Healed, restored, forgiven.....walking the Labyrinth once more

I'm not sure how many years it has been since Gloucester Cathedral took to hosting a labyrinth in August - nor how many times I've made the journey there for a Taize service at the end of a long day...

Each year, it seems to be the prayer experience I most need.

Each year, I take away something different from this precious encounter.

This week, at the end of a rather stress filled first day back at work, it brought me peace and reassurance in ways I would never have dared to imagine.

That morning at Mass,having heard the parable of the workers in the vineyard, I'd said something about our incorrigible tendency to judge ourselves in comparison to our neighbours...to consider their triumphs and disasters mostly in relation to our own journeys, to lose track of the beauty of our own surroundings and the grace that we are offered because we are too busy looking over our shoulders to check that our fellow travellers haven't had a better deal.

That evening, I was given a wonderful encouragement to focus on my own journey and never mind what my fellow travellers were getting up to.

Walking a labyrinth in company is always a potentially anxious task for me.

I worry that I will adopt the "wrong" pace, that if I fall over my own feet or wobble as I turn a corner, I will somehow make things harder for anyone walking nearby.

I worry that I'll be in the way, that I'll want to spend too long in the centre....

Or at least that has often been my experience in the past.

This time, though, was quite different.

Yes, I was very much one of a group (more people there than in past years), seeking to cover the same ground, following the same pathway with the same intention....but instead of anxiety that there might not be space enough for us all, that somehow we would hinder one another, I found myself drawing strength and inspiration from those who walked around me.

There was the buttoned up bachelor, taking his shoes off hesitantly, self conscious as he began his journey in black stockinged feed

The small boy, keen to whizz round at his own pace ,but equally determined not to upset anyone else, who gave me a radiant smile as, whispering, I invited him to overtake

The woman who lives nearby, someone with whom I'd shared significant moments in our respective faith journeys....how lovely to find her walking that same path

And M., the wonderful priest whose ministry had so inspired me when I worked with him during my training. As I walked, I remembered sitting cross legged on the floor of his inner-city church, singing Taize chants quietly by the light of a single candle - and the blanket of peace that had fallen over me

There were many others too...but there was space enough for us all

When I reached the centre, I sat for a while, as the chant continued around me....gaining strength and confidence as other voices grouped around me, lending me courage and assurance by their presence....my felow-travellers, whose pilgrimages matched my own

"Bless the Lord, my soul, who leads me into life"

Still here, I think

Suspect that I may be breaking the longest silence this blog has yet known...In part this was the result of 2 lazy weeks aboard Polyphony, exploring the previously uncharted waters of the Staffs & Worcs & Shropshire Union Canals, and in part it's the result of a longing to retain the feeling of calm and space with which I returned from the holiday.

This is in no way reflected in the state of my study, which is as post-cataclysmic as ever...but at the moment my brain still feels OK, as if things are mostly manageable, as if there is some hope that God and I will get through the next few months together.

What struck me above all, in this period of post holiday clarity, was that I had space not just to read some good theology but to let it work on me.

I'm part of a very small, very sporadic clergy birds reading group, and we met on Monday to have another go at Timothy Radcliffe's "Why go to Church?"

We'd started it early in the summer, but too few of us had got beyond the opening chapters though we all agreed that what we had read encouraged us to delve deeper. I'm strictly forbidden from taking theology of any kind on holiday, so it wasn't til Sunday afternoon that I was able to revisit, and indeed finish the book......and I found myself excited and inspired in ways that I only usually manage at the end of a week long retreat. That sort of reading makes me happy to my core - reminds me of all the reasons that I love my calling - sends me on my way singing...and it hasn't happened anything like enough since I became an incumbent.

Learning point: I really do need to make space for reflective reading - which will involve not just the time in which to read, but the preparation time in which decks are cleared, preoccupations shelved to enable the process at all.

Possible supplementary: I may be more likely to achieve this if I spend less time online...though I need to set against that the value of reflective blogging, which used to be so much the stuff of life for me.

Oh what a dilemma!

Once I've logged on, the siren voice of the internet is liable to call me in so many different directions, and often the half hour I'd thought to spend writing here is taken up ranging far and wide to read all sorts of exciting things.

While I was away this blog celebrated its 6th birthday. I began posting in the early weeks of my curacy, when the space to reflect was a given...as I wrote I discovered a community of friends whom I'd never have dreamed of, and it is this more than anything else that keeps me blogging onwards, though I've all too conscious that the glory days are past. There simply isn't the time. It would be truly ironic if it turned out that time spent blogging was the barrier to having something to blog about...but it seems a distinct possibility...

Come what may, I simply must share some of Timothy Radcliffe's wonderful words- which have filled me with such joy, - but not tonight. My post holiday resolutions include bed by 11.00 unless there is a real crisis - and tomorrow I need all the strength I can muster, to brave the Messy Church outing to Weston-super-Mare. 

If I make it, I'll see you on the other side!

Nothing to do with Advent...

At the moment I'm struggling with an identity crisis!

Clouseau, the  Citroen C3, comfortably "worn in" via vicarage gate posts & muddy, hairy retrievers, is visiting the garage for a spot of R&R. I'm hoping that he may even come home with the heating working once more...
The garage he's visiting belongs to G, a friend and parishioner, whose normal line of work is substantially further upmarket than the vicar's Citroen. 
Knowing that Clouseau's stay might take longer than just one day, we had postponed and postponed hoping there might be a gap in the diary, but finally conceded that a carless day was just not going to be manageable - so G undertook to lend me a courtesy car for the duration.

Thus yesterday morning he appeared at the vicarage, we exchanged keys, and off he went into the chilly dawn, leaving me with the sort of shiny, perfect, grown-up car that would be the answer to most people's dreams.
It has a big engine (remember, my favourite car ever was my 2CV), amazing electric gadgets to do any and everything at the push of a button, cream leather seats, and automatic transmission. It's a splendid vehicle, which any sensible person would be thrilled to borrow.


And I have never been so uncomfortable in my life!


At first I thought it was simply because I was struggling to remember to avoid the non-existent clutch. However, after a couple of unscheduled emergency stops I learned that one quite quickly...
Then I thought it might be because the idea of the car choosing when I should change gear made me feel out of control. After all, I'm supposed to be brighter than this machine, right?
But it wasn't til I had to drive past the crowd of mourners as I followed the hearse from valley church yesterday that the penny dropped.

You see, I was desperate to open the window and assure them that of course this wasn't MY car, that I hadn't so far forgotten who I am called to be that I thought that driving around in something of this degree of shiny splendour would be in any way appropriate. 
I hated that someone, anyone, might see me and believe that the church was that cut off from the life of this community, that forgetful of the Gospel's bias to the poor. 
I felt as if, just driving through the parish, I'd somehow sold out (which is quite ridiculous, and not a little rude in the face of G's generous loan, for which I am genuinely grateful).

I realised, though, that I do see my car as an expression of myself. 
I remembered how hard I found it to give up the ageing-hippy image of my 2CV when teenaged sons were simply too tall to be accommodated on the back seat any longer.I didn't feel ready to drive a sensible car, like a proper grown-up, and was far less excited about a brand new car than people assumed that I'd be. Clapped out rust heap v shiny new vehicle, with much better green credentials. It should have been a no-brainer but there were many tears shed when the 2CV departed forever.


In time, of course, I adjusted - I'm very fond of Clouseau, though he'll never have the personality of Daisy & Skippy, who came before him - but I'm pretty certain that whatever car I find myself driving in the years to come, it will never boast leather seats or the sort of opulence that is currently, nervously, parked in the vicarage drive.

Miles behind myself...

In the midst of a rather startling run of funerals, I just want to flag up the thing that is currently very clear to me after my ministerial review.

Friends and regulars here will know that I spend alot of time making noises about my hopeless inefficiency, the state of the study floor and the impossibility of ever keeping up with myself. I looked at this head on with my rather wonderful review colleague (WRC) yesterday and we came to the conclusion that actually it's a non issue.

Things get done.

Sometimes there's a bottle neck of pressure because the way that they are done doesn't match my perception of how they OUGHT to be done, and too many busses arrive at the stop at the same moment - but they are generally perfectly OK, sometimes even better than OK.
WRC has suggested that I build in a periodic admin catch up day, designed to prevent me from reaching the rabbit-in-headlight stage of administrative terror (though we both realise that there's every possibility that this might go by the board if something more interesting/pastoral comes up) but really the only issue is the self-inflicted angst as I fall short of an ideal of incumbency that is, when all is said and done, based on a very different context - my training parish, where there was an army of able supporters to implement (and indeed come up with) any number of bright ideas and new strategies that the vicar might desire - and a paid administrator to see that the paperwork got done to boot.

So yes, it's good when I get things done promptly and without drama - and because it's hard for me, I award myself all sorts of notional gold stars on these rare occasions...but actually being me and doing things my way isn't a disaster either. On the whole, I think people feel loved and are comfortable to see and trust me as their priest, and I'm happy that there is growth and warmth in both congregations. That's not the whole story, of course, and there are all sorts of hopes and dreams and aspirations - some of which will be God's dreams for these places and some of which will be just my wild ideas...but there's plenty of time to watch them grow or let them wither, and it will, actually, be alright because
I do know, with all my heart, that I'm where I should be.

As for the unrealistic, perfectionist expectations...time to quote The Cloud of Unknowing again

"Not what thou art, nor what thou has been, but what thou wouldst be beholdest God in his mercy"

But (if it doesn't seem ungrateful) because I'm still Kathryn, even in this startling moment of clear sight, I'd really value your prayers that I don't find myself at the crem prepared for the wrong funeral on any of the next several days...It's a very long time since I've had so many on the trot, and I'm genuinely concerned that this is a possibility.

Truth will out

Maggi is looking at book deadlines, so blogging for England at the moment - and posted some challenging words from Richard Rohr earlier this week
‘how we do anything is how we do everything'.

I'm pondering that - wondering what deep truths I unconsciously reveal...
Sometimes I think I'm far too like Libby the retriever
I do many things with bucket loads of love, but often lack finesse!
The last minute rotas may not matter, the last minute "inspirations" in liturgy probably do, the visits and phonecalls that also get left til the last minute - are occasionally, heartbreakingly, too late.

I'm probably specially aware of this at the moment, having just completed quite a detailed personal inventory for my first ministerial review since I arrived here in April 08...This is a peer review, so it's a genuinely safe space to explore all that's going on, in all its mess and muddle.

I was struck by the way that yesterday presented me with a very neat little microcosm of the ups and downs of clerical life.
It began with the school Harvest Festival - a service all about hospitality, held in church, welcoming any number of parents who don't attend otherwise, making space for the children to be their wonderful, creative selves and sharing just a little bit of the great story of God's love.
From there I went on to a Deanery planning meeting - lots of good vibes as we talked and dreamed and planned for mission in our little corner of the Kingdom.
Then I thought "I'll just drop into the office and copy those leaflets and do the bookmarks for Sunday - should take about an hour, top whack"
Four extremely grumpy hours later, I emerged...recognising that the technology and I were just not going to come to terms...and that, unsurprisingly, plans to take at least the second half of the day off had foundered irretrievably.
Later, the day was redeemed by some splendid conversations, - and eventually, a glass of wine and a couple of episodes of House - but what will stay with me is the way I was brought back down to earth with a bump as I struggled with the ordinary, necessary tasks.
‘how we do anything is how we do everything'.
So I need to work on doing it all lovingly...or, as dearly beloved Herbert said

"Teach me, my God and King,
In all things thee to see
And what I do in anything
To do it as for thee"

Touching holiness Friday Five

Sally has joined the crowds venerating Therese of Lisieux (whose relics are currently on a kind of royal progress around the UK) and moved on to consider other brushes with the transcendent and holy...She asks

How about you, where do you find God's peace and presence, is there:

1. A place that holds a special memory?
The wonderful chapel of Our Lady at Llan, the retreat house in the Shropshire hills which was my favourite spiritual bolt-hole during training and curacy...With its long windows looking out over the valley, beautifully simple furniture and the presence of the Sacrament, it was somewhere that I never failed to encounter God...Llan was very much a "thin" place. On arrival, I would always go down to touch the trunk of the great tree I could see from the windows of the little sitting room in the guest wing, and as I did so, would know myself safe home.
The house closed 2 years ago, and I've yet to establish that same sort of connection. Perhaps I needed a reminder that such things are only for a season - though I know that my recent lack of retreat has more than a little to do with the nagging feeling "It won't be the same without Llan".
Of course it won't, nor should it be - but the memories are indeed special.


2. A song that seems to usher you into the Holy of Holies?
There are so many I could list, it's almost impossible to choose one. My faith became real for me as I sang my way through innumberable Evensongs as a Cambridge chorister...I guess William Harris "Faire is the heavene" might be The One - but what about Palestrina "Sicut Cervus" ? or Victoria "O Quam Gloriosam..."? or...?or...?

3.A book/ poem/ prayer that says what you cannot?
When I run out of words the psalms make all the difference, and I thank God that in the Daily Office I get to pray them regularly...and to supplement, or confirm the truth that I know, - George Herbert. Always and completely.
"You must sit down", said Love, "and taste my meat"
So I did sit and eat"

4. How do you remind yourself of these things at times when God seems far away?
I think the answer to that lies in the answers to the previous questions...And a walk in the hills too.

5.Post a picture/ poem or song that speaks of where you are right now in your relationship with God...
Well now, if I knew that....[will try and get back to you on this one]

Blogging block

On Thursday a text from someone whom I love dearly prompted me to tweet a prayer request for all those bearing the hidden grief of miscarriage.
The response was generous, with comments appearing in many forms and from all directions, some quite unexpected....and I thought to myself, "I ought to reflect on this. It's clearly huge for so many people".
But somehow, I didn't quite want to.

That puzzled me. Though I am that strange contradiction, a shy extrovert, I much prefer to engage with people in total honesty, and a major aspect of the blog has always been as a place to do just that. To work through who I am before God in the situations of the day, and sometimes to look at the past in the light of the present.

But I've never written about my miscarriages, that I can remember.
I had so many of them, you see.
I'd only been married a few months when, unexpectedly, there was a little ring at the bottom of a test tube and I found myself joyfully pregant.
My parents were married 11 years before I appeared on the scene, and died before I thought of asking what lay at the root of the childless years...For some reason I always assumed infertility (possibly because of my mother's life long health problems) so I was jubillant that I had managed to conceive so easily.
We phoned everyone...
Just days later, I started to bleed.

As we phoned everyone again, I began to learn of just how "normal" this is.
Many had stories to tell. We were among the first of our own generation of friends to marry and attempt parenthood, but so many of our older friends shared their own stories of loss, redeemed in healthy families (our peers...who might have had brothers and sisters to be our friends too).
It didn't help much, though at least I began to realise that all the things I was feeling had been felt by others before me.
I was introduced to the Miscarriage Association and cried as I read of the experiences of others, my sisters in secret bereavement.

By the time it happened again, I had a small collection of books and pamphlets on my shelves....and mourned the lost babes whose stories were told there even as I mourned my own.
I wondered if my body, - always taken for granted as efficient, if not beloved, would forever let me down.
It was ironic - years earlier, while trying to plot a course for my life, I'd realised that my longing for children was absolutely fundamental, non-negotiable. I'd abandoned the vaguest possibility of serious singing, because a wise teacher told me
"If you can think of anything else you might ever want to do, don't attempt to make singing your career".
And now, the "anything else" seemed to be slipping out of sight.

But suddenly, - before the doctors thought I could even dream of conceiving, my period was late, the tests were positive...and this time the babe stayed safely where she belonged until, one snowy January morning Hattie Gandhi was placed in my arms and the world shone.
Medics reassured me - "just one of those things...we don't know why they happen but you'll be alright now"
But I wasn't.
Again, and again, and again.
Each loss weighed heavier, until after a particularly frightening miscarriage at 17 weeks, when blood and tears seemed set to drown my world, I gave up on God.
I lay in bed in our terraced S London house on the Sunday morning afterwards. LCM had taken HG to Mass, but our West Indian neighbours liked their music loud and that morning it was, for some reason, not their usual fare but, bizarrely, the Faure Requiem.
A work I loved, had sung many times...the work I would have chosen as music for my own funeral...and I felt nothing.
Where words and music had always been a sure route to consolation, as I flung myself sobbing into God's arms, - nothing.
I was past being angry.
There simply wasn't a relationship any more.
Nothing.

I went through the motions, attending worship because I simply didn't have the energy to explain to LCM that the whole thing was pointless.
When I could, I found ways of avoiding it, though, pleading headaches and feeling relieved when Hattie Gandhi was fractious and needed to be taken out of church.
One day I was sitting in the car outside the Brompton Oratory and something changed...
I found myself swearing away at God, using language I'd never used in any other context, the gist of which was
"You needn't think I'm going in there to talk to you, you.........................."
And there were the words, almost visible in their reality
"That's quite alright...we can just as easily talk here".

So began the long, slow process of forgiving God. The arrival of the boys helped of course, though they were never "replacements", but always, gloriously, themselves.
Time helped too.
And I woke up one morning realising we were gently, undramatically, friends again.
But I've never really made sense of that waste of life's potential, those oceans of tears wept by so many women.
I understand now that God weeps too...and that each of those babes is safe in God's arms...but for those whose arms remain empty that's never answer enough.

No wonder I've not written much about this before. I try to make this blog a place of resolution as well as honesty - but some things are beyond resolution this side of eternity.
I don't hurt any more, but I truly couldn't offer any words in answer to the prevailing question at the time "Oh God, why..."
So, once again, I invite you to pray for those bearing the hidden burden of loss that is miscarriage...

17th June 1978

Might just have been the day when I grew up - or thought I did.

It was, you see, the day on which my house-master came into the school library, where I was determinedly revising for my first A level, to be sat 2 days later, and told me that my father had died.

In common with many another only child, the death of my parents was the substance of, quite literally, my worst nightmares - and suddenly, here I was living it. But God is kind, and this, like so many other imagined fears, was less cataclysmic in reality than my dawn terrors.
The protective wall that had surrounded me through childhood was, in a moment, blasted away, but the world beyond was both gentler and more welcoming than I had dared to believe.
It contained music and poetry that would give meaning even in this situation of apparent chaos, where the certainties of life had been obscured.
It seemed I might not sink without trace, might even eventually enjoy learning to float.

That I was even half-ready to try is, of course, thanks to the unconditional love that my parents had lavished on me for so long that I never, for a moment, doubted that in this universe the facts are kind.

What's more, they bequeathed to me a language that enabled me to interpret what was happening when, as I travelled home by train to confront this life changed utterly, I was met in a railway carriage by a love beyond anything I could ever have conceived.

So 17th June is a day when, for all my concern for inclusive language, my thoughts will always be full of Fatherhood. It's the day when it seemed to me that, as one father's love was interrupted, I experienced Another's in ways I'd not dreamed of, a day to give thanks to one Father for the other.
Thirty one years on, I still do.

Processing can be very hard work!

Processing...that's what I lack time for!

Yesterday was a very full morning of CME on "Living in the Power of the Spirit".
It included an excellent Bible study on the work of the Spirit in mission, a liturgical overview of the Sundays after Trinity (which should surely not be "ordinary" in the sense of losing their unique and special identity), and the ever-inspiring DH talking us through some aspects of the work of the Spirit in church history and in our current di (or are they multi?) lemmas.

All good stuff - demanding action if I can only carve out time to pray, plan and pray again instead of simply reacting to the situations that arrive on my doorstep.
Oy vey - practical processing sorely needed!

Mind you, there's quite alot of the other sort of processing going on too.
You see, in the middle of the morning came a session that was always going to challenge me...
A session in which we focussed on the gifts of the Spirit - and yet again I found myself engaged in the business of comparing myself with others and finding myself wanting. This is deeply unfair to the speaker who was very wise in reminding us that spiritual gifts take many and varied forms...that we can be very slow to recognise the Spirit's work....that sometimes things just don't happen as we pray they will. Actually, his input was quite excellent...personal without being unduly so, challenging and reassuring, thoroughly engaging.

And I KNOW (goodness, how I know) how the Spirit works within the Sacraments of the Church...I too have had times when I've "just happened" to turn up on the right doorstep at the right time, without any clear sense of planning to get there...I too have had experiences of praying with people and seeing things change for them....and week by week, as I preside at the Eucharist, I know myself caught up in something beyond words....

I KNOW all that sort of thing is the work of the Spirit and I rejoice in it....but yesterday I found myself plunged right back into the teenage neuroses of the 14 year old who didn't receive the charismatic gifts when everyone else in the school CU did!
It was a wretched experience...something that has been endlessly useful in sermons and comforting for those feeling sidelined by God in the years since, but at the time, just miserable. I prayed as determinedly as I was able, and endless people prayed with me. Everyone else seemed to be cheerfully speaking in tongues...sporting their oh-so-seventies "Smile Jesus loves you" while I felt like the only one not invited to the party.
The charismatic revival at Hasting High School must have lasted - oooh, a whole week, I guess - and it was one of the most uncomfortable periods of my life.

Later, on the bus home, I had it out with God...
"What's going on? Why not me?"
and God said, with great gentleness
"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed...And also, Kathryn dear, have you tried considering the gifts that I HAVE given you in order to worship me? Because that's what tongues is all about"
And, for the time being, I understood and was glad.

But always, when conversation turns to "spiritual gifts" I find myself in a lather of insecurity. Yesterday we were invited to discuss with our neighbour our own experiences and my first reaction was to say
"Absolutely none"
I know full well that this isn't true, but it's hard to shed the legacy of that teenage disappointment, that the shiny things that others were displaying with joy and excitement were not being offered to me. And of course, God was quite right ( "nice of you to say so, Kathryn"!!! ) - I've never yet been in a situation where those particular gifts would have made a difference...

God gives the gifts we need for our situations.

But oh dear, I do wish God would help me grow out of the terrible need to compare myself with others and indulge in a wallow of insecurity. The human tendency to return to collect our unwanted baggage is disconcerting when I see it in others, exhausting when I recognise it in myself.

I know that my calling is not to be anyone but me, Kathryn...and that's actually quite OK.
No, thank God, it's better than OK....
And I'm given the gifts I need to be myself for God in this place.

Maybe one day I will reach the point of recognising that without having to go all round those familiar derelict houses first...or maybe not. But that will be OK too, as long as I remember that, as a wise and splendid friend pointed out to me
"He who calls you IS faithful"

Intimations of mortality

Some half formed observations...and a pretty huge dose of naval-gazing. You might prefer to wait for the Friday Five.
If not, "let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs"


During the Easter holidays, on one of our philosophical dog-walks (gentle reader, tis the walks and not the dogs that are philosophical), Hugger Steward and I were discussing the golden invulnerability of youth (particularly, perhaps, of Oxbridge youth).
We agreed that his peers were, for the most part, secure in a bubble of immortality, that however bright they were, none of them would be likely to imagine themselves ever becoming middle-aged accountants, or, of course, would ever entertain even the faintest possibility that the world might one day have to carry on without them.*
That's what youth is all about.
You KNOW you have answers to all the things your parents struggle with.
You KNOW you will live forever.
Then Hugger Steward turned to me and asked
"But do you REALLY know that you're going to die one day?"
and there he had me.
Because, for all my familiarity with death, both at close quarters (2 parents at 18, several lost babes in my 20s) - death remains out there.
And it's almost impossible to imagine a world that doesn't include me, because of course, my own perspective is the only one I really know.
So while my reason is fully appraised of the fact that I shall one day die, it's still in no way real for me emotionally (and as an F, emotions are the deepest reality).

Then, just yesterday, Hattie Gandhi (home for post Finals R&R) took a phonecall.
Someone wanted to speak to me & when HG told the caller that I'd ring them back when I got in from a funeral, the caller said
"Oh no - I'll phone back tomorrow. She'll be tired after an emotional experience like that"
HG reflected that, as a vicar's daughter, she has to be careful not to see funerals as every-day events, that if a uni friend mentions attending a funeral it is probably a really Big Deal and not something that happens at least once a week in their working life. And we wondered what impact that regular exposure has on clergy...I once worked with a priest who was terrified of death. She worked in a setting where funerals were rare, and that only worsened the situation. Each funeral became a crisis, part of her own on-going struggle against the dying of the light. I so wanted to change that for her, but for all her faith, fear was stronger. I wondered if I was strange, not sharing that huge angst. I wondered if I would feel different if my time came to be as involved in these liminal stages as she was.
Now I am, and I've learned that actually I love taking funerals.
They are a time of the utmost reality.
Nobody messes about, nobody pretends, hides behind what they think the vicar would want to hear. Rather, people are utterly real in their grief, anger, thankfulness, staggeringly generous with themselves, their feelings and stories.
And to me falls the task of weaving those stories into the Great Story of love and transformation that is the gospel. Mind-blowing privilege. And sometimes I'm told, and sometime I can feel, that it makes a difference. Staggering!

But in a way that familiarity with death does nothing to increase its reality for me. I know it happens (9 funerals since Easter) but caring for others as they deal with it increases the feeling that, while it's no more threatening than other physical characteristics that I don't share (blue eyes, long legs, golden hair...) it is quite definitely other. Still not really anything to do with me.

Is this healthy self-preservation, or dangerous delusion? I honestly don't know.

The final catalyst for trying to collect my thoughts in this post was a visit to the ever-thought provoking Digging a lot. Graham too spends alot of time in church-yards and produced this comment, that brought me up short
I’m looking round the graveyard- where I once saw stones, I now see people

I've yet to bury anyone I know well, but in a settled community like that of the valley, it can only be a matter of time. I wonder if that will change my perspective...
Of course I don't WANT to wake up suddenly afraid of death.
I don't want to be halted in tracks by a sudden paralysis as I confront its reality, any more than I want to be on a sort of professional automatic pilot, that disengages me emotionally even as I seem to empathise..
But I would like to be reassured that my confidence around issues of death and dying stems not from denial of death's reality but from a deep conviction of the truth of resurrection.
Perhaps I won't actually know that until the death that confronts me is my own.
But Donne's Hymne to God the Father, which became real for me on the day that my own father died, has never yet let me down. I think actually, it's all OK.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.

* Just read a report of a Theos poll that suggests that Hugger Steward and I were wrong in our estimate of the attitude of his contemporaries

Resolutions - or not?

Having spent the morning in vaguely melancholy reflections, I guess it's now or never if I'm to attempt any resolutions for the coming year.
I'm so very good at planning 6 impossible things before breakfast that resolutions are a pretty much constant element of life for me...Lent, Advent, birthdays, retreats....you name it, if there's a possibility of a new start, I'll be on the verge of making it.

So of course I can't resist at least trying again on this 1st day of January 2009...

1. to see more of my friends. You are some of the dearest and most heart-warming people on the planet and I'm so blessed to know you - so I intend to celebrate your presence in my life by actually spending time with you
2. to leave my study each evening in such a state that I don't feel faintly sick when entering the following morning (this might also save me time as there should be fewer unexpected losses of keys, diocesan forms and the like)
   
3. to read a bit of a real book (the sort I wouldn't be ashamed to blog about!!!!) every day. You know, I did keep on reading right through last year, and must have cleared well over 150 books, but too many of them were in the happy trash category, and though I need to read those too, I did once upon a time have a brain and I tend to be an all round happier person if I use it. Maybe I'll revisit the book challenge this year to keep myself on track - what do you think?
4. to take the dogs for a decent walk each and every day (essential with Libby in my life,- and much easier as a result)
5. to either change those things that need changing in my life, or stop whingeing about them.

There we go. That should keep me amused for most of the coming year...Right now I'm off to walk the dogs.

That was the year, that was

If you read my response to the last Friday Five, you may have guessed that, for all its celebrations, 2007 has not been a year of unremitting joy in Privet Drive.
Last New Year's Eve, though I made no public pronouncements, I did make myself a promise as the evening wore on that in the year ahead I would take active steps to sort out those parts of my life I was least happy with.
At the end of the year, despite alot of very hard work from more than one quarter, actually nothing much has changed.
I'm not even sure if it can - and that's not a good thing to realise,- though as I type this I hear my Great Aunt May's voice "What can't be cured must be endured" - so perhaps this year's goal had better be an end to even my quiet internal whingeing.
Certainly the blog isn't the place for any necessary processing - so instead, I too will join the ranks of those reviewing the year via the first sentence of each month's posts. I hope this year's may be a little more exciting than its predecessor

Every now and then,I am filled with an unwarranted sense of my own importance as a communicator (this may be an occupational hazard for preachers) and specifically as a writer, and delude myself into believing that this blog has merit beyond the very limited reality.
As anyone reading this surely knows , I'm chaotic by nature and find it really hard to use time well and wisely, so I was probably hoping for magic answers, but was not unduly surprised to find them eluding me.
Llan was great: I'd not been there in stormy weather before, and in its position on the side of the hill the house felt very much like a ship breasting the waves, as the wind howled around us.
OpenHouse, our once a month informal family worship, is now 18 months old.
Apologies for the break in transmission, which crept up on me rather.
I’m getting slightly confused here.
If you're feeling weary, I suggest you just move straight on. I'm not quite sure why I'm blogging this - it's not, I promise, in an effort to claim the "most clapped-out clergy award" for 2007.
Hattie Gandhi remains the perfect person with whom to travel and our hosts at Tregithy were their usual hospitable selves.
I really don’t want to bore you…but I do need to note some other highlights of Greenbelt worship this year, if only so I've a reference point when I need it.
One of the great compensations for losing both my parents when I was just 18 (honestly, - there were some, I’m not just putting a brave face on things) was the number of friends who included me as extra members of their family, whose mums encouraged me to turn up for meals, to stay the night, or just hang around the place whenever I felt like it.
I must be dotty:with everything else that is currently going on in my life, I've signed up for a whole month of blogging every day.
World AIDS Day and I'm thinking about my friends in Tamil Nadu who are part of the AIDS Awareness and Rehabilitation project that opened while we were out there a year ago.

So - themes of blogging, of characteristic confusion, of worship and time out, and of some of the special people whom God has put in my way. Pretty representative of my life, I guess.
Time now to walk dogs and then make salads....New Year's Eve, with all its weight of expectations and scope for disappointment, stretches ahead.
However you're spending it, I hope it's kind to you

What We Feel Is Not Who We Are

was the challenging heading of this morning's Henri Nouwen meditation.

Whenever I do Myers Briggs, my F score is way off the scale, so though I know perfectly well that there are all sorts of objective realities beyond my feelings, I really struggle to believe that. Prayer time is "successful" in proportion to whether or not I feel that I've been close to God...relationships rest heavily on whether someone understands (or is able to imagine) my feelings and there is all sorts of stuff that I know intellectually, but tend to discard because, unless head knowledge is supported by - yes, that's the one, feelings -then I simply can't trust it.
Of course, I've trained myself to behave as if I'm convinced by the head stuff but it won't ever be the place where I'm most at home, most sure of myself. Unless there's integrity of thought and feeling, the thought really doesn't mean that much to me. It's the feelings that make things real.

So I probably need to post this, not just on the blog, but on the wall over my desk, in my stall in St M's, in the car, beside my bed...pretty much everywhere. It won't make that much difference, but it will remind me that the way I experience the world isn't necessarily the way the world is.

Our emotional lives move up and down constantly. Sometimes we experience great mood: swings from excitement to depression, from joy to sorrow, from inner harmony to inner chaos. A little event, a word from someone, a disappointment in work, many things can trigger such mood swings. Mostly we have little control over these changes. It seems that they happen to us rather than being created by us.

Thus it is important to know that our emotional life is not the same as our spiritual life. Our spiritual life is the life of the Spirit of God within us. As we feel our emotions shift we must connect our spirits with the Spirit of God and remind ourselves that what we feel is not who we are. We are and remain, whatever our moods, God's beloved children.

Response to Comments

Caroline pointed out, by implication, in her comments on yesterday's post that actually what I think is probably more sorted than I've suggested.
She's right, of course, but (returning to the good old MyersBriggs paradigm) I am so strongly F that when I'm considering the realities of being me, feelings have it their own way almost entirely.
I know quite alot of things as intellectual certainties.
I actually live most of my time quite contentedly on the basis of that knowledge.
But when I'm asked to go grubbling about in my murky depths, that's a process based on instinct and feeling.

I'm only pointing out this obvious and boring (to anyone except me) truth because I spent some time last night with very dear friend whose T is as strong as my F. Hearing her talk about her approach to a situation, I was struck again by what a huge impact this all has.
And I remembered that, at least half the time, when I say "I think..." what I actually mean is
"I feel"

Right now, though, I think, feel, KNOW that if I don't press on with writing the Lent talk I'm to deliver tomorrow night I will be absolutely done for.
I've only had 6 months to prepare. No wonder I haven't started!

Accountability - or stupidity??

As Songbird clearly knows me well enough to giggle at the idea that I might need to learn that it's not all up to me, I'm taking a deep breath and posting the fruits of the weekend in terms of where I could usefully be heading....That way you can at least smile knowingly to yourselves as you see me fall flat on my face in my attempts to live them

Key transforming truth: relationships are not as fragile as you think

Key action: say no

Key attitude: trust yourself

Practical outworkings of this might well include

• switching off my mobile and being unavailable at times I've set aside to play, pray or be with family

• resisiting the urge to plough into emails first thing in the morning (yes, I'm online now before I've been up to say the Office, and yes, I did do emails before blog) without first stilling myself and handing over fears/hopes to my Source of safety

• handing over to someone else a role I'm possessive about (stand well clear, anyone who doesn't want to find themselves up to their ears in OpenHouse)

• asking for help when needed, rather than taking on all the responsibility myself

OK.
Typing that lot felt very vulnerable. Not the sort of "cost-you-your- job/wreck-your- relationships" vulnerability that might be part of careless blogging, but rather the vulnerability that says
"now anyone reading this who was at the residential will be able to work out what "type" I am, and could speculate on the flaws in personality or relationship that have made me thus".
[Awful pause for thought.]
They might be able to guess what I keep in my cupboard back-stage.

Its hard to think of anything less backstage than a blog open to the whole world to read (however limited my real live readership) but yes, I do trust that those reading who are guessing significances won't think the less of me...
And, bearing in mind the stuff in my personal back-stage cupboard, that feels like a pretty big thing for a Tuesday morning.

Mind the Gap (again)

During this morning's blog surf, I found myself commenting both here, and here
that it's disturbingly easy for me think I'd manage to live up to my principles, since most of the time I'm in very little danger of being asked to do so.

This afternoon I have the ministerial review that has been looming for a while. The form to be completed beforehand had some pretty clear categories, but finished with an "Is there anything else you'd like to say?" type question. With the woes of the Anglican Communion heaped about me, I added something about my longing for "compassionate inclusion" and felt as if I might have nailed some sort of colours to a mast.
But of course, as I was reminded by reading Tom's post, I've never actually been asked if I would bless a same-sex couple (this could, of course be because . St M's isn't the sort of church that is brimming over with brave souls who've come out and are asking God's blessing on their love...so the curate can rest secure in the knowledge that she won't actually be challenged to do anything.
Equally, this isn't the kind of community where individuals in need of refuge from a hostile world turn to the church for help (unless you count the occasional visit from Hamish, of course) - so again, I'm safe from having my behaviour actually challenged by reality

In the months ahead, I'll begin the process of looking for a new parish, a new situation in which to try and live out this calling. I've been hoping that this won't be somewhere too comfortable, that I'll find myself in situations where I might begin to bridge the gap between present reality and cherished aspirations.
But if it came to the crunch, I'm very much afraid I might just melt into the background, always smiling a friendly pastoral smile but doing precisely nothing.

A bit of a blow

I've blogged in the past about my very favourite retreat house in the entire world, The Llan in Shropshire. I've been getting excited over the past few days, because I'm heading there for 3 nights next week with special friend from vicar-school, - and, what's more, I'd managed to book in for a slot all to myself in May so I was feeling truly smug.

Until, that is, a friend emailed me this link yesterday.
The Llan, in all its hospitable beauty, is on the market.
There's even an ad in the Church Times.
I have a horrible feeling that this may be my last visit, and I hate that.
What's more, I suddenly understand the sentiments of those who see changes looming in their beloved church and want to run away and cry. Those pews may be ugly, but if it was while sitting in one of them that you had a special hug from God, then yes, you are entitled to get rather upset if they are under threat. It doesn't mean the changes might not lead to a greater good in the end, - but grief along the way is perfectly reasonable. Trust me, I'm a curate and I know.

That's rather where I am tonight.

Oh, and I urgently need recommendations for retreat houses that give you enough space and spoiling without any sense of people breathing down your neck...Llan has been so special for me, -it' going to be a very hard act to follow.

Dreams and realities

I’ve just received a slightly scary package through the post…the assorted paperwork I need to complete (and ask others to complete about me) before my first ever official Ministerial Review.
As I’ve only been ordained 3 years, the first question or two are relatively easy
The most significant experiences in my ministry over the past 3 years?
That would be my ordination and first Eucharist, for sure!
Have I managed to achieve the objectives identified in my last ministerial review? What review??
Then I remembered that, during our very last residential at vicar-school, we were told to settle down and dream dreams about where our ministry might be in 3 years time...The exercise was labelled "The Miracle Question".
Atypically, I knew where to find my thoughts…and was really interested in what I’d written. I’m not in any way saying “Wow, look at me…super-priest has met her personal goals” but I was struck by the similarities between what I’d dared to hope for and where I feel ministry really is right now. I suspect this says more about my self-knowledge in terms of what I might reasonably expect to do/be than about any real or imagined success criteria…Still quite interesting, though. Overall, there is a pretty good match of "achievements" (to my amazement, I’d actually thought I might do a spiritual direction course- had totally forgotten about that) – with, of course, one or two heroic failures.
For example, whatever happened to the alt worship that I was hoping to see as a regular part of my ministry?
And the regular writing?? Maybe this blog is it,- but perhaps I should try and do something more focussed....or revisit the question of an M Phil (Help! I need a topic…aaarghhh)
Church re-ordering isn’t really something I have any control over. No surprises that it hasn’t been achieved yet – for somewhere like St M’s, this is HUGE.

But the things that I really envisgaged mattering most…Presiding at the Eucharist, work with pre-school and school-aged children, funerals…those truly are the places that I feel most at home.
I’m intrigued that I thought I’d need to “learn to relate to those on the fringes of the community”. Here in CK, the fringes are often where I feel most comfortable…

I had no idea about the real pressure points for me….Time management when there is no fixed timetable…Boundaries of all sorts…those are the things that bring me up short again and again.

Perhaps, after all, this ministerial review won't be too daunting at least in the preparation. Always assuming, of course, that I actually get the paperwork done! If I manage that in good time for the deadline, I think I'll have to award myself the Curate's Medal of Extraordinary Achievement...it'll be a first.

Reflections on a reflection.

One of the great pleasures of the blog world is, of course, becoming good friends with people whom you have never actually met...and every now and then, discovering tastes and circumstances in common that make you feel this might just be a long-lost relative. Jo(e) and I have found so much in common,- not just the presence in both our lives of a Shaggy Haired Boy,- but it seemed almost uncanny to read her latest post.
Still hampered by a knee injury, Jo(e) has been exploring self-portrait photography, and considering the person she sees. As part of the spiritual direction course, I recently spent half an hour (3o whole minutes...believe you me, that's an incredibly long time) looking at myself in a small mirror and...yup...considering the person I saw.
I hated the process.
I'm not unused to looking at myself.
I'm pretty well used to the idea that I'm now middle-aged, that my face is not going to stop being round, that some lines are now part of the deal, no matter how assiduous my use of moisturisers.
That's OK.
I like most bits of being me, in the here and now.
I can even deal with my face when it is animated, responding to another person.
But at rest, it seemed hardly alive....reminding me that I only really feel like myself when I'm relating to another person.
Dammit. That's exactly the sort of thing this sort of thing is supposed to make you consider.
I rather wish it wasn't.

Having posted this morning's offering, it was time to drive Hattie Gandhi back to her favourite city for a blissful reunion with her university and her friends. She was like a champagne cork popping with joy and excitement as we followed the road through the Forest of Dean and south from Monmouth, so I really couldn't indulge in soggy-mother behaviour - a great relief all round, I'm sure. Though it has been blissful to have her company for the past 3 weeks, it's even better to know she is so happily settled at Cardiff, and her pleasure in life there lights up the rest of us too.
I guess I knew I might need a morale boost on my return home (so an "amnesty" for lurkers could have spelled triumph or disaster). In the event, it was lovely to find such positive responses, - so I now feel all warm and smiley. Thank you!

I might have gone in for alot of slightly silly "I can't imagine why you bother" noises in the light of those friendly comments, were it not for to-day's Henri Nouwen offering.

One of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life is self-rejection. When we say, "If people really knew me, they wouldn't love me," we choose the road toward darkness. Often we are made to believe that self-deprecation is a virtue, called humility. But humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift. To grow beyond self-rejection we must have the courage to listen to the voice calling us God's beloved sons and daughters, and the determination always to live our lives according to this truth.

Nouwen's writing so often says exactly what I feel, (or more often don't feel, but do need to be told), and another friend said something that struck a similar note very recently, so perhaps I'd better try to listen. Self-belief is not the same as arrogance, and clearly God believes I'm worth it...