Moments of transition

We travelled on Friday night to Cambridgeshire from Hailsham, after six months of living in the manse on Windsor Road. It was hard to leave. We worked hard, as we did when we left the manse in Hastings, to leave it ready for the next person to move in easily. It felt very odd handing my keys over to Jenny, the steward at Hailsham. We are now in an Air B and B annexe. It feels like we are on another holiday. We are actually in the village where we shall be living for the next fifteen months. The house we are moving into can be moved into on Wednesday when our stuff is delivered, and also stuff out of storage, which I’ve not seen since last October: three quarters of my books!! 

Packing up and moving on is always hard. By Wednesday we will have had twenty three moves since August last year. Adapting to sudden new circumstances is also hard, especially if we had no choice but to embrace them. I’m looking forward to building myself up over fifteen months without appointment being stationed in The Fens Circuit. It will be a privilege to gently work with the eleven, mostly small and rural, churches as I build myself up. I pray I shall be able to enter stationing in the autumn for 2020. But it will take time to adapt. I still deeply care about my people who I’ve tried to care for over the last seven years in the Hastings Bexhill and Rye Circuit, I didn’t want to leave at all. But sometimes hard decisions have to be made and you just have to see what happens after you’ve made them. 

Points of transition happen suddenly. There’s a sold board outside my mother’s house! It will be very strange not to have this house which has been part of my life since I was born, anymore. We need when things change some certainty and assurance. 

Psalm 143 is helpful here.

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
    for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
    for to you I entrust my life.
9 Rescue me from my enemies, Lord,
    for I hide myself in you.
10 Teach me to do your will,
    for you are my God;
may your good Spirit
    lead me on level ground.

We remember that God holds us at those times we think we can’t cope with rapid change and we feel the ground is far from level! On Thursday, I had to go and be at a family funeral. One of the readings was the summary of love from the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians. We were reminded in the service that love never fails. At times when we haven’t a clue what is going on, we hold on to God who as the old hymn says is working his purpose out. Times of transition, moving, sudden bereavements, illness, certainties taken away need us to be held and to know in the end it will be okay. 

In his book The Dance of Hope, William Frey, a retired Episcopal bishop from Colorado in America, recalls how he volunteered to read to an older student named John, who was blind.

One day, Bishop Frey said, I just had to ask him, “How did you lose your eyesight?” “A chemical explosion,” John answered, “at the age of thirteen.” Still curious, Frey asked John, “How did that make you feel?” John responded, with brutal honesty, “Life felt like it was over for me, I felt helpless and I hated God with all my heart. For the first six months, I did nothing but stay in my room and I ate all my meals alone, by my choice. Then a curious thing happened. One day my father entered my room and said, ‘John, winter’s coming and the storm windows need to be up. That’s your job. I want those hung by the time I get back this evening or else.’” Then John’s father turned and walked out of the room and slammed the door. John reported that he was so angry that he was thinking, “Who does he think he is? Who does he think I am? I’m blind.” He was so furious, he decided to do it. “I’ll show them. I’m gonna try to do it and I’m gonna be not only blind, but I’m gonna be paralyzed, ’cause I’m gonna fall. I’ll get them.” He felt his way to the garage and found the windows and located the necessary tools.

He found the ladder, and all the while he was muttering under his breath, “I’ll show them. I’ll fall, and they’ll have a blind and paralysed son. That’ll be great payback.” Eventually, he did complete the goal, the assignment; he did get the windows up before evening.

But the assignment achieved more than that. It achieved the father’s goal as well. John reported that it was at that point that he slowly realized that he could still work and even more so that he could begin to reconstruct his life. As John continued to reconstruct his life. As John continued to tell Bill Frey his story, John’s eyes, his blind eyes began to mist. “Seven years later, I learned that something else important had happened that day, that the entire day my father was no more than three or four feet from me.”

So on the first few days of a huge transition for me, I need to be held, I need the Father no more than three or four feet from me, I need to believe the declaration of faith  above I found the other day in Celtic Daily Prayer, I need to remember while I’ve left a role I loved, I might have left my mark on some things there, I need to embrace change and see what the next page of the story is. 

Over the weekend we’ve explored Wisbech, and the village we shall be living in. It will take time to adapt! Not least to living somewhere where everyone knows who you are...

We told the owner of the Air B and B we are in for a bit we had a table booked in the village pub. 

“I’ve just been down there,” he said, “and I’ve told them about you!!!”