During the academic year 1975-76, I worked part time as janitor of University Christian Church. I was allowed quite a bit of flexibility in my work schedule which accommodated my academic schedule. One of the ministries of the congregation at that time was a kind of a cafe that was staffed by volunteers and served meals to university students. That meant that five days a week the terrazzo floors in the fellowship hall had to be mopped. After the Friday meal before Sunday’s service, I stripped the wax from the floors, applied a fresh coat of wax, and ran a buffer over the floors so that they were shiny and clean. If there was a funeral lunch, I would wax and polish the floors an additional time that week. The job also involved a great deal of pushing dust mops and occasional mopping in the sanctuary. In addition, I cleaned bathrooms and classrooms, arranged furniture, and performed light maintenance. In place of pews, the sanctuary was outfitted with individual hardwood chairs with rushed seats. In the normal course of use the rushing would become damaged and individual chairs would be put in storage awaiting renewal of the seats. I had learned how to rush chairs at some point, so I took on the task of putting new rush on the chairs. The product we used for rushing was twisted strands of paper which I soaked in water to make pliable before wrapping it around the rails. I did so many chairs for that church that I got the process down to 15 to 20 minutes per chair.

The work was good work, but it was the kind of work that didn’t require intense concentration. It was a good match for that phase of my life because graduate theological education took a lot of careful concentration. I had enormous amounts of reading and writing that was required for my degree work. The janitor work allowed my mind to wander, a luxury that I couldn’t afford for many hours of my days. Sometimes I thought about my academic work as I performed my chores. Other times, I just let my mind wander freely from topic to topic. Occasionally, a verse would come to my mind. Although I am no poet and I was reading almost no poetry outside of my Biblical studies, I wrote poems from time to time. Of course there is a lot of poetry in the Bible. Jesus’ most quoted scriptures were from the prophet Isaiah, whose Biblical books are mostly poetry.

At that time, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) had a new magazine called The Disciple. After more than a century of publishing a magazine called The Christian, that publication was merged with the church’s mission magazine World Call and the new magazine had a large and world wide circulation. One of the poems I wrote about my job as a janitor was submitted to the magazine by the pastor of the congregation and it ended up being my first published work to be translated into multiple languages. The poem was subsequently re-published in a quarterly journal of the American Foundation for the Blind, adding Braille to the list of languages.

The poem is, I believe, the only poem I have written that was ever published. I pursued other forms of writing for the rest of my career and continue to see myself as an essayist rather than a poet. One of my retirement projects, however, has been participation in a poetry group. We meet a couple of times a month. Between our meetings we share a common prompt and prepare a poem to share with the group. During the meetings we also write to prompts offered by members of the group. The prompt for tomorrow’s meeting is, “I’m not here to start this race; I’m here to finish it.”

Fortunately for me, I am unable to participate in this week’s meeting due to a family event. That means that it won’t be noticed if I don’t complete a poem. Sometimes when I miss meetings, I write a poem and email it to group members, but I am totally stumped by this prompt. Frankly, I haven’t experienced my life as something that I finish.

I rushed hundreds of chairs when I was a church janitor, but I never finished the chore. If they are still using rush chairs, someone is renewing the rush regularly. I mopped floors over and over, but they still needed to be mopped. The bathrooms I cleaned still needed someone to clean them after I quit being the janitor. I served as a pastor for 44 yers of my life, but I never finished the work. I shared parenting chores with Susan and we raised two children who are adults with children of their own, but our role as parents is not finished and never will be.

One of the ancient traditions I observed as a pastor involves not pronouncing benedictions during Holy Week. The tradition was to see the services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil as a continuous service dispensing with the traditional closings and openings of worship. I modified the tradition, treating all of the services between Palm Sunday and Easter as a week of continuing worship without benedictions. I don’t know if the congregation noticed, but it was a good discipline for me. In that sense, I have participated in all kinds of ventures that I have not finished.

Not finishing things fits my theology as well. At the core of my beliefs is a theology of resurrection that declares that death is not the end. Just when it seems that life is over and all is finished, there is more.

Each time I try to write to the prompt, the lyrics of a Jim Manley song come to my mind: “Just when you think it’s over/the music starts once again/and its sweeter than it was before/and its better than it was before.”

Once again I won’t be finishing any races this week. And, it appears, neither will I be finishing a poem.