Dear Friends in Christ,

As most of you know by now, last week I announced my departure this fall. Someone asked me, “what do you still want to get done that you didn’t get to do?”

I think my answer is simple. “Enjoy the time.”

It’s not so much that I didn’t get to enjoy the time I’ve had here but, rather, that we were in the middle of so much that I wasn’t always aware of the time. Deadlines give us a sense of finitude that focuses that mind and heart.

I talk all the time to parents whose children have left for college or moved away. They tell me how fast the time when they are little goes. Day by day I’m now, too, seeing that time slip away, and it’s becoming ever more apparent just how true it is. It is short and we forget to enjoy it.

But we’re also in the middle of it—so we forget to enjoy it along the way. We are always wrapped in the work of becoming that we lose sight of being. So I want to spend the last few months here focused on being together, not doing together.

Worship, prayer, meals, and fellowship are where I hope I can focus my attention. Of course, that is always at the heart of Christian community but too often we are caught in the trap of setting the table rather than enjoying the meal.

But finitude provides focus. I think this is part of the cycle of the liturgical year that we are in right now, too. The Ascension has happened. Jesus has left. The finitude of that departure is setting in with the disciples and they are charged with figuring out who they will be—and what they will do—now that Christ has gone before them to prepare the way.

In some ways, this finitude shaped the discipleship of his followers. Knowing they were now the body of Christ in the world gave them a new focus. I wonder, if after Christ returned but before the Ascension, if they saw him and asked “what can we get done now?” I suspect not. I think they knew that what was important was being together. In the midst of the miracles and the journeying and the healing and the trial and so much more they had been in the middle of it all without really appreciating it, perhaps?

Christ’s return gave them a chance to be again—to simply sit with the One whom they loved and Who loved them. It might be our model for the time we have together in the remaining few months. We can remember whose we are and why we gather and focus on that infinite finitude with a renewed appreciation for the gift of community and Communion together.

So my hope is that what we do with the time is simply enjoy it. There will be time for rushing to the next thing—we will soon enough be in the middle of it all again. But the time is going to move faster than we know. So let us be together, one with another, and let that be enough for the time being.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert