A Lost Wedding Ring
I
got to the top of the stairs at the New York Region office and realized my
wedding band was gone. For nearly 23
years it had been around my left ring finger.
I had just finished washing my hands, so I returned to the sink and took
the pipe underneath apart; but the ring was not there. The two women with whom I work seemed to be
more concerned about this loss than I was.
The ring had deep meaning for me, but it was not irreplaceable. I had not lost my wife; the marriage was
still in tact. Debbie and I could go
together to buy another ring and create for ourselves a new memory. I found the ring that evening in a glove
where it had become snagged. It now,
once again, rings my finger in gold. It
has sentimental value, but it is not irreplaceable.
An Inherited Painting
Both
my parents have died within the last year.
I have a painting in my house that hung in their breakfast room for the
last several decades of their lives.
Many times when I was home to visit, I would sit at the table and talk
with my parents as I ate my breakfast below that painting. They had grown hard of hearing and were
accustomed to shouting their conversations; they did not realize they were
shouting at each other. I would turn
the volume on the TV down each time; for me it was too early in the morning for
both the shouting and the TV. That
painting is now a daily reminder of them and those loud conversations over
Cheerios and coffee. I cannot have any
more of those conversations; I cannot make any new memories with them. That painting keeps fresh for me something
that is irrecoverable, thus the painting is for me irreplaceable.
Church Buildings
Church
buildings are a bit like that painting.
They are the repositories of memories.
Weddings, funerals, Christmas pageants, and baptisms—they carry
emotional echoes of these important milestones in our lives. The pews and the windows and the walls make
palpable the presence of bygone joys and sorrows, of deceased friends and
family. The nursery is the place where,
perhaps, we first entrusted our newborn child to someone else’s care. The Sunday School rooms are, perhaps, the
places where we made our first friends.
These buildings ring of a time when our lives were expanding and life
was more potential than past. The people and experiences that these buildings
mediate to us in feeling and thought are irrecoverable, thus these buildings
are irreplaceable.
Sometimes
congregations come to a point where they must leave these structures
behind. It becomes impossible to
continue to bear them any longer. You
cannot take all things on all journeys; sometimes we must leave some things
behind. However true this might be, we
must not dismiss these powerful places as simply structures of brick and wood
that can be easily swapped for another.
They are irreplaceable because they mediate to us the remembrance of
things that are irrecoverable.
Gil
Rendle wrote that we don’t resist change; rather we resist loss. So how do we process the sometimes-necessary
loss of these special spaces? Gratitude
is a good aroma to mingle with our grief.
We can give thanks for what happened in these places, how we were formed
and supported and loved and renewed within the embrace of their walls. We can remember how they animated our lives
and gave song to our joys and comfort in our losses. And those of us who were not there can listen to, appreciate, and
learn from the stories these buildings evoke from those were there. These buildings are irreplaceable places
because of what happened to us within them.
In letting them go, grief and gratitude are appropriate.
Then Joshua summoned the twelve men from the Israelites, whom
he had appointed, one from each tribe. Joshua said to them, "Pass on
before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of
you take up a stone on his shoulder, one for each of the tribes of the
Israelites, so that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in
time to come, "What do those stones mean to you?' then you shall tell them
that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the covenant
of the Lord. When it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut
off. So these stones shall be to the Israelites a memorial forever." (Joshua 4:4-7)
Our
buildings tell stories. We would do
well to listen to those who remember them.
Blessings
on you,
Jim
Kelsey
Executive Minister-American Baptist Churches of
New York State
