Roughly three and a half years ago I was invited to be a keynote speaker at a conference for newly accredited ministers, and told I could speak on anything I liked, so long as it was relevant to pastoral ministry.  At the time I was mulling over various thoughts about 'authenticity' and how that is played out within the role and responsibilties of pastoral ministry.

Circumstances meant that I had to withdraw from that confernece even before I had begun to prepare for it, and the invitation has never been repeated (which is perfectly fine, in case any of the organisers are reading this!)

Over the summer I made some progress on some empirical research exploring how ministers have managed the interface of 'public faith and private pain' which led in turn to the title of the paper I have to write for the international conference I will be attending next February - 'Public Faith and Private Pain: A Quest for Authenticity'.

Last evening I was involved in an innovative project where people bring photographs they consider to be significant in some way and use them as a jumping off point for a conversation.  More to follow on this in a few weeks time, but perhaps inevitably with the photos I chose, the question of authenticity emerged.

And so, three and half years on, or thereabouts, I have come full circle, kind of, and am considering the same topic with very different insights and resources.

Somewhere along the line, I derived a mental image for faith development and/or theological reflection that is a spiral staircase where the vertical axis is chronological time (tautologous but you get my drift).  As life passes you ascend (or descend I suppose, but in my head I go upwards; you can only go one way) the staircase, which may or may not be uniform in pitch or diameter (bet you wish you'd done A level tech drawing now!!) passing and repassing the same point but at a different level.  There is no sense that later is 'better'  or 'more mature' but it does have the potential to be 'richer' with more to mull over and new insights to take forwards.

Maybe it's a daft image, but it works for me, and helps me make sense of the cyclic and linear nature of life in all its fullness.