Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
March 1, 2020
“We might find that an ending is a door opening into an unknown and promising world. We could also discover that it is possible in an ending
to dance with the
rhythm and the lead of fate and not only survive, but enter an unknown world of unsurpassed vitality”
– Thomas Moore
OPENING WORDS
Today we talk of endings…
There are so many endings in our lives, small and ordinary, and huge and heart-breaking.
We’ll talk of how fully living our leavings opens us up to embrace new beginnings.
Mary Oliver has a poem about death that I think also applies to all kinds of endings…
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Friends, what a gift to be here together on this day….
To be with this company who have come together to care and support, to search and strive, to work and hope.
Let us embrace this day, this moment, this very breath.
All things end, so let us be here now.
It is good to be together.
SERMON
When I was little, for half of every summer and every other holiday, my brothers and I would go to our dad and stepmom’s house.
I have two brothers – one older, one younger, me in the middle. My stepmom also had three kids. They were one older brother, one younger brother, and a sister in the middle, just like us. And the six of us were parallel in ages. I loved hanging out with my stepsister. My stepmom and my stepsister were the ones who taught me about make-up and how to shave my legs. It was at their house I could eat PopTarts, and every summer we had a season pass to Wet and Wild, that water park in Dallas.
We had a grand time, my step-siblings and I.
Then one Christmas, after Christmas Day, my step-siblings said goodbye because they were going off, as usual, to their dad’s house for the rest of the holiday. So we said, “bye, see you again next month!” And my step mom went off to run an errand.
My dad sat my brothers and I down on the couch and told us that he and my stepmom were getting a divorce. He was in a lot of pain.
It became pretty clear that that had been the last time we were going to see my step-siblings, and almost the last time we were going to see my stepmom.
And it was.
I tried to write letters to my stepmom and my stepsister, but my dad made it pretty clear he didn’t want us to stay in touch. Too painful for him.
So, for me, this family who was just there for years, was all the sudden, just gone, without even a goodbye.
Most people have a hard time with goodbyes.
Just as we are a death-denying culture, we also have a hard time with other endings.
Young people these days even have a term for it – ghosting.
When someone just fades out of your life without a word or explanation, they’ve ghosted you. It’s pretty common to slip out the back door, to leave under the cover of night… There are “50 ways to leave your lover,” as Paul Simon sang. Can you sing it with me…
Slip out the back, Jack. Make a new plan, Stan. Don’t need to be coy, Roy. Just listen to me. Hop on the bus, Gus. You don’t need to discuss much… Drop off the key, Lee, and get yourself free.
But the psychologist John Hughes goes so far as to argue that “Saying ‘Hello’ and saying ‘Goodbye’ are the two major learning tasks all humans need to accomplish.….”
He says, “Some children come into this world and have no one in their family really say hello to them. Can you imagine what it’s like trying to learn to say hello to others in the world, when no one ever said hello to you when you were born?”
Think about all that’s entailed in truly saying hello.
Saying hello involves seeing someone, being present to someone, affirming their existence, being open to that person and how they might change you.
And what does truly saying goodbye entail? That’s what we’ll explore today…
A couples counselor once told my husband and I to pay more attention to how we say your daily hellos and goodbyes – what she called our “launchings and landings” out and in the door.
It turns out that it does make a difference whether you just grab your bag, give a glance, and wave a quick goodbye, or you can actually take a few extra seconds, even a minute to look in their eyes, give a hug, and say some words about the coming day. Even if it’s just a normal day, one after the other…
We have so many opportunities to practice endings. Small endings fill our days: goodbyes at the door, the closing of a day, the finishing of a task, the “have a good day” to the cashier …
And then of course there are endings that became major markers in our lives: a divorce, a death of a loved one, the rupture of a long friendship, a retirement, coming out of the “closet,” moving away…
We don’t just say goodbye to people in our lives, we sometimes say goodbye to identities that have defined us, communities we’ve belonged to, roles we’ve held, organizations we’ve worked for, stages of growth we’ve surpassed…
I invite you to think back to the last way you left a party, or a job, or a town…
What is your exit style?
….Because some go so far as to say the way you approach endings in your life is probably the way you will approach your death.
As Mary Oliver said in our opening poem, “I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.”
Making a good ending – whether it is the ending of a relationship or a job or a life – requires us to live the leaving fully.
Now this congregation is about to begin an ending.
This congregation is not ending – no – this congregation has been here for over 65 years and it will continue to be a strong beacon of truth and love and justice.
But today I am announcing to you all that my ministry here with you will be ending in a few months.
My family and I will be moving to Albuquerque.
I am not going to a different church.
We’re leaving because as long as I’ve known my husband – about ten years, we have prioritized my vocation in our family’s plans. But it’s time to shift toward his career being primary. He will be better able to find work in his field in Albuquerque. My last day will be June 10.
Friends, I am so grateful to be your minister.
I love this church, and I love you all.
I have felt deeply honored to be invited into your lives, to share in your joys and sorrows, to accompany you through significant life transitions. I love being together on Sundays. I love talking with you about your ideas and your hopes, your pains and your passions. I love watching the children in our classes and services grow and learn. I love working with our committed staff and exceptional leaders.
I feel real grief about having to say goodbye to all of you.
In truth, I have felt grief about having to say goodbye to you since I began here!
When I began here, I had just left a previous ministry I loved, and so I knew about how much it hurts. I knew that one day I would also leave here, whether it was after five years, like this will be, or after 30 years.
The truth is that all beginnings carry the seeds of ending, and all endings are potential beginnings.
But before we can get to the next beginning, we have to go through the ending.
And if we don’t fully live that leaving, we are not fully prepared to embrace the new beginning.
So what does it mean to live a leaving fully. To have a good ending?
I’ll talk about three things…
ONE
It means feeling all the feelings.
You all, and the others who aren’t here today, will have many feelings about this announcement – not only because of your feelings about me, but also because of the ways this connects to your feelings about this church or your faith, or your feelings about other endings in your life.
You may feel anger, regret, disappointment, grief… – if you’re not a fan, it’s okay to feel relief… – you may also feel curiosity or hope or possibility about what – and who – is next.
All of that is okay to feel, and I am okay with receiving your expressions of all you feel. And people will be feeling different things at different times.
Last night I told about a dozen of our church leaders about my coming departure. They had to keep it quiet until now. We had dinner together here in the fellowship hall… and we talked about what these five years together has been about…and we talked about the promise of the future. And we will keep talking about these things over these three months.
But it was even harder than I thought it would be to sit with those people I love and begin a goodbye. Because fully living the leaving is hard.
When people talk about resilience, sometimes we think of the scientific definition of resilience – like a ball that is hit by a bat, and compresses a bit but then fully regains its shape as if nothing happened.
But our resilience is not like that.
When we get hit by grief, we might crumble and break – but that doesn’t mean we are not resilient.
Life should change us. Life should sometimes break us open and rearrange us. It doesn’t mean we have died, it means we are fully loving and fully living.
We have changed each other. And so…
TWO
Having a good ending involves expressing regrets and expressing gratitudes.
My step-siblings and I, in our late 20s, found each other on facebook. We wrote long emails sharing with each other our stories of that time, our continued care for one another, our regrets and our gratitudes. I got to see photos of my step-grandparents, whom I cherished – I still have the pink afghan my step-grandmother crocheted for me.
When people are still in our lives, it remains possible to share our regrets and gratitudes, and take another try at that good ending.
My regrets with you are that I could not stay longer. My regrets are that I was not perfect. I hope if I hurt you and you haven’t told me yet, you will give me and you the gift of sharing that with me so we can have a true and authentic ending. My regrets are that we have unfinished work together.
And my gratitude is that we have grown and evolved and thrived together. Because of the work we have done together, I believe this church has become even stronger at engaging people in the work of searching for truth and meaning, in living for justice and love, in building a caring community. My gratitude is that you have cared for me, both professionally and personally. You have trusted me, and watched me grow, and allowed me to risk, and risked yourself with me, and kept showing up.
We will keep talking about our regrets and gratitudes…I sent out an email today, and a letter that you will probably receive tomorrow. In the letter I list some special office hours I’m holding this week because I want to see you and hear from you – I want to hear your reactions, your feelings, your questions. And this week is not your only chance. I’m here for over 3 more months – and I look forward to all we have planned for those months.
THREE
Having a good ending means saying real goodbyes – it means acknowledging that there is an end.
When you have a new minister, I will no longer be your minister. We’ll talk more later about what that means. But you will have a new minister. In the coming weeks, your Board will be laying out for you the choices before you as a congregation in searching for your next minister. Right after church today, at the potluck lunch, there will be a chance for conversation, and they have other information sessions, conversations, and congregational meetings they will host. You have strong leaders on your Board and they will be grateful for your participation in this process.
But while the congregation does need to make some decisions soon about next steps, I also encourage you all not to jump too quickly into logistics and decisions.
A good ending requires time. A people in grief cannot make decisions.
Living the leaving fully will allow you to embrace all the possibilities of the new beginning.
You are a caring and courageous people. I know this deep in my bones from my years with you.
So I invite you to fully live this leaving together. Keep showing up for one another. Be curious about what memories of other endings this is stirring in each other.
Know that by working together to make this a good ending, we can actually even help heal some of our past endings that were not good endings. All pain is connected; all healing and growth is connected.
And I am still here, for three plus months. I will still be very much here.
And you know that this church is not mine. We have what we call a shared ministry. This church is yours.
So I know this church will go on because it has always gone on…. because you all are just as much a part of its ministry – its truth and love and justice and kindness and courage – as I am.
Many of you were here well before me, and you taught me about what this church is.
And some of you are newer, and I am the only minister you have had at this church.
But you, too, by being here, even if today is your very first day, you have already changed this church.
We need you here as we move into our next chapter.
The truth is that all beginnings carry the seeds of ending, and all endings are potential beginnings.
And so while I am so sad, friends, I am also excited, because this congregation is poised with great promise to launch into its next chapter of impact.
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,…
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth. – Mary Oliver
Thank you, friends.
– Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon