Sunday
It has been above ninety degrees Fahrenheit for ten or so days. Thursday last week was 106. Most of the time it has been oppressive, but today it felt good. I stood, first at the back stairs, and later on the deck to let the sun warm me. Somehow I felt the heat inside as well as outside me. I recalled that same feeling from my trips to the Caribbean in the 1980's and 1990's.
I thought of the first day I had felt so. I was in St. Martin. My room had a small balcony facing west. I went out in the afternoon. The hotel was white. The temperature approached one hundred degrees. The sun's rays reflected from the white wall making the balcony into a dry sauna. I enjoyed feeling the heat burning into me and the sweat beading on my skin. It felt as though the warmth was physically holding me erect. Relaxed and at peace I stood with my eyes closed a long time. It had been years since I last had that experience. It felt good to do it again.
The heat of the sun and the memory of St. Martin improved my mood immensely. Church had been difficult. The service was different than I was accustomed, as was the preaching style of the pastor. It wasn't bad--just different. When I closed my eyes during the hymns I felt best. But I was uncomfortable despite a welcoming congregation.
Two men there knew I had been pastor in Wolf Lake. One introduced me to his wife and the other to the pastor. Both, in their introductions, referred to me as "pastor." I corrected them gently. I am no longer pastor. I must insist on that. If anything I am now a monk . . . A secret monk.
Monk's clothes
worn inside this one--
the journey begun.
Perhaps I should have gone to a church where no one knew me. I need to be one of the crowd and not "labeled." People react differently to a pastor. Some non-believers can be condescending or even hostile. Some believers don't relax; they have their guard up. They want not to offend. They don't understand I care to know them--not just who they think they should be when I am near. I am not there to judge. This is why pastors often feel isolated. It is part of why I need this year.
I have never felt that serving as a pastor made me any different as a person than when I simply worshiped from the pew. I recognize the responsibility of a pastor to set a good example, and tried to do that. I failed many times, I'm certain. But John Wesley said we " . . . should be going on to perfection." He never said we would be perfect in this life. He knew better.
A Bishop, Emerson Colaw, wrote, "The flower, reaching for the sun, never reaches its goal except in responding to the upward pull; the dynamic of life and growth is within the flower. We may never in this lifetime attain all that is implied in the ideal, 'You, therefore must be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect,' but in reaching toward that we have within us the dynamic of growth."
Beliefs of a United Methodist Christian
The title "pastor" didn't change me. Change was taking place before I was pastor, during my service as pastor and continues now. If I am to grow in this year it must continue. Else my time away, and my life itself, will mean nothing.
Growing skyward and
into the earth--as one.
Thus comes the flower!
No comments:
Post a Comment