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So, one night, sitting in my truck in High Springs, Florida, a thought arose of resigning the chaplain position. A thought like from nowhere, a thought I almost dared not consider, a thought that was gracious but appeared somewhat like a dark specter, at least initially. "Why not let it go, say goodbye?" I went inside a store to speak with an acquaintance, and the words came out of my mouth. They sounded very unfamiliar. Never in my life had I considered doing such... leaving a job without a job waiting or income! My "responsible self" would never do such. I realized, however, leaving felt oddly real and right.
Over a few weeks of prayer and meditation, as well as counsel from others I trusted, nothing was returning to me, without or within, to remain. I resigned, and I have not regretted it for a moment in the last ten years, not once. Before leaving the corporation - for it was a huge hospice of many centers - the head of chaplains appealed for me to remain, offering me a new site to work at. This new site would remove me from the other chaplain and give me a non-chaplain position. The offer appealed to me, including the chance to stay with hospice work and enjoy not being directly connected to religious work, which I had done almost my entire life - I began preaching at age fifteen, and by age sixteen, I was serving as an interim pastor of churches. - And it felt good to be wanted, but I sensed if I said "Yes," that would be a "No" to Life leading onward. I declined the offer, expressing gratitude and openness to receiving a later offer to consider. I let the representative know I would contact the hospice, if I decided to return. She agreed.
* * *
After a year, I sensed an inner movement to travel for a stay in the Northeast - such movements the Quakers, with whom I have often worshiped, sometimes call "way opening." I loaded up my truck and headed all the way to Coastal Maine, a three-day trip of almost fourteen hundred miles, into a place I had never been and knew no one. I had found a cabin rental on Georgetown Island via Craigslist.
On the way, I felt an energy, or presence, like it was lifting me up and taking me all the way. I had never had such an experience over many days, this was so powerful. The whole way, I was in one moment, eternity in just one breath, in one turn of the wheels. And for the first time after my father died about a year-and-a-half prior, I felt what it was like to be in his presence, blessing me on the way up Interstate 95, glad I was driving into the unknown. I sensed he needed this as much as, or more than, I did.
This sense of support was unlike him in life here, as he showed me love, as he knew love, by discouraging such adventurousness. He never wanted me to be far from him or the homeplace. He had never lived more than two miles from where he was born. Maybe my moving to Maine, I recognized, was a gift to him as well as to myself. Possibly, he was proud of me, celebrating my courage to cross this border, like an immigrant transplanting to New England. Perhaps this was his way of letting me know he was sorry for trying to hold me close, rather than celebrating with me crossing borders. Maybe it was, too, a way of sharing an adventure.
* * *
Winter was nearly over in Maine. I enjoyed my first northern Winter, though somewhat trapped in the cottage due to a back and rotator cuff injury. Then, only about a week from having nowhere to move but back home down south, Grace provided a month-to-month rental in a Quaker intentional community, nearby in Bath, Maine.
Continued... |
