I love the saints, you know: the ones with the prefix “St.” in front of their names—Saint Peter and Saint Paul and Saint John and Saint Alban, to name a few. You know those saints, the ones who show up in Holy Writ and have churches and cities and universities and streets named after them. I also love the saints numbered among the ordinary schlubs who call themselves friends, guys like Saint Jeff and Saint Steve and Saint Gary. But it doesn’t end there: I love the folks who populated the pews of the churches I pastored for 40 years. Twenty-six years and eight months of this happened at a wee church in the idyllic village of Longville, situated in the Great Northwoods of Minnesota. Once I reached the official age of Old Fart-dom (70), the Missus and I believed God was telling us the time had come to hang up my pulpit. So on September 1, 2023, I joined the ranks of those who obsess over such things as Medicare and weekly visits to the plethora of sawbones who try to keep gasping geezers from over-wheezing and monthly visits to Costco and daily efforts in not sending ones spouse into the nether-regions of abject insanity.

For decades, my world was filled with things like sermons, worship planning, visiting folks in the horse-pistol, and writing devotionals for Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter. My day was spent seeking God through the pages of Scripture and reading and praying. And while much of this was for my own growth and edification, it was equally so that I could take the insights I gained and share them with the saints at Longville Community Church, as well as the congregations I had served previously in Michigan, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

If you’ve ever watched the movie “White Christmas” you know that one of the main characters is General Thomas Waverly, who had commanded the characters played by Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye during World War II. Once the war was over, and General Waverly was generally too over-the-hill to bark orders aimed at mashing Mussolini, he had bought a resort hotel and re-tarred to Vermont. When the stars of the movie end up, rather serendipitously as it happens, at General Waverly’s resort, they see how he is still struggling to adjust to civilian life these ten years later. In his desire to help pay back the man who had meant so much to so many, Bing’s character Bob goes on national TV and sings, “What do you do with a General when he stops being a General? O what can you do with a General who retires?” This appearance sparks, as you remember, scads of former soldiers under his command to flock to Vermont to surprise General Waverly with a tribute show. In the end, Bing and Rosemary Clooney sing “White Christmas” as the snow (which had been absent to that point) begins to fall, couples get together, General Waverly’s hotel gets into the black, and all is right with the world.

And so it begs the question: what can you do with a minister who stops being a minister? Some ministers have no trouble whatsoever putting that life behind them. They look at sermon preparation and nursing home calls and teaching Bible Studies and massaging fragile church egos in the rearview mirror. Others can’t do that. At least in all respects. I, as it happens, am one of them. General Waverly, while no longer serving the Armed Forces in his former capacity, was still called General, even when he was picking up guests at the local train station and hauling wood for the hotel fireplaces. Every day I walk out to the mailbox and retrieve items addressed to me as Reverend, even though those 14 hour workdays are behind me.

So, what do you do with a minister who stops being a minister? Well, if you still spend time each day reading and studying Scripture, if you still start out your days praying, if you still have the creative juices going and ideas are still bursting out of your brain, you write a blog. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what you see on the silver screen in front of you.

I start out each day reading the Psalms. Not only reading them, I copy them out by hand with a bonafide fountain pen on lined paper. There’s a method to my madness, which I will share with you in a later post. Often, things from the Psalms will leap out at me. This blog is a way of lassoing these insights before they end up collecting cobwebs in my mind’s garage. Another important part of my daily devotions is spent on reading up on the saints whose feast days fall on that particular day. For far too many Protestants, there are a great cloud of witnesses that they’ve never heard of. I hope to share their stories with you in hopes that speak to you as much as they have to me.

Since hanging up my shingle, Pam and I have been worshipping with the folks at Cornerstone Church in Walker, Minnesota, a little church filled with great people who love Jesus and have some incredible prayer warriors among its midst. It’s been good to be in the pews instead of the pulpit; it’s been great to listen to a sermon from someone other than myself; and it’s been refreshing to be just another guy in the congregation instead of the clergy at the front of the sanctuary. That said, new thoughts leap into my head each day. As the stuff from the Psalms and the Saints show up, I hope to pass them along to you. I hope you are as blessed in reading them as I will be been in sharing them.

From the hill overlooking Kabekona Bay – Duane