It is now nine months since I left full time Parish ministry. I had to complete an official document recently and one of the questions caused me to stop and think - full time employed? no, part-time? no, unemployed? not really, student? hardly, so I ticked home-maker.
For twenty years my life was marked by the need for immediacy; multiple deadlines and balancing several different diaries (home, church, schools and so forth). There is a lot to be said for that productive busy-ness brought on by competing demands. Eugene Peterson is right to warn us to the danger of being "the busy pastor". We should regard this, he says, like we might think of "the embezzling bank manager" - it is simply not right. I don't think he is saying we shouldn't have lots to do - the problem comes about when our busy-ness defines us and we find our egos being boosted by the lack of empty space in our calendars and how many people have come to depend on us in some way.
For nine months my life has not had such pressures. I have been ministering a couple of Sundays per month in local churches (and it has been a joy getting to know some of the smaller villages around and about). However, one senses one can easily be the cause of "a disturbance in the force", as it were, so there is much to be said for holding back a little. A few weeks ago I was in a Church getting ready to lead and so I checked with those setting up what "the norm" was. There was a helpful list of things, one of which was the they say the Gloria. I announced at the start that I was going to lead the service as closely as I possibly could to how I understood they did it most weeks, no boat rocking from me, but when we got to that point and I announced that we stand to say the Gloria, an older lady on the front row in a wonderful stage whisper asked, "Why aren't we singing it?". I smiled some days later when I came across a paragraph in the Rule of St Benedict concerning allowing members of the clergy in to join the monastery. 'If an ordained priest asks to be received into the monastery, do not agree too quickly'. Wise words indeed.
I have just handed in my second MA assignment. I picked up the first book to prepare for this in the middle of April, and so I have spent four and a half months concentrating on one or two questions concerning the life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I have been excited and then baffled, been exhilarated by new insights and left despondent by realising how little I knew (more than once) and then wrestled with getting all that into the word limit. This feels a very different learning experience than the couple of times per annum CMD days offered by the Diocese. Certainly, this concentrated learning is having a far greater impact on my preaching output and reflection than the innumerable training days I have had, but which now have all blurred into one.
I have a week to pause and let my brain run free before the pre-reading on my next module, and so I am reading about tides and rock pools and enjoying the long view.
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