Busy May

Frederick Leighton, Flaming June

And, at the beginning of June, I can say I've settled in with pleasure.

I'm pretty regular at Christ Church, Walker, and at Common Ground where I've become volunteer volunteer co-ordinator (any enquiries, offers?).

I've been to the Cluny, more than once, the Tyne, and the Free Trade; to the Laing Art Gallery; to Northern Stage (twice) and to the re-opening of the Tyneside Cinema, though not yet to a film. Newcastle is a good place to be.

And I've done my first freelance funeral, to the annoyance of the Anglican Diocese who wish to protect the Anglican brand from boundary crossers.

Specifically I think the diocesan authorities do not want people who are Anglican priests taking non-religious funerals, or people who are not priests claiming to to be so as they take a funeral. From my self-interested perspective it seems to me that the brand they are protecting is not the kind of (and certainly not the quality of) the funeral but is the capacity of the Bishop to control who may and who may not claim to be Anglican. It's about episcopal power.

And I've finished a pamphlet for the MCU about the proposed Anglican Covenant (we're against it). It's been a busy month.

Ascension

May 1, and what has seemed like a bit of a holiday has now officially become unemployment. I'd better find an income from somewhere.

Still, I celebrated the end of my contract with the C of E with a pint and a meal in the Bascule and taking an elderly lady shopping in Sainsbury's (but not in that order) and then by going to church in the morning.

Just for a moment I had a sense of real time out, of being in a sacred space separate from all that was going on, from all the ordinaryness of the day and its noise and demands. It vanished as quickly as it came but it was a real boost.

And then to Common Ground where, amid the usual cloud of people - one person needing help with a court case, another had been thrown out of the place where he was staying on someone's floor when the landlord caught wind of it (being destitute he was entitled to 10 pounds and a small bag of food for a week), with meetings and people hanging around out of boredom or the desire for company, I helped review the volunteering process.

And a new phone to play with.

Definitely a good start.

Not a vicar

When he knew I was leaving a Pentecostalist minister, for whom I have a lot of respect, said,

I trust that you can cope with the fall out of not being a vicar, as I suspect there is little support towards this major transition. It is a huge change to go through.

Well, I'm sure I can cope but it's a kind thought.  The reality has been a total lack of support while I was a vicar and so there's not likely to be any when I leave.  Some people have had much worse.

I find I go shopping thinking to myself how good it is to be anonymous, not just that I don't know anyone but also that no-one will know who I am irrespective of whether I know them.

One day I hope to shop without bothering.

New life, new start, new questions

It's a new start.

I've moved from the small market town of Retford in rural Nottinghamshire to Newcastle upon Tyne, home of MadPriest and not so far from themethatisme.

I've stopped being a vicar. I haven't yet sorted out a new identity, but I'm pretty sure it won't elide job and life quite so thoroughly.

It will be strange, after almost 12 years, to squeeze the vicar out of me as water out of a sponge. It's not just the day to day work (some of which I might continue anyway) but the assumptions people make about vicars, the relationships that are possible and those that are not, and the spectacles through which I see the world.

I went to Church in Walker on Sunday. I was surprised to find a Common Worship 8.00am service. There was no reason why I should have been surprised except that I am accustomed to BCP at that time of day. It will no doubt take a while before I can stop looking at things from, so to speak, the front of the Church and learn to see from the pews (well, chairs in this case).

The walk there and back evoked a haiku:

Early morning light
body and bone long for warmth
willing the sunrise

Eternity, Blake

Eternity

He who bends to himself a joy

Does the wingéd life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

From Proverbs from Hell

No bird soars too high,

if he soars with his own wings.

William Blake (1757-1827)

Ceaselessly

Falling as rain falls

on a mountain

storm, shower, mizzle

words cataract through ravines

stream across hills

pour into the wide embrace of rivers

as wild woodcarvers gouge, plane, polish the land

till, with a child’s delight,

dissolving in the indefinable, illimitable sea.

Ceaselessly.

Infinity

I cannot

reach the end of words :

when words are ended

                            so am I.