Dear Members and Friends of Napa United Methodist Church,
United Methodist pastors are appointed on a year-to-year basis. That’s what clergy and churches sign up for. You would imagine both pastors and churches would be used to this system. But none of us gets completely used to it.
I have been reflecting on the little heartbreaks nobody warns you about when you move.
Nobody tells you that you will miss the mailman who still remembers how, during the pandemic, you’d slipped him a $20 bill every now and then in gratitude.
Nobody tells you that you will miss the young man with dreadlocks at the dry cleaners. The first time he saw my preacher’s robe, he chuckled and said, “That’s a hell of a dress.” I laughed and replied, “You’re not too wrong. I’m a preacher, and that’s my preaching robe. I wear it to preach sermons that challenge the hell out of God’s world.” He looked at me with total respect and said real slow, “Daaaaammnnnn.” From then on, every time I walked through the door, he’d hurry over to serve me first, smiling as he said, “Welcome, Preacher!”
Nobody tells you that you will miss the tree you passed each time you turned the corner. In the spring she dresses herself in green. In the summer she adorns herself with white blossoms. In the autumn she becomes a burning bush, clothed in fire as her leaves turn orange and yellow. And in the winter, she drops every leaf and stands day and night on one leg, shamelessly naked, as when our ancestors lived in Eden.
When you move, nobody tells you that you are not simply packing belongings. You are saying goodbye to the ordinary saints—the mailman, the dry cleaner dude, the neighbor’s dog, and the faithful tree that will surely miss you in its own silent way.
And now, in this new place, boxes almost unpacked and now leaning into the new chapter. It is becoming familiar with the super dinners where I am learning names and histories; and committee meetings where I am still on a honeymoon, free to ask questions and allowed to have no answers; and my visit with the hundred‑plus‑year‑old rose bush in the church garden; and sheer joy with the three‑day‑old newborn who came to visit Dianne in the office, and I rushed over to bless him; and the next door neighbor who I asked about trash day in the neighborhood and she kindly explained that here the garbage bins are best lined up with space between them so the mechanical fork can lift them properly, because where I came from we had a real person who preferred the bins close together so he could grab them by hand. I am settling in slowly.
Itinerancy is the gift our United Methodist Connection gives us: it is the discovery that home is made not only of walls and addresses, but of ordinary saints and steadfast trees, and all the small graces that make a place beloved.
I am at home in the world. In the words of John Wesley, the world is my parish. And in the Apportionments which connect us, I can hear the congregation’s “AMEN!”
With love, Grace