Wondering about endings and beginnings

I like beginnings better than endings. In the past, I have been able to successfully focus more on the new job and community I’m going to than stewing too much on long good-byes. The transition I’m going through now is different though. I left my position as Canon for Ministry and Congregational Development for the Diocese of Wyoming on Friday…but I’m not leaving Wyoming. In fact, I’ll be staying in the same city while trying my hand at writing another book and beginning a consulting business (Companion Way…but more on that later). I’ll also be teaching a week in Seabury-Western’s doctoral program in June and hope to hook up with EDS’s online offerings at some point. In fact, I have a lot to look forward to, a lot to “begin”. But as I sit at my desk in my office loft, surrounded by files and boxes begging to put away, I am aware that this “ending” has been different and is ongoing, needing attention and care.
Usually, an ending for me has meant a leaving behind. So, moving from job to job I’ve left in my wake lots of unresolved relationships. The best advice the Church has to give priests who are moving on to different pastures is to not call, not go back for a visit, and not keep connections which may make it harder for people of your faith community to form a new relationship with the next priest to move in. While I have colleagues who struggle with or even ignore this advice, it’s always made sense to me. After all, my own need to form new connections and relationships took up most of my emotional energy. But staying in place calls for a transformation of relationships, which is much more difficult. Like most retiring priests, I will take a break from exercising sacramental ministries for a while…but that has not been the focus of my work for quite awhile, so I don’t dread this hiatus. What is difficult is to visualize where I do fit in the faith community now.

My hope is that I can find my place as baptized member and as friend. This should have been my identity all along, but after 30 years of being vicar, rector and canon these other titles have overshadowed and even sometimes obliterated the most central and fundamental relationship I’m called to in a community. No faulting is intended here…both I and others probably bear the blame. But the question lies before me, how to reclaim the most fundamental of identities among people who know me in other ways. I wonder…and I look forward to making a new beginning, here in an old familiar place on the foundation of a good and holy ending.