Vacating

There's something very holy about vacation. For us clergy-types, I'm afraid it at times seems like more of a pain that it is worth. I'm vacating right now, and trying my best to empty out, shift gears, slow down, savor, and hope that in two weeks the pressures built up within the tectonic plates of my life will shutter and quake enough for a resettling to take place. A more comfortable fit.

But, somehow, sometimes we get suckered into believing the great lie. Our absence - even for a week or two - will be so sorely missed as to wound the church irreparably. Somehow we will become abandoners, not caring for those who count on us to be at bedsides or gravesides. Especially when we are lolling away our time dangling our feet in a cool stream or watching a video at home with the curtains drawn mid-afternoon. It's a great lie - not that parishioners tell us, but that we tell ourselves.

Let us love our people enough to entrust them to the caring hands and attention of others that might speak a word of God or have a touch of God so slightly different than our own so as to catch our beloved parishioners by surprise and let them perhaps meet God in a new way.

And, let us love ourselves enough to trust ourselves to the great vacation void, where God may be waiting to meet us in the empty, surprising space of a blank schedule or a new location.

A deep-body thanks to those who are enabling and enriching my holy vacating! Rich - far away but always close; April - "Anam Cara;" Christopher, Jaylin, Cara & Jenole - sharing sacred family space like a down comforter!