RETIRING DANCER

I have been dancing with retiring in ways that feel like my retirement from dancing.

I am a former musical theatre performer that left the stage in 1995. My training was in vocal performance, acting, and dance. Of those three disciplines it was dance that most captivated my creative imagination.

I did not begin formal dance training until I went to college. My parents did not want a son that danced. I was not permitted to take lessons until I went to school which I paid for. And so let the training begin.

By the time I was twenty I had already had each knee surgically repaired. This was not directly traceable to dance, though it was debated. My mother accompanied me to an orthopedic appointment where she applied her son-dance aversion to my medical condition. She presented her evidence for my dance cessation to the orthopedic surgeon. She had every confidence he would concur.

He did not.

The doctor shifted his focus from her to me.

“Do you love dancing?”

“I do.”

“Then keep at it as long as you possibly can.”

And I did.

Professional dancers know that our “life expectancy” on the stage is limited. Mine was shorter than most. But I loved every grand jete and every shuffle ball change. I was in my bliss when I was dancing in the studio and especially on stage. While I had frequent knee pain I pushed right through it until I simply couldn’t.

And so, I am a retired dancer.

I stopped acting and singing professionally at the same time. Without dancing I didn’t have my mojo. I did some television and film work while I was in my clinical training, a transition from performer to therapist and eventually clergy. The final traces of my entertainment career were concurrent to my seminary work. I moved out of New York with a clinical credential and was ordained shortly after.

I was formally retired at age thirty-eight.

And a whole new stage of professional life opened before me.

Since retiring from dance, I have worked full-time in the ministry for thirty-one years. As much as I love the performing arts and dance, I know it is ministry that is the true calling of my life. I feel deeply connected to and live from what is truest and deepest within my heart. And my “tasks” are various expressions of that internal moving flow. I often marvel that I am paid for being what I authentically am and then sharing that with others. I daily put feet on my spiritual practice. I tap into my creative impulses and then channel my inspiration into words and other ways of relating.

I have been the full-time leader of a spiritual community for over twelve years. While I began ministry as an independent contractor I felt inspired to agree to a more structured role for what I thought would be a relatively short period of time.

Many dramatic and even disturbing things have occurred for me personally during my tenure as a senior minister. This culminated late last year with the passing of my husband.

As a result, I have been dancing with the idea of retirement. Again.

I retired from dancing, and now I am dancing with retirement.

Most days this contemplation is an easy waltz that does not yet lead me off the dance floor of my profession. I can still move with the music of my heart. I can keep up. I am admittedly slower when I move. Yet the passion in my heart is as vibrant as ever. I sit while I lecture. Yet my vital energy is standing strong.

And I am aware that my general pace is slower and I am physically able to do less than in previous years. It feels like a very real example of “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The years of forcing my dance have taken a toll. I do not regret it. Yet I ponder how much longer I can maintain the pace of fulltime employment. While I am currently not feeling a definitive “stop” the body symptoms are clearly having a say.

I am clear that I feel no motivation to build a big community that I would then need to maintain. My focus is on touching and reaching one heart at a time. I feel compelled to channel decades of spiritual exploration and put it into forms and words that may benefit others. It is what I am doing as I type these words. I am pointing to something universal when I speak of my individual experience. Bodies often weaken even as our spirit strengthens and soars.

Ours is a doing culture. Success is seen as active achievement. Busyness is a badge of honor. Do. Do. Do. Stay relevant. Measurable. Do even more. Then tell about it. Take pictures of it. Post it. Build even more upon it.

I am personally called less by doing. My heart and my spirit are vibrating at the frequency of being. Much if not most of what is most important to me is not measurable or seen by the world as achievement. It is slow. Intangible. Etheric. I used to love leaping across a stage to a fast-paced crescendo of music. I am now sweetly content to sway to the serenade of my Soul. I then invite you to sway with me.

There will always be a dancer in my imaginary self. And there will always be a minister as my highest form of expression.

I embrace my slowing down. I celebrate that I have survived the past several years, and that I am spiritually stronger and more centered as a result. I dance with the notion that perhaps rather than retiring from my current position I can retire from the demands I place upon myself in terms of how much I do. How much output I can measure.

I dance with the truth that I have thirty years of experience of platform speaking. Individual and group counseling. Workshop presentation. Writing. I have earned the right to slow down a bit. I can allow my expansive being to take form as less doing than in past years. Slow dancing is still dancing. Inspiration does not take muscle. Practice, yes. Muscle, no.

So, for today I am giving to you this pondering on dance and retirement. I retired from dance, and I dance with the possibility of retiring again. It will not be happening today. I have sat in my chair to compose this offering. No warmup required and no sweat induced.

Yet I pray you can feel the music of my heart and the swaying of my spirit. I hope you will dance with me and that you will glean something that will lead you in your own explorations.

Life is indeed a dance. Will you let It lead?

BARREN LAND

I am feeling very much like barren land these days.

Desert.

I have spent my entire professional life working in creative fields. Even as a youth, I was involved in music and the arts. I began professional gospel music when I was eleven years of age.

Though my current title is Reverend, I consider myself an artist.

And I am in a barren period artistically. My creativity feels stifled, at best. Flat. Not vital. Which is interesting, because I do not feel the same about my spiritual alignment. I am attuned as much as ever.

I am not used to feeling spiritually and artistically dystonic.

I really don’t feel as if my spiritual and creative living are different. They are, however, varied expressions of the one life force. Spirit within me is the creative impulse. It is in all of us. We are all creative by creation. And those expressions are unique, and they ebb and flow in and from all of us. There are times when I feel more inspired and creative than at other times.

Barren, though, is rare.

As most of you readers know, my husband passed away in November of 2025. His passing was the culmination of nine years of illness for him and caregiving for me. It was progressive, and the last five or so years were very difficult. I am bereft at the loss. I took almost two months’ bereavement leave from my position as a senior minister. I simply could not function. As most of what I do is creative by nature, the hollowness in me stopped me in my tracks. I could not imagine tuning in and tracking with the inspiring movement inside of me. Not in front of a congregation.

When I returned to officiating Sunday services, I did so with no small amount of trepidation. With over thirty years in ministry, I do impeccably trust my intuitive impulses. In most circumstances. After losing a spouse was a different context to work from. The lamp from which I usually shine felt shattered.

The grief and the mourning have been intense. The sorrow, deep and immense. While it seems difficult for those around me, I have allowed fully for it. I lean right in. I sob when I need to sob, which is a lot. I have physical and psychological symptoms. I tire easily. I have cognitive space-outs. I irritate more easily than usual.

I frequently and consistently feel barren. Flat. Dry. Arid.

I continue to do my best at presenting effective and even entertaining Sunday sermons. I am writing infrequently. I amp myself up to occasionally record a social media video. And I pray and maintain my connection, regardless of what I may be feeling.

I am a lifelong creative and not feeling very creative.

Yet here I am.

While I am not sure this will ever be distributed, I am engaging in the art of creativity for the sake of engaging in creativity. I am writing because of my love of writing. I am demonstrating that, regardless of pain and sorrow, grief and mourning, art can be born from them. Not despite them. From them.

This is my desert rose.

Someone gave Donald and me a desert rose plant when we married sixteen years ago. Donald is now gone, yet the desert rose is in full bloom.

Donald is now gone, yet our love is still in full bloom.

I must believe that beauty can still be born from barren land. If the desert can yield blossoms, then so can I.

There are periods when our desert rose has nary a blossom. I have never once heard a critical voice coming from it. It simply knows that it will bloom again when it is time.

The same wisdom is in me. I have not been blooming very much recently. Yet I trust that I will blossom again prolifically when it is time. Maybe I just need some time to be barren now. To not produce too much, to embrace my desert nature. Perhaps the volume of tears is flooding my garden. And perhaps, after this venture, I will drop the term “barren” and know that I will soon be fertile once again. My consistent attuning to the Great Creator can only result in my own great creations

I began this creative experiment with the words, “I am feeling very much like barren land these days.”

And now, not so much.

Barrenness has borne creativity. It’s a small step. A gift of love.

And just like that, I am creating again.

LOVE RISES AFTER LOSS

I am fifteen years old. My father has been living in a facility due to early-onset dementia. He does not know who I am.

Yet it is his birthday, and so I bake him a cake and take it to him. With his condition, I must feed him the cake.

As he does not know me, he is fixated on each bite of cake. He does not look at me. He looks at the spoon and at the cake.

Only at the spoon and at the next bite of cake. He does not see this fifteen-year-old he doesn’t know. The one who so longs to be seen.

Fast forward fifty years. It is my husband's birthday. Due to Lewy Body dementia, he lives in a facility. I obtain a cake, and I take it to him. As he cannot use his hands or utensils, I feed him the cake. I do not miss out on the memories or the patterns or the pain.

This is different.

He knows me. Even with the advancing dementia, he knows me. He sees me. He relishes each bite of cake and gazes at the one feeding him. He sees me. And I see him loving me.

My dad. My husband. The dementia. The loss. The honor. The connection. The cake. The love. The feeding.

The love. The love. The love.

I remember every detail of not being known and of being profoundly known. Baked into those cakes was a love beyond words. Greater than dementia or memories. Greater than feeding or being fed.

Both of them are gone now, and yet they are both here. They are both great loves of my lifetime. I was blessed to have loved and fed and served them both.

In my own experience, that is my Easter story.

Crucifixion. Resurrection.

Loss. Love.

In my memories and in my heart and in this moment I am risen.

PURPOSEFUL GRIEF

I have never felt so bereft. And I have never felt more purposeful.

I do not recall the last time I sat down to compose a blog post. It would be easy enough to check. I just do not feel compelled to do so.

For those new to me and to my work, I am bereft because my beloved husband, Donald, passed away on November 8, 2025. At 10:49 p.m. I was holding his hand as he released his final exhalation. While he had been progressively ill for nine years, his death came as a shock. It was a shock that I am still grappling to internalize. To believe. To realize.

Donald died from complications of Lewy body dementia. In the last few years of his life, I provided almost total care. In early April of last year, I physically could no longer care for him. I made the excruciating decision to move him to a skilled nursing facility. From April until November, I lived alone in the home that had been ours. I trekked to his facility and watched as he continued his decline. His care was excellent. I went and I micro-managed that care. I was his loving husband and his fierce advocate. I personally participated in his care, and when I traveled, I spoke with him and to his providers with frequency.

And now he is gone. I have never felt so bereft.

I also am experiencing a deeper level of purpose than I have ever felt.

After two months of bereavement leave, I returned to my full-time position as a senior minister. I could not fathom how I was going to make it through the first Sunday service. And yet I did. And the second and the third. When the impulse to write began to move within me, I decided to give way to that impulse. As I type these words, I am uncertain as to whether this will ever be distributed.

And yet I continue to type. I listen to the movement in my heart and allow the movement to become words. I am imbuing every word with feeling. Feeling that is seeking expression. Grief. Sadness. Love. Loss. Purpose.

Purpose.

There were thirty years to the month between the deaths of my two spouses. I am a man who has been supremely blessed to have had not one but two incredible loves. Amazing love. Transformative love.

And agonizing loss.

I am a person who deeply believes that everything that happens has purpose and has meaning. I also deeply believe that it is fundamental to our evolution to discover and to embrace the purpose in what happens and to assign a meaning that serves our Soul and all who are involved.

Our pain uses us until we decide to use our pain.

And so, I am feeling the enormous pain in my heart, and I am also feeling the enormity of the equivalent love. I am intoning that love into words. I am processing the pain into pictures that I seek to share with you. I want you to read my words and feel my heart. I want you to taste the saltiness of my tears. I want you to hear the cessation of his final breath, and how it became a guttural howl that instinctively sounded through me.

I shared not quite seventeen years with the most delectably quirky, wise, loving, delightful man that I have ever known. No one has ever loved me like Donald loved me. No one will ever love me as Donald loved me. I am inexplicably changed due to that level of love.

And so, the impact of that love and of that loss is now an urgency to fulfill the purpose that is clear and passionate inside of me. The purpose is not new. The intensity has increased. Having once again faced death in an up-close and personal way, I am stunningly aware of my own mortality. I have lived far more years than I will accumulate in the future.

My time is now.

My heart is bruised. The grief is still new, and as the shock subsides, the waves are of tidal proportion.

And yet I am crystal clear that there is purpose in my grief. My non-negotiable commitment to emotional fluency and spiritual dedication makes my grief available to be used in service of a world ill-versed in feeling its pain.

Donald is no longer embodied. And yet my communion with his spirit is clear and comprehensive. As such, he will be a part of my creative expression for the remainder of my days. He will be in every sermon. Every class. Every podcast. Every blog.

Every blog.

I embrace that I will grieve Donald until I rejoin Donald with my final exhale. In the meantime, I will channel my grief into purposeful expression. Passionate expression. Full and free connection. I will hold you in your grief because I do not fear it.

For those who are the survivors of great love, there is great grief. It is the price we pay for being incredibly blessed. The love will always remain, and so shall the grief.

I do not lament that fact. I do not attempt to deny, suppress, or outrun the pain. Instead, I use it. I allow the grief to flow freely through my tears, my words, my counsel, my expression.

For you see, I have never felt so bereft. Or more purposeful.

Or more purposeful.