In October 2001, Tom Clifford, a newspaper editor in Florida, asked me to write a spiritual response to the 9/11 tragedy.
“That’s easy,” I said. “I’ll whip that right up.”
Actually, I didn’t say that.
I struggled, dug into my soul and eventually pulled together a few hundred words. And I was humbled by the response.
Two weeks later, Clifford began publishing my weekly column. He called it “Spirituality in Everyday Life.”
Within six months, editors at Gannett newspapers liked my combination of humor and spirituality enough to syndicate the column to more than 50 publications. A year later, I moved to Elk Grove and began writing each month for Inside.
Over the decades, I’ve watched the print world shrink. Thousands of editors, reporters, photographers, page designers and columnists have been laid off. I’ve survived well beyond the 10-year average of most people who write columns.
So maybe it’s time to retire.
But how does anyone know when it’s time to retire?
That question haunts a lot of people as they wonder how much better they can be.
For a print columnist, writing in the post-pandemic world of dwindling circulations and distracted readerships, the answer is easier. Retire yesterday.
That guidance comes from Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mary Schmich, who retired from the Chicago Tribune in 2021 after 23 years. She advised fellow practitioners to ask themselves, “Do I feel lucky to write a column this week?”
Or does the introspective question become, “Do I have to write another column?”
For the past few years, it’s often been the latter. And to be honest, I’ve been recycling old columns, a crutch known in the trade as self-plagiarizing.
Over the years, I’ve learned a great deal from critics and champions of this column.
Schmich says, “No matter what you write, there will be people who love it and people who hate it. Only the ratio changes.”
My love-hate ratio has changed in recent years, especially as I’ve endorsed vaccines and spoken out against Christian nationalism.
But I have tried to follow Schmich’s best advice: “Be careful not to pointlessly—I emphasize pointlessly—alienate the people who care about what you write.”
And now my wife Becky has just one question. “Is your retirement for real this time?”
She watched as I retired from the military, then went to work for a VA hospital.
She engages quotation marks when she recalls how I “retired” from hospital chaplaincy, only to go into hospice work.
From there, I “retired” from hospice duties but currently pastor a church.
You can tell it’s not accurate to say I’m fully, completely retired.
The cliché has some meaning when I say, “God ain’t finished with me yet.”
I’ll remain as pastor of my small church in the foothills, even as attendance soars beyond 22 people. In some form, I’ll continue to email old and new writings to readers who have signed on.
And I’ll double down on efforts with my daughter’s Chispa Project, where she along with generous volunteers outfit school libraries for kids and teachers in Honduras.
I won’t be writing in these pages anymore, but the work continues. Even in retirement. Please remember us.
Norris Burkes can be reached at comment@thechaplain.net. For information on Chispa Project, visit chispaproject.org. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
