THE ECLECTIC CLERIC - “It’s only the ceiling, not the sky....”

One of the most interesting personal insights that came out of our recent leadership retreat in September was just how much anxiety people are feeling about my health, and how my own apparent LACK of anxiety about those same issues tends to make people feel even MORE anxious than they might feel otherwise!

I really don’t know how to respond to all this. My health is what it is, and some days I worry about it more than others. But every morning (at least so far) I’ve woken up knowing that my cancer’s not going to kill me today, and it’s probably not going to kill me tomorrow either. In fact, if anything, I’m actually getting a little healthier. And that’s generally enough to get me through the next 24 hours.

I DO worry about how some of my other related health issues, such as my lack of mobility, my chronic fatigue, and especially the “fuzziness” I experience from the medications I take to control my pain, have limited my ability to do my job they way I want to. My decision to file a disability claim this past summer was one of the most emotionally difficult things I have ever done in my life, and I still feel uncomfortable about it, even though it has made it possible to bring in colleagues like Kitsy and Will to assist me, and thus transform a challenge into an opportunity.

But still, I don’t really feel like a “disabled” minister. I feel like a human being attempting to minister to others despite my present disability, and often frustrated by my inability to perform at the same level I’m accustomed to performing. Yet even though I can’t do everything I’m accustomed to doing as well as I’m accustomed to doing it, I also know I still have an important contribution to make. Figuring out the parameters of that role, and learning how to fulfill it, is the real challenge facing me now. And it’s really no different than the challenge every one of us faces when we enter the doors at First Parish -- whether for the first time, or after countless times spanning decades and generations.

I’m also quite sensitive to the sentiments raised at the retreat that it would be nice “to catch a break” every now and then. Misfortune around here seems to run the gamut from my cancer diagnosis to the ceiling in the Meetinghouse, and all sorts of other setbacks in between. And yet I am also discovering that we are a congregation of survivors: strong, resilient, resourceful, creative...we encounter a crisis, face it squarely, work the problem and resolve it.

My own optimism is grounded in experience. It has nothing to do with blind hope or wishful thinking; if anything, it is rooted in a profound sense of cynicism which simply accepts that if something can go wrong it probably will go wrong (and at the worst possible moment), but that nevertheless we have the expertise and the resources to patch things up and move forward on our journey. And at the end of the day, that’s really all any of us can ask. Until it’s time to wake up again, and embrace another 24 hours of authentic living...................twj