THE ECLECTIC CLERIC - "I Will, With God's Help"

It's hard to imagine writing my column this month about anything other than my illness, my Installation, and the amazing outpouring of encouragement and affection and support I've received, not just from the people of First Parish, but from people all over the world as word of my condition spreads through the vast network of friends, colleagues, and former parishioners whose lives I have touched and whose lives have touched mine in the three decades I have practiced this strange and wonderful vocation of ministry.

And likewise, it is hard to imagine writing anything new that I haven't already written again and again in my blog, One Day Isle, or expressed in person on more occasions than I can recount. My profound feelings of gratitude, and amazement, and humility and blessing.... Words fail me, and I am reduced to a sense of silent astonishment and overwhelming emotion. I feel so fortunate -- which you might think would be strange for someone who has been afflicted with a potentially fatal illness. But I can't describe it any other way. Can't really explain it either. Death seems very distant to me now. I just feel so lucky to be alive.

The occasion of my formal Installation as the Minister at First Parish would have been a monumental milestone in the course of my ministry under any circumstance. But under these particular circumstances it is profoundly awe-inspiring. Awesome. An expression of faith and hope and trust and confidence in the promise of the future, which recognizes that life is uncertain and nothing can be known for sure, yet which empowers us all to believe in ourselves, to believe in one another, and to trust that whatever the future may bring we will be equal to the task and able to meet the challenge.

A faith which affirms the power of a loving "community of memory and hope" to embrace a vision of its future and step confidently in the direction of its dreams: transcending doubt, transcending uncertainty, transcending all of the cynical, skeptical attitudes of modernity which hedge themselves in the sophisticated "wisdom" of the aloof observer, and calls us instead to take a stand and to make a commitment -- to express our convictions without reservation, hesitation, or fear.

And perhaps most importantly, a faith which understands that we can not do this work alone, and that each of us is here neither one moment less nor one moment more than God needs us to be, however vaguely we ourselves may understand that need, or the sacred/holy/spiritual/divine Truth beyond "truth" that gives that purpose meaning and makes our lives meaningful.

This is why it is with both humility and gratitude that I willingly accept this charge to serve as your Parish Minister, and will continue to do so to the best of my abilities come what may. Not only with God's help, but with the help of all of you as well.......twj