The Breaking of the Fellowship

This weekend, Tertianship officially ends.

Most of us are kicking around for a week or two before heading back to our points of origin, but it's really all over but the crying.

And I might, a little. This has been one of the best years of my life, period. So as you might imagine I'm not anxious to see it end.

We have had a remarkable group of men. We have had incredible experiences, both together and separately. We have lived and made a community and, as they say here, 'a fair go' of it.

And now it's over. One is going back to editing a magazine in Italy. Another is becoming part of the faculty of the theology school in Frankfurt. A school chaplain in Berlin. A pastor in Winnipeg. The JSTB gets its liturgy professor back. A Swiss retreat house will see its director again soon. A new high school principle for Northern Poland and a returning vocations director for Southern Poland. A Korean missionary in Cambodia. One is returning to the classroom for his Masters in Fine Arts. The CPE Supervisor is returning to training people. And one is becoming president of a theology center.

But I think we'll carry each other for quite a while. We've really impacted one another. That is for certain. And I'm pretty sad that it's ending. It is the nature of the both my life and this year though, that the good things don't last long. So I have tried to drink deeply while the tap has been on.

My own adventures will continue on here. Despite the breaking of the Fellowship.

"Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end
of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace!
I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil."