There are so many books about how to leave a congregation well, and how to start a new ministry well.
None of them that I’ve seen address the spiritual challenge of pastoral transitions.
They’re professionally helpful, yes. And they’re psychologically astute. “These are the feelings you may have.” “These are the issues at hand.”
But none of them deal with the soul of the pastor.
Professionally, I’m fantastic.
Emotionally, I’m fine. I have the usual feelings of sadness and then elation, and grief, and thrilled excitement and lots and lots of gratitude. HUGE gratitude every day.
But my soul is wandering the streets at night looking for the faces of my people, and she is wailing. Every night before I drop off to sleep, I say my prayers (in my fashion, I do. Non-conventionally). For the past ten years, I have had the same roster of names, faces, bodies, voices, concerns, stories, joys, sorrows in my heart and mind. These are the people whose life force I have been immersed in for a decade. I can go away from them in full understanding and acceptance of professional boundaries and healthy pastoral practice and all those things we are taught, but my soul needs some instruction of her own.
Dear Soul, I want to say. Professionalism requires that we give these dear ones into God’s keeping and to the good care of a new minister. But you and I know that their energy will remain around us and within us as long as there are any of us alive to remember and think about each other, and perhaps even beyond that.
Before I go to sleep each night, after I have quieted my mind from the list of painting shelving installation movers fixing stashing boxing buying discarding planning measuring window treatments bathroom cabinets guest room closet rack, my heart calms and my soul rises like the moon within me. It is her time. It is then that they swim toward me like honeymooners emerging from turquoise water heading for the swim-up pool bar, where we will bob and tread and sip from glasses with little umbrellas in them. Our hair wet like seals, we will smile at each other the silly grins of people in love. We are all there in the pool. Even the dead make an appearance, emerging like Esther Williams with flowers in their hair and triumphant, open arms. We applaud them as the stars they are. The light shines on us and the water is utterly pure azure and we are cool and weightless in our perfect element. Forever.
Lovely, lovely image. If it were my fantasy, I would emerge from the water with my make-up perfect, my swimsuit “in place”, and no chlorine up my nose. [oh, yes. That shiny red lipstick as she emerges from the depths… – PB]
This is beautiful – and dead on. Thank you for giving words to something I felt deeply but had no words for.
You know what I’m just realizing? I want to do retreats for pastors in transition on just this soul stuff. What my friend and colleague Martha Niebank just referred to as “mammalian body hunger yearning after beloveds.”
Yes, yes, good that your soul has her own boundaries of love and attachment, that your sould’s care for your former parishioners slops over the end point, that the dead rise up forever. Thank you for sharing your Mandala image of Beloved Community, its Busby Berkeley choreography of covenant.
Thank you- that’s what I need right now. Moving home and congregation at the end of this month.
Emotional rollercoaster.
Lovely, PB, and utterly true. I hadn’t thought of it this way, but immediately recognized that my soul still is yearning for all those beloved I left behind two years ago. I still dream about them. A lot.
Beautiful.
Well done, good and faithful servant.
I too, have just left a 14 year ministry, and feel mostly numb. Things will take much longer to shape themselves into images and emotions. Yet, clearly, it is a far more alienating and unsettling experience than we are led to expect. The advice to read a book about thistles is not enough…. we need connections, support, retreats, or at least spiritual direction. Especially in the UU tradition, we may be isolated. I am not in search, nor am I retired, so this “bardo” state is very strange. BTW, I have a beautiful Victorian home that is now a B&B and plan to offer FREE stays to UU (and other) clergy who need time for healing & renewal, as long as there is space. I am a short drive from Gethsemani Abbey, and right in the middle of the Bourbon Trail (KY). Choose your spirits!
After 28 years and 5 congregations, my soul still aches sometimes for that first congregation that I served (and those subsequent congregations as well)…but I am reminded by your post of something I frequently say at funerals — that the Gospel reminds us that love is not ended, even by death itself. You will always love those people, always carry them in your heart and they will always carry you in theirs. You are part of their collective story. Let there be blessing and balm in that knowledge.
“Our hair wet like seals, we will smile at each other the silly grins of people in love.”
This image is so beautiful and struck me so keenly and deeply. Thank you for sharing.
We are all taught at school to have professional boundaries. And that is true and necessary. And yet, we fall in love with the congregations and with time the parishioners become friends and some even become family. And then, at some point, we need to leave and its difficult to name the excitement and mourning that fit hand in glove.
Well said Beloved PB, well said.
Beautiful, And so true. And I cried.
Truly beautiful, thank you.