A Rev. Bill Commentary: The Ides of March Indeed

The Ides of March are upon us.  For me that means I better get the pruning of my grape plants and fruit trees done.  And, I need to get my tomato plant seedlings started.  Also, in March I will be travelling to New York for a week to help care for two granddaughters as their mother slipped on the ice and badly fractured her wrist.  I will be performing my normal functions at KVUUC as well as working on two interfaith services and helping plan Cynthia’s celebration of life service on April 15.  I will be returning this Spring to deliver sermons at other congregations I have had relationships with:  Tacoma, Whidbey Island, Bremerton.  I move joyfully into a deeper communion.

At KVUUC it is the time of the year to begin discernment as to whether I should return for another year because, although my 1/4 time contract ends September 1, the congregational meeting to pass the new budget comes up at the end of April.   The Council on Ministry (Debbie, Bruce and Becca) will be centrally involved in consulting with me and with the congregation on this issue.

I do sense that things may be on the cusp of breaking out at KVUUC if strong but collaborative leadership steps forward.  It must attend to picking up all the functions that Jim and Cynthia fulfilled and address existential questions like where do we go from here.

And so each of us needs to do some contemplation, even prayer, as to the future, and as to mine and each of your roles in it.

Whenever I contemplate my own future course I like to recall this short poem by T.S. Eliot:

Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Rev. Bill