For my friend Mary, who is retiring.
I first met Mary Darling 39 years ago. She was working in student development, as an event planner and chapel coordinator, and I was working for the local newspaper. We met for lunch at a little restaurant in Concord, Michigan, so I could interview Peter Jenkins, an author who had spoken in chapel about his walk across America.
My wife and I had just moved here from Tennessee. Through that first meeting with Mary, I became familiar with Spring Arbor University and joined the communication faculty that year. Not long after that, she moved from student development to the communication faculty herself.
Mary and I have been teaching together for a long time, covering for or speaking in each other’s classes, serving on committees together, and comparing notes, and jokes, about deans and administrators. And students.
It turns out we disagree about a lot of things. I’m a Calvinist and she is Wesleyan. We take different approaches to spirituality, especially spiritual direction. We bring nuanced differences to conversations about various social issues. We even differ on our approaches to communication itself.
But I think we’ve proven that you don’t have to agree with someone to care for them. And to be grateful for them. We joke about our differences. But we also celebrate them. Because one thing we agree on is that every moment is sacred.
In fact, this is one reason colleagues and students love Mary. She can be present. She can be in the moment. She listens to you and she asks beautiful questions. My colleague Gwen Hersha says students “appreciate Mary for being practical and full of faith. She shows concern for important issues and asks students to develop ways to face those issues. She challenges us to walk the talk and persuades us to grow.”
And for this, we are all grateful. And for this, we will miss her. As she retires, we will still see her around, occasionally teaching a class or coming to Shop Talk, our monthly school gathering. But don’t be deceived. She only comes to Shop Talk for the donuts.
When I first heard Mary was retiring, I assumed it was to become a full-time image consultant. She remembers the red flannel shirt I wore that first day we met. The one I am wearing today is not that shirt. But she has often offered me welcomed advice about how others perceive me professionally.
Apparently becoming an image consultant is not her plan. She is retiring to continue her life work, which is to listen to others and ask beautiful questions. These others include her grandchildren. And strangers she has yet to meet.
So, I offer this benediction:
Lord, may our acts of service and creation,
frail as they are,
be met and multiplied by your Spirit
who weaves our weaknesses together
into a tapestry of redemption and hope.
As we continue to experience the echos
of Mary’s love and work, go with her,
lowering in her a fragrant foretaste
of glory yet to come.
May Mary, and those she loves,
see that glory more clearly each day.
and whether we are separate or apart,
Oh Lord, shape our hearts and guide our hands.
Build your peaceable kingdom in us, and through us.
And we will praise you.
the daysman 