A Curate in Vicar's Clothes

As the title change of this blog might suggest, I am now across the line that divides one ministry from another. The line itself was a wonderful and emotional Service, attended by so many friends and friends-to-be, family and well-wishers, filled with (I think, because I chose it all) rousing music that all could sing at the top of their voices. 

Across the line I am now in a new Diocese, working with new people and for a new Bishop. I have a different job with different expectations, facing a different future in a different house and with loved ones who themselves are doing different things in different places. 

I am sort of wondering when the penny will drop and I will have map routed out in front of me. It was in my curacy. I know what I was doing and when, for whom and why. As you know, mine was a richly blessed curacy but one that was crammed full. Each day was full-on - and that in a training role too. Instinct told me that when I crossed the line to the next ministry, it would be even more that way: crammed to capacity.

A few of my friends have recently walked across this line. We were curates and now we are incumbents or the like. Their eyes were once cast towards a mentor for the direction and the plan. All eyes are on us now. It is a very funny feeling, not unpleasant - and so far, all is quiet. Today I prayed in the church alone (and did some nosing around). Today I pootled up the High Street and had some useful chats with people. Today I will complete sermons for the four services that I will be part of. I am secretly hoping that the Guide Book for Incumbents is in the drawer somewhere so I can tick off 'Jobs for the First Week', confident as I am that I have surely forgotten something. 

Ministry is, I suppose, not set in stones (paradoxically). We are rooted in a parish that has a church. Sometimes that church has services that I will have some control of. But that is about it. How I spend the next decade is, broadly, in my own hands and that has the potential to be an alarming thought if laboured too much. For me, I want to be furiously active saving the world for God (often forgetting that God has a part, not just me). For now, I have no specific work-load and I wonder if I am just meant to be wondering. What am I called to do in this parish? What and where are the signs? What do I represent to these hope filled people? What needs changing, if anything? Where are we called to go, together? 

If this post feels a little strange, that is because I am still a Curate in Vicar's clothes. I still yearn to be spoon-fed like before, but know that there is no longer a spoon. I am happy and fearful, overjoyed and worried - all in equal measure. The only thing I know with absolute certainty is that I am meant to be here. The rest will become clearer in the days and weeks ahead.

... I hope!

Blogging, Technology and the Future

I read an article over the new-year period that spoke of the progress in various technological media. 

I challenge you to read this piece by Matthew Bell, and not feel some sympathy for his point of view.

In summary, it is a piece that examines a small thing in itself but which is gaining some momentum. For Bell, the issue is about paper versus electronic greetings - in this case thank-you cards. Yes, it is happening more and more. Many of us are starting to send e-cards (or in my case, a WordArt mock-up) and emailing it, or just a straight text email. It is always nice to receive 'cards' by email, but it is true, never as nice as the real thing. A paper card can't be sent to 150 other people in one key stroke.

There is a sense that technology gets us to a point where we look back and see that what we had may have been better. This is not a new thing. The advent of the 'drive a lorry over them and they still play' Compact Disc (which as we know, can become scratched just by thinking a thought near one) was wonderful for many of us for whom vinyl was large and vulnerable and a little bit passée! The CD came, and then in recent years, vinyl made something of a recovery. 

We are in the digital age, of that there is no doubt. When we go on holiday, we carry a memory card in our luggage upon which to consign eighty-zillion poorly focussed pictures of friends. Once, we would take a couple of rolls of 36-exposure films and use them carefully, even coming home with a couple left to snap the cat to finish the film. We'd send them off to Truprint and wait like kids at Christmas for the fat envelope to return. Now, we lob our pictures onto the PC before washing the sandy undies, get bored at snap 763 and resort to Gin. There will not be a person reading this that do not miss actual paper photos in an actual photo album. With the advent of Photobooks etc, and Print-ur-own booths for photos, we are looking back to our halogen days pre-tech!

So, thank-you notes, Christmas cards, snappy-snap holiday pictures, Compact Discs ... and add to that  the possibility of expanding MP3 music files from 'least space' to greatest space for best quality, and we have a tide ebbing and flowing. So what does this mean for another technological advance ... web-logging?

Anyone can blog, and some do. Anyone can read, and some do. The difficult truth about blogging is that, however snuggly wuggly it gets, it is still detached and impersonal. Rarely do people who write and read blogs know each other - we are but apparitions, names and faces on a screen who make mystical words appear. For now it is a growing phenomenon, and one that I enjoy. But in my deepest darkest places where I don't like to look, I sense that every post I write is a conversation I could have had down the pub, but didn't. Does blogging have a shelf-life? The psychologists may have a view. In the end, so many people will blog that the idea of a chat over a beer will seem novel and inventive. In the end, there will be so great a volume of words that not reading them will become desirable. For now, I hope that day is far off, though I wonder if it is not inevitable. 

Don't Live all Your Dreams

In recent weeks, I have had cause to use the term 'living the dream' on a number of occasions. Preaching at the first Mass of a new priest is an obvious example, but in a curacy - if all goes as it should - we can readily describe ourselves as living our dream. 

In all good ways, of course, we are. Most ordained people have been labouring under the particular burden of their calling for years, and whilst it as often as difficult burden, in the end, it forms our dreams. Those dreams are realised at ordination. 

On a different tack, I once heard a lottery winner state that all their dreams had come true, that they could now fulfill every ambition and dream. That sounded marvellous, but only for a moment. 

In the cerebral world that is Coronation Street, one of its older characters stated that she still had her dreams, that she knew that they would never come true, but that they were still worth holding on to. This gave me cause to ponder over my Gin and Tonic and think how life really would be if we had no more dreams to chase after. It sounds perfectly awful to me.

Our dreams, aspirations and ambitions colour in the person that we are. We are clearly a product of 'past', and fact of the 'present' - but it is all of those things that give us our 'future' dimension. I number many people who (if they but did the thing) would give most lottery winnings away for fear that all the little (or not-so-little) things that we dream of would all ocme true and there would be no dreams left. Without our 'future' aspect, we are nothing, except flesh-bones-and-memories. 

Witnessing the ordinations of friends was bitter-sweet for me. It was sweet to see a much loved friend recieve God's Grace and Charism and to become that which they were born to be. It was slightly poignant then to realise that in fact, it is good to look forward to something (maybe or maybe not) happening. Ordination for me is now past - so now what ...?

For me, my dreams project upon my children now. I want for them and not so much for me, though I am still a man who harbours ambitions and dreams. The 'biggies' (family, priesthood) are real now, so they need to be replaced with other things. I once heard a story which I am reminded of now ...

There was once a man who loved to go fishing. He loved to fish and he dreamed of the  time when he could sit in his boat and fish all day. Eventually, his dream came true, and as he was rather a good fisherman, was quickly overwhelmed by his catch. He asked a friend to join him and they fished together. They too were very successful and other friends joined them. There were so many fish that they couldn't eat them or give them away as they had done so before, so they bought a little shop and sold their catch their. So popular was this fish that the man and his friends needed bigger and better boats, and then trawlers which needed a yard which needed staff which needed a bigger shop, and another and another. The man's fish business soon became the most successful and the most profitable and he and his friends became rich beyond their wildest dreams. Time passed and the man became stressed with the burdens of his business and became ill. When he went to his doctor, he was told that he needed a little hobby; something that could help him relax and reflect on the wonderful life he had. Being a man who took the advice of his doctor, he thought hard about how he could unwind after a hard day at his Corporation's Head Office.

So he went fishing on his little boat ....