Rev. Megan Lloyd Joiner
Unitarian Society of New Haven
June 16, 2019
Reading: excerpts from “After Running Through the Thistles: the Hard Part Begins” by Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison-Reed (Rich Stockton)
The reading this morning comes from a talk that the Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison-Reed delivered to a gathering of Unitarian Universalists ministers back in 2000.
Each year, a minister is chosen to deliver what’s called the Berry Street Essay.
Rev. Dr. Morrison-Reed’s 2000 Berry Street Essay grappled with ministerial departures and the spiritual dimensions of ministers leaving the congregations they have loved and served. He took as his starting point for the essay a small book about ministerial departures by Roy Oswald, which was published in 1978. Oswald titled his book Running Through the Thistles, a metaphor which Rev. Megan will unpack a little later in her sermon. Over the years, Mark’s essay and Roy’s book have both become important resources for ministers concluding ministries with their congregations, and this morning, Rev. Megan wanted to share with you some of Rev. Morrison-Reed’s wisdom.
. . . being present is what it takes to love a congregation. We do ministry knowing that someday the relationship will end. The challenge is to be there despite this. For unless we can be fully there in authentic relationship with [our] members we can go through the motions of ministry
but we can’t really minister.
We can’t hold back because the power is in our relatedness to one another, and yet we must [also] hold back or risk conflating the professional with the personal. To minister is to wrestle with this dilemma….
Ministry takes enormous courage or romantic obliviousness to the repercussions of giving one’s soul to the [congregation]. Mary Oliver’s poem “In Blackwater Woods” describes what is required: “To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it, and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
We love what is mortal. For each individual ministry is mortal. It has its life span — a beginning and an end. Knowing this we still invest our essence in the community….Then “when the time comes to let it go” we have to let it go. This is the way it must be.
Forrest Church writes: “The fact that death is inevitable gives meaning to our love, for the more we love, the more we risk losing. Love’s power comes, in part, from the courage required to give ourselves to that which is not ours to keep: our spouses, children, parents, dear and cherished friends, [and our [beloved] congregations]….” It takes courage to throw off caution and enter fully into life. The risk of loss is not just great; it is certain. Therefore, it takes courage for us to wholly engage in the life of the community knowing that what awaits us at the end of our ministry is grief.
Anthem: For Good by Stephen Schwartz USNH Choir
Sermon: “Handprints On Our Hearts”
A colleague recently told me that, once, when he was leaving a congregation, he, too, gave them a number of months’ notice. Near the end of that time, a member of the congregation approached him and said, “How can we miss you if you won’t leave?” I feel like we are close to that.
First of all, I want to say thank you for the beautiful flowers that grace the chancel this morning.
My favorite color, red. You are so incredibly thoughtful.
This morning I want to talk with you about our time together: the past four years and the past four months. I want to share with you what I’ve learned during this time and reflect back to you some of what you’ve told me you’ve learned.
I thank Rich for reading Mark Morrison-Reed’s words this morning. I want to share with you more of the wisdom of my colleagues: Roy Oswald’s, who wrote about ministers leaving their parishes before I was born. And Mark’s, who writes about the Phoenix as a metaphor for the ending of one ministry and beginning of the next.
I am resting, this morning, in the love that we have shared and the love that will endure after our parting. I invite you to do the same. We’ll get through this together.
And, at the end of my sermon this morning, I’ll tell you about the presents I have for you.
So you can look forward to that!
~
Two weeks ago, we celebrated our ministry together with song and word and beautiful artwork
on the walls of the Social Hall, and food – so much food!
I wept as I listened to your words, your “Megan Moments,” and to the songs you had prepared,
surreptitiously asking Anthony what my favorites were. Arden came home singing “like a river ever flowing onward…” and I was so deeply touched by your tears and your laughter and your beautiful and thoughtful gifts, your kind- and open-hearted good wishes and, as always, your honesty.
Last week, we celebrated YOU with flowers upon flowers and deep gratitude for all the ways you make this congregation such a special, vibrant place. I have said before, and I will say again now, it is YOU who make USNH what it is. And it has been my joy to live and love and minister with you during the past four years.
Over the past few months, we have said our goodbyes. You’ve shared with me what our time together has meant for you. You’ve shared with me the losses my leaving has brought up for you. (I wish I had known enough to warn you that that would happen.)
You’ve written cards and letters and emails and called and come to sit with me for a while.
We’ve talked. We’ve sat in silence – which is what you do when you’re grieving sometimes.
Sometimes there are simply no words.
Many of you are aware of that ministers make themselves scarce in a congregation from which they have recently departed. After I conclude my tenure as your minister at the end of this month, I will intentionally depart the USNH community in order to make way for your next minister. Following our best practices, I will stay away during the interim time, for at least this next year. Our move to Atlanta will likely make things easier for all of us. It should be fairly obvious that I won’t be attending services or events here.
I also will not be contacting you, the members and friends of this congregation, by phone or email, letter, or even on Facebook.
As much as I might want to, I will not be performing your weddings, or coming back for a memorial service or even meeting you for coffee should you be passing through the Atlanta airport or should I be passing through New Haven.
After the transition period, and as the new minister settles in, I will most likely enter into a covenant with that person. Crucially important in any contact I might have in the future
with USNH is that my goal will always be to support the health and success of your shared ministry with your next minister. I believe you and in your future.
~
Roy Oswald likens a minister saying goodbye to her congregation to running barefoot through a patch of thistles. Oswald recounts that when he was a young boy growing up in rural Canada the quickest way home from school “was over the fields.” “It was shorter … but occasionally,” he writes, “we would come upon enormous thistle patches.”
He and his older brothers either had to walk around or find the narrowest gap and sprint across.
He writes: “I can still vividly remember the experience: running full speed in bare feet across 20 feet of prickly thistles yelping in pain all the way through.” On the other side, there were always a few thistles stuck in their feet, but the worst was over.
Oswald says that this is how many pastors approach their termination with a parish. “They rightly assume that there will be pain involved,” he says, “so their approach is to run through it as fast as they can.”
I was determined not to do that here.
Not with you.
You are too important to me.
~
Now, I am no fan of goodbyes. At a party, I prefer to leave quietly, to do what they call “ghost,” go without anyone knowing you’ve gone. Anthony is a say-goodbye-to-everyone-with-a hug-or-a-handshake kind of guy. (It actually takes us quite a long time to leave a party!)
But I am no fan of goodbyes. Goodbyes are hard.
And I’ve struggled throughout my life with hard feelings: sadness, fear, anger, disappointment –
mine and other people’s.
Through my work as a chaplain in a busy New York City hospital, I learned to tolerate people’s sadness, and their fear, but anger and disappointment remained challenging – terrifying, if I’m honest.
And so, one of the hardest things I’ve ever done is announce to you that I would be leaving USNH.
Because I knew you would be disappointed.
I knew you would be angry.
And I knew you would be sad, too.
I knew there would be thistles – lots of them.
And, yet, in order to be true to myself and my calling, I had to tell you.
You were – and are – disappointed.
You were – and maybe still are – angry.
You were – and are – sad.
And together, we did another very hard thing. We walked through those thistles slowly and deliberately. We sat with those hard feelings. We leaned into them and cried together.
We talked. We stayed in relationship, even when we wanted to do the opposite, even when we were tempted to ghost instead.
More than one of you came to me and said: “I was so angry, so hurt, ready to say ‘fine, just go already.’”
You’d been hurt before, by people’s leaving or their absence or their abandonment.
You told me those stories. And then you told me this: “I decided,” you said, “to do this differently. To come talk to you instead of leaving hurt and mad. To sit across from you and tell you how I am feeling rather than go off on my own.”
I decided,” you said, “to do this goodbye differently.”
I decided that too.
And we have done it differently.
My God, what a gift we have offered each other: the opportunity to change old patterns, to practice living and loving and losing differently than we ever have before. What a gift.
When I told another minister friend about what we’ve been doing together here over these past few months, he said that this is what ministry is all about.
We, pastor and people, together, teach each other how to love and then how to let go, how to say goodbye, how to grieve, recover, and love again.
In this sacred space we create together, the space between you and me and between you and your fellow congregant, we practice what it is to be human – fully and authentically and, at times raw and unabashedly human. Loving and losing is part of that. And so we practice together.
We chose to do things differently here than maybe we have before or in other places. We lean into the rawness and the humanness and we emerge, dare I say it?, transformed.
You have told me that you feel that you and this congregation have been changed by our time together, mostly for the better, you’ve said.
I know I have been transformed by my relationship with you.
We are both changed, for good.
I am not the same woman who stood before you in May 2015 when you called me to be your minister. I am older, obviously, but also a little bit wiser and a whole lot tougher. I am braver and a better listener. I am a better spouse and a better mother because of you, a better daughter, and a better friend. I am less reactive and more compassionate. I trust myself more. I trust others more.
I am all these things because you let me be. You let me make mistakes and learn and change.
You gave me second and third chances. You modeled and taught and cared for me and let me care for you. You loved me into being your minister and I loved you into being my congregation.
For all this and more, I say “thank you.”
Thank you.
~
Roy Oswald says that the way ministers close out our ministries will be “very similar to the way in which we will die.”
Woah. I don’t mean to be overly dramatic here, but, I think he is right.
He writes: “Death provides us with [the] opportunity to come to terms with our relationships, our values, our lives…In death and in grief, we do not so much need protection from painful experience as we need the boldness to face it. If we chose love, we must also have the courage to grieve.”
He goes on to say that ministry “involves being able to live deeply into the human side of death — the death of relationships — the death of roles and functions and responsibilities — the death of that special relationship a pastor has with a parish…Dying to the parish involves dying to our role with people, as well.”
Plenty of folks have trouble with this and try to hold on. Oswald is clear: “Our [ministers’] failure to die to this role with congregational members gets us involved in pastoral acts with them long after we’ve left. Our hanging onto these roles is our bid for immortality. We allow ourselves to be indispensable with people, insuring our ability to live forever in their lives.”
I know that I am not indispensable. And I will not be hanging on in this way. I will not be involved in your lives day to day any more. We will, however, live on in each other’s hearts.
That, I know to be true.
Mark Morrison Reed suggests that when we have said our goodbyes well and with intention, the next ministry rises like a Phoenix, arising “from the distillation of our essence — our deeds and dreams and love for those with whom we have striven to build the beloved community.”
My deeds and dreams and love for you will live on here. Take them into yourselves like “handprints on your hearts.”
And your deeds and dreams and love will live on in me – indelibly printed upon my heart. I will carry you with me – wherever I go, for all the days of my life.
~
It has been my honor to be the fifth settled minister of the Unitarian Society of New Haven.
I love you.
I believe in you.
Be bold. Be bold!
Your future beckons.
~
I promised presents.
And we have presents for you. Anthony and Arden and I wanted to give you something to celebrate and support the future of this congregation. I am holding in my hand two plaques that will be placed on the two rocking chairs that will arrive at USNH next week and be placed in the rear of the sanctuary for fathers and mothers and grandparents and friends to rock babies during the service.
We hope – we know – they will bring many years of comfort to the next generations of USNHers.
Thank you to you all for the opportunity you have given our family to minister with you here at USNH.
We are deeply grateful to you all.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
“Running Through the Thistles: terminating a ministerial relationship with a parish,” Roy M. Oswald, The Alban Institute, 1978, p.2
Ibid.
Ibid, p. 11.
Ibid, p. 11.
“After Running Through the Thistles: the Hard Part Begins” The Rev. Dr. Mark D. Morrison-Reed, The Berry Street Lecture, 2000. https://www.uuma.org/mpage/BSE2000
In delivering this sermon on June 16, 2019, I incorrectly stated the number of settled ministers USNH has had. There have been five, not four. Rev. Lester Lewis, Rev. Wayne Shuttee, Rev. Daniel Hotchkiss, Rev. Kathleen McTigue and myself, Rev. Megan Lloyd Joiner.