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Sensing the spark (or not)
As of the 1st of September I have been allowed to begin applying to vacant charges. Of course I had being doing some preparatory work and had a not so short list of likely places. I confess it was a somewhat arbitrary collection, based primarily on my ability to access their parish profile from a […]
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Milestone? Hurdle? Whatever!
The last one has been passed/jumped/got through. (Apart from the minor matter of actually finding a charge that is.) I’ve never taken the view that the path to ministry is a series of hoops to jump through or boxes to be ticked. It is, rightly, a formation process. But it is, nevertheless, marked with critical […]
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Time
I’m wondering what has happened to the month that has passed since I last posted anything. Once again, it’s not a case of nothing happening; more just a case of lots of little things which eat away at the time and are, in and of themselves, not really worth a blog post. But I suppose […]
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Funerals
About this time last year I happened to be reflecting on the idea of ‘privilege‘ when it comes to funerals. Well, since starting probation, I’ve had the privilege of taking 17 funerals and participating in one other. Not that I’m keeping score, but I’m beginning to see truth in the old adage that where two […]
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Time to think
I’ve just had a week off and did very little – an ideal way to spend a break. The relative inactivity did give me some time to think though. In a few weeks I have my interim review and that reminds me that this final placement is hitting the half way mark. If the second […]
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Normal service will resume
I hadn’t realised how long ago I’d last blogged anything. It’s not that I’ve been overwhelmed with work and it’s not that nothing interesting has been happening. But nevertheless, I haven’t felt terribly inspired to blog about anything. Somehow writing about the ‘normality’ of life seems to be contrary to what blogging is about. When […]
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1 of 4
This past weekend has been the first or four probationers’ conferences. (The next one, including the candidates’ conferences, will be seven of nine thus establishing the uneasy link that we are being assimilated into the CofS collective. Apologies for the obscure trekkie reference. I am not a trekkie – my brain just makes these bizarre […]
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Tempus fugit
I’m beginning to get a sense of why those who are in probation begin to disappear from Facebook and the blogosphere. It’s not that I’ve been especially busy but it’s amazing how many things there are to eat into your time. I know it’s only been three weeks since the start of my probationary period, […]
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Getting organised
Since I’m being allowed a gentle start to probation, I thought I’d take the opportunity to get myself organised ‘administratively’. I’m not a natural organiser. I have a bunch of notebooks with no order to them where jottings of meetings get put – along with to-do lists and ‘notes to self’ and contact details and […]
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Endings and beginnings
Yesterday marked the last day of my final candidates’ conference: today marks the beginning of probation. Endings and new beginnings are, I suppose, the very marks of a Christian’s story. That grand meta-narrative of scripture is a cycle of endings and new beginnings; enslavement and redemption, death and resurrection.