Our annual conference gathering
opens with the Memorial Service to those clergy members and their spouses that
have passed away since our last gathering.
Unless you are the member of a clergy family you probably don’t realize
it, but clergy typically can’t get away to attend the funeral of one of their
colleagues when they pass away. Clergy
work, the work of ordering and guiding a congregation, is demanding and time
consuming, and you often can’t break away to attend the funeral of a beloved
friend, mentor or co-worker. So we begin
by remembering. And because of the age
of our clergy (average age somewhere in the late 40’s), we sometimes have a lot
of remembering to do.
And because of our
exaggerated interrelationship with one another, because we depend on one
another, it is rare that there is no one being memorialized that you don’t have
some connection to. And I feel that is a
good thing. One of my favorite movie
quotes is “it’s good having someone that saying goodbye to is so damn hard.” As a United Methodist we have lots of people
that it is hard to say goodbye to.
It is a thin place.
No comments:
Post a Comment