Friday night

Do you ever have times when it all feels too much you need to escape? I am writing this on a Friday night. Two hours ago, I looked at my desk and the pile of stuff on it, a washing basket full of dirty washing, a house where you can write your name in the dust and a front garden that looks like Dungeness! I decided after a long week, I hadn’t got the energy to do anything and so I went out to the Brewers Fayre for my tea and some me time. I have come back fed, watered, and refreshed. The pile of stuff is still there, the washing still dirty, the house still filthy and the garden, well, that still looks like Dungeness, but I escaped for a while to find renewed energy.

Mother Theresa had a famous reading in her writing called “Tempested” in which she reminded her readers that Jesus said we will never be overcome. Sometimes we need peace and space away from the problems we have to remember that. Someone said to me on the way to a meeting last night it was her last meeting before the summer. I am glad meetings lessen over the next few weeks and we can slow down a little. Perhaps we need in the summer to take more time to enjoy the world, feel less guilty for not doing and don’t feel we are failing when we need to take some time out. 

We are coming to the end of what has been a crazy year and a half in our Circuit. I will not have to go to Bexhill every day come September! It would be easy for me to say “ my new colleagueTricia Williams is coming!” – but then pile on pressure on Tricia so she arrives to so much stuff she burns out by the end of September. The trick is to take time out together so that we can discern priorities and what is important for our time and deal with it calmly. But I take this opportunity to thank my “normal” churches for your understanding since April last year of an unusual situation which meant you have had less of me than you hoped.

In these summer months, I invite us pondering tonight, to take time, take time out, even an evening. We will discover you come back to our “stuff” refreshed!