FROM THE PASTOR
It’s One of the Ten Commandments, for Pete’s Sake
Despite my retirement from professional chaplaincy, I remain on the email list for ELCA chaplains and persons serving in specialized ministry. In the most recent issue of the chaplains’ newsletter, the director for specialized ministry reflected on his week away at a friend’s lakeside home in upstate New York. Remembering the recently assigned Gospel texts in which Jesus is portrayed by Matthew as taking time away, the director encouraged his readers to consider the importance of self-care, days off, and scheduled vacations for being renewed and prepared to offer competent and effective pastoral care.
To make his point, he reminded us that the Creator took a day off and incorporated a weekly sabbath in the plan for creation, adding the striking observation, “It’s one of the 10 Commandments, for Pete’s sake.”
Judy and I just return from a week in Door County (St. Luke’s north) and Pastor Bouman and Janet are on a trip East to see family and friends. Judy and I will be gone again for parts of September and October. In the last few years, it seems late summer/early fall has become our primary travel season. I am grateful to have come to the time in life where we have the time and resources – and good health – to be able to travel. I am grateful for the friends and family who receive us when we are able to visit and for decades-old relationships we still enjoy. I am grateful for our friends in the Windy City Miata Club with whom we have traveled on occasion for 23 years – and for Mazda which continues to build a fun-to-drive roadster. I am grateful for old familiar haunts as well as for new places to explore.
Throughout my ministry in the parish and in chaplaincy, I often failed to keep the Commandment to make time and space for sabbath. I hope I’m a little older and wiser now. I hope, too, that in these waning days of summer, each of us will be able to hold an opening in our calendars to rest, to enjoy friends and family, to celebrate the richness of the creation which God has entrusted to our care.
As is said as greeting and blessing in the Jewish community, “Gut Shabbos!”
Pastor John E. Schumacher, BCC
Interim Visitation Pastor
