Thanks

I’ve been around the church a long time; grew up in the days when women were called ladies and they all wore hats in church and we sang Holy, Holy, Holy to start off every service.

I’ve got a lot of mementos from all my years in the church.

I’ve got my Sunday school “Five Star Memory Certificate” from 1957. I was 9 years old. The certificate has shiny stars for memorizing the books of the Bible, the ten commandments and a few other things. It’s signed by my teacher and the Sunday school superintendent.

I’ve got a plaque for helping out the Canadian Forces Chaplaincy and a mug for helping out in the ice storm of ’99.

Anybody who has been around the church as long as I have gets these kinds of mementos.

I have a Bible given to me by a student minister at the church I was serving in Montreal. When she started with us she was afraid to drive her car across the city to get to the church. She was afraid of preaching, afraid of hospitals, afraid of meetings, afraid of making mistakes, afraid of being a minister.

By the time she left us she was different. We knew she would be a good minister and she knew it too. And she is.

When she left she gave me the Bible that sits beside my desk. On the first page she wrote an inscription. Of all the mementos I’ve received this one speaks most eloquently to me. She didn’t write the date or any explanations, not even her name. All she wrote was this one word: Thanks.

When I was Moderator of The United Church of Canada I visited widely in the church. That’s what the Manual says a Moderator has to do – visit widely. You have to learn the language. When a businessman is travelling he says, “I’m on the road.” When a scientist is travelling she says, “I’m in the field.” When ministers travel we say, “I’m out visiting widely.”

Anyway, as I went about visiting widely I held retreats for more than a thousand ministers in villages, towns and cities across the country. They all wanted to know the best strategies for succeeding in the work of the church. I didn’t know any strategies but I always thanked them.

They’d be sitting around in a circle, all those ministers, and I’d say, “Thank you for every meeting you’ve been to. Thank you for every time you stacked the chairs, turned out the lights, locked the door and walked alone into the night.

Thank you for every time you stood over an open grave staring down into eternity.

Thank you for every time you listened graciously while someone explained to you why they don’t go to church, even though you hadn’t asked. Thank you for living with the jokes about working one day a week and for being a stage prop at those wedding spectaculars.

Thank you for every time you heard the phone ring in the night and you got up and went. Thank you for the courage and the cost of it all.”

And the room would get very quiet, all those ministers there. A lot of them had tears in their eyes.

When our youngest son was a baby he got sick. We lived in the Northwest Territories at the time. For several days we didn’t know what was wrong and then they had to fly him out to Edmonton. Little baby on an emergency flight. They operated and saved his life. Now he’s a dad with two little ones of his own. My God, I have no idea how to thank all the people who made that possible, from the pilots to the nurse who got up in the night and went, to paediatricians, mechanics, administrators, ambulance drivers, the minister who stood by us because we didn’t know a soul down there in Edmonton.

When the crisis passed and we brought him home a bill came in the mail. It listed all the charges for the various emergency services. At the bottom the balance remaining showed a zero. No charge. Every time I pay my taxes I remember all that. I remember universal health care and I say, “Thanks.”

There is no better source of good energy for living than gratitude. As an energy source gratitude beats resentment hands down.

Gratitude is free and not hard to practice. Best of all, it’s the twin of happiness. Sometimes you can hardly tell them apart.

P.S. The minister who stood by us in our desperate hour was Bill Phipps whose life and friendship I remember and give thanks for today.

The Very Rev. Dr. Peter Short lives in Fredericton, NB. He is a retired minister of The United Church of Canada and a former Moderator of the United Church. He’s also a pretty decent canoeist, gets up unusually early in the morning, and is an all round good guy. He also did not write his own bio for this piece.