s history now. That parish was home for a decade, and the people there still hold a big piece of my heart. Nonetheless, it is clear that we have moved, both physically and spiritually. Holy Trinity is becoming home, for which we are very glad.

Some people wanted to discuss parish issues with me, but I was quite able to say, “That’s not my problem.” That ended the discussion, but not the conversation. The relationship is different now — simply as friends, not as pastor and congregant. For at least one person, that seemed to be a relief! And indeed, it is a bit of a relief for me too, because I don’t have to be “on,” as clergy always have to be in public. Today I can go to coffee time after worship and see the stipendiary clergy having serious conversations with various people, and I can think, “That used to be me,” and then I can smile.

We went to our previous home, and then we came home again.

Holy Week … rediscovered

daliFor many years, this week has been the most intense, the most emotional, and the most stressful time of the year. For clergy in Catholic tradition, the observance of Holy Week is at the same time the ultimate spiritual experience and professionally the most demanding few days one can imagine.

I used to be responsible for making sure that a whole week of services happened, from the “light into dark” of the Palm/Passion Sunday liturgy through the gathering darkness of the week to the blackness of Good Friday — and then to the new fire, and the glories of Easter Day. One of the secrets of clergy life is that Holy Week is never complete until the priest has completed the final act — the liturgy of the Holy Face Plant!

I rejoiced to be a part of this for many years, even as it was so exhausting physically, but spiritually fulfilling.

This year is different. I am not responsible for anything except for a few assigned roles. The pressure is off! That’s a good thing, to some extent. Except… I am feeling this lack of pressure rather keenly. Holy Week seems a little emptier this year, and I have to realize that this will be the case in the future. This year, for the first time in a quarter-century, I skipped the Maundy Thursday service in favour of family commitments. I am happy to be with my family, but I look at posts of pictures from services, and I know what I am missing.

Professional or vocational responsibilities are one thing. My spiritual life is another. The years ahead will help me find a new balance, when the one that is now so much less has probably outweighed the other in the years past.

I will be part of the rest of the paschal liturgies: Good Friday, the Great Vigil of Easter, and the glories of Easter Sunday. That will be good!

10 Things Pastors Hate To Admit Publicly

As a retired pastor who has had a lot of opportunity to reflect on the experience of being in parish ministry, I say a loud “Amen!” to this. The truth is that many clergy live out these things every day. Thanks to Pastor Matt for this.

Matt Boswell's avatarThe Everyday Missionary

MB Posts When Ellen and I were first married ministry was not our 20-year plan, the Navy was. We had it all planned out; we were to spend the next 20 years with me being gone for 15. The Navy explained to my sweet new bride how grueling it would be, that I would be gone often and that even when I was around my mind would be elsewhere. Knowing that my particular career path in the Navy would be a marriage destroyer I pursued a discharge for the pursuit of higher education. With the promise of a difficult future behind us we embarked upon an easier dream where everyone would love us and things would be calm: pastoral service.

Twenty plus years later I can tell you it has been a ride we never could have anticipated. So much so that only now do I feel equipped enough to share a…

View original post 1,944 more words

Respect, part 2

The primary goal of this blog has been to reflect on the experience of retirement. Some recent posts may have seemed to go off on tangents, but they were really about things that have grabbed this (retired) priest’s attention. When I was in full-time parish ministry, things that attracted my attention as a person tended to get noticed in my preaching. To be honest, I enjoyed having regular access to a pulpit from which to address matters that seemed to be to be important. There’s always some tension in the practice of preaching. There’s a constant challenge to the preacher to be fully engaged with the congregation, the text, and the world around, while at the same time refraining from being too personal in viewpoint. As a former colleague once said, “If my parish knew my real political and theological views, they’d run me out of town.”

But on with the topic of respect…

In my previous post (Respect, part 1), I offered some reflections on respect in the context of the residential schools issue, and the hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As I was writing, I began recalling times in my ministry when I felt that I was not being treated with respect — and also times when I did not treat others respectfully. I have already blogged about one of them, and I don’t feel any need for further comment on that event.

There’s no need to rehearse old hurts, especially when some of them go back 25 years or more. I have striven to forgive people who have hurt me, and have sought to seek forgiveness for hurts I have inflicted. The past is past: let it be. As it has been said,

Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past.

We can’t change the past, but we can learn from it. One of the things I have learned in parish ministry is that parishioners don’t all deal with clergy in the same way. Some see clergy as “the help,” there to do the parish’s bidding, endlessly available to do whatever people ask. At the other pole are the people who put clergy on a pedestal, deferring to them as holy people with hotline to heaven. Neither position is truly respectful, seeing the cleric only in terms of the office, without really seeing the person in that office.

Clergy who are seen as hired hands become dispensable in their people’s eyes. When things aren’t going well — toss the chump! I’ve seen this happen to a number of colleagues. Everyone gets hurt, church and cleric alike, because the motivation is power, not love and respect.

Clergy on pedestals can only do one thing, and that’s fall off. We are human, and no human can ever fully live up to the exalted standard that others project on him or her. Clergy who allow themselves to be thus exalted are only setting themselves up for a fall. The fall can be long and hard. Again, I’ve seen this with some colleagues, some of whose egos and forceful personalities did not allow them to see that they could do any wrong.

Can we say that clergy who persist in either of these behaviour patterns respect neither their congregations nor themselves?

respect yourselfA healthy congregation-cleric relationship is based on mutual respect: valuing everyone’s gifts, acknowledging legitimate authority, accepting each other for who and what they are. The church’s prime message is one of love, God’s “steadfast love” (hesed) as in the  Hebrew Scriptures, agapé as in the New Testament. We do best by each other, both lay and clergy, when we live what we preach.

 

 

 

Respect, part 1

respectIn the Spirit which draws us into honest engagement with one another, including those who may be very different from us in various ways, God calls us to wake up and learn how to love and respect one another, period.

 I. Carter Heyward

I spent two days listening at the Alberta National Event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It was hard. I heard a number stories much like those I had heard from various people I encountered in Brandon, but the cumulative effect of the hearings was overpowering. It’s taken me almost two weeks to begin to process what I heard there, along with reactions from the media and a number of people I have spoken to personally.

One word sticks in my mind from the TRC: “respect.” I heard it used many times in a variety of ways by people speaking to the Commission. It is clear to me that the Residential Schools were born out of a lack of respect for our aboriginal peoples, and also that those peoples continue to struggle in our society with a continuing lack of respect. It is also clear to me that many of the survivors have struggled throughout their lives to regain some measure of self-respect. Perhaps the most moving stories for me were accounts of how individuals won that victory.

As I listened to the speakers, the thought kept going through my head that “Children learn what they live.” (That’s the title of a 1972  poem by Dorothy Law Nolte. Read it here.) Regardless of how well-intentioned some of the people working in it may have been (as I have heard some argue), the residential school system as a whole taught its students that their way of life, their languages, their very beings, were substandard, even evil. Churches participated in it out of a belief that they were doing the Lord’s work. By the standards of the day, that position might have been defensible, but in today’s post-Christendom world, I cannot see that it can be defended with any integrity.

For many centuries, the church was aligned implicitly and explicitly with the rulers of this world (See a good blog piece about that subject here.) Our involvement with the residential schools was a direct consequence of the assumption that preaching the Gospel necessarily entailed converting people from “savage” ways to something like European civilization.

It is — or should be — a matter of shame that Christian churches participated in a system that treated human beings as people undeserving of respect. At the heart of the Gospel is the assertion that we are all created in God’s image, all children of the same Creator, all equally deserving of one another’s love. The second great commandment, as Jesus taught it is “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” which begs the question “And who is my neighbour?”

Jesus answered it by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. The story pushes the boundaries of the idea of neighbour. To be a neighbour has less to do with where we live or how we are related than it does with the recognition that all other people are worthy of our love and compassion — our respect.

Treating aboriginal people without respect has stained our country with a legacy of racism, discrimination, and social and physical ills. It took many years for us to get to this place in our history, and it will take many years to find our way to a healthy and positive relationship between our various peoples, aboriginal and settler alike, a relationship based on realistic and hopeful mutual respect, as beloved children of the living God.

For what should we hope? Surely for the peace which Jesus came to give. So let us pray for that peace:

O God, it is your will to hold both heaven and earth in a single peace. Let the design of your great love shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows, and give peace to your Church, peace among nations, peace in our homes, and peace in our hearts; through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Book of Alternative Services, p. 677)

A Most Wonderful Weekend!

I have spend most of this weekend doing one of the things that I love best — singing. I often tell people that I joined my first choir at age 7, and have missed only about 5 years of my life since then singing in some choir or other. At the moment, I am a member of two choirs, Vocal Alchemy and the choir of Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Edmonton. I have lost count of the choirs I have belonged to in the intervening years, but it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is: I sing!

There is a famous saying, probably originating in Orthodox Christianity, that the one who sing, prays twice. I believe that with all my heart. Singing, especially choral singing, demands everything of a person. It involves the body, the mind, the emotions, and the spirit. If one is truly singing, the whole person is involved. If one is singing in community (i.e. in a choir), it also extends the person beyond the individual to become truly a part of a community.

A choir director once said that we needed to be able to hear the person next to us. If we couldn’t hear that person, we were either singing too loud, or we  (or the other person!) were dead. That’s a good metaphor for community in any setting, but it works really well in a choir. No individual voice should be heard, rather one should hear the voice of the choir. A truly fine choir sounds like one voice, but also sounds like no voice in particular. A real community is dominated by no one person, but finds its voice when individuals join in chorus, hearing each other, and responding to each other. The individual is not lost, but is part of thwhole, contributing to the voice of the whole.

So: this weekend…
I spent it singing! Vocal Alchemy’s spring retreat was held yesterday. The morning was for the women, and my spouse went to take part in that. I joined back in for lunch, and then we spent the afternoon singing as a full choir. After an evening of relaxation, we headed off this morning for the morning events at Holy Trinity, which for us means choir practice at 9:30 AM, followed by the the 10:30 AM service of Holy Eucharist. We usually stay for coffee hour, but not today, because I had to  be at the Vocal Alchemy men’s workshop by 1 PM.

It was great afternoon. I sang in a men’s choir for 10 years in Brandon MB, and came to love making music with other men. Today reminded me of the great times I had with Prairie Blend. I am so grateful for that experience, and so grateful that I can continue to sing in other contexts.

I sing.
I pray.
I live.
I cannot easily distinguish between these three facts.

Thanks be to God for a wonderful weekend! May there be many others.

I am an Anglican

I am an Anglican. It’s a historical faith, born out of the strife of the 16th century, committed by that strife to reach out to all people, bringing them into the reach of the love of God. We follow Jesus of Nazareth, who embraced the whole world by his death on the cross, and redeemed all humanity by that ultimate act of love.

In my early years in the church, I learned to love its ways — liturgy, scripture, prayer and service. In my latter years, I have come to question its historical identification of the Gospel with a particular cultural and ethnic orientation. Even though my forebears in this church have made errors, I stand with those today whose commitment to a new and Christ-like way of being are calling this Communion into God’s future.

We are a Church that has been in constant Reformation for almost 600 years, as we have striven to open our doors to all people in the name of Christ. Sometimes that has been successful, sometimes not. Sometimes the work we have done has borne appropriate witness to our Lord, sometimes not.

We are human, and like all humanity can only seek to follow Jesus in all or humanity.

This a warts-and-all church. Thanks be to God.