A Letter from The Rev. Joyce Keeshin & The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Dear Friends,
I want to share with you our plans for a transition in my role at Church of the Redeemer. At the end of this year, I will be taking several months for a sabbatical. Upon my return, I will be rejoining our clergy team here as an assisting priest on a non-stipendiary basis. This means I will very much continue to be a part of this community, with preaching, teaching, and celebrating on occasion, involvement in special projects, and, also getting to sit in the pews alongside you and participating fully in the life of this community.
This is a transition that Phil and I have been talking about for over a year, and I have prayerfully discerned both my readiness and this timing. I will be celebrating my seventy-fifth birthday in October, and while I would like to believe I could keep up my present pace, my body is letting me know it may be time for a gentler one. These recent years have also brought home to many of us the preciousness and finiteness of our time, and I feel a longing for more time with family and to pursue some creative paths I have been putting on hold. And I think this is good timing in the life of our congregation, to welcome in fresh energy for the next chapter in our life together.
Being a priest and serving as the Associate for Pastoral Care in this community has been one of the greatest gifts I have ever received in my life. I can only see this time as having been through the movement of the Holy Spirit, because in the normal workings of the larger church there was no possible path for me to have been able to serve in the congregation that had also been my sponsoring church, and for decades before that, had been my church home.
I want to thank you for accepting me in the transition I made from parishioner to priest here. Some of you have been friends since high school, where I don’t believe there were any visible traces of this call present then. For some of you I was the kid sister of your friend, or your former colleague at P&G, or someone who served alongside you on vestry or numerous committees or projects throughout the years. It has been your love and your openness to accepting me as a priest among you that has supported, inspired, and sustained me in my ordained ministry.
And I need to thank Phil and our wonderful Church of the Redeemer staff. It has been a joy serving with this group of people who are more than colleagues, they are also family to me. Phil has encouraged and supported me every day of my ministry in this place. The DeVaul family has welcomed me to their home on every major holiday. Phil’s leadership and openness to new ideas, and the whole staff and congregation’s creativeness in finding ways to connect these past couple of years has made a challenging time also energizing, and very often fun. We have been experiencing in real time a chapter in history marked by pandemic, polarization, distortion of truth, and violence. And yet, here we are, as a church community filled with and sharing God’s love, vitalized, growing, welcoming, inspired, and being present for each other in the most difficult times of isolation and grief, and in the joys of baptisms, weddings, and block parties.
I thank God for this Church of the Redeemer community, for all of you, and for the palpable presence of the Holy Spirit in this place. I look forward with excitement to the next chapter of ministry we will share together.
With gratitude and love,
Joyce
Friends,
When I joined the Church of the Redeemer 6 years ago, the Rev. Joyce Keeshin quickly became one of my first friends, and most trusted partners in this holy work we share. In the intervening years, she has taught me so much about God’s love, patience, and wisdom through her role overseeing Pastoral Care in our community. Joyce is a treasure, a teacher, and a comforting presence for so many people. Though she is gentle and quiet in demeanor, her passion and impact are widely felt by all who are graced by her ministry.
I say this from personal experience. The DeVaul family have had our fair share of medical emergencies and hospital visits since our arrival in The Queen City. More often than not, it has been Joyce who has shown up in the waiting room and kept us calm and peaceful as we anxiously awaited news of our loved ones. I know many of you have experienced this as well.
Joyce is an integral part of our team, and of this church family. After much prayerful discernment, she has decided it is time to step back from her role as Associate for Pastoral Care, to get a little rest after what has been an incredibly demanding couple of years, and to enjoy her family and her free time a bit more than she’s been able to while carrying so many pastoral responsibilities at Redeemer. I’m proud of her for this decision, and as I’ve come to do over and over again these last years, I fully trust her wisdom and intuition.
And I’m overjoyed to say that Joyce isn’t going anywhere! She’s not leaving our team, our community, our family – but simply shifting roles. In the first few months of 2023, Joyce will take a much-needed sabbatical to rest, get refreshed, and ready herself for the next chapter of her ministry here at Church of the Redeemer. When she returns, she will serve in a non-stipendiary role as an Assisting Priest for our congregation. While her load will be lighter, we will still benefit from her preaching, her teaching, her administration of the sacraments, her wit, her kindness, and her unending faithfulness that inspires us all. And I’m delighted to say she will still be leading our pilgrimage to Scotland next summer!
Joyce’s transition to a different role here means you will see some changes to how our clergy and staff are structured – and to be fully transparent, I’m not 100% sure what that will look like just yet. We are having those conversations right now, and as always, I welcome your thoughts and input. Please know that I will continue to communicate with you as we get a sense of the next steps for our ministry team. And, while Joyce isn’t leaving, this change is significant for her and for us. We’re not saying goodbye, but I hope you will take the time in the coming months to thank her. If you are one of the hundreds of people on whom her pastoral ministry has had an impact, I hope you will let her know. I’ll get it started here:
Joyce, I love you. I am so grateful for you. You make Church of the Redeemer a kinder, wiser place, and you always challenge me to see the best in others. I can be a cynical, grumpy, caustic guy – but your gentleness always draws me out of myself and into a space where the Spirit is ready to soften me up and experience God’s presence more fully. You are always looking out for this church, and you are always looking to support every one of us. I can’t wait for the next chapter of our work together. You are a gift and a blessing. Thank you.
Your friend and brother in Christ Jesus,
Philip Hart DeVaul †
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