You Trust the Next Chapter

After 45 years across multiple careers — as a parish minister, university lecturer, and now principal of a university residential college — I find myself in the change-over zone of a relay race. I’ve spent my working life helping people grow and develop, and that won’t stop anytime soon. But the way I contribute will shift.

With a few years left in my current role, my focus is not on climbing higher, but on handing over well. I want to pass the baton with strength and care — leaving behind stable systems, embedded values, and a community equipped to flourish. A dropped baton hurts more than the next runner; it affects the whole team. My plan is to finish with generosity and attention, setting up my successor to run freely and lead confidently.

When that handover is complete, I plan to redirect my energy into community-focused work. I want to write biographies as a hospice volunteer, run memoir writing courses for seniors, read widely, and write for the joy of it. I hope to join a bush regeneration group, and study sustainability — working gently with the land as well as with people.

I also want to continue supporting asylum seekers. Throughout my current role, I’ve seen how brave, resilient, and inspiring these individuals can be when given shelter and support. In retirement, I hope to remain involved in offering welcome and practical care, helping create the kind of community that says, “You are not alone.”

Spiritually, I’ll be looking for a new church as I will be moving to another part of Sydney — not just to attend, but to join and serve where the ministry aligns with my convictions. I may also return to study, this time in creative writing, not to build a résumé, but to explore ideas and expression in a new season of life.

So my career plan? To finish well, hand over well, and live generously — contributing not through titles or offices, but through presence, service, and creativity. I’m not retiring from life. I’m retiring into it.

Not with noise,
but a steady hand
in the handover.

The race was never mine alone—
just one runner
in a longer line.

To finish well
is to pass the baton
without fumbling,
to clear the way
for what comes next.

It is to leave space,
not emptiness—
to plant, not close.

To read for joy,
to write for no one,
to tend to land
and stories.

To finish well
is to trust
that the story goes on—
the vision shared,
entrusted to another,
carried forward
in new hands
with the same hope.