50 and Counting
Looking back over 50 years of ministry, it’s been quite a journey. I never thought about what this journey would look like. In fact, when Kathy and I started out, I didn’t know where Staten Island was (and I certainly couldn’t find Mamaroneck on a map). Somehow we made our way to these places as we discovered what lox and bagels were and that the Big Apple is not a really an apple.
Kathy, a Jersey girl (who doesn’t pump gas), took me around the city to places like McSorley’s Old Ale House, Greenwich Village, and what was then the restaurant Mamma Leone’s. I went to my first Broadway play and to my first opera at the Met and, while I was not a fan at the time, to my first Yankee’s game.
We left Chicago headed for New York to see the world but always figured we’d end up back in California, where I grew up. That never happened even though I have visited California twice a year for the last 50 years.
The more I thought about those years, the more I realized that I was moving forward on faith that I could succeed in the Big Apple or anywhere. I didn’t know it exactly at the time but as I look back, I took a lot of risks, and they all seemed to pay off, even bigger than I could have imagined.
While I don’t want to talk about my glorious life, I do want to say that I am not the same person as the one that started out on this journey. In my arrogance I thought I was very capable and better than most people I was serving. I was wrong. I was so very wrong.
As I look back, I discovered that there were a ton of things I needed to learn. This know-it-all that I was really didn’t know anything. At some point I did realize that I was not as capable as I thought I was, and many people at St. John’s taught me what it meant to be both a competent professional and a compassionate human being.
Looking back, I can see faces from the past, people who believed in me, who saw more potential in me than I could see in myself. I don’t know exactly when, but I had a huge change in attitude and perspective. I started seeing myself as a sponge, soaking up advice, watching people who had a tremendous work ethic, and experiencing people in great pain who faced their hurt and were resilient.
Everything, from how I dressed to what I read to how I spoke and to how I saw others, changed. Things I took for granted became important; things I ran away from, I faced. I began to prioritize what was really important and leave behind what wasn’t.
I remember being asked in a group of pastors: “How do face adversity, difficulty, and conflict in a parish of which you are the pastor?” My answer was, and still is: “If you love people, they will go a long way for you.” This is the truth of my ministry. Love is not a cliché when you actually express it to others. M. Scott Peck, of The Road Less Traveled, defined love as the act of giving other people your attention. When you are giving them your attention, listening, truly hearing, truly understanding, you are loving them. This is exactly where 50 years of ministry have led me. Always learning, always growing, always trying to understand, and always remembering to care.
More than 50 years ago I had a supervisor in my internship, who gave me a poster with footprints in the sand and the words: It is better to have journeyed than to have arrived. After 50 years my journey continues and it remains an honor and privilege to journey with all of you.
MEH