As we stand poised in this liminal space between 2024 and 2025, I have been thinking about how January gets its name from the Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, and doorways. I stand in the doorway, reflecting back on all that 2024 held and looking forward to the possibilities of the new year.
For me, “weary” sums up 2024. The year included retirement, an international move, and the end of the anti-LGBTQ+ language in The United Methodist Book of Discipline. Any one of these would be momentous and exhausting. Together, they cast a surreal light that made me often stop and wonder, “Can this really be happening?”
When Robin and I decided to move to Nova Scotia in retirement, we chose to replace our little cottage in Pugwash, NS with a larger home. We do not recommend building a new home a whole country away! Not being physically present meant that miscommunication was easy and meeting deadlines was not! The promised finish date of May turned to June, turned to July, turned to August, turned to September. Anticipating moving issues related to customs, we shipped our belongings up in May. After eight years of serving an area of 430,000 square miles, living out of a suitcase for a couple of months was nothing new!
I never could imagine myself retired. Despite the ups and downs of ministry, I have loved every second of service. Every appointment has blessed me in countless ways and I am so incredibly grateful for all the people I have encountered, who hold a precious place in my heart.
The hard part of being a United Methodist pastor is saying goodbye to the people you have served and come to love. Having to say goodbye to the people of the Mountain Sky Conference pained me deeply. We had weathered so much together—my election and consecration, attacks and undermining by the Right, the creation of a new conference, COVID, and disaffiliations. Yet, we also dreamed big and found joy together grounded in our deep commitment to mission and ministry.
The biggest impact on my life and ministry was the tectonic plate shift The United Methodist Church experienced at General Conference, where the delegates removed all the anti-LGBTQ+ language from our Book of Discipline. I had my call to ministry before that language entered our shared United Methodist lexicon. Even when it changed and I came out, I knew deep within me that I was called specifically to ordained ministry within The United Methodist Church. Boards of Ordained Ministries, District Superintendents, Bishops, and the churches I served affirmed that call over and over again. However, for more than forty years, I woke up each morning worried and wondering if this would be the day I would lose my ordination. That stress, experienced on a daily basis, was exhausting and stressful, impacting my spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being.
I find myself wondering: what was lost due to the church’s stance and what could have been if it hadn’t been there. What would I have done differently in my ministry? How might my life have turned out?
But living with “what ifs” dilutes reality and clouds the eyes of being able to see the gifts of what has been. So now I find myself looking forward to a new year, a new community, and new season of life.
Standing at the threshold of 2025, I recommit to living into a prayer I prayed in the parking lot of every church I visited in the Mountain Sky Conference:
“Give me an undefended heart, and may I be generous in love.”
I will continue to listen to the Spirit’s still, small voice that has always nudged me forward when the path wasn’t clear. I will invest in community in ways I couldn’t as an itinerant United Methodist preacher. I will be present to family. I will be a better friend.
As 2024 concludes, I carry a weariness deep within my bones. But through that weariness is a stubborn seed of joy that is bursting forth even now.
Thank you for being part of my journey in 2024. Holding you and all of us in prayer as we cross into 2025.
