Where can I flee from your presence?

Psalm 139:7-12

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night,"

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

Would that we might always have the perspective that time's passage affords.  There would be less despair, little doubt, more comfort, and the assurance that God is there.  Yet such an awareness awaits the morning sun.  When one is in the thick of it, one's perspective is obscured.

As one who is bipolar one learns to loathe both the height and the depth  of our experience.  Soaring with a manic euphoria is to be feared.  And the descent into the depths brings despair and a sense of abandonment.  In the name of a healthy balance these are shunned as an aberration of a disease.

And in doing so major segments of our lives are dismissed as symptoms.  Successful treatment is measured in the degree to which one maintains the healthy balance of the center.  Yet I would not be who I am were it not for the highs and the lows that have defined my existence.  This is the other balancing act.  On the one hand we yearn for that blessed normalcy that health brings.  Yet on the other, there is a recognition of the presence of God in both the heights and depths of life's experiences.

When I have been in the midst of a manic phase the presence of God was palpable.  Too much.  A delusion?  Neurons misfiring in the old noggin.  

And as darkness covered me like the night a powerful sense of being forsaken by God took over.  Where was he?  And how could he just let me descend to such depths?  And how long could I endure the awful silence of God?

It is only with time that the Psalmist sings of God's ever present love.

As those who have come out of the abyss, who have ascended to the heights and leaned over the precipice, yet survived, there is a holy calling to bear witness to the loving hand of God that sustained them.  And so, today, I'm at a place that I can sing the song.

And perhaps it will be that song that sustains a fellow traveler on this  bipolar journey until they too, can hum the melody.

It's not just that God brought us through the heights and the depths of our existence, it is that God was present in those experiences.  Would that we could only see it at the time.  

Dare to lead

Karla and  I were charter members of a new mission congregation during the early years of our marriage.  Agnus Dei Lutheran Church was where we began our adult lives as active participants in the life of the Church.  It was there that I was led into Church leadership, and eventually decided to enter the ordained ministry.  As I entered ordained ministry there was a deep desire, cultivated during my time at Agnus Dei, to become a mission developer and to lead in the development of a new congregation such as Agnus Dei.

At about the same time, Peace Lutheran in Otis Orchards was being organized.  Like Agnus Dei, Peace Lutheran thrived during those early years.  To this day, hanging on the wall in the entry are photos of the relatively large confirmation classes that Peace Lutheran conducted.  Those photos bear witness to a vibrant young congregation.  

I discovered something new the other night.  These two congregations had something else in common.  Each of the organizing pastors was engaged in sexual misconduct.  Both of them fell in love with and married members of their congregations.  Each of the congregations was thrown into crisis.  And that early vibrancy of the new mission congregations was interrupted.  Decades have passed and Peace Lutheran has never fully recovered from the effects of that, hard as that may seem to believe.  

To be called to redevelop Peace Lutheran is a dream come true for me.  And though it is not a 'new mission start', it will require the same sort of development that goes into starting a new mission.  We will have the advantage, though, of a dedicated core group already in place, as well as a building that is paid for.  

One of the observations of some experts in dealing with clergy misconduct is that it can take two full pastorates for a congregation to recover.  In Peace's case, one of those pastorates lasted 22 years.  During that time, trust was restored in the pastoral office.  The congregation has now been free of conflict throughout most of those years.  What is left to do is to rekindle the missionary spirit and vibrancy of the early years.  

The challenges that this brings awakens within me the kind of drive and energy that I have experienced before during my best times in pastoral ministry.  The concern is that it also may awaken within me the manic impulses.  A "savior mentality" is one of those impulses that is almost always present when I'm in a manic phase.  And I am well aware that the circumstances of Peace Lutheran could call for a savior.  

The trick will be to lead the congregation in mission, without getting caught up in a savior mentality and role.  And to have the courage to walk that fine line.  

One of the dynamics of Agnus Dei's early years was that the congregation was developed around the personal charisma of the pastor, to a certain extent.  This made the congregation even more vulnerable when things went sour.  

It's a reminder to me that though leadership will be required of me, I'm not to be the glue that holds everything together.  I'm not to be a savior, nor the focus of the ministry.  Another has that role.  

But on the other hand, the caution that being bipolar requires in order to maintain balance should not be allowed to undermine what are the legitimate and measured needs for pastoral leadership in this new endeavor.  Part of maintaining that balance will be to see that leadership more in terms of a 'coming alongside' and a 'walking with', rather than a 'going where no man has ever gone before.'  

I pray for guidance.  And a continuing balance in my moods.  And I ask your prayers as well.

Meanwhile, I get to be a mission developer.  Yeah.