Ending and Beginning

Personal Encounter

I confess that I am not an avid reader of poetry. High school English was enough to put me off. But every now and then I come across a poem that breaks through my reluctance and speaks to my life.

One of those for me is T S Eliot’s, “Little Gidding”, the last poem in his Four Quartets, a series of four poems published over a six-year period. The line that speaks to me at this stage of my life is:

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.”

July 2024 saw a significant end in my life as I ‘retired’ as a minister in the Uniting Church of Australia. For over 40 years I have been active in ministry in one form or another, mostly as the minister in a congregation. That came to an end, at least in the form that it has been, at the end of July. But, as many people have asked me recently, “Do ministers ever really retire?”

When we stop and think about it, life is full of endings and new beginnings. We see endings, for example, in nature. A flower flourishes for a time, then it dies and in time a new flower will emerge. If the first flower didn’t end, the new one could not come. There are beginnings and endings in our lives. We face them in our life transitions as the end of childhood marks the beginning or teenage years. Teenage years end and our adult years begin. Our school life ends, and our life of employment begins.

To try and hold on to somethings is to stagnate. It is only in the letting go that we can move forward into the newness that awaits us.

I come to this time in my life with mixed feelings. I come with a deep sense of gratitude, both to God and to all the people who have walked this path of ministry with me in these last 40 years. Well, gratitude for most of them at least! I was once asked why I was a minister. The answer I blurted out was that it was because I couldn’t do anything else. I didn’t mean there weren’t other jobs or vocations I couldn’t have done, but that deep down I truly felt this was what I was meant to do. It is a blessing to be able spend one’s life doing what one feels deeply connected with. I don’t expect anyone who knew me earlier in life would have seen me fulfilling this role for 40 plus years. But God did some work on me, drawing out the gifts and abilities that lay within and, with the support and encouragement of many people along the way, I have used those gifts to the best of my ability. But it is time to let that go.

In amongst those mixed feelings there are many other emotions. There is a sense of grief, and I will allow myself to grieve in the next little while. There are things I will miss (and some I won’t!). Things I would like to have done and didn’t (at least not yet.) I also have a sense of apprehension. I’ve never been retired before, so I don’t know what it is like! So, I find myself in what is called ‘liminal time’, that space of ‘no longer this’ but ‘not yet that’. It can be an uncomfortable yet exciting place.

As Eliot’s poem reminds me, an ending is never just one thing; every end can be a new beginning. I don’t fully know what that new beginning will look like, but I am excited to find out. As one of my favourite writers and thinkers, Meister Eckhart wrote, “And suddenly you know: it’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.”

In gratitude and peace

Gary Stuckey (Rev. Dr.)   Summer 2024