Nobody Said Anything When I Left

Eleven years, and it ended through a fire door because that is the one nearest the car park.

There was a card. There is always a card, and this one was good, and about nine people wrote something proper in it and two of them made her cry in the car later.

There was a leaving do, in a place with a step down into it, and about eighteen people came and it was warmer than she expected.

There was a bag of things off her desk, including a mug she does not like and has kept.

And then, at twenty past four on a Thursday, she handed a lanyard to a woman on reception who was on the phone at the time, and mouthed thank you, and went out through the fire door.

That was four months ago. She is somewhere better now and the new place is fine.

And she cannot work out why she keeps coming back to twenty past four.

It is not the job. She does not miss it. It is not the people, because she still sees three of them.

What she has got to, after four months of turning it over, is this: nothing was said. Nobody stood her in front of anybody and said what eleven years had been. There was no sentence. There was a card, which is not a sentence, and there was a party, which is not a sentence either.

She walked out of a third of her working life and the last thing that happened was a woman on the phone.

The oldest words in the book are said over people who are going

Sit down for a minute, because the thing you did not get has a name, and it is one of the oldest recorded sets of words there is, and it was given to be put on people.

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.Numbers 6:24

Three lines, and then the instruction after them: they shall put My name upon the children of Israel.

Put. It is a word about placing something on somebody, out loud, deliberately, by another person.

And notice that this is not a reward and it is not a review. Nothing in it depends on how the eleven years went. It is not an assessment of anybody. It is words placed on people who are about to go somewhere.

Hear this in your own hallway. What you were waiting for at twenty past four is a real thing, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts a formal blessing into the hands of people so it can be spoken over others as they go, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept you circling a fire door for four months because you know, without being able to say it, that a sentence was owed.

Now let me be fair to that place, because you have been and I want to be too.

Nobody withheld anything. There was no decision. Modern working life simply has no mechanism for this: it has cards, and parties, and processes for equipment, and it has nothing whatever for the moment when a person finishes a decade and walks into the rest of their life.

That is not cruelty. It is a gap where a rite used to be, and a great many people are walking around with a version of your twenty past four.

Hear this too, and let it stop the going round. You are not being precious, and Scripture is what says so. What is written treats the blessing as necessary rather than sentimental, and the Spirit of God has never once been indifferent to how a person leaves a place, and the reason it has sat in you for four months is that something real was missing rather than that something is wrong with you.

And now the part that is actually available, and it is not the same as the thing you wanted and it is nearer than you think.

Nobody in that building is going to say it now. That is closed, and pretending otherwise would be a worse comfort than none.

But the words themselves are not owned by an employer. They are three lines, in the public domain of the church for three thousand years, given to be put on people who are going out, and there is nobody standing between you and them.

You can say them over yourself, out loud, in your own hall. Not as a substitute for what should have happened. As the real thing, said late, by the only person left in the room who knows what those eleven years cost.