Father Craig Burlington was cleaning out his desk at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church late Friday morning and thinking about what life would be like once mass was over on Sunday. After 18 years as the church’s priest, Sunday’s sermon would be his last.

“I’m going to retire,” he said with noticeable sigh, “because I’m 66-years-old and my wife just retired and I thought it might be the right time to take leave.”

He added, “It’s not because I want to. It’s like encountering a death. That I am choosing to do this is very counter-intuitive. It’s bittersweet.”

But Burlington has some plans to keep his mind off of the sad part of retirement. First, he and his wife Adelene plan to go on a sabbatical of sorts. It will start in Maine and take them to the Atlanta area, Key West and Phoenix before returning to Rhode Island. They plan to celebrate Christmas in Georgia with their children and grandchildren, have an extended stay with Adelene’s mother in Florida and visit friends in Arizona.

“Our greatest joy is to eat with friends,” he said. “We’re going to take that moveable feast up and down the East Coast.”

Once back home in North Kingstown, he plans to “hang out my shingle” as a spiritual consultant.

“You want to talk about god in your life, let’s talk about that,” he said, describing his future small business. Always quick with a joke, Burlington said with a laugh, “It’s for-profit. It used to go to the discretionary fund, now it will go to me.”

While he said he is excited about this next phase of his life, Burlington said he is uncertain about it, too.

“I really don’t know what it will be like to be retired,” he said. “I wake up at night worried about that. I just trust that all will be well. You have to trust that the things that supported you in the past will come through and take care of you again. I have to continue to believe that God will continue to bless me in my journey.”

A self-proclaimed “control freak,” Burlington said leaving the cloth will be difficult for him.

“The hardest part of being retired,” he said, “is going to be just being in the pew. Next Sunday morning we’ll be in Maine doing something completely different. I will be thinking of this, but I’ll be on a completely new journey.”

He thought for a moment, then made another joke: “I’ll be in a church pew thinking they should be doing it my way. I’m kind of a perfectionist and believe things should be done the way I think they should be done.”

The next priest at St. Luke’s won’t have to worry about Father Craig trying to impose his strong will on his former congregation because a retiring priest is required to leave the church altogether, something that Burlington understands but is sad about.

But as he was packing up his belongings, he got a call from his friend, Father Casey from St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. Father Casey had invited Father Craig to worship at his church in Narragansett, and was checking to see how he was doing with his final days on the job. The call, Burlington said, made him feel that he had been instantly transformed from priest to parishioner.

“I still have a lot of energy for this job,” he said, “but I feel I’m being directed to channel that energy elsewhere.”