"Letting Go, Gradually, of a Life Embracing the Ministry,"

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN - The New York Times

Alone on an early morning last month, days away from leaving the pulpit he
had occupied for 35 years, the Rev. Johnny Ray Youngblood started to write a
poem. He titled it “The Time Has Come,” and he set down verses about the
stations of his life, from boyhood innocence to college idealism, from marriage
to child-rearing to divorce.

But when he reached the point where he might overtly address his
departure from St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn, the congregation
he came to as a 26-year-old out-of-towner in 1974, his words ran out and his pen
went dry. Even now, in the week after Mr. Youngblood’s final Sunday at St. Paul,
the poem remains unfinished, the poet’s emotions unresolved.