....
Words constantly
broadcast to users of the automatic revolving doors at the local
hospital. Whenever I hear them, I hear a rather cheesy motivational
message – something that might appear over the threshold of a
successful multi-national – and wonder how it sounds to those who
are arriving anxiously to see a consultant, visit a loved one, face
head-on some news they had hoped never to receive.
KEEP MOVING FORWARD!
Of course, it's really
just an instruction designed to help pedestrian traffic flow
smoothly...but all the same – in this Easter season it has given me
a lot to think about.
You see, though it's
not yet a full calendar year since I left my beloved St Matthew's, in
liturgical terms this is anniversary week. My final services were on
Low Sunday – and as a recently rather semi-detached Canon (having spent much of
Lent on sick leave following surgery, I never quite got into the
feeling of the season here in Coventry) I seem to have spent quite a
while reflecting on the changes of the past year.
Lent in a cathedral is,
I think, generally diluted somewhat. Because our Sunday congregation
come from all over the city and beyond, there is less of a sense of a
gathered community through the week even in Lent...My assumptions
that Lent groups would “just work”, and attract a good proportion
of our regulars, and that EVERYONE ALWAYS has soup suppers in Lent
proved, as assumptions generally do, to have no foundation in
reality. The same constraints that prevent many parish churches from
drawing large numbers to evening services apply even more in a place
where the elderly really don't want to come into the city centre at
night, so there was much less sense of a community travelling through
Holy Week together than I had anticipated – and I really missed
that, though there was, in contrast, a wonderful feeling that we were
offering worship on behalf of many – and enabling visitors to dip
in to a continuing tide of liturgy that they might not easily find
elsewhere.
Coupled with the fact
that I was dealing with so many memories of last year it made for a
rather strange season that has left me thinking hard about the nature
of community and priesthood. In one way, it's easy when you live in
the place that you serve, when every trip to the letter box, every
walk in the park involves meeting parishioners...when the neighbour
opposite tells you about an ambulance calling ...when the children
who pour out of school at home time are the same ones who pour into
Messy Church on a Sunday afternoon. It's all there, around you, 24/7
– and you are part of it, whether you like it or not.
Here, I guess, you have
to earn your place in the Cathedral community – or at least in that
community which exists beyond the boundaries of Sunday worship. There
are communities forged among those of us who work there Monday to
Friday, or who give time as volunteers, but to earn your place with
the congregation is not quite as straightforward. Sick visiting,
funerals, life crises – those are the places where trust and
relationship can be forged – but there are fewer opportunities to
just spend time with people – and thus it is harder to truly
belong. Before I even arrived, the Sunday congregation sent me a
lovely card to welcome me...but I was struck by one greeting which
ready “Enjoy your time with us”. Even as I unpacked, people were
already preparing for the time when I, like all my predecessors,
would move on...whereas in the parish, there was, I think, always the
silent hope that “this time it might be for good”.
While I know that I
spent my first year of incumbency wondering if I would ever stop
missing my title parish, I knew too that this community needed me in
functional as much as spiritual and emotional ways...
That made leaving
hideous – but also gave rise to some very mixed feelings when I
read, at bedtime on Low Sunday, that at last a priest has been
appointed to St Matthew's. Of course it's wonderful that they have
someone else to work with them at being a sign of God's loving
welcome in that place, splendid that the over-stretched Herring of
Christ and the other team colleagues should no longer need to cope
with an extraordinary number of Occasional Offices, great that
another priest should have the joy of making his home in that lovely
vicarage – and with those dear dear people.
But all the same – I
can't pretend that “home” is still there if I wanted to run away.
I don't, I promise – but it still feels odd.
Time, then, for another
cheesy motivational message – this time from the ticket machine in
the Car Park down the road.
“Change is possible”
it said.
Amen to that.
And - Keep Moving
Forward.
I know what you mean; it's impossible not to get attached to people; it's your JOB to care, but then you have to leave them and it's painful: you still think of them and pray for them but they are moving on into a relationship with another priest. Meanwhile, working in a big city rather than a parish means relationships are different again, harder to get the depth. But, as you say, keep moving! Hopefully, forward.
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