Life as a Professional Leaver

Faith My Eyes
by Caedmon’s Call (1999)

As I survey the ground for ants
Looking for a place to sit and read
I’m reminded of the streets of my hometown
How they’re much like this concrete that’s warm beneath my feet

And how I’m all wrapped up in my mother’s face
With a touch of my father just up around the eyes
And the sound of my brother’s laugh
But more wrapped up in what binds our ever distant lives

But if I must go
Things I trust will be better off without me
But I don’t want to know
Life is better off a mystery

So keep’em coming these lines on the road
And keep me responsible be it a light or heavy load
And keep me guessing with these blessings in disguise
And I’ll walk with grace my feet and faith my eyes

Hometown weather is on TV
I imagine the lives of the people living there
And I’m curious if they imagine me
Cause they just wanna leave; I wish that I could stay

And to visit places from my past
But only for an hour or so
Which is long enough to smell the air
To tell the tale and find the door

But I get turned around
I mistake some happiness for blessing
But I’m blessed as the poor
Still I judge success by how I’m dressing

So I’ll sing a song of my hometown
I’ll breathe the air and walk the streets
Maybe find a place to sit and read
And the ants are welcome company

And I’ll walk with grace my feet and faith my eyes.
And I’ll walk with grace my feet and faith my eyes.

Not long ago I exchanged a couple of emails with a friend about how some people tend to stay in one place most of their lives and how others always seem to be move around from one setting to another. If the world can be divided into those into those who stay and those who leave, I have found myself in the latter camp for most of my life.

In fact, there are times when I feel like a professional leaver, and for good reason. My family was part of the working class poor in my childhood and youth and could never afford to buy property or a house. So we moved from place to place whenever our landlords decided to sell the houses we lived in or increased the rent beyond what my parents could pay. Most of my life was spent in and around Bloomfield, KY (as you can tell from my posts about my recent trip home), but even so we lived in over a dozen different homes by the time I left for college. It always seemed as though we would just get settled into a place when we would have to pack up and move to another house.

This pattern continued when I went away to college. Of course, every student lives in a variety of dorm rooms and apartments when he or she is attending college. But even so, I was exceptional in this as well. Part of this was due to the fact during my first year in college, my mother remarried, and I lost the home I had with her due to her new husband being an alcoholic and first-class jerk. So, from my Sophomore year on, I was basically on my own. Staying at school during the summers and intercession periods, I basically made it back to visit my mom and brother only on the big holidays and during Spring breaks. This necessitated more than normal amount of moving around from dorm to dorm and eventually from apartment to apartment as the semesters and roommates came and went.

When it came time for me to answer a call to ministry, I even moved away from my home state to attend school in the very foreign land of New Jersey (How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?). Two years there convinced me that I needed to be elsewhere, but instead of going home, I moved to Eastern Pennsylvania to continue my ministry in the United Methodist Church. While here I have worked in four different communities since 1988 - a rural church in the middle of Lancaster County farmland, a church in Tamaqua - in the anthracite coal region of the state, a church in Elysburg - a small community that is on the edge of Central Pennsylvania, and now in Pottstown - part of the outer suburbs of Philadelphia. And while I still may be the pastor here for a few more years, I am sure that in three to five years I will be
asked to move once again to another church and community.

In all this moving, I have never really felt at home, and frankly I am getting sick of feeling homeless. Perhaps that is why I always have such mixed feelings when I go back to Kentucky to visit friends and family. While I see Kentucky as my home, I have been away from it for 20 years now, and it is not the place that I once lived in and left. You see, those of us who leave often expect things to remain the same in the places we leave, and we are surprised (though we shouldn’t be) when we discover the vastness of the change that has taken place in our absence, even in small town Kentucky. In many ways I would love to go back and live among my people once again, but I have the feeling that I would still have that sense of homelessness since so much has changed. But . . . I still think about it.

On my recent trip home I was able to talk to my first mentor in ministry, Mark Girard, for the first time in years. Mark was the director of the Wesley Foundation at Eastern Kentucky University, and he was instrumental in my hearing and answering the call. Mark is also now a District Superintendent in the Kentucky Conference, and as such he is involved in the making of appointments for churches and pastors. Part of me was thrilled to discover this. I could, after all, use my relationship with Mark to help bring me back home to Kentucky. But, the longer I was at home, the less a good idea this seemed to become. And the truth is I don’t know why that would be aside from what I have written above.

Of course, my daughter is (for better or worse) a Pennsylvanian, and I would never leave here until she is older and out of school in four years, but even then, would I leave? I don’t know. I do know that even on my best days I feel like a “wayfaring stranger,” and that I long to feel at home, wherever that might be. I also know that the writing of Wendell Berry (another native Kentuckian) about “staying put” where you are has always resonated with me (I hate that word resonate - but there it is : ). And I also know that, in the words of the old gospel song “this world is not my home,” but even so . . .

Am I doomed to feeling homeless for the rest of my life? Will I always be the one who leaves? This leaving and moving is getting old, but home seems as distant and as far away as it ever has.

The other day I was listening to 40 Acres, one of my favorite cds by Caedman’s Call. The song at the beginning of this post came on, and as I listened closely to the words, I was surprised at how much the writer of the lyrics and I have in common - from a feeling of homesickness to his description of himself (I too have my mother’s face and a little of my dad around my eyes). This got me to thinking again about my recent trip, my exchange of emails, and this subject that I cannot get out of my mind. So I thought I would just put it down in words and see if anyone else out there knows what I am talking about. Is there?

I have no idea what twists and turns my life will take over the next few years. Of course, none of us do. So I was grateful when a little later on in my listening another song (Table for Two) came on. It too speaks to me on a very personal level (which is grist for more reflection at another time), and I was intrigued to hear the singer conclude with these words:

And You know the plans that You have for me
And You can’t plan the end and not plan the means

Now I am not a person who normally believes that God maps out our lives for us. I am usually more Wesleyan/Arminian than that (you know, free will and all). But when I heard these words on that day, the only thing I could think or say was a simple prayer: “Please God, let it be so.”

Table for Two
by Caedmon’s Call (1999)
Danny and I spent another late night over pancakes
Talkin’ ’bout soccer and how every man’s just the same.
We made speculation on the who’s and the when’s of our futures
And how everyone’s lonely but still we just couldn’t complain.

And how we just hate being alone.
Could I have missed my only chance,
And now I’m just wasting my time
By lookin’ around

But ya know I know better, I’m not gonna worry ’bout nothin’.
Cause if the birds and the flowers survive, then I’ll make it okay.
If given a chance and a rock; see which one breaks a window.
See which one keeps me up all night and into the day.

Because I’m so scared of being alone
That I forget what house i live in.
But it’s not my job to wait by the phone
For her to call.

Well this day’s been crazy, but everything’s happened on schedule,
from the rain and the cold to the drink that I spilled on my shirt.
‘Cause You knew how You’d save me before I fell dead in the garden,
And You knew this day long before You made me out of dirt.

And You know the plans that You have for me
And You can’t plan the end and not plan the means
And so I suppose I just need some peace,
Just to get me to sleep

To listen to our purchase 40 Acres click on the title or the album cover.

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