This process of creating my own home, separate and distinct from my role as pastor, is a strange and wondrous territory. Born and raised in the Pastor's house, a certified PK (preacher's kid), I've never lived in a house that didn't belong to the church, let alone was separate from the systole and diastole of church life. Our life here is our own. A few people have told me that I would miss the relationships and responsibility that have to do with the pastor's role. I would say not. Any more than I missed college or graduate school, and the roles and relationships that were engendered by that time of my life.
I do think that I have detected in myself some of the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress. Years of hyper vigilance, confronting and managing conflict, death, mental issues, and loss begin to create a callus on the psyche that is hard to dump. It creates emotional habits that don't necessarily match the time and the day and situation. Trained to identify such tendencies and helping others to cope and climb past them, it has been fascinating to see them in myself and come to grips with them and their sources.
One of my New Year's resolutions is to embrace a devotional life in its new context.
This I consider a challenge that will help me as I live my life in this new world.
This ain't Kansas anymore, Toto.
Welcome to OZ.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Retired Angel
It's been a while....
A lot has gone under the metaphoric bridge. Geographic differences, role differences, stress differences, lots under the bridge.
We're all in this business of living while the river runs. So much changes and yet, too often we stand and watch with the same expectancy and anxiety. Our position on the bridge seems the only thing that remains the same. But the mirror and all else around us reminds us that we are no more constant than that river that carries all of life past, bits and pieces washed from other times and places, other perspectives, other hopes and dreams, done and gone.
It sounds so dark and hopeless. On the contrary. In this new place I feel new sense of life. I am not standing passive, watching life roll by. Rather here, past the times of grinding labor and responsibility I find a freedom that I really did not expect. Who knew?
I see myself and my place in this wonderland of living much more clearly. Perhaps less grandiose, perhaps less bound and bordered, perhaps with more of a sense of mortality, perhaps a little more philosophic, and definitely a lot more humble.
It's good to be here.
So, it's been a while.
Let's see what comes up...
It's been a while....
A lot has gone under the metaphoric bridge. Geographic differences, role differences, stress differences, lots under the bridge.
We're all in this business of living while the river runs. So much changes and yet, too often we stand and watch with the same expectancy and anxiety. Our position on the bridge seems the only thing that remains the same. But the mirror and all else around us reminds us that we are no more constant than that river that carries all of life past, bits and pieces washed from other times and places, other perspectives, other hopes and dreams, done and gone.
It sounds so dark and hopeless. On the contrary. In this new place I feel new sense of life. I am not standing passive, watching life roll by. Rather here, past the times of grinding labor and responsibility I find a freedom that I really did not expect. Who knew?
I see myself and my place in this wonderland of living much more clearly. Perhaps less grandiose, perhaps less bound and bordered, perhaps with more of a sense of mortality, perhaps a little more philosophic, and definitely a lot more humble.
It's good to be here.
So, it's been a while.
Let's see what comes up...
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