Keeping In Touch

Boy do I suck!

My colleague from the neighbouring Lutheran parish, just a 20 minute drive down the highway, said farewell to her congregation yesterday and is moving to a new call. Now she’ll be 5 hours away!

We were, are, good friends. We went through seminary together and then as luck would have it received our first calls just down the road from each other. I was looking forward to being so close, able to see each other often, maybe even to work together sometimes. But it didn’t happen.

Why? Because I suck!

It’s been over 4½ years that we’ve been in these calls and I’ve known for a long time that I wasn’t keeping in touch. We’d phone each other every couple of months. The clergy in this conference just don’t seem to want to get together. I’m the dean and was scheduling monthly gatherings for the clergy (there are around 25 on our roster including retired clergy) and sometimes only 4 would show up. Those were occasions when I’d see her but I stopped scheduling those meetings because so few clergy bothered to show up.

It really drove home how bad we’ve been at keeping in touch when we ran into each other at the mall before Christmas and she almost didn’t recognize me because of my beard. THE BEARD I’VE HAD SINCE AUGUST!

It’s one of my deepest regrets of the past few years. We were (are?) good friends and lived so close and so rarely saw each other. I had lunch with her today to say goodbye. Now it’s too late. I said now that she’ll be a lot farther away we might end up keeping in touch a lot more by email. That’s what I’ve got to do. That would be so easy. I send one or two emails a week to my brother, not always long. I’ll have to do that with other friends.

Actually, after I post this I’m going to send a couple of emails to friends I haven’t communicated with in quite a while. Maybe that’s a belated New Year’s Resolution I’ll try to keep. Getting back in touch.