Dear Members of the First Houston Community:
I am excited to be joining you this month for our time of interim ministry! My first day in the office will be August 7th. August 12th will be my first Sunday in the pulpit. I will be preaching at the Museum District. I will be preaching there again on August 19th and at least once at each of the campuses during the autumn. The services for the month of August will help us set the tenor of our work together. They are designed to focus our attention on the religious tasks before us as First Houston moves through a period of unanticipated transition during a time of profound cultural, ecological, moral, and political crisis.
I promise it won’t be dispiriting! My work while I am with you will be to help guide you through the transition while remaining honest about and engaged with the broader crises we face as a human species in this moment of history. One of the most important religious practices we can cultivate is the ability to find beauty and joy while we confront the disappointments and horrors of the world. As Unitarian Universalist theologian Rebecca Parker writes, “The greatest challenge in our lives is the challenge presented to us by the beauty of life, by what beauty asks of us, and by what we must do to keep faith with the beauty that has nourished our lives.” Some Sunday you might find me wearing a clown nose or engaging in an act of lyrical foolishness just as a reminder that joy should be constantly invoked.
Over the next few months my columns will share information and stories about the interim process. But, before I close with a piece of poetry, I would like to just tell you how excited about I am accompanying your congregation through its period of transition. I hope it is a time of growth and deepening for all of us.
It is a time, however, which will necessarily come to an end, for that is the nature of all things and, more particularly, the nature of interim ministry. I will be with you as you move through your period of transition. And then we will go our separate ways. And so it seems appropriate to conclude this month’s column with a fragment from T. S. Eliot’s “East Coker:”
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
I pray that this time of transition is a time of blessing for all of us. See you soon!
love,
Colin
PS Let me share with you a bit of logistical information. My office hours will be Tuesday through Thursdays, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with other times available by appointment. Mondays will be my study day and Fridays will be reserved for sermon writing. Saturdays will be my day off. I will be available to the church two evenings a week, most likely Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
