Retreat time

I’ve been on retreat today and have greatly enjoyed being in community with Steve and Cate who along with their friend Chris have made me very welcome into their home in Nordelph just outside Downham Market. They open their home to troubled or wearied souls, give them space, food, and a bed for the night. I’ve enjoyed walking by the river and sharing conversation at the dinner table and sleeping a lot! 

I wanted to come away for 24 hours to get my head round the stationing process. We will hear on Thursday where we have been matched to for an appointment next September. Any minister who goes through stationing will tell you it is a scary, unsettling yet exciting time. For a while your life, job, family home, everything is uncertain. You wait for the Chair to ring on Thursday evening with a match. You wait for 9am on Friday morning for a Circuit to invite you to come and visit. I have absolutely no idea where we will be going at this point although I’m  relieved there are some good possibilities. In the end I’m under the discipline of the Conference and will be sent where the Church thinks is right. We shall see! 

 

I love that Thomas Merton poem “Lord I have absolutely no idea where I am going.” I walked this road this afternoon. I don’t know where it goes to. But it was good to travel along it and see what was on it to experience: mostly quietness and the natural world getting on with life. I guess over the next couple of weeks I will travel to a place I don’t know, be open to what’s there, take in what might be on offer and see if I and they want to travel together on the road a bit further. Most of the 100 plus Circuit profiles talk about thinking outside the box, doing things differently, having some vision. We need to be brave enough to set out first! 

Retreating for a few hours has helped me see wherever we are sent, God’s people are there already. I will merely be part of the next chapter of a long story of faithfulness and care, and it will be a privilege to join the story and see what might be possible. 

Retreating for a few hours has also helped me see that just being able to enter the stationing process is an absolute miracle! At the beginning of this year I still couldn’t speak for long without coughing my guts up, I couldn’t walk very far without being absolutely exhausted and I hadn’t the energy or drive to think about tomorrow let alone contemplate going there. I’m now back on the preaching plan most Sundays, and I’m beginning to do some pastoral and support work in the Circuit, which feels really good. There were times over the last year I didn’t think I could do this full time ever again because I was so physically unwell. I’m so grateful to the people who’ve walked the journey with me: especially at the moment the good folk of the Fens Circuit who I’m loving quietly getting to know and gently help. 

I found the card at the top of this blog in a vegan shop in Norwich yesterday. It does feel, in many ways, I’ve been growing back. I guess my faith story is one of holding on when it was so really tough. Only now, over a year and a month since I collapsed in my kitchen unable to breathe, and going through what was depression, am I believing there might be a flourishing experience round the corner. God is good. He’s never abandoned me. Because my God does darkness and death and crap, light and life and healing and hope and energy feel brilliant if you’ve walked through those things.

So thank you Steve and Cate for the gift of space and hospitality. Jesus went off to sort his head out. I really think we need to if we have big stuff ahead. The stationing process isn’t facing death on a cross like he was facing, but it’s still pretty mad! Please pray for us this week and next and for those who meet to do the work of matching us all. It’s an awesome responsibility for them and we often forget how much work is done to get it right. 

Night everyone.