30 years and counting...

I realized, yesterday, that my ordination happened on the summer solstace--the "longest day" of the year-- the day with the most sunlight, in the northern hemisphere. My husband & I joked about what manner of metaphoric meaning might be contained therein, as the 30th anniversary of the ordination came...and went...a moment in time...a moment marking the passing of time...a moment representing more than half  of my life-time...

It was a beautiful day in New York: warm, but not too hot, nor humid.  Idyllic. A perfect day.

Minstry, however, is not always like that, on the outside. Yet in a deeper sense, it is... Ministry is about being with others in the contexts of their lives. It is about incarnational embodiment of the Gospel. It is about the unexpected popping up in the midst of the ordinary, the hum-drum, the up-and-down days. It is about bath & meal & conversation: font, table, and pulpit. Ministry is about suffering & joy; consternation & celebration; or, in Frederick Buechner's words, about "Comedy, Tragedy, & Fairy Tale."

Thirty years have come and gone since that summer solstace of 1981; it does not seem possible, most of the time.  And yet, as I think back, I see faces and remember names, across places & spaces... A child baptized, and buried three months later; another child receiving first communion--soon to be, herself, ordained! ("Grace: God's love given freely." --and if she is reading this, she knows who she is.) I remember the single mom struggling with her four children and living in poverty; I remember the retired church-men (yes, men) gathering to talk and do "handyman" work around the church. I remember the work-release programs of the upstate prisons, and the ministry of hospitality of the Ladies' Aid, the Frauen Verein, and the LCW... the forthrightness of GF:  "So, what are you in for?" Inmate: "Manslaughter."  GF:  "Oh. Have some cake?") ...  precious memories, precious times. Thirty years later, new memories are being forged, new relatonships born, nuances of ministry explored...

...like that of having found myself ecclesiastically homeless, in 2004, for reasons far beyond the scope of this blog -- and being welcomed into a new church home, in the city.... St. Luke's, the Lutheran Church near Times Square... first as a member & later, as pastoral associate. Word and Sacrament, there, support and sustain the healing work of pastoral psychotherapy; the practice deepens and enriches the ministry at St. Luke's --  interlocking circles of Word, faith, & grace.