I walk among the headstones with grandchildren, searching
for the calm, wrinkled hand that once gave the kind of sweet pinches upon their
cheeks to calm their little fears.
The divorced father will sometimes walk with me along the
riverside, fishing rod slung across his shoulder, and turn in a moment of vulnerability
and weep.
The young addict phones at midnight as the shame rockets
through his veins much faster than the heroin. He is ready to give up.
I watch the tears well up in the eyes of a college student,
alone and afraid after giving her best to a man who took it for granted. We patiently
wait for the right moment to depart, the dusk my family enjoys feels a world
away.
I am there when the news comes… the word “cancer” falls
quietly over the doctor’s lips. I see the tremor in his wife’s hands and hear
the silence peel away the noise of the office.
She confesses the brokenness of solicitation in the corner
of the busy church. The need to feed her children. The disgust she felt wrapped
up in the lingerie of survival. I brush back the tear and we pray.
The phone rings at 2:00AM. Startled and still groggy, I
attempt to talk the young boy into laying down the gun he points at his own
head.
I stand up on any given Sunday and look out to the masses
that gather. I see their faces. In almost all of them, I see even their homes.
Nights I have spent, holding a glass of wine, asking about their photos on the
walls or the books on their shelves.
I stand up on any given Sunday, somewhat afraid that what
I say might be received as an accidental disclosure of a sin or a tragedy gone
by.
I look intently into her eyes and read what she is
unwilling to say. I see the regret etched in the wrinkles along his cheeks and
know better than to ask. The shallow breaths are enough of an exchange between
us.
From the podium, I see the way he wiggles when I speak of ethics. I watch his wife nestle close in forgiveness and see the wall between them of a forgiveness he will not give himself.
From the podium, I see the woman whose bruises have
healed and whose blood still stains my sneakers from that time I pulled the man
off her.
I stand and with every effort attempt to provide those in
attendance with the memories that make them weep and with even more effort
attempt to provide them with a hope they find hard to feel.
In any given week, my inbox is loaded and my cell phone
bombarded with need. I am asked to absorb so much pain or to provide a wisdom I
feel that I don’t have, or falsely supply in vanity or ego.
In any given week, I feel alone. No one ever asks how I
am doing, nor do they know the weight that I bear. No one asks me to a casual conversation,
or invites me to unpack my own pain.
And in all the confessions I attend, never once have I
felt a place close enough to confess myself.
With all the deaths and funerals I have overseen, there’s
never a question regarding the things inside me that die and are buried with
each one.
My tears are always shed alone and there is but one who
knows of them.
I have learned and come to accept that a clergyman is a
pain sponge. That wringing out the pain is an act of heroism and stamina. And
that the more I can squeeze out of me, the better prepared I am to absorb next
week’s delivery.
It’s a road I don’t have to walk alone, despite the many
hours I chose to. The man who absorbed the world’s pain is with me. And what he
takes from me, he owns completely.
I’ve found in any given week, I have to find the will to
let go. And in the darkest hours, he calls me and takes the complied grief from
my hands.
In any given week, I know the darkness is losing because
I take from many and I am absorbed by one.
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