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Tempus fugit

Wow! How time flies.

December 5th 2023 marked the second anniversary of my ending the season of my ministry that was centred around full-time in a parish. It was good in many ways, but it was also good to move on. In the whirl of caring for my Mum in the last month of her life I can't recall exactly what I was doing on the 5th but it probably involved driving to Bristol and visiting her in Southmead Hospital.

In August last year I was appointed as the Area Dean of Andover in the Diocese of Winchester, which has been a really fruitful and satisfying new piece of ministry I had neither sought nor anticipated, but getting to know and serve the varied Parishes of the Deanery has been rewarding. I love being able to lead worship in the villages, and having the capacity during the week to support some of the outreach work in the urban setting, particularly the CAP Debt Centre.  

In December I completed the second year of my MA, although some of my second year deadlines flowed over into this year. I signed up for this MA in some ways as a means to ensure my brain remained active, but the learning has been profound for me. I have loved being able to use important new insights as I have preached and led contemplative times, but the learning has also allowed me to process some of the more complex issues from Parish life which were, sadly, left unresolved. The reading and writing has been hard, at times, but so enriching and I wish I could trade in all the Clergy training days from the last two decades for the quality and depth of learning on my MA. Over the past twelve months I have written about the Desert Fathers and what we can learn from their endurance to address stress (which involved walking the West Highland Way), and another assignment based on Narrative Psychology considering what we can learn pastorally from a person telling us their story for which I was very grateful for a TED talk by one of the screenwriters of Toy Story. I am now beginning the long haul of 18,000 words for my final dissertation which is scheduled to take me through to February 2025. 

Obviously, saying goodbye to Mum was a big deal. Over Christmas it felt like one of us was driving over almost every day, and then gradually daily on the phone to the nursing team at St Peter's Hospice. She knew she was dying, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last February, but the last few weeks hit us very quickly and Mum was in quite some pain for days at a time.

It was good to have a Memorial Service for her at St Chad's, my old Church in Patchway, as they had welcomed her in and made her part of the Church family there for the last 3 and a bit years of her life. She wanted her ashes scattered in the woods near here where she used to walk. We'll do that in due course.

End of year report card

Sadly (or maybe not), I don't get an end of year report to take home from where I am studying for my MA. However, as I have just passed the first anniversary of stepping back from full-time ministry, I want to try to make sense of these last 12 months.

The first thing that became obvious was the loss of a sense that people understood what I was doing. For all the misconceptions people may have, saying you are a Parish Priest conveys a meaning. I am just starting my first book post-final assignment hand in, and I came across this sentence

There are no easy routes to self-realisation; it begins, ironically, with self-abandonment.

I had carefully prepared my CV as I finished last December, and have used it as I have applied for PtO (Permission to Officiate is the somewhat nebulous term to indicate I have the Bishop's permission to minister and that I am up to date with things like safeguarding training and so forth). Having relinquished, I realised how ironic it was to be a bit piqued not to be given a range of plum little projects to work on which would have sounded so impressive as I explained them to people. Instead, as I seem to have found more than once, the path to fruitfulness usually begins by heading in the opposite direction. What's the point of relinquishing stuff if it doesn't stay relinquished?

I continue to preside and preach out in the sticks, trying to listen and discern the health of each as they work to appoint a new person in that Team, and I have become involved in the CAP centre locally. I have been very busy sorting out my Dad's estate after he died suddenly back in February, and I try to keep tabs on my Mum.

Studying has been a most unexpected blessing. There is the roller-coaster of emotion excitedly starting a new module, then the low points of realisation the vast amounts one doesn't understand, rounded off with the immense relief and sense of satisfaction actually handing something in. I have engaged with issues I would not have had any reason to go near had I not been doing this MA, and this has given me a lot of new insights to use in preaching.

As the photo shows, I continue my discipline of walking with my camera and have just started a plan for a substantial walk next year which is both exciting and a little daunting. I have so much to reflect on and am looking forward to more learning in the year to come.