Intimacy With God Fall 1994

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A few months after I retired, I stood by my mailbox talking with a neighbor. He'd had a problem with alcohol once but hadn't taken a drink for years.

"When you were a minister--" he began. Then he stopped and corrected himself. "That's not right. You'll always be a minister. Just like I'll always be an alcoholic."

That's a strange analogy, I thought. Does he think I'm struggling every day with a compulsion to preach sermons, pray at public gatherings, and attend committee meetings?

I'm not. I'll never need to attend a Clergy Anonymous group.

I had a better analogy. I considered myself a minister the same way that I was a soldier when I was young. I wasn't a hero, but neither did I disgrace myself. Being in the army was something I was called to do. I did it as well as I could.

But I never became a soldier. It didn't define who I was. Soldiers were the thirty-year professionals who had no life outside the army. I was a civilian who did a soldier's job. When the job was over, I went on to something else, not because I was less patriotic, but because that calling was completed. When I retired I thought I'd stop being a minister, just as I stopped being a soldier when the war was over.

Both pictures were partly right; and, it turns out, neither was completely accurate.

HALF AND HALF

I will always be a minister. My friends see me that way, and they expect me to remain true to the colors I wore so long. To do otherwise would reduce my life's work to a charade, role playing with no sincerity.

I still pray with my friends and for them. If a church asks me to preach I will, even though now, other things interest me more. When the pastor who succeeded me asks, I join him at funerals. I don't seek any of these opportunities, but if my services ...

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