Passion

Back to what I know and do best today with a combination of storytelling, project encouragement, and healing rifts around my two parishes. I always forget that when I am a bit fed up visiting people cheers me up… people are what I am passionate about… so being with people reconnects me with my vocation.
Yesterday I was talking with a group of clergy about passion when someone became very upset. I think what pushed the button was thinking about passions, clearly many of those present felt that what they were passionate about as clergy had been blocked out by the other things they were being asked to do.
Today I talked to a brilliant teacher who felt that they were being forced out of working with the children that they loved in order to deal with all the other stuff thrown at them by their job.
Are we destined to lose the bit of the job we love in order to do the job we get paid for?
I hope not… today I was able to be the working, passionate priest out and about helping people.
No wonder I feel better.

Betraying the other woman

Still trying to shake off Sunday... Mothers's Day, Mothering Sunday on which I was inflicted with that disaster for vicars a loss of my voice.
I ended up oscilating between Barry White and Barry Humphries!
Comedy voices appart it was the first "significant" Sunday in ages since the sabbatical when I have been not present at one of my churches. It felt a bit weird to get up late and only visit one of the two communities I hang out with. How people cope when they have a multiplicity of congregations cope I don't know.
Catherine always reckons that Cragg is my other woman... I missed her yesterday and so next week I'll need to take flowers.

Friendship

To Halifax and Calderdale Council's health scrutiny committee with a friend of mine who is transgender. She has had a hard journey to find out who she is and I have been a distant support as best I could. It is a journey that I wouldn't recommend to anyone, in all departments it's a painful journey.
What Clare has needed has been friendship... Or as they call them "people who give unconditional positive regard."
It's been hard for me not to wade in with an unhelpful prophetic voise in what has been a pastoral situation.
As I sat with a slightly mottley and yet heroic collection of humanity I allowed myself a moment of reflection of how this would appear to others only to stop myself. What others will think is always the wrong question. The right question is always what's right.

leadership

It's been an interesting evening with PCC at Cragg with lots of positive talk about stuff and plans for the future. With it came a discussion about pastoral support which got a bit personal.
It brought up an age old problem of those in leadership... To what extent does your competency make others incompetent? If a church has a gifted evangelist does that mean others stop sharing their faith? If a community has an effective project champion does that mean that nobody else need drive it forward? I always thought that effective leadership was that which lead by example... You model by good example and people do as you do and not just as you say.
Paul writes of Jesus that he emptied himself taking the form of a servant. Deliberately Jesus chooses to be less so that we might be more. He chose to leave his people so that we might grow up and with the help of the Holy Spirit change the world.
Today I am on a train running away to Manchester to see a film about superhumans...that should bring me back down to earth.

1970's revisited

A historic meeting of Catholics and Anglicans in wakefield draws together a great crowd looking at each other and realising that we are alike.
It seems very important in this week when we have seen violence in Ireland again. Is it just me or have we just leapt back fo the 1970s?
We have a recession.
We have violence in Ireland.
There is even talk of opening the mines in South Yorkshire!


Not the same because we meet today in wakefield Catholics and Anglicans.
We build or business centre in our church.
Both communities in Ireland are not rising to the call to arms.
As the bishop said:"We are not strangers but friends."

Roller Coaster

It's Friday night and as catherine sleeps soundly I finally get time to reflect on a week which has included several top level meetings and in my day job a funeral today of someone who took their own life.
Many years ago, another time, another lifetime really I can remember getting fed up with the sheer effort of living. I went to a talk, the speaker said: "if you don't want your life give it to someone else."
For me it was a start of a roller coaster life that saw me in the centre of Manchester, working with students and coming to Mytholmroyd.
I am still working out the consequences of 'giving my life away.'

Dancing on buses

I am on the bouncy bus to halifax with the slight smell of exhaust fumes on the back seat compensated by being able to look at everybody. It's snowing! Thw bus is a collection of the young and old with me probably the only one on board travelling the old fashioned way with cash. I've never been one for the upstairs of buses probably a remnant from when that was a shortcut to nicitine addiction.
It's been a calmer day so far, with a great deal of fun chosing hymns with my organist Denis this morning.
"Donald won't like that one!" he says.
I reply that as far as I know we're not trying to please Donald!
Set me to contemplating who we are trying to please with our worship.
Is God really sat in heaven like a cosmic simon cowell.
"oh, I like that one" God says as we burst into Thine be the glory.
I like the idea of worship being like a dance. We make a stumbling kind of a move and God ever the expert dancer is able through their skill to make us look good.
I suddenly have a vision of the people on the bus as sitting like wallflowers round the room while God and I take the floor.
So to the wall flowers around the edge... I wish I had the guts to ask
Come and join us in the dance.

Two days in one

I have just finished two days work in one day. It didn't happen intentially I just left the house this morning at 8.30 to Scout Road School to look around the new extension now everybody's settled into it. It already looks like home to the children and staff and its friendly learning buzz and creative clutter was quite infectious.
Back to home to print off papers and off to lead clergy chapter in a cheerful lunchtme meeting looking at our plans for the restructuring of the deanery.
An important pastoral one to one was followed by a 4.00p.m. Chairing of a meeting with British Waterways and a few excited people to talk about the linear park based on the canal.
6.00p.m. I snatch 25 minutes for the loo and a ready meal from the local shop then the handover meeting for the new church treasurer.
8.00 p.m. pastoral chat about life the universe and children then a pick up and return home for 10.30p.m.
An hour picking up e-mails and making phone calls before bath and now bed.
Fifteen hours leaves me energised and busy headed and prayerful as I review the day and pray for those I met.

Fasting

Sat waiting for my sons music lesson to start and finish. Feeling a bit brighter and therefore bloggy after a few days of darkness. The beginning of Lent is always a bit hard as you switch into the new discipline.
I am trying something new with a stab at fasting. I always felt in the past that fasting was the Violet Elizabeth approach to prayer. If God doesn't give you what you want you'll scream and scream and make youself sick. Of course it's not that but rather something which frees you to think and pray...
Mostly I am thinking about
Food!
Not really: So far so good.
only problem is you're not supposed to tell anyone.Try refusing Lunch without saying why!