Oh all right then.....

About 13 years ago, when I had just started going back to church and was beginning to think that there might be something real there, I was driven away furious and upset by the Toronto blessing and its wilder manifestations.  I stayed away for six months, ignoring occasional messages from the then vicar inquiring euphemistically how I was, but in the end found that although I didn't want to be in a church where people cackled manically and fell over, I was no longer comfortable not being there.  And so I went back, and the rest is history (see picture above).  Oh yes, and when I went back I found that things had calmed down and it was looking more like the church I recognised.

Whilst not in the same league of significance, blogging turns out to be a bit like that and having not done it for two months I'm caught on the fence not knowing whether to stick with my resolution or to go back on it.  There have been many occasions when I found myself thinking "I could blog that... that would make a good post...".  So here I am again and we'll just see...

A quick update.  It's seven weeks yesterday since I was ordained so I've had seven weeks of learning how to be a deacon/curate/ordained person.  Amongst other things, I've taken my first funeral and tried to focus on the needs of the deceased and the family whilst dealing with my own nerves.  The moment when I needed to turn and precede the coffin into the chapel whilst beginning to say the prescribed words was one of those points when with a gulp you realise a new phase in your life has begun. 

And I'm well into a series of visits to those members of our congregation whom I barely know or only know to say hello to.  These are giving me a new perspective on a church I thought I understood, having been a member of it for 14 years, a member of the leadership team for nearly four and Pastoral Assistant for 15 months. Reassuringly the visits themselves are much less difficult than I anticipated: people expect the curate to visit and the collar etc acts as a licence to the kind of exchanges which I would have seen as intrusive and/or embarrassing in the past.  Conversation has almost always flowed - and its so much easier to talk to people in their own homes than in the frenetic and distracting atmosphere of after church coffee (which is especially problematic if, like me, you are slightly deaf).  What's interesting is how much unanimity there is in the hopes and fears people have for Christ Church, especially the need to find ways of creating community in a place where so many people work and have family responsibiites that the opportunities for what Mission Shaped Parish calls "open friendship" are very limited.  Oh yes, and the whole issue of children in church - how we provide for them and for adults within services and outside them, is a also a recurrent theme.  We are a church richly blessed with under 6s - only it can be quite a loud blessing at times.  I read Kathryn's recent post on this with a sense of admiration, envy and hopelessness... we have plans to make some changes but I envy other churches the sense of occasion that ritual creates:  in a very w/Word based church creating a sense of wonder for children is hard....

Enough for now.  We'll see whether I manage to come back soon...

Comments

[Jackie]

Thanks for your comment - welcome back! Re your comment, I used to live in church accommodation too, with similar restrictive conditions!

I was really interested in your reflections - the church I used to be part of was also Toronto'd (it started while I was away in Romania, I came back and couldn't get my head round it at all) and it lasted a looooooong time there before calming down.

[Kathryn]

Good to have you back, even sporadically (though the irony of your waiting till the day after I'd finally tidied up my links is quite noticeable!)

[Jane]

Welcome back - You have been missed!

[SpiritMists]

I have the same ambiguous relationship to blogging that you do! Thank you, though, for this post. Perhaps one day we will find the strength that we need in an online community---I hope I do so that I will blog more regularly.

Many wonderful blessings on your newly ordained status. Blessings.