Letting go

The blog I completed a few moments ago provides a context for this one.  As I reported, the recent shareholders’ meeting of the International Center for Ethnic Studies, appointed an entirely new Board of Directors, ending a formal affiliation that lasted for more than a decade.  I feel good about my work, but sad that some friendships with those involved may be strained beyond repair.  

I learned about the shareholders’ decision last Friday evening, but it took a few hours and a good night’s sleep for the impact to sink in.  Saturday morning, I realized that problems of financial management. funding, leadership and staffing at the ICES were no longer my problems,  And I realized that these problems had been a matter of almost daily concern for more that eight months.  I felt a lightening of burdens, long borne. There would be no need to scan my emails for urgent communications from the ICES or wonder what bad news the next voicemail message, received while I was sleeping, would bring. There was no longer any formal role for me to play at the ICES, even should I wish to do so.  I realized that there would be time to pursue new interests and new opportunities in Sri Lanka.  

A passage from 2 Timothy 4:7  (in the Christian Bible) came to mine.   I heard it first at a summer  camp church service when I was a pre-teen.: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”