Barb:
Thank you for being here this morning.
Thank you for all it takes to get yourself here.
If this is your first time here, thank you for the courage to come, not knowing for sure what will happen or how the church will feel.
Thank you to those wondering if this is could be your spiritual house.
And thank you to the members who come when satisfied and unsatisfied and continue to make this your church home.
Thank you for all who are gathered here in this place on this morning.
What next?
Many of you ask us what we hope to do in retirement.We want to create loving relationships, grow spiritually and live with integrity, joy and service.
For many of you those words will sound very familiar. Reciting the church’s mission week after week persuades us. The church’s mission is now truly our own. I want to make the most out of momentary meetings with strangers. I want to deepen love with family, friends, Bill and with myself. I want to grow my soul. I want to live in gratitude for life and for being able to have a chapter of retirement.
Among you, we find role models of good retirement. We hope to walk, travel, read, and write. I want to explore the connections among art, music, poetry, mythology and religion. I want to read good novels that make me laugh and cry and know what it is to be human.
When I walk, I want to try authentically to look on each person to see them at their best. I want to look at a person’s child or dog as if the child or animal was the most adorable on the planet. When I am able to do this, I feel good about myself. I feel connected. I envision this as my next ministry.
Bill:
I want to study my family history back through the generations and see how my family’s story connects with the history of the country and the human journey. I want to understand myself through knowing the stories of my ancestors. I want to expand my awareness of myself through time and space back as far as I can, back, say…to stardust. I want to see the divine in the beings of others and feel ourselves part of cosmic creation. I want to read and write poetry.
My ministry will continue as I make my way through life, believing in the Unity of All. I will open my awareness wider and wider, perhaps losing sight of this particular place, this particular moment, this particular me.
I may merge my consciousness with the rising sun, the fruit trees putting forth pink and white blossoms. For, we are sunshine. We are the dark of empty space. We breathe in the air of dinosaurs and walk the paths of mammoths. We merge with the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and we venture out into the unknown, yearning to know this cosmic home of which we are part. I can see it’s going to be a busy time, this retirement.
With this cosmic consciousness, I will believe that my last breath will become breath for future generations. I will believe in the power of love and compassion to heal the wounds of alienation—for what better salve is there than to invite the joining of hands and hearts, what better step for any of us to take than opening our arms to embrace the magnificence of sky and earth, water and our beating hearts.
What an adventure!
Barb:
What next?
We will savor four more Sundays with you. Saturday, May 31 we’ll have a church party from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. On Sunday, June 1 we’ll have a ritual of leave-taking, followed by a picnic, socializing and fun.
Once we retire, once we are no longer your ministers, we will practice what is called a “ministry of absence.” Our absence from the church supports your relationship with your next ministers, (interim and settled ministers). The ministry of absence is not a euphemism; it is a real ministry to this church.
Our absence will support your discernment and exploration of your identity as a congregation after our ministry has concluded. In our absence we will remember you, appreciate you, and hold you in our prayers. If we happen upon one another at the grocery store or the library or out on walks, we will be so glad to see you. We’ll be grateful to hear about your life, your work, and your family. We have been such a part of one another’s lives.
Though we will be absent from church life, you will always be present in our hearts. We will always want the very best for you and for this congregation.
Bill:
If we meet up by chance, our conversations with you will not be about church life. You most likely will have a new minister by mid-August and another new minister in two years. Your questions, desires, complaints, observations, creative ideas and wonderings about church life belong here within this community, and not with us.
All Unitarian Universalist ministers agree to conduct our professional lives according to a Code of Professional Practice which we continually revise and update. Barbara and I agree to this code, and the two of us will follow it. Our priority is for a healthy next chapter for you and your next ministers.
Your next ministers deepen their relationships with you not only when they lead Sunday Services, offer classes and workshops, meet with the board, committees and staff, but also when they conduct weddings, baby blessings, memorial services, make pastoral visits, provide counsel, and greet you over coffee following the service.
Barb:
What next?
Over the summer, the ministers who make this church home their worshipping community will be offering sermons. You will be with familiar, fine ministers who will offer continuity and community and their best sermons.
Summer is a season for people from the community to visit Sunday services, to see if there is a place for them among you. We hope you will be here to warmly welcome and get to know them.
During the summer, ministers are available too for weddings and memorial services and for pastoral visits. You are blessed too by Director of Family Ministry Merrin Clough. She is a thoughtful and wise religious leader.
Most of all, you will have one another. Your care for one another is what makes this a loving community. So many rich blessings are yours.
Bill:
What next?
By mid-August you will have an interim minister. With the interim minister, you will be able to review church life, make needed organizational changes, strengthen others, and envision new possibilities and next great chapters for UUCB.
This is good.
Barb:
What next?
14 year old Lindsey Lam with her poem today lifts up her vision. Many people, small and big, young and old and in-between, gather in the sanctuary of acceptance. They unite strong as the walls of this church, as bright as candle light. The prayers are like music, the music like prayers. There are laughter and smiles. Everyone learns to live life to the fullest. No one stands alone. No one is left to face life alone here.
When one person falls, others pick them up and help them carry on. Everyone is welcome with open arms and a caring smile. Everyone is loved.
Bill:
It is an exciting time for Unitarian Universalism in the whole bay area. We have a new, inspiring, wise, bass playing, music making, story-telling district executive to lead us. New ministers will be coming here and to the Oakland, Hayward, Berkeley Fellowship, and San Francisco churches. There is also a new President for Starr King School for the Ministry, our own UU seminary down the hill. This is an exciting new chapter of shared vision, collaboration and creativity. This is good.
Our hope is that you will welcome warmly your next ministers and nurture close and affectionate relationships with them. Your next ministers will benefit, as we have so very much, from your love and support. Ministers come and go. The church goes on.
Barb:
Look around you …
beside you …
behind you …
in front of you …
You are surrounded by such good people, people who come together to co-create a loving community. When the two of us first arrived as strangers, you gave us your smiles. You reached out to us.
Look around you … someone is seeking your welcome, your willingness to know them.
Bill: During difficult times and times of conflict, you have been real and stayed in community and in relationship with us and with one another.
Look around you … someone is wanting you to be real with them.
In our time with you, we have learned more to trust ourselves, to be vulnerable, to try things and if they don’t work, to try again. With you we have learned to grow in authentic, compassionate relationships.
Look around you … someone is longing for a real, caring relationship. Maybe it is you. Maybe it is the person whose eyes you just met. You make community by your caring attention to one another, by affirmation, by trusting.
Continue to make loving community for yourself and for each other.
Barb:
We humans are able to live lives of integrity, joy and service when we are loved. Love one another. Welcome the stranger. Welcome those familiar folks who you see so often. Seek ways to heal old wounds.
As a community of faith, you are constantly invited to love. Look around someone is waiting for you to open your heart.
What next?
Open your heart, bless and be blessed.
Amen.
Copyright © 2014, Revs. Bill and Barbara Hamilton-Holway. All Rights Reserved.
