Pause for thought

Recently, as you'll have noticed, I've been rather an absent blogger.

There are lots of reasons for this.

One, of course, is general busyness and lack of reflective time.

Another is a growing sense that, while a curate could legitimately think aloud, an incumbent ought to know what she thinks before committing it to the internet.

Yet another a recognition that the more interesting bits of my life and ministry are pretty much unbloggable.

Add to that a sense, commented on far and wide, that the blogging phenomenon seems to have peaked.

I tweet alot (a perfect and speedy diversion from almost any given task), and have made new connections there, as well as keeping in touch with many blog friends there

So one way and another, I wondered if this blog's days were numbered.

I was pretty sure that I knew exactly who was reading me, - a small number of old friends, who dropped in out of loyalty when I actually got round to posting something.

I've never had one of those clever gizmos that tells me who is visiting, or from where.....)But just recently, that view has been challenged - and my world enlarged once more.

You see, one of the comments on this morning's homily for church on the hill came from Gabriele...

She wrote

In my country the ballot might be secret but the intimidation that precedes any election is terrible and destructive. Elections here are fraught with fraud and violence and very much them and us. And we are due another one sometime soon .... maybe.

Gabriele lives in Harare,  where she writes a rather lovely blog herself, "Floating in God's Sea"

Her perspective not only reminded me of the huge privilege of safe, free and fair elections that we enjoy unthinkingly in the UK, but also reawakened me to the excitement of a blogging community stretching across the world, to offer encouragement, challenge, fresh outlooks.

Parish ministry so easily becomes, unsurprisingly,all too parochial. But in the past week I've "met" not just Gabriele in Harare but other voices from other places, voices that make me think, remind me that my small world is just one tiny piece of the jigsaw.

I need these wider horizons and I'm rejoicing in them - so I guess that mean I need to keep on blogging.