Washed Ashore (and Back Again)

Just got back from a ten-day vacation on Nantucket, where I served two years as an interim minister before being called here to Carlisle in 2003. The Island is lousy with clergy this time of year: visited with my successor, my predecessor, two Island colleagues from other denominations (Methodist and Episcopal), the visiting "summer" minister (who arrived while I was there to fill in for the current minister while she and her son enjoy a little well-deserved vacation OFF-Island), plus a former intern of the minister emeritus, who had come to the Island to reconnect with HER call before heading off for what promises to be a difficult interim ministry in Eugene, Oregon -- the city where I earned my PhD. So the old saw about whether our movement is best understood as a small religious denomination or a large extended family remains intact.

For me this was supposed to be a "real" holiday -- didn't even bring a pair of long pants (which was actually a packing mistake, but worked out OK) and had no intention of doing anything even remotely "ministerial" -- yet even so, everywhere I went I was introduced as "our former minister," "our interim minister" "the guy who used to be our minister" and the like. Eventually I just started describing myself as "the Temp," which seemed to go over pretty well. Yet once again I was reminded that ministry is a vocation that depends as much on who we are as what we do -- and that (like it or not) we remain ministers in the eyes of others even when we are not actually "doing" ministry.

I love it on the Island -- felt at home there in a way I have rarely felt anywhere else, especially in the dead of winter when the weather closes in and the rest of the world "off-Island" fades into obscure insignificance. But after two years there, I also knew that it was time to move on -- that like Brigadoon or Shangri-la, Nantucket has a way of making time disappear and leaving little to show for it other than enduring friendships and fading memories...which are generally considered good things, but which (as Odysseus discovered in the arms of Circe) have an addictive, dreamlike quality that can easily consume all other considerations.

In any event, left for the Island in a bit of a hurry, playing cat and mouse with boat schedules and a tropical storm...and returned to discover that in my haste to depart I had left my refrigerator door slightly ajar, which meant that much of my first night back home I spent throwing out spoiled food and cleaning up a puddle of warm water from my kitchen floor. Thursday I begin my career development consultation in Dedham -- the "25 year check-up" which was part of the original inspiration for this blog to begin with. Meanwhile, I've got a week's worth of work to catch up on in the next two days...and the "excessive heat warning" here in "America" begins at noon....