Kempton Baldridge, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Waterloo, Belgium. 
When Kempton first approached me about reporting on a day in the life of a clergyman, I was eager to give it a whirl. Then he mentioned that often his days start around 4 a.m. because the predawn hours are distraction-free, a time he devotes to writing, scripture, and tasks that require his undivided attention.
Oh, that sounded good for HIM, but I confessed that the only thing I do at 4 a.m. is roll over and pull the blankets up closer to my chin. I never extricate myself from bed at that hour unless there’s a crisis requiring ambulances and fire trucks.
Kempton, being a considerate guy, decided to share a day with me that didn’t start that early. He offered to let me accompany him on his rounds on Ash Wednesday, a day that started at 7 a.m. for him and included dropping his daughter Grace off at school. He promised to swing by my house in Tervuren and pick me up between 9 and 9:15 a.m.
The road approaching my village is closed as is the road going through it. My home is conveniently located in a neighborhood sandwiched between these two dead ends.
It’s easy to get to my house—if you have a helicopter. If you’re driving and follow the omlegging signs, you’ll end up miles from where you intended to go, sitting on some country road bordered by freshly plowed fields and rolling green hills with no signs for navigation.
Seeing as it was the first day of Lent, God decided to test and build Kempton’s character by letting him wander in the wilderness surrounding Tervuren for forty minutes while attempting to reach the Promised Land of my neighborhood.
He didn’t arrive until just before 10 a.m., and I can’t be sure, but it seemed he had a few more gray hairs. Still, he managed to smile before whipping out his cell phone to call Mambwe Kamanga, a former parishioner who he was supposed to meet in Waterloo at 10 a.m. for a visit. Of course he couldn’t get through to tell him he was delayed.
“Ah,” Kempton said, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
We headed back to Waterloo, and Kempton reflected on how his former life as a military chaplain was different from life as an Episcopal priest.
“Back then I had no office, no steeple, and no choir but I always had lots of administrative support. Now I have a church, a choir, an office, and no administrative support,” he explained. He told me he spent lots of time doing things like ordering printer toner and making and collating copies. I wondered if we’d be doing that during our day together, but Kempton said no, “The first thing we need to do is make ashes for the midday service.”
“What? We don’t order them online from ashes.com? " I asked with a twinkle in my eye.
Kempton explained that, no, priests don’t buy the ashes for Ash Wednesday, they’re made by burning dried palms leftover from a previous year's Palm Sunday celebration.
And so this is how I found myself (along with Mambwe) watching Kempton unleash his inner pyromaniac. After loading a stock pot from the church kitchen with palms and offering a prayer, he pointed a lighter into the pan and tried to get the palms to burn. As they smoldered, a sweet smoke that smelled remarkably like the blue haze that hangs in the coffeehouses of Amsterdam filled the air. Suddenly the church felt like a set for a Cheech and Chong movie.
Hmmm. Maybe we should take this operation outside. Mambwe, Kempton and I moved outdoors into the parking lot, and Kempton continued to tease the palms with the lighter until flames billowed out of the stock pot and threatened to singe his tweed jacket and his eyebrows.
Mambwe and I wondered what the cars traveling the traffic circle bordering the parking lot thought of our operation.
“Those Episcopalians sure have some weird rituals! What’s with the parking lot flambé?”
Bringing the pot [ahem] inside, Kempton demonstrated the dirty work of ministry as he attempted to crush the charred palm remains into fine soot. Ah yes, now I know why priests always wear black! It’s to hide the nasty charcoal stains!
I warned Kempton not to touch the pristine white of his clerical collar and smudge it. “It’s made of plastic actually,” he said.
PLASTIC? The image of my priest cleaning his collar with Windex at the end of each day left me feeling vaguely disillusioned. Wow, the day was already full of surprises, not the least of which was that the church now smelled like weed and Kempton was not a Man of the Cloth but Father Vinyl.
As Kempton worked to pulverize the blackened palm stems and I joked about donating a mortar and pestle to All Saints, Mambwe filled Kempton in on his siblings, mother Irene, and life in Zambia. Mambwe, newly graduated from university with a public relations degree, is job hunting in Belgium. When Kempton invited him to be a counselor on an upcoming mission trip to Romania, he eagerly accepted and began filling out the paperwork.
After the ashes cooled, we put them in a small white container that we discovered after searching the entire kitchen for something suitable. I had a good laugh imagining Tupperware offering an Ashes-to-Go container. They have specialized containers for every other use, why not Ash Wednesday? They could design a container with a special lid that allowed priests to sprinkle OR smudge the ashes. Hey, they could expand the liturgical line with Tupperware collars, and Communion Carryalls featuring their patented leak proof seal. But I digress…
With the kitchen counter cleaned and the stock pot scrubbed, Kempton, Mambwe and I wandered into the church. We decided that having Christmas greenery hanging on the walls on the first day of Lent was tacky as well as liturgically incorrect. We took the wreaths down and followed Kempton into the sacristy to retrieve vessels and linens for the upcoming services.
Kempton explained that one of the challenges of having our own church was that there are now an abundance of volunteer positions to fill. For example, because we have multiple services each week, the Altar Guild needs to expand its membership. I remember my days as an Altar Guild chick in Oklahoma. I was only 21 and the older Altar Guild ladies provided training that was a bit like hazing. They were always putting me in my place.
Kempton made quick work of setting up the altar and then took Mambwe and me on the deluxe tour of the new church facilities that we bought from the Swedish Lutherans when they moved. In Kempton’s unpainted office (a work in progress) there are sketches of a steeple planned to crown All Saints one day. Like the church facility itself, the steeple is a both a beacon and a dream.
We explore the building from the basement Sunday School, youth group, and storage spaces up to the top floor apartments, which are flooded with sunlight and contain a few choice antiques. Everywhere we go, the potential of the facilities shines. A boarding school. A hospitality center for the USO. Meeting rooms. Offices. A youth center. The list of possible uses goes on and on.
Soon it’s noon and parishioners are entering into the church for the first Ash Wednesday service. There are about a dozen of us who turn to page 264 of the Book of Common Prayer and officially begin Lent.
Earlier Kempton had informed me that he put together two sermons (a short one and a long one) from bits and pieces he’d written or saved earlier. For the noon service, he goes with a short sermon so people can return to work on time. He preaches from the Ash Wednesday Collect and encourages those gathered to “Give up hate and take on love,” this Lent.
“Speak in love, listen in love, forgive in love, pray into and out of love.”
Communion is given from reserve sacrament, and after the service, Kempton quickly removes his vestments, signs eleven copies of a budget to go to the commune, tells others who wish to speak to him about church business that he has to be on his way, and then speeds out the door with his hands full to head to the U.S. Army Garrison in Brussels for a service.
As we drive, Kempton explains that his goal when there are time constraints on a service is to give people a quick takeaway message and stick to essentials.
“When I was in the Navy, I used to do a ‘combat communion’ service which took 17 minutes from start to finish,” he said.
We arrive at the garrison with ten minutes to spare. In true military fashion, Kempton is offered support from the Army staff. A sergeant tells him she has ashes if he needs them and helps him set up a makeshift altar. The garrison chaplain greets him and offers assistance as well. At 1:15, the service begins. Once again there are about a dozen people in attendance.
The sermon is embroidered with a few extra anecdotes (including one about a Biship blessing a septic tank) but the message remains the same as his earlier version: “Make love your hallmark. Everything you do in love reveals God and is done in concert with His will.”
At 2 p.m., the service is over, and once again Kempton is gathering up his things and ready to move on. Before he leaves the garrison, he pauses to check his mail and collect a package. That’s when he sees David, a worker in the post office who greets him warmly and expresses regret at having missed the service because he was in a meeting.
Kempton offers to pray with him and impose ashes right then and there, and David accepts the offer. Kneeling on the floor of the post office with his head bowed, David enters the season of Lent in an unexpected way in an unexpected place.
And this is what Kempton loves most about his work—moving easily between the military, expat, and native community, finding acceptance in all those places, and sharing God’s love and ministry in a church, in a chapel, in the gym, the barbershop, and yes, even in the post office.
I need to be delivered back to my home to meet my children when they come off the school bus and Kempton needs to get to Leuven for a 5 p.m. service at St. Martha and Mary’s Church. From there he’ll scoot back to Waterloo to watch Grace play in a basketball game that starts at 6:30 p.m. and then it’s back to All Saints to conduct his final service of the day at 8 p.m.
As I bid him goodbye after what feels like a full day of activity, it occurs to me I’ve shared less than half of his day. As I climb the steps to my home, I say a little prayer of thanksgiving—not just because it’s been a privilege to witness his dedication and share moments of humor and grace but also because I’m so, so glad our day didn’t start at 4 a.m.
February 9, 2008