This is the experience we are all having right now in this congregation. After ten-and-a-half years, David's voice -- and, with Beverly's arrival, their voices -- are being replaced by other voices. No matter where each of us may have stood in relation to the ministry that has just ended, we face a change, a major change. And the human animal, for all its chasing after novelty, resists change, prefers stasis, and resents letting go and saying goodbye.

Watch any group of people at a leave-taking -- they linger on, saying goodbye several times, thinking of last-minute things to say, running after the departing person with a forgotten item, returning for a final hug. Our daughter used to have a game with her friends on the telephone, each trying to be the last to say goodbye, lingering for endless silent minutes, hoping the other would be the first to hang up so she could voice the final triumphant "goodbye."

Why should it be so hard to say goodbye? We do it all our lives. The infant leaves the womb. The child leaves the security of parents' arms to explore the world on all fours, then relinquishes two supports to walk freely and to run. The child then lets go of parents to engage the world of peers, and lets go of known peers for the challenge of new worlds -- at camp, at college, in work and play.

Although we engage in goodbyes often in our lives, we do not always do them well, sometimes even when we choose them ourselves, and especially when they are thrust upon us. Sometimes we take goodbyes too seriously. We cannot imagine living without that car, that house, that job; we cannot go on without our health, our spouse, a parent, a friend, or our child. The world as we have known it has just come to an end and we cannot go on. Sometimes the goodbye is too scary to deal with at all. The feelings and issues surrounding it are hurriedly swept under the proverbial rug. Sometimes we take the goodbye too lightly. We are in a hurry to get beyond it, saying, "Let the past alone and it will take care of itself."

Taking endings too seriously can keep us stuck, fixated at a moment in time and unable to move on. Taking endings too lightly prevents us from the important learning that can occur when the endings are probed for their richness. And avoiding the reality of endings leaves them invisibly lurking as lumps under the rug, causing us to repeatedly stumble and fall.

It is my intention this morning to take the opportunity of Dave and Bev Bumbaugh's departure to explore with you the dynamics of "goodbye," of good endings as the necessary precursors to good beginnings. I hope to lay some groundwork for the process of grieving so this community of memory and hope can in due time move forward to the choice of a new parish minister or ministers. And I hope to speak to all of us as we deal with the necessary endings that are inherent in human life.

But what are endings? They are so common about us that we often take no notice. Endings come in many forms. They signal, above all, a transition. And in our linear, future-myopic existence, we can only see one side of the transition as we enter into it. It is only through hindsight that we can understand the fullness of the process.

In his book, Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, William Bridges writes, "Endings are, let's remember, experiences of dying. They are ordeals, and sometimes they challenge so basically our sense of who we are that we believe they will be the end of us."

Whoa a minute. We weren't talking about dying, just about a little "goodbye." No one expired; Dave and Bev just moved to Chicago ... Every ending, every loss is a preparation for the final loss that is death -- death of a loved one, death of life as we have known it, death of oneself. If all the endings of life are practice for the final goodbye, then let's examine the process of dealing with finality as important preparation for living.

You are probably familiar with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' stages of dealing with death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. For myself, denial of the end of this ministry lasted a long time, from the moment in July when I learned that David and Beverly would be going to Chicago until just a few weeks ago, when David instructed Carolyn to put his and Beverly's generic mail in my box. They were really leaving!! "Nooooooo!" I shouted as the facade of my denial was broken.

I experienced anger: Why are you leaving when we are right in the middle of an exciting building campaign? Why are you leaving when I need you to help me continue to become a minister? Why are you leaving at all?

And I bargained, even if only in thought: If we as a congregation were different, if we did such-and-such for you, if I were a better colleague, if only, if only ... then you would not leave.

Depression has been another reaction, tears streaming down my face whenever I let myself contemplate the wrench of loss of my colleagues in ministry, a pervading sadness that touches everything, every mood, every interaction, every dream. The only way of being a minister that I have known has been in partnership with Dave Bumbaugh; it feels as though a part of myself has been wrenched away.

Finally, though still shaky, there is a taste of acceptance, a tentative affirmation that we'll make it, a faint surge of courage to strike out on my own, to grow.

Although Kubler-Ross' categories are applicable in dealing with the personal sense of loss, there is so much more to the departure of a minister from a congregation. Each person has his or her own reaction to this situation. For some, it is a deep loss; for a few, it is a relief. For some longtime members, it is deja vu; for some newcomers, it is one more piece in a confusing puzzle not yet fully assembled. All have in common an ending, an implacable, immutable end of an era. While most of us are dealing with loss, all of us are dealing with a terminal point.

I have found the categories in William Bridges' Transitions helpful in contemplating endings from both a personal and an institutional point of view. He speaks of disengagement, disidentification, disenchantment, and disorientation. These are all aspects of dealing with endings, and, like the Kubler-Ross stages, can be experienced in any order, with returns to each stage many times.

Disengagement: The obvious fact of disengagement is that the parish ministers have retired from active parish ministry; they have left this church. This may seem confusing and upsetting and we can feel abandoned. However, we have the opportunity to treat it instead as a symbolic event, a moment that raises for our consideration a review of our situation. Bridges writes, "As long as a system is working, it is very hard for any member of it to imagine an alternative way of life and an alternative identity. But with disengagement, an inexorable process of change begins. Clarified, channeled, and supported, that change can lead toward development and renewal."

Disidentification Bridges describes as "the experience of not being quite sure who [we] are anymore." Disidentification is the interior process related to disengagement. If I am no longer in relation to him/her/them from whom I received my identity in the past, then who am I? For a decade Dave Bumbaugh has contributed to this church's sense of itself. Letting go of one identity makes it possible to move into a new identity, affirming what is still true about oneself while appropriating new aspects as they mature.

Disenchantment: Discovering that, in some sense, one's world is no longer real. Disenchantment is the loss of childhood ignorance and innocence, but is not limited to the world of children. Disenchantment with a fixed world view is necessary for growth to occur; it is essential for the birth of new ideas, new forms, and new ways of being. Disenchantment permits us to hold up our construction of the world and examine it as the way to new possibilities.

Disorientation: In disorientation, one loses the familiar vision of the future. Whether in agreement or disagreement, we have counted upon Dave Bumbaugh to offer direction, a vision of how to proceed. However, as in passage rituals, one is taken away from the known into unfamiliar territory and, in Robert Frost's words, you are "lost enough to find yourself."

At this point of ending, we are disengaged -- we are no longer in relationship with a person of importance to us. As a result, we have lost something of our identity. We have become disenchanted -- the situation does not fit our inner ideal of how things should be. We are disoriented, unsure of direction and purpose.

The point here is that there is no way to a healthy and happy future but through the challenges of this passage. How might these ideas apply to the Unitarian Church in Summit? There is the reality of disengagement from the Bumbaughs. For most, that disengagement was abrupt and final, causing varying degrees of sorrow and grief. For some, the connection never was forged, or the links weakened over time; and this disengagement has caused varying degrees of disappointment and anger. In either case, the break is clear; the disruption is complete. Each individual has his or her own emotions to deal with. In either case, the end provides an opening for review and renewal and an invitation to open dialogue.

Some of our membership has only known a Bumbaugh ministry and therefore identify with that expression of Unitarian Universalism. Some of our membership has known many Unitarian or Universalist ministers, here and in other places. Whether new or long-term, our identification as Unitarian Universalists will no longer be filtered through the persons of our former parish ministers. We have before us the challenging task of rediscovering who this congregation is, separate from its parish ministry leadership. The congregation is sustained here and this ending provides the opportunity to reassess who we were, who we have become and who we yet may be.

We must be disenchanted, that is, we must let go of our fixed images of what the ministry should or should not be. As long as we glorify, or vilify, the memory we hold of these people, we cannot be open to new visions, new understandings of ministry, a new covenant with the next called minister. Images of perfection are hard to live with or to live up to, and are a guarantee that growth and change will be stunted. With all of their gifts and failings, Dave and Bev were very real human beings; neither they nor this congregation will benefit from their being idolized or vilified.

We will go through a passage of disorientation. This church has depended upon strong ministers to give direction; it is known as a pulpit-centered church. This is not to minimize a vital tradition of dedicated lay leadership; it has always been strong. The central, ministerial focus, however, has been continuous. Disorientation is a difficult prospect, especially because we are pursuing our vision of a united congregation on one site, and it would be a mistake to let go of that goal. However, we have the opportunity of the fallow time of the interim period to re-create ourselves as a congregation with a vision and a mission all its own. From this emerging vision will grow a new partnership, a new covenant with another parish minister, next in line of a rich succession.

Indigenous cultures offer ritual passages at times of loss or great moments of decision, sometimes referred to as a Vision Quest. Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness was such a time of disengagement. Our culture does not intentionally offer people such ritual passages, does not honor the important in-between times, the necessary neutral zone, the time to feel and to see, and to be open in new ways. Feeling this need, people do become disengaged nevertheless, from persons, places and relationships, withdraw for a time to nurse their wounds, to sort things out. Unfortunately, there is little affirmation for this process; people are encouraged to get on with their lives.

There has been an ending, a death of sorts, and it behooves us to acknowledge that reality. When faced with a loss of the magnitude of the departure of a parish minister, what is needed is not for each individual to go off alone, but for the congregation as a whole to engage in a Vision Quest. For all of the processes of disengagement, disidentification, disenchantment and disorientation to occur most fruitfully, the congregation as a whole must use the two-and-a-half years ahead as a time out, a neutral zone, a collective Vision Quest.

We are not accustomed, in our rapid-paced lives, to take time out, to live in the between times, to embrace uncertainty. Bridges again writes, "Traditional people in passage ... suffered through it because that was the way, which is to say because they had faith in the death and rebirth process. Having that faith they did not need to try to make distress comfortable." Without faith in any passage ritual, we tend to feel that the end is final. However, Mircea Eliade, a great student of passage rituals, has written, "In no rite or myth do we find the initiatory death as something final, but always as the condition sine qua non of a transition to another mode of being, a trial indispensable to regeneration; that is, to the beginning of a new life."

During this period of Vision Quest, we need to take time for the "goodbyes." We must take time for grieving. There have been strong bonds built up over the past almost 11 years, personal bonds, pastoral bonds and bonds of doing ministry in a lay-ordained partnership. Not only are the worship services different without Dave or Bev's voices, so are the Board of Trustees meetings, Finance Committee, Caring and Sharing, Social Concerns, Building Council, Religious Education, Council for Committees and midweek life in the office. We are used to each other's ways; we have worked well together and grown to count on each other. It has been a partnership of great trust. There is enormous loss in all of that and it is OK to grieve. More than that, it is important to grieve, to notice the empty chair, to acknowledge the loss, to feel the sadness.

The counterpoint to grieving is forgiveness. Imperfect as is any human relationship, there have been disagreements, disappointments and disillusionment. We need to make time for forgiving. Central to moving on in any relationship is the need to let go of the hurts and the disappointments as well as the bonds of affection. We need, as a religious community, to hear the voices of discontent and for the discontented to put their unhappiness to rest, to forgive the unmet expectations.

Expressing the sorrow or the anger and then letting them go are the keys to healing and being ready to move on. Holding on to either one handicaps us permanently.

I invite you now to engage in a symbolic ritual passage, as part of the service, in community. It may help to close your eyes. Hold in your mind's eye a particularly poignant memory of the Bumbaugh ministry. (If you are a visitor, or new to this congregation, pick an important relationship in your life and identify a poignant memory associated with that.) It might be something you are particularly grateful for, a time when you were hurt, a moment when you felt uplifted, an experience of inspiration, a disillusionment, or a healing word or touch. During the silence, hold this memory close, bring to mind the fullness of the experience, the people present, colors, sounds, smells, feelings. Be present to the memory as fully as you are able. We will keep silence for one full minute.

Then, as the music sounds, let it go, let it go. Let it rise into the "space between the stars." Keep it as memory, but be no longer possessed by it.

(Silent meditation ... musical interlude.)

What we have just done here together is only the tiniest beginning. This process of saying "goodbye" takes time, much time. We must not hurry through it or we will miss its richness and complexity. The extended interim period ahead can be our Vision Quest; it can be the opportunity to disengage fully, to re-create our identity as this religious community of memory and hope, to become enchanted anew, and to renew our mission as a religious body. We must be in the Quest together, in community, with radical openness to each other's feelings and perceptions, loss, hurt, understanding, disillusionment and love.

When I stood on the sidewalk two weeks ago with several members of this congregation, waving as the Bumbaughs rounded the corner on their way to Chicago, I recalled David's expressed wish that a legacy of his ministry with this congregation would be openness to hearing many voices from this pulpit. We are in the process of living out that legacy. In the Vision Quest of the next two-and-a-half years, let us truly hear and celebrate many voices, so that with full hearts and in a joyful chorus we will be ready to say a real "hello."

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.
We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
-- T.S. Eliot

The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog.

You may want to read other visitors' comments on Carol S. Haag's "Following Each Goodbye, A Real Hello " .

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