Now that the news is out

Last Tuesday, I began to announce my pastoral retirement. We put a letter to the congregation in the mail on the previous evening. Then I announced verbally to a gathering of church leaders. Many may have seen it coming, but were in suspended disbelief. 

Of course. It is my retirement, not theirs. And I've been plotting it, even rehearsing it, for a couple of years.

The church will be fine. There is a long runway of nine months before I hang up my pulpit gown on April 15. The board will establish a transition team in the fall. They will ask me to give them a brain dump of things I know and do. An interim job description will be crafted and a transitional minister will be recruited. There is already a shift in the wind. That's OK.

And I will be fine, too. My work with late career clergy for the denomination's CREDO program has helped me imagine a post-congregational life. I will begin with a six month sabbatical from church work, breaking it only briefly to help out a couple of colleagues. Frankly, I need the head space. My brain is prone to clutter.

One of the curious gifts of the last month has been new correspondence with a notable author. She found my Thriving on a Riff book somehow, expressed appreciation, and reached out to encourage me to keep writing. It was stunning - she won a Pulitzer Prize for one of her novels! Yet I must confess to her that my head is too full to imagine writing another book. The brain dump is in order. Spaciousness must be claimed.

Not that the future is an empty canvas. My musical adventures will continue. I will reinvest in my relationships with the people who are God-given gifts. Appropriate friendships will continue and wider friendships will develop. There are recipes to try and a thinner waistline to pursue. Just to name a few.

Meanwhile the news is out. The milkweed has left the pod. I'll be using this blog as a way to narrate where the seeds are landing.  

The futility of chasing the next big thing

One of my annoying qualities is how quickly I move on to the next Big Project. Something catches my fancy, I jump in, complete it, and then I'm onto something else. 

Later  I stumble across a previous project, and think, "How long ago did I finish this? Why didn't I enjoy it?"

Case in point: I love to make music with some great musicians. We recorded a concert in March. What a great night! Now the CD is at the manufacturer and sounds fantastic. The countdown is underway. I can't wait to share it with the world. We've started a small promotional campaign to get out the word.

This morning, I came across our last recording project, released just over a year ago. Still got boxes of those albums, on top of boxes of the previous recordings. Granted, CDs don't sell like they once did. Notable sales opportunities are rare. We don't order as many from the manufacturer as we once did. And yet I keep making more stuff.

Is this the curse of a creative soul? Or an imagination not balanced by retraint?

Or is this a slice of the human condition? This is how the book of Ecclesiastes sees us. An overachiever surveys his life, scanning his acquisitions and achievements. He was so busy moving from peak to peak that he doesn't even enjoy where he is or what he is doing. "Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire," mused the Sage. "This also is vanity and a chasing after wind." (Ecclesiastes 6:9)

The antidote is to pause. To savor. To inhabit. To sink in. And to enjoy. 

Nothing needs to fills the empty space. It's enough to be full.

When a saint dies

When a saint dies

the music stops
the voice silences
the light goes out

for a while.

Such is the shock
of loss 

and absence.

When light shines again

we learn it was 

always reflected

It never originated

in the beloved

but in the Beloved.

The saint shines on,

only knowing

the Light.

And the darkness

shall never overcome it.

For Pauline,

7/10/2026

It's time to pick this up again

This blog has been dormant for a while. I'm sensing it is time to refresh it, especially as I continue to reflect on my life and work in light of God's presence. Stay tuned. 

The Tipping Point

Some beach time allows me the opportunity to catch up on that stack of books that pile up unread. Just finished Malcolm Gladwell's classic, The Tipping Point, and I liked it very much.

Why did I wait so long to read this? The explanation comes from the book itself.

The book was recommended to me nine years ago by the son of one of our church members. We were chatting in his mother's hospital room. He suggested the title and I wrote it down. But when I saw it sitting in a stack at a local bookstore, I didn't buy it. Not right away.

A few years ago, I picked up Gladwell's book Outliers during a late night cruise through Amazon.com. Gladwell had become known for the claim that we become good at something if we do it for 10,000 hours. He traced this through well-told stories of high-achievement people. I liked that book, saw The Tipping Point on Amazon for a couple of bucks, and added that to the shopping cart for my next purchase. It arrived and sat on the shelf of unread books.

Gladwell asks how change happens. Who or what is moved to make a difference? What are the circumstances that prepare for an epidemic? How does an idea or product become "sticky" enough to build momentum?

Hmm. A lot to think about.

Perhaps I sense the need to make some changes in my life. Or it's time to "catch up" with a generation that moves on without me. Or I can perceive my own undeveloped abilities as a "Connector", "Maven," or "Salesman." Or it is simply time to revise my environment and make it more conducive to joy.

So I chew on these things as I wipe the Jersey sand out of the page bindings, close the book in satisfaction, and return to wipe Aloe lotion on my suntanned legs.

Katie Carter, sports journalist

Here's a new talent in the sports broadcasting business. Click to watch:

On the road again

Back in third grade, I received my first Bible as a gift from the church. It was – and is - a strange book, full of stories about long-ago people in faraway places. We heard some of those stories in worship and Sunday School, and their curious details sounded so distant. Then we discovered a few maps in the back of the Bible. They charted places on the other side of the world where God had acted or spoken. It all seemed so far-off and exotic, and heightened the distance between then and now.

A trip to the Holy Land in the year 2000 did blow away some of the ancient dust. My dad and I traveled to Nazareth, Samaria, and Jerusalem. Things haven’t changed that much in that part of the world – new buildings have gone up, the generations have come and gone – but people are still essentially the same. Our hopes and fears are identical to our ancient forebears. On that trip, what impressed me most of all is how local the Bible really is: Jesus walked from town to town on the same road that is now paved. He cast out demons in the synagogue on this spot, and ate tilapia fish from that lake over there. He did eighty percent of his adult work within a four-mile stretch on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, prayed in Gethsemane’s garden, and carried the cross through a narrow city street. We can still visit these places.

Some people take comfort in the vague promise that “God is everywhere.” As for me, I have increasingly found it comforting that the Gospel happens somewhere – in certain locations, among specific people, under particular circumstances. There is no timeless truth for the Christian faith. In Jesus, the Word became flesh – specifically – and we know where it happened. To this day, the grace of God continues to have GPS coordinates. God comes to us, where we are, right here in this lifetime, in the specifics of our need. That is the meaning of the Incarnation.

To put it another way, context matters. It matters to our congregation as we plan our work. Where do our people live? What do they do? What are the challenges and blessings in their lives? How might the good news speak to the concrete realities of our lives? And what do we have to say on behalf of Christ?

As I write this, my suitcase is packed for another holy trip. As part of this year’s study leave, I am retracing one of those maps in the back of my third grade Bible. Biblical storyteller Dennis Dewey is leading a tour that leads us through St. Paul’s itineraries. We will see spots in Greece and Turkey where the Gospel took root, and hear the Bible stories in the places where they happened. My Dad will once again be my roommate, and we’re delighted to share the trip with Donna and Andy Kepler, Pauline Heckman, and my mother-in-law Loraine Laubach. Keep us and all other pilgrims in your prayers, and expect us to return with stories of how the Word of God came alive in our travels.

With every good wish for the Story to come alive in you!