Yes, My Heart Really Does Break

I really do love interim ministry.  It's like being on a cruise with a whole bunch of people and falling in love with them all.  As the ship pulls into port, we all hug and say goodbye.  I head up the road to my next assignment, and yes, I do it with a broken heart.  The excitement of the next adventure does draw me on, but the thought of never seeing these people, the ones with whom I worked so earnestly for two years, never seeing them again except maybe at General Assembly, that brings real pain.

Pain is not a totally bad thing.  I had to sympathize with a young facebook friend who posted that she was sad after the end of camp at Ferry Beach.  I really think the sadness is deeper when we have been having a deeply wonderful time.  Since things end, deep and wonderful things as well as shallow and boring things, those times of sadness, deep sadness, are an inevitable part of living a full and open life.  So how bad could that be (she said, reaching for a tissue...)?

It could be so bad that the person who has suffered the loss abandons all will to go on.  I have seen this in long-married couples when one partner dies.  I have seen others who after great loss find something within that wants to continue.  I'm thinking the sorrows on my mind just now -- of saying goodbye to a congregation or a minister or the special friends at camp --real as they are, these may also be rehearsal for the inevitable really big losses.  No, we don't get used to it.  A broken heart is a broken heart.  What we can draw into deep awareness is that after the heart breaks, something new can happen.  Something comes to sing deep in the core of our being, assuring us that there is some new dawn on the other side.

I'm coming to believe that for me, and I hope for most of us, love calls us on.   Faith calls us on.  Life calls us on.

Here's a link to Jason Shelton leading a congregation in "Life Calls us On"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XhJiWgbrP8