Rector's Note: Where was Rev. Barb last week?-9.25.25

The Credo conference that I attended last week in Maryland drew clergy from all over the country to focus on how to care for our ordained selves, financially, physically, mentally, vocationally and spiritually. It was sponsored by the Church Pension Fund, which not only manages our pensions but also provides for clergy wellness. It wasn’t exactly a retreat, and it wasn’t quite professional development, but it had huge helpings of both

The gathering got its start in the mid-1990s, when a wellness committee of CPF recommended a program to enhance clergy wellness by providing a conference to focus on health, wellbeing and discernment. It has since offered more than 400 such week-long gatherings.

The participants at my Credo were from all parts of the ordination timeline, from young, newly ordained priests to seasoned clergy staring down retirement. And there were people like me, late-vocation clergy who were old enough to be looking at retirement in less than 15 years. All of us had different areas that wanted our focus, different futures to discern. And all had personal wisdom to share on things like sabbaticals, retirement savings plans, managing parishioners’ expectations, getting rest.

I zoomed into my Credo conference doing about 80 miles an hour, arriving about 15 minutes before it was scheduled to start. Dodging rush hour traffic around Baltimore felt much like my schedule in the past month, as I hurtled to get the program year started, manage diocesan anti-racism programming, support parish planning and get the liturgical pieces in place so I could leave for seven days. (Special shout out to the Rev. Christopher Drummond, who filled in for me on Sept. 21!)

If the body is the temple of God, then I feel that the Holy Spirit has been holding on white-knuckled while I careened through my calendar. I wondered if my soul were feeling motion sick at the constant speed, the inability to slow down. This was one of the needs that I brought to the conference, where part of the work was to write a “rule of life” to guide our actions after the conference was done.

“Where are the margins in your day?” Kurt, one of the team leaders, asked me, as I described my need to establish some breaks in my high-speed ministry.

Margins?

“When you’re writing something you don’t start at one side of the paper and continue off the other side,” he said. “You set margins.”

Oh, those kinds of margins. The kinds that are above you and below you and on either side – like St. Patrick’s breastplate. The spaces where you rest and pause and gather your thoughts. Originally trained as a newspaper reporter, I put a lot of stock in margins and white space. That also got me thinking about the spaces in between paragraphs, how there is a bit of openness between one idea and another.

I was reminded, too, of John O’Donohue’s similar call to create space for one’s soul, how a poem is mostly white space, with words used carefully and sparingly, usually in the center of the page.

What if I intentionally created pauses and breaks in my day to get up from my desk and move? Or to change locations after a meeting and intentionally rest or breathe before diving into the email that was waiting for me, Kurt suggested. “And if you get an unexpected cancellation, throw up your arms and shout ‘unplanned margins!’ and head off with your soul to spend some unscheduled time together,” he said, demonstrating with arms flung high in the air.

He looked silly. I’m totally going to do it.

So that became one of the lines in the rule of life that I took out of Credo: “Set margins in your day and spaces in between its paragraphs to move and rest.”

And that might mean adding more time between meetings so I can get up and stretch and walk around a bit. That could look like heading off for a walk or a trip to a nearby labyrinth if I really want to get fancy. I could sequester myself in the chapel for a bit when no one is looking and just sit still for a while. And I will also do the needful work of scheduling retreats, seeking solitude on my days off, even exploring some prayer and breathing practices. (During the conference we learned the Chinese mind and body practice of Qigong using this video, which I’ve already used a few times as part of my morning ritual.)

In all, I left Credo with a sense of how to shape and reshape my days and years ahead. Making mindful space is an important part of it. As is celebrating the unexpected cancellation with a shout of “unplanned margins!” arms flung up in the air.

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