EPILOGUE & ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
/EPILOGUE
A Prayer for the Journey
May Jesus who walked on wounded feet
Walk with us to the end of our road.
May Jesus who served with wounded hands
Teach us to serve one another.
May Jesus who loved with a wounded heart
Be our love forever.
May we see the face of Jesus in everyone we meet and
May everyone we meet see the face of Jesus in us.
And God will bless us.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Amen.
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It has been quite a ride, these 40 years. I was 37 and not even close to a mid-life crisis when Touchstone started. Now I’m 77 and still rolling—with artificial knees and hearing aids. But I’m filled with gratitude to God and the untold numbers of friends who have guided, supported, challenged, and protected this little work of friendship with Jesus.
The original group of friends that established Touchstone provided me with the resources and accountability to be a learner about the inner journey that shapes our outer walk in society.
When Susan and I met for a planning retreat in June 1984—with Holger and Sharon Larsen, Blair and Anne Slade, Bill and Lorna Smith, Bob and Nancy Burnside, Tom McCullough, Joe and Cynthia Wilson, Don and Trudie Reynolds, Terry and Carole Madison—we really didn’t know what this little friendship ministry would become. But we had faith that the calling was right, and that the way forward would be made clear by listening, learning, and serving.
I am equally grateful to the current board chaired by Scott Cameron, Melanie Reist, Tim Sinclair, Pekka Varvas, Matthias Benfey, Gretchen Van Riesen, and Martin Cobb who for the past seven years helped us negotiate continued fruitful ministry beyond what I could envision. Even this little book project has only been possible by their providing resources for an editor, graphic designer, and all that has gone into its blog and podcast formats.
Add to these the dozens of men and women who have served on the boards through our many twists and turns over these four decades as the ministry changed and grew in response to the evolving needs of those we served.
My old friend G.K. Chesterton once said, “A thing worth doing, is worth doing badly,” not I think as an excuse for incompetence or shoddy work, but as an encouragement to generalists and non-professionals like me to just do the work they think needs doing, and not to be intimidated by perfection.
There is often a gap between our rhetoric when discussing our ministry and the actual reality of it, but that didn’t keep us from aspiring to change, learn, and grow. Aspiring to the mystery of friendship with God in Jesus is impossible to do perfectly. If I love imperfectly, as I do, is that not better than not loving at all?
During one of my sessions with my spiritual director of so many years, Tarcia Gerwing, she asked me what I’d like my tombstone to say. I responded that I just wanted to be known as an unworthy servant of Jesus who did his job. “That’s not true,” she replied and then allowed me to explore what I really thought. “I would like to be known as one who loved God and loved those that came across my path,” I said, “but I’m afraid to say that, because of the gaps between rhetoric and reality.”
The lessons we learned along the way also provided ongoing tension. We never really “have it right,” but we have Christ and his friends for the journey. This has been a 40-year learning journey for me as you have generously invited me into your lives on a common search to learn from Jesus about following him into our different marketplaces of calling. Your calling places most of you in leadership of companies, practices, or ministries.
We worked hard to exegete the scriptures as well as our lives and the culture in which we operate. As the years pass it is clear to us that the issues of managing ego, pride, money, and power are the same for those in business, politics, or religion.
What I have been learning from scripture, spiritual direction, and engagement with you has shaped the work. My broken places that need the grace of God are the seedbed for the fruit of any work that has the Divine hand in it. You have allowed me to be a flawed leader whose life needs as much help from God and others as anyone in our circles.
Our desire when we started was to support anyone who invited us to join them on their inner journey at any level of interest or commitment—the terms were to be defined by the inviter. The goal was to allow the umbrella of Touchstone to exist with the necessary resources, while at the same time not promoting its existence, but functioning behind the scenes so it was never in competition for loyalty, commitment, or money with the organizations in which our friends exercised responsibility. Hence “Doing ministry without leaving our fingerprints,” was one way we described the work. Jesus and the Kingdom of God has always been our intended priority, not Touchstone.
The only metric that matters after all these years is friendships. Sure, we had groups, events, and Forums but they were only places for friendships to be discovered, engaged, and from which to continue beyond any of those specific activities. We see friendships that have lasted for decades, and which are still somehow centred in the friends’ walk with God. Friendships are the fruit, and whether Touchstone gets any credit is of little importance.
Touchstone was never intended as a platform for me. It was there as a vehicle for me to serve high-powered, sometimes aggressive, but usually struggling people. We acknowledged that we needed help to begin to be truth-tellers and to move away from what Jesus calls the subtle powers of wealth, anxiety about life, and the temptation to think that we are better than somebody else because of our success.
One of the things I learned over the years in Touchstone, is that no matter how high somebody got, they were never as smart as they seemed. Conversely, no matter how far down somebody went, they were never as bad as they seemed. We’ve had people who were at the top of their game—and who were trying to develop gratitude, a sense of social responsibility, and an inner life undistracted by success.
Some hit bottom facing prison, marriage, or business failure, and walked together with friends to the other side. Over the years, we have been able to create a community of faith that supports and cares for people, who look like they’ve got their act together, but underneath the surface they’re not. We need friendship with God, but we also need the tangible friendship of human beings who share our weaknesses. They help us believe, through their love, that we have the invisible and unconditional love of God.
As we explored how to address the issues of having an inner journey with Jesus while putting on the uniform of leader/executive/entrepreneur/politician we discovered common themes and methods for getting below the surface of that uniform and nurturing the inner life in Jesus that shapes our business, family, and community life.
We were able to safely acknowledge our inability to do it well, and thus became people who created an environment in which we were slow to say we have the answer to all problems but are ready and willing to respond with Christ’s love to assist and support one another in the ups and downs of life.
The circle of friends around Jesus is for broken people and it is an open, welcoming circle. I have always been struck by the fact that when Jesus was instituting his memorial dinner it was in a circle of broken people (needy, competitive, disloyal, fearful, confused) and yet they were the founding membership of the church.
We are all broken people in the process of recovery. It is very easy, particularly in the world of leaders and power persons to put on the suit, put on the professional face of leadership, and never demonstrate or reveal weakness.
We’ve been invited to the freedom to explore friendship with God in Jesus, a mind-blowing invitation. That friendship grows and expresses itself in deep and mysterious relationships with one another, also called friendship. It is in this community of friends that we discover the love of Jesus and witness by our relationships with one another to the truth of Jesus as God.
Christ is calling us to be sent into the world as he was sent into the world. Sometimes he preached, sometimes he went to parties, he had breakfast with people, he healed. We have that capacity, not necessarily his miracles—and we are certainly not the redeemers of the world. But we can be his representatives as we go into the world, expressing the relationships we have with one another so that the world may say “You know what? There is some integrity in this thing.”
There is no secular/sacred dichotomy. We recognize that Jesus calls us into all areas of life. Our work is our service to God whether it is church, banking, business, the professions, family, or community.
There is a real and identifiable hunger for “centredness” in Christ in our constituents. Believer, seeker, cynic, and clergy alike express the need for solitude, silence, and a sense of the sacred amid the life of the activist person.
We are bound together by a sense of our own need of Jesus and his friends. We are slow to say we have the answer to all problems but are ready and willing to respond with love to assist and support one another in the ups and downs of life as they come our way.
None of this can happen as a solo entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur, and I have a lot of independent energy, but I was surrounded by a wonderful core group of people who also have their own independent mission objectives, and perspectives on the world. We moved ahead together in mutual support, in discovery, obedience, and service to God, worshipping together, experiencing the sacraments together. That’s been an important part of Touchstone’s history, its current life, and its potential to bear fruit.
Two years ago in 2022, Susan and I were driving along Highway 407, bound toward a lunch meeting. It’s easy to be in a sort of zombie state as you drive along in comfortable silence. Susan interrupted my reverie: “How old is Touchstone? Thirty-eight?” I nodded affirmation. Her next question proved that she had also been using the drive for some deep thinking. “Have you thought that 40 might be a good endpoint?”
I hadn’t thought it. But her suggestion resonated with me, and we used the rest of the drive to chat further about the idea. Touchstone turned 38 in June that year, so 40 would be June 2024. That Fall at our board meeting I asked those assembled if the idea also resonated with them as a board. They were open to exploring the notion and to finding out all that would be involved in shutting down a charitable corporation.
One of the key advantages I saw in drawing Touchstone to a close would be a degree of certainty for Touchstone’s Ministry Development Assistant, Keri Tabet, and for the board in working toward a defined endpoint. Keri has served for 23 years in a wonderfully fruitful and efficient role, really keeping the operation running. Touchstone’s current board has served for nearly 10 years; I thought a predetermined exit ramp might be attractive to them as well. T. S. Eliot’s well-known line, “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper,” was not how I wanted Touchstone to finish.
On January 2, 2023, I wrote in my journal:
It’s vision/decision time for Touchstone and I’m leaning to June of 2024, which will be 40 years. The finances are in good enough shape to give us the freedom to make a choice, and for that I am grateful. God, You gave me the freedom to start, envision this work, and You have given me the responsibility to close it down properly. The board meets a week today, so I need to hear what the Spirit may be saying and offer my thoughts for the board to consider.
…. John the Baptist is the focus this morning and he has always been my template in serving You, O Jesus Christ, King of Endless Glory—You have words of eternal life—where else would I go?
John the Baptist is quite clear that he has a role—a limited role—limited by time, space, and purpose.
I’ve had that sense underlying this for all these years—it has a time, space, purpose limit—or at least my role in it does. Whether we shut down or give it away, my time of active work under that umbrella will be over—I’ll hand it back to You with grateful thanks.
The board agreed, and we established this celebratory way of finishing. The Apostle Paul described King David as serving the purposes of God in his generation, and then he died. I have always felt any ministry might have this as a healthy way of looking at itself. Do what you are called to do, and then exit.
We aren’t having a funeral, we are having a celebration event with the same title as this book, “Pop the Corks & Pass the Butter Tarts,” celebrating the goodness of God and the kindness and generosity of all of you throughout the decades.
So, thank you for your company on this adventure of faith. Thanks be to God for whatever helpful fruit has come from our life together as friends.
A Doxology
And grateful as we are for the world we know
and the universe beyond our understanding,
we particularly praise you, whom eternity cannot contain,
for coming to earth and entering time in Jesus.
For his life which informs our living,
for his compassion which changes our hearts,
for his clear speaking
which contradicts our harmless generalities,
for his enduring presence,
his innocent suffering,
his fearless dying,
his rising to life breathing forgiveness,
we praise you and worship him.
Here, too, our gratitude rises
for the promise of the Holy Spirit,
who even yet, even now,
confronts us with your claims
and attracts us to your goodness.
Therefore we gladly join our voices
to the song of the Church
on earth and in heaven:
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord,
God of Power and Might.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
—Excerpt from St. Mark’s Orangeville’s A Celtic Communion Liturgy.
Adapted from The Abbey Liturgy of the Iona Community.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“Keep out of debt altogether, except the perpetual debt of love which we owe one another.” (Romans 13:8 Phillips)
My balance sheet of love is heavily in the red due to a whole host of people who have made this Pop the Corks & Pass the Butter Tarts project possible. Right from the beginning, when I scratched out a germ of the idea on a few pages and sent it to our resident theologian John Vissers—who gave me honest encouragement that it had value, and the germ was worth nurturing.
Maureen Benfey and her magic skills of transcribing my rantings came next, as I realized dictating what was on my alleged mind was the best way to get started. We ended up with 20,000 words through Maureen’s kindness and efficiency, but it was in dire need of structure and editing.
An introduction to Patricia Paddey really got the process moving. After seeing some of the first transcriptions, Patricia said “You can write, but you do need an editor.” Happily, for me, Patricia agreed to take on the project. When I sent her proposed contract to my board chair Scott Cameron for approval he called and said “I have only one comment. She’s your new boss.”
Patricia has been a great gift to me in this whole process and her skill and creativity combined with gentle push back has made the writing a good experience for me. I am grateful.
Pekka Varvas has been a good friend even before Touchstone began. He’s been a key friend in many aspects of our history but in his post-retirement life he has become our creative director for podcasts, blogs, social media—both a gentle encourager and focussed taskmaster as this project has come together in its various facets. Our new graphic design person, Jess White, has been very helpful in all of this, but it has been Pekka’s vision that has made the day.
Obviously, Touchstone’s board has made the resources available for this project, and with their wisdom and integrity have kept me free to get the job done with clear expectations of delivery. Thank you, Scott, Melanie, Gretchen, Matthias, Martin, Tim, and Pekka. And to the ever gracious and efficient Keri Tabet, thank you for keeping all the pieces that make up Touchstone moving in the right direction.
Thank you to Susan whose love, faith and character have enabled me to become the spiritual explorer that is at the heart of all this. Susan has her own rich spiritual exploration, and it is that—moving together but also independently—that makes it all work. It will be our 56th wedding anniversary in July 2024 so my debt of love to Susan keeps growing.
Our family has been a source of strength and courage for me in all this as well. Our children, Heidi and Luke, have been patient encouragers for their old man, and their partners Mark and Alissa have done the same as they joined the team. Lots of independent thought but also respect for what I’ve been doing has been their gift. Wade and Lael, our grandkids, are one of my sources of motivation. As they write their own story, I hope that they will be encouraged by mine—not to do as they see me do, but maybe as I wish I had done it.
When you go down memory lane so many names and faces come to mind. All the men and women who chaired the board for long periods, and others who stepped in when necessary—Blair, Bill, Richard, Tom, Matthias, Sharon, Steve, Glen, Melanie, Daryl, and Scott—who helmed the ship through sunny and stormy times. And the dozens of those who served on the board—men and women whose love for God and for this flawed leader deserve medals of honour or even sainthood.
Mike and Karen, Michael and Janet, Tom and Karen, Dave and Cathy, and Catherine, are among those who hosted retreats at their cottages and even let me invite groups outside of their supervisory view. Their hospitality created what our retreat benediction called “this holy place of Your abiding” for hundreds of people at probably hundreds of retreats.
The folks who worked on our Forums to create the program, shoot video, produce publications and recordings for distribution—Doug, Richard, Jack, Tom, Pekka, Michael, and the list goes on.
To our good friend Jack Kiervin who allowed me to borrow office space for decades at two of his companies, where I found friendships and welcome among partners and associates. He gave me a professional setting for the work because we often joked that Touchstone was “like a floating crap game”—we were downtown but at no fixed address.
Brian, John, Paul, Matthias, Tarcia, and Ron provided extra discernment and encouragement through my not infrequent bouts of acedia or self-doubt, helping me catch vision for next steps as the work developed.
On one occasion I was approached to consider becoming the minister of a large suburban church. The church’s board chair had become a friend and said his membership enjoyed my preaching, and besides, “this Touchstone thing always looks a little shaky.” I laughed and said that while Touchstone is always dependent on the generosity of 100+ donors most years, somehow, we always make budget. I added, “All 100+ donors aren’t going to get mad at me on the same day and cut off their support, but you and your leadership could tire of me quickly, and I’d be out on my ear.”
The donors, some large and some with more limited capacity, have always been a wonderment to me. It has never ceased to amaze me that you take the time to write a cheque or whatever form the gift takes and direct it our way. I know it is all given to God as gift, but I have been a great beneficiary of the kindness and generosity of hundreds of you over
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