Almost time to say goodbye

As the time winds down for me to say goodbye to the 'little church with a big mission' I find myself alternately excited to push ahead to a new kind of life, and at the same time, extremely sad. The grief comes up with waves of actual crying, the sobbing kind that overwhelms me at times. I can't really tell if its related to our extremely strange life inside a pandemic or just the grief I find in leaving a congregation I have known and loved for nearly twelve years. Probably a bit of both.
I have to clean out my office at the church. Each paper and file bring back memories of the people who have guided me on this journey and the people I have helped guide...all of which give me opportunities for thankfulness and joy, as well as times for crying. 
I have to admit, I'm a bit of a packrat when it comes to keeping meaningful (to me) bits of paper. I started my file and book collection in the era before the internet gave us unlimited access to information. If I were doing it now, I probably wouldn't have saved so much paper. Now I'm re-examining the collection for what will be appropriate to save. What will I be passing along? How do I decide what to keep and what to discard? How do I organize all the ephemera I keep to tell my own story? Who will care if I do or don't? In any case, I find that I have to answer all those questions in about a week, before I vacate the premises of the church on May 31.
When I picked May 31 as a retirement date, I did so with the happy realization of the coincidence of Pentecost with the last Sunday of the month. (How often does THAT happen?) Little did I know that this year in 2020, Pentecost would fall in the middle of a pandemic. Our little church hasn't met in person since the middle of March. It doesn't look like it will meet in person any time soon.  So much to grieve in so short a time, at at such difficulty!
As I bid farewell to the congregation with my own legacy, I look back on their journey and mine, with bouts of grief and thanksgiving, for our joint moving with the Spirit.
Back to cleaning out the files and bookshelves.
To God be the Glory.

PPE for the Soul

While commenting on the practices that we're all trying to incorporate now to stay healthy in our quarantined environments, it occurred to me that our spiritual practices are our own versions of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for our souls. We need the disciplines of prayer, worship, meditation, bible reading, on our own and with others in virtual space to provide the framework to interpret our actions and feelings and to connect them with the purposed that are beyond ourselves. This is how we'll survive, and even thrive. Our fore-bearers in the Christian faith knew this, as do all prior generations of people who survive crises like ours.  This is the wisdom that has been passed down to us: Spiritual health is a matter of regular devotional hygiene, faithful discipline in the practices that put boundaries around our human tendencies to wander. Faith matters. This is not the time to jettison the spiritual practices we know and understand. It is definitely the time to engage them in much deeper ways.
I do feel some sorrow for those who have no faith traditions to appeal to for such wisdom.  Those unmoored from any faith community--the 'nones' and the 'dones'--may be struggling now to reinvent spiritual exercises for themselves, maybe searching the internet for sites devoted to coping mechanisms with whatever is available to fill a felt need. Some may do well, others not. It's hit and miss. It's difficult to discern what works, and what has stood the test of time when one doesn't have the benefit of the long history with a tradition in which to make such a judgement.
Now I am grateful for the many years of experience in my own Christian practices...not that I'm an expert in any of the them. But I do have the examples of generations of saints who have gone before me--the Desert Mothers and Fathers, the mystics of the European middle ages, the Pilgrims who have progressed--all of whom survived with their own PPE for the Soul and handed on to me.
Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola.