THE ECLECTIC CLERIC - “Spring is sprung...

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the grass is riz, I wonder where the flowers is?” This brief bit of doggrel verse is one of my many memories from childhood, something that I learned from my father, and he no doubt from his father before that...passed down perhaps through so many generations that its actual origins are lost in obscurity.

There are lots of things in our lives like this, and the accuracy of their transmission is no guarantee of the quality of their content. Communications theorists sometimes call them “memes” -- tiny snippets of information which combine together as bits of code in order to form larger patterns of meaning, in much the same way that our “genes” combine together to create a genetic code that both defines who we are in a biological sense, and is passed down to subsequent generations as well.

As I prepare to leave First Parish, I find myself wondering what my “memetic” legacy to this congregation will be in years to come. I hope, for example, that the value of Radical Hospitality, and the vision of being “A Warm & Welcoming Place in the Heart of the City,” will both continue to thrive and grow here. These are ideas that I both brought with me, and that I also learned from you in an authentic and “honest to God” process of memetic cross-pollination. “Open all the windows and the doors, and receive whomsoever is sent.” It’s a worthwhile goal worthy of our faithful devotion. Yet it also requires a commitment to being “accessible to otherness,” and greeting neighbors and strangers alike with loving hearts, open minds, and helping hands.

I also hope that the support, encouragement, and gracious generosity that you have shown to me as I have wrestled with my illness will continue to be part of the personality of this congregation. Generosity breeds Gratitude and Gratitude in return breeds Generosity -- it is a classic “positive feedback loop” that has the potential to save the world from itself. So embrace these values in your own lives, teach them to your children and to their children, and know that with each good deed you do you plant the seed for another somewhere down the line.

Finally, I hope that this congregation will remember as fondly as I will the robust Spirit that filled the Meetinghouse the week I originally candidated here in May 2007, and again at my Installation the following Spring, and especially at last year’s Easter Sunday service, which might well have turned out to have been the last sermon I preached in my ministerial career. As it did turn out, thanks to your support I was able to return to the pulpit this past fall -- perhaps not as good as I ever was, but I hope good enough to serve!

Now I’m off in a few months the West Coast (and ultimately to the San Francisco Bay Area) to rest, recuperate and recover as best I can at my Father’s place in Fair Oaks. No one can say with any certainty what the future may bring, but I know my prayers are for ongoing vitality and prosperity here at First Parish, and for a long and happy life for myself. And may we all feel blessed by the too-short-of-time we shared together, and grieve the lose of “what might have been.”