One of the paradoxical things about this season just beginning is the way it both heralds the warmer weather, the summer which is to come, and somehow also insists that we look back to previous Springs. This must be what the poet T.S.Eliot meant when he wrote about the Spring "mixing memory and desire". Even as we look forward, every Spring we experience reminds us of the past, of our youth, the Spring of our life. And every little fleeting flower we see reminds us how quickly that Springtime passes. When we're young, we think we always will be, even though, as it says in a poem by Dylan Thomas, "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age". Spring is always, at one and the same time, a time of springing forward into newness and a time of recognizing that, as Buddhists particularly stress, nothing is forever, everything changes, and this day, this moment, is all we surely have. I love particularly the way the poet Robert Herrick expressed it four centuries ago, when he wrote, "Fair daffodils, we weep to see/ You haste away so soon:/ As yet the early-rising sun/ Has not attained his noon. ...... We have short time to stay, as you,/ We have as short a Spring;/ As quick a growth to meet decay,/ As you or any thing."
Today I want to focus on a particular and personal instance of this Spring paradox of springing forward while also being conscious of inevitable endings. Some of you will be surprised by what I have to say, and others not at all. It probably won't surprise any of you to know that someone my age has been considering retirement for some time. The Springtime news is that I've come to the decision that this year, 2004, will be my last year in ministry with you. On Wednesday, after informing the Committee on Ministry last Monday, I informed the Board that my planned retirement date is December 31, 2004.
I wanted to give the congregation time - give us all time, really - to plan for the transition. (Nine months is, you may have noticed, just enough time for the development of something wonderfully new!) The reality is that every time I have a birthday I am one year older - and yet every year this congregation becomes younger; I think that gap could usefully be lessened with a younger minister! I'll be 65 in October. I've always looked forward to retiring from work at that age so that I can have time for the many other things I already love doing and some new interests that I want to explore. John, as you know, has retired from his full-time hospital Chaplaincy work and is involved in volunteer work in South America. I look forward to being able to accompany him on more of his travels, or at least to have longer visits with him while he's away. And -- the congregation's growth and vitality make this in some ways a good time to be looking for new leadership which can bring to this position new skills, energy and enthusiasm, a fresh perspective and creativity.
If you know me at all, you will realize this decision has not come entirely easily. I really love this work, and I have a great fondness and appreciation for the people of this congregation. Ministry here is a marvellous form of work -- not always easy, but it is always interesting! I came to the profession of ministry late in life. It's at least my third career, maybe the fourth or fifth, depending how and what you count. I've only been ordained for ten years. There's a part of me that would like to go on working indefinitely -- an unrealistic woman who pretends she's indispensable and indistructible, when she's not. There's a part of me that doesn't like to face realities like the natural aging process. But fortunately there's also a self-interested me that has faced the reality and acknowledged that the balance of pros and cons tips towards retirement. That doesn't mean I'm free of ambivalence, of course. I'm going to miss so many things about ministry - both in general, as a profession and a major part of my identity, and - above all - in particular, with this particular and quite wonderful congregation.
For the benefit especially of those who have joined the congregation since I came here in August of 1998, I'll summarize a little history. By the end of this year, I will have been with the Waterloo congregation for six and a half years. When I arrived, the congregation had about 75 members, and had been served by various part-time ministries. I came as a three-quarter-time Minister with Waterloo and one-quarter time with the Elora-Fergus congregation, who had not had professional leadership before. Unfortunately, the funds were not available to continue the Elora-Fergus ministry, and to my surprise and delight this congregation decided to take the leap into full-time ministry, raising the extra money needed for that with amazingly little difficulty and in a short time. We worked out goals for this first-ever full-time professional leadership in the congregation, and we've worked on those goals together. In the past couple of years particularly, we've experienced wonderful growth and vitality in this religious community. We're certainly not perfect. There's always more that we might want to be able to do, and there are things we'd like to improve on, but we've had good success together, and it's been an extremely rewarding time of my life, and I hope of yours.
As the Reverend Richard Gilbert said in a reading for meditation, "our lives are always unfinished business." Nothing is ever quite over or complete, and that will include the transition from this year to next year. But I do want do my part in it as clearly and helpfully as possible. I've told some of you the cautionary tale passed on to me by my friend and colleague Anne Orfald, who's also retiring, from the Peterborough Fellowship. Anne grew up as a Universalist in Minneapolis, and she tells the story of a Minister in the old Universalist Church in downtown Minneapolis, about a century ago, who was dearly beloved, and stayed on and on, until - it's sad to say -he was not quite as dearly beloved. He continued to age as the congregation also continued to age and decline, until they thought he would never retire. He was well into his 80s. Finally, to their relief, he concluded it was time to go. With joy and appreciation they threw him a party, and sang his praises -- so much so that he changed his mind and decided to stay!
I am not going to do that to you. Nor will I make the announcement and run, as some have done, to avoid the painful good-byes. I will be here for a little more than nine more months, plenty of time for us to do a good leave-taking from one another. It can and will be good, because this congregation is strong and healthy and solid. Naturally, we have some problems, especially too little space, which is a wonderful problem really! And so, this is a wonderful time to be looking for new leadership, new ways of stretching and growing.
A new Minister will bring new skills, energy and enthusiasm, a fresh perspective and creativity. I feel a great sense of satisfaction that we have accomplished so much together. We have been a good match, and I think I was the right minister for this congregation when I came in 1998. But just as I am not exactly the same person I was then, neither is the congregation. There are more members, more people showing up on Sunday mornings, a much larger children's programme, more diversity and variety and youthfulness in the congregation, many more programs and activities, and therefore different needs for ministry. You wouldn't want to have to call a new Minister if things were declining, but when there is promise and opportunity, and an active positive congregation, it can be a wonderful new stage. And believe me, I will have nothing but positive things to say about the congregation to any Minister who expresses an interest in coming here!
Of course there will be some anxious times in the year ahead and some feelings of loss, certainly for myself, and probably for some of you. With all my positive talk, I don't want to deny or discount the sadness. It's a reality that there is grief with any loss. But as we all get used to the idea, I sincerely hope there will be a growing sense of excitement and optimism about the future. Wouldn't it be wonderful, for instance, to find a new home into which you could invite your next settled Minister? There could perhaps be a period of interim ministry while the space challenges are worked out, and then the calling of someone who will be with you for a good long time. Of course, that's just my own fantasy of how it will unfold, and it will be entirely up to you, and not up to me at all, to decide about such things. And I'm confident you will decide well.
Last Wednesday, I shared with the Board what the transition process usually looks like as a particular ministry ends, and the steps which need to be taken immediately and in the coming months. You'll all have a significant part in that process too, particularly in re-examining what's needed and wanted, for this congregation at this time. I have a professional obligation not to try to influence the choice of the next Minister in any way, and certainly not to infringe on her or his ministry when the next settlement begins. But I will do all I can to help and support the transition process. When the day comes that you welcome a new Minister to this pulpit, I know it will be a day of celebration, and the beginning of a new phase in the life of the congregation. I also feel confident that we can have a good time together in these next nine months as we work toward the closure of my ministry with you.
I've been talking about how we might "Spring Forward" in perhaps quite a different sense than you were expecting from my title. But all the senses of the phrase are related. Let's return now for a moment or two to appreciating this season of the year as well as this season in the life of the congregation. You won't be surprised that I'm going to use the words of some poets. Lawrence Binyon, for example, a poet of the 1930s, who told us to plant our seeds in the autumn, looking forward to Spring, and in faith that:
The small twy bladed
Shoot will thrust
To brave all hazards.
The seed is sown
And in the Earth I trust.
We need that trust, don't we? There's so little we can be sure of these days, and the ability of the earth to grow flowers is one of the few remaining certainties. As another poet, Tennyson, said:
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last far off at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
The world often seems to be such a mess, and we're conscious that it's mostly we human beings who've made it that way. So it's also we human beings who need to believe that we can help put things right. Perhaps, as our Children's Time this morning suggested, we need to help the Spring come, even while trusting that it will. One of my favourite word plays is about this; it's in a poem called "Naming of Parts", by Henry Reed, about young soldiers learning the parts of a gun; their instructor, standing in the warm sun of an April day, is demonstrating how the weapon works in these words:
And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.
Let's do whatever we can, with our appreciation, our wake-up calls, and our trust, to ease the Spring this year!
New birth is possible at any time, but perhaps Spring is the time it's most likely. Here's a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, that Jesuit priest I've quoted before, who loved the natural world with a passion, and the Springtime above all. (It will be a month or two before this height of Spring reaches Canada, but it will come, and on Friday I saw a bird carrying small twigs to a tree to build its nest.) Hopkins writes:
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden ...
For Hopkins, as for most of us, I think, when we allow ourselves to experience the joy and delight of warmth and sunshine and growth, there's some dissolving of cold fear, and we feel that hope is the overriding reality of the universe. And I think we can go further; we can commit ourselves consciously to the increase of light and warmth and inward growth knowing that the season is short, like our lives? I'm often too scared to say a positive "yes" to all the possibility which life offers, but I believe that "yes" is the most growthful answer. Even though it may cost us dearly, "yes" to life is more productive than "no".
A commitment to "Spring Forward" isn't necessarily a busy or frenzied response. It may be more in the nature of contemplation, of worship. Simply giving ourselves time to experience March sunlight, to look at the ice breaking on the rivers, to listen to the returning birds singing, to be aware of life in our hearts, this is allowing the experience of the holy and in the end we may not need to do anything except wonder at it and drink it in. I'm going to end with two of my very favourite poems, another one from Gerard Manly Hopkins and then one from A.E. Housman's collection called "A Shropshire Lad", in the hope that each one of you will be able to "Spring Forward" with delight, this year. First, Hopkins:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
And from Housman:
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now/ Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride/ Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now of my threescore years and ten,/ Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,/ It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom/ Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go,/ To see the cherry hung with snow.