Back-story

This was my experience at Convention this year.  Oddly, though it may not sound like it, it was overall a positive experience.  I was made aware again of the pieces of back-story which are mine to bear, mine to attest to, mine to proclaim.  At the same time, I became more aware than ever that I will have to find new ways to do this.  The theme of Convention was "Behold! We are doing a new thing."  We welcomed new people into the diocese, but did not say farewell to others, to those who moved or are moving, to those who retired. Sometimes the old is not honored when we make way for the new.  It is possible to do both.  It is necessary to do both.  Perhaps I am more sensitive to this because I am a few years off from retirement now.  Perhaps I am more sensitive because I am part of that tail end of the first generation of ordained women whose vocational life was like unto those first farmers who moved West and had to clear land before any kind of crop could be planted.  This is part of my personal back-story.  I am a farmer.  I have cleared a lot of land.

Just home from Convention

I realize I know

So much

Of so much

Back-story

To this place.

The archives man died

This year.

I am one of many pages

Still walking around,

Still

Not recorded on official paper

Except perhaps

In sundry places

I have served.

I am one

Of many.

Some remember.

Still

There is back-story,

There is memory

Somehow

Deemed less significant;

There is the new announced

As the whole of things;

The change proclaimed

Which still ties in

With everything we have done

Before.

Somehow

We forgot.

Somehow we forget.

There is always back-story.

Nothing is ever

Completely new.

Amnesia unrealized

In truth

Does not make anything new.

Even when we say

It is so.