This week I got to have coffee with a retired colleague. It was so fun talking about all the people we had worked with and learned from throughout the years. Names of people who mentored me as a child, who I sat with at annual conference, who I remember from district retreats and camp work days. It was lovely to honor their memories, laugh over the stories, and recall their wisdom. And in the conversation was also grief for a church that is no more. For meetings and retreats that no longer occur. For patterns and rhythms that have ceased. We delighted in all the good times that shaped up and meant so much and we lamented their fading away,
And we also talked about all the ways the church now is leading us into deep conversations about race, embracing more fully LGBTQ+ people in full recognition of their leadership and spiritual gifts. We talked about the gift of online church and all the new people who have blessed our lives recently. And we spoke hopefully about the church to come and how God was moving in exciting and unimaginable ways.
This is sometimes a hard place to be. Loving of the past that made us, grieving the end and loss of people and patterns, and embracing with joy the now, while looking to the future in hope.
As the world changes and our institutions shift it’s natural to want to keep what we know, what has shaped us and helped us. We want to go back, conveniently forgetting of course the hard parts of what was.
I feel so grateful for the chance to be in this delicate dance of past, present, and future as our church look forward 5 years. Honoring what has been, celebrating our parish as it is now and dreaming together of what God can do in and through us moving forward. Together we will continue to remember, honor, and grieve, continue to celebrate and enjoy, and continue to hope and wonder and work!
-Eilidh
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