Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

This weekend we had a vestry retreat at which we looked at a range of issues. We debated different courses we might take and different choices we might make.

One of the realities of leadership in a nonprofit, especially a church, is that we’re always debating “goods.” We’re debating between one good path or another. Will we support one outreach project or another, choose one class or another, use one small group program or another?

Such choices are always a mix of pluses and minuses that we navigate when making choices. We always wish we could have it all, don’t we?

Yet life is always thrusting upon us what Kierkegaard called the “tragedy of choice” which means that every choice we make closes off a path that could be.

When we follow one path to its natural and fitting end we have not been able (for good or ill) to follow another path toward an end that might have been.

I’m sure you’ve all had those moments when you think of what might have been if we’d made some other choice. These become more and more a tragedy when we live in the metaphysical alternative rather than going more deeply into the joy of our choices.

Most of the time I find that these tragedies are about a deep disappointment in who we have chosen to be that is at conflict with who it is that society or family or a spouse or a parent has told us we should be. We hear their voice over and over telling us how tragic it is that we’ve made some choice or followed some call or embraced some love.

Nothing will kill a joy for life more quickly than regret over the unlived lives we might have lived.

As Eastertide closes and we enter the mysteries of Pentecost it is worth our time to consider what Resurrection joy is leading us toward.

How might we stand in the life we live and live it for God with the joy of knowing that this is our path, this is our life, and to waste its precious moments on the tragedy of choice is a tragedy?

How might we let the Holy Spirit inspire us in new ways to find God at work along the path we are now on?

Wherever we are, wherever we go, whatever path or place is ours, we are there.

It is not the path or place that is the tragedy (or the joy) but the way we choose to be there, to walk, and to live.

Let us live our lives with joy. Let us lament only the missed chances to love and serve along the way. And let us follow the Holy Spirit’s leading through the changes and chances of life toward the abundant life which Christ promises to those who walk in love.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert