By Norris Burkes June 19 2026

Last month, I stood in my study in my Lake of the Pines home, surrounded by half-filled boxes and the particular silence of a room being dismantled. I practiced saying it out loud.

“I’m leaving California.”

My words came out smaller than I expected. Like a prayer I couldn’t be sure anyone heard.

Here’s the thing about goodbyes — nobody warns you they have so many rooms.

There’s the room where I stood before my congregation last week and noticed the tears before I could finish my sentence. Four years of pine-scented Sunday mornings at 300 Main Street. The conversations outside the sanctuary that turned out to be the real sermon.

There’s the room where I told the local pastors at our monthly lunch with the Nevada County Christian Ministers’ Fellowship. I was their token liberal, yet they kept inviting me back. Good folks. Good table.

And then there’s this room — this column — where I have to say it to you.

I’ve been writing this syndicated column in over fifty papers since October 5, 2001. More than 1,300 columns. More than 800,000 words. At least a dozen metaphors involving sheep although I’m not entirely sure why I added that stat.

I heard from readers who told me I’d gotten it exactly right. I heard from readers who told me I’d gotten it magnificently wrong. I treasured both. The second kind kept me honest.

Now, Becky and I are packing the boxes and pointing ourselves toward St. Louis, where the grandchildren live.

Let me be clear: I’m not moving across the country because of St. Louis. Few foothill folks would never do that. We are moving for the grandchildren — a five-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl who greet me at the door like I’m the answer to a question they’ve been asking all week.

That’s a theology I can work with.

As a healthcare chaplain, I’ve sat with people at the end of their lives in more hospitals than I can name. Almost none of them wished they’d spent more time at the office. They said names. They reached for hands. They asked if there was still time to get there.

There’s still time for Becky and me.

If I’ve learned anything in 25 years of writing about spirituality in everyday life, it’s this: the sacred doesn’t live in the steeple. It lives in the showing up. In the neighbor who brings a casserole when you didn’t ask. In the ICU waiting room at two in the morning when a stranger puts a hand on your shoulder and doesn’t say a word. In a weekly column that lands on a kitchen table next to a cold cup of coffee, and somehow finds exactly the person who needed.

I believe that happened here. At least, that’s what you’ve told me in scores of emails.

All twenty-five years of this column will continue to reside at www.thechaplain.net.

Dear readers: you are — and I say this as a man who has chosen his words carefully for a quarter century — exactly what I didn’t know I needed.

Thank you for five years of letting me be your chaplain columnist.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a flight to catch, a house to find, and two children waiting on the other end — a five-year-old boy who will want to wrestle before I’ve set down my bag, and a three-year-old girl who will take my face in both hands and look at me like I hung the moon.

I’d move across any number of states for that.

While Norris Burkes has now retired his syndicated column, I hope you will continue to support ChispaProject.org. You can read all my past columns at www.thechaplain.net. Send comments to comment@thechaplain.net or leave a message at (843) 608-9715.