Leaving & Losing
I have left churches before - twice, in fact. But that was different. First, because we were physically relocating, drawn toward new vistas with no desire to glance at the rearview mirror for one last look at the landscape behind us. Hundreds of miles and fading memories now separated us from the lives we had vacated. Feelings of loss, remorse, or nostalgia felt foreign and unfamiliar as we adjusted to these changes.
Our third leave-taking has proved to be unexpectedly wrenching. Oh, it started out well. The congregation gave us a memorable send-off. Cards and letters of appreciation were solicited and presented at our farewell celebration. The State of Wisconsin recognized and commended my thirty years of service to the First Unitarian Society and the greater Madison community. My former colleagues offered glowing tributes, and henceforth the prominent Atrium Library was to be graced by my name: The Michael Schuler Library. On that celebratory day in mid-June 2018 all was sweetness and light.
By the end of the month I was gone, my bookcases and file drawers emptied and the cobwebs swept away to create an open and welcoming space for the next occupant. Henceforth, I would be officially described as “minister emeritus in residence” in recognition of our continued presence in the local community. Indeed, almost four years later we still reside in the same snug neighborhood we swept into upon our arrival in Wisconsin. In other words, this time around I left a job, but not a home. The village of Shorewood Hills in which the architecturally distinctive First Unitarian Society Meeting House (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) is located is also where our son grew up and where my wife, Trina, and I remain in place. This proximity has made it much harder to turn the page, but the process could have been less fraught.
There are, in the Unitarian Universalist world, certain protocols known as “best practices” that our denomination and professional clergy association recommend to congregations for certain defined purposes. Some of these pertain to departing ministers and their congregations. This happens to be a fairly recent development, for when my predecessor left after thirty-five years of service in 1987 it was pretty much left to him and the church’s leadership to outline the conditions under which he (also a minister emeritus in residence) would relate to the congregation and his successor(s). Max Gaebler understood that a period of near-total absence on his part would make for a healthier transition. Accordingly, he and his wife removed to Adelaide, Australia for the interim year, returning shortly after my own arrival and fully expecting to re-engage with FUS on the cordial terms he and I had already agreed upon.
From that point on our relationship blossomed, with the two of us making every effort to set an example of collaboration and mutual support both for the good folks at the Society and for other UU faith communities preparing for their own transitions. The two of us never had the slightest doubt that this is the way things ought to work and that our arrangement reflected a “best practice.”
Nearly four years have now passed since my own departure. During this entire period I have been instructed to steer clear of the Unitarian Meeting House except when my presence there (e.g., for a memorial service or in other special circumstances) has been previously approved by the new regime. Moreover, all direct communication with staff with whom I worked has been forbidden and anything resembling pastoral relations with congregants disallowed. More than that, members of the Society were advised to cut me and my family off entirely - to refrain from initiating conversations and to ignore overtures on our part. Why? Apparently because these are now the “best practices” that the Unitarian Universalist Association recognizes.
Can one think of any other professional association that countenances the exile of its retiring practitioners? I don’t believe there is even another faith tradition that expects its clergy to endure four years of separation from the people they faithfully served for one, much less three decades. If the intent here is to ensure that the minister emeritus and his wife become so discouraged that they no longer wish to return to the fold, then the current “best practice” is achieving its purpose.
I am trying to be philosophic about the situation, reframing that marvelous send-off of four years ago as a “wake” rather than a “bon voyage.” It was one of the most gratifying experiences of my professional life and I’m glad to have been alive for it. But the plain fact is, I am now dead to the congregation and I see little possibility of a resurrection. This shift in my perspective helps, but it doesn’t completely assuage the hurt.
More useful has been a poem, one I’ve always appreciated but whose existential pull has become so much more powerful of late. That short scrap of verse is, of course, Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” perhaps the most poignant poem about loss ever written (or at least in modern times). The poet repeats a variation of this line four times - “The art of losing’ s not too hard to master” - as if to make the point as forcefully as possible. She offers the reader a litany of losses, from the trivial to the profound, ending with the couplet: “The art of losing’s not too hard to master/though it may look like (write it!) like a disaster.”
Truer words were never spoken. We also endured the departure of my father and a wonderful dog we’d cherished for almost nineteen years these past four years. As I reach the end of my seventieth year, I am beginning to appreciate how important it is to stay awake and centered under the steady drip, drip, drip of accumulating losses. You know, the best philosophic wisdom Socrates could offer his students was to make the “practice of dying” a daily discipline. It really amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?
