Four weeks of experimenting with use of prolonged silence in worship are now over.  I am really proud of how people stuck at it, even those who found it difficult or uncomfortable or unnatural.  I know, from the feedback I've had that many found it liberating, energising and encouraging.  So I have some ideas of how we might take that forward in the future.

We also had a nearly silent communion - simply a telling of the story with bread and wine shared in silence at the appropriate points.  It wasn't entirely successful, but people gave it go, and for that I am very grateful

Next Sunday will be a stark contrast - lots of action, lots of singing (well know stuff I hope, after the one this week I thought everyone in the whole wide world knew was unknown to all except one other person and me!!) and hopefully quite a lot of colour.

I love my church, and I love the willingness to try new things, just so long as it's not too much, too soon.... which is fair enough.

The last two weeks have been very busy - lots and lots of travel, conference type things, meetings, presentations and stuff; especially stuff.  And it's been good.

Last week was the BUS NSM event which provided some valuable revision on conflict resolution techniques,  tips and tricks on healthy decision making, and of which the closing communion service was very precious.

Monday this week was a day spent with the OBM doing quasi-monastic kind of prayer and support group and accountability group type stuff, and it was good.

Tuesday was spent with the CBM listening to ideas about one way in which ministers can be supported and encouraged as they continue to grow and develop through demanding ministries in ways that are healthy.  And it was very helpful to listen.

Last evening and this morning I spent time with the BUS BoM Task Group reflecting with BUGB's equivalent Team Leader on the work we've done on CMD up here.  And it was all good, helping things to drop into place in my addled brain.

Perhaps it was the Monday and Tuesday meetings that were the catalyst in a process I've been living with and through for a while now.  It's been hard, as a self-motivated, workaholic, creative, mission-minded minister comig to terms with the long term side effects of life-saving treatment that has left me with, among other things, poor(er) concentration, blurred vision, joint pain, lethargy etc.  As time has passed I have become more and more aware of needing and wanting to restore more order and structure to my working life, to dig fresh wells for my spirtuality (or at least to clear out the debris from the old ones). 

The last two weeks have really helped with that.  But it was a remarks on Monday and Tuesday from a woman minister that crystalised things.  In our trial cell conversation she spoke of her own discovery that how you are is OK, there is permission to be tired or dry or whatever, and that naming it is healthy.  In a chat on the Tuesday she to me, "it's really great that you feel you're starting to wake up."

Perhaps the last couple of years have been a bit dormant, and perhaps I have been reluctant to admit to myself the toll of all I've been through.  In the last few days I have spoken aloud quite a few times "but I can't do that any more" and it has been quite liberating... I can't work stupid hours, I can't concentrate for hours and hours, I can't read at high speed, I can't do things that make my arms or feet or back hurt (or hurt a lot anyway), I can't read in poor light... but I can be me and I can be refreshed and re-invigorated, and news ways of doing and being that are emerging that will, I hope and pray, enhance my ministry here at The Gathering Place.

Working with the lectionary gospel for the four middle Sundays of Lent.  Long, rich stories (my readers probably hate me by now!) of encounters between Jesus and various people named and unnamed, educated and uneducated, female and male, gentile and Jew, people with phyiscal disabilities and people without physical disabilties, people who are alive and people (well, one person) who are dead, people who worked out who he was and people he told who he was.  All that dualism being put to good use!

The ten minute silences have been engaged with, even by those who find it incredibly dififcult, and there have been some delightful responses to the pictures and poems we've shared.  I think that for most people, except those for whom either silence is scary or their constant companion at home, it has been valuiable to give it a go.  If nothing else, perhaps the experience of the person who lives alone is better understood by those who live with others.

I have been energised by the experiment, and have some ideas of things I want to try in the autumn (summer is pretty much planned already) that will help us explore other ways of engaging with scripture, other kinds of meditation, other approaches to preaching.  I'm not quite sure what that will look like, but it excites me - and I need a bit of excitement now and then!

Last Sunday's lectionary was the man born blind and we used this poem:

Through The Eyes of A Blind Man
by Virginia Haefner Wark

I saw a homeless beggar
On my way to work each day.
I never paid him too much mind
As I went along my way.

But this day he looked saddened
And his eyes began to weep
As he held his cup out pleading
To the people on the street.

I paused to ask this question,
"What virtue do you find
In begging coins from strangers,
Is it because you're blind?"

"Blind," he asked, "How silly!
It is they, it isn't me
Who cannot see the virtue in
Simple charity."

"Most people think I'm cripple,
Others call me blind
So work they will not offer
To people of my kind."
"No, I cannot see their faces,
Nor do I know their name,
But pity I have for them
For I can feel their shame."

"They pass me by each morning
And again, most every night,
Yet never stop to lend a hand
To a brother in his plight."

"Their hearts are full of apathy,
And little do they fear
That only for the Grace of God
They could be sitting here."

"I feel their footsteps pounding
As they go along their way,
All of them too busy to
Enjoy this lovely day."

"They will not hear the flutter
Of a sparrow's wings in flight,
Or listen to the love song
That it warbles through the night."
"Nor will they stop to listen to
The music of the breeze
As it gently plays its' harp stings
Through the branches of the trees."

"No, I cannot see their faces
Or the color of their skin.
I can only see the beauty
They possess from deep within."

"So I view my brother's virtue
As a soul that knows no sin
If he'll take the time to drop a coin
Into my cup of tin."

In my haste, I left him crying,
As I had to catch a flight,
But the thought of him still plagued me
Into the long, dark night.

Long before the sun would rise,
I set out on my way
To fill his cup with silver,
So to brighten up his day.

But the pale moon's light soon led me to
The place he occupied,
Where an empty cup of silver lay
At the beggar's side.

His eyes were no more weeping,
Nor his spirit racked with pain,
For the Lord in all his mercy
Had called him home again.

As I knelt there next beside him,
In the dim light I could see
That the blind man I'd been praying for
Was no one else but ME!

My heart became so heavy,
And my eyes soon welled with tears,
As I thought of all the needy
I had passed by through the years.

Right then I made a promise,
Though I knew not where or when,
Should a brother ever need me,
I'd not pass him by again.

The night now seemed so endless,
As the time was only three.
As I cursed the dark around me,
A light soon came to me.

I understood his message now,
And changed my life would be,
For only through a blind man's eyes,
Would I begin to see.

On Monday I spent a lovely day with the Order for Baptist Minsitry, a kind of neo-monastic diasporic community thingy, with whom I certainly want to 'journey' for a while to see if it is 'for me'.  It was a safe enough space to admit to 'spiritual tiredness' (there, I said it in public too!) and my need to find new wells or new buckets or something for refreshment.  I came away feeling I'd made a new friend (at least online), with a kind of confirmation of something (or a couple of somethings actually ) I want to try with church, and that energises and excites me.  During our chats, in a small group of five, we shared quite openly some of the challenges of the public/private interface in ministry with someone saying "sometimes you just have to put on the slap and get on with it"... a very pithy expression of what I concluded in my reflections for NZ.

Yesterday I had an interesting day with the College of Baptist Ministers, an embryonic 'professional body' that insists it is not a trade union (though some of what it says sounds a bit like one) or a replacement for Ministries Dept (though some people are certainly hearing it in that way) but I'm not entirely convinced I know what it is.  Parallels were drawn with the RCN (which is a union I think) or the RCP or RCS (which are learned bodies).  I think the aspirations are good, if sounding a little legalisitic and I am certainly going to think very seriously about signing up, largley because it does offer a sense of accountability (albeit epxressed in what seems a very 'male' 'functional' model).  If the law changes, and ministers become 'employees' rather than 'office holders' then organsiations such as this may prove important.  However, if the motivation for them is purely and simply projected legal changes and an increasingly litiginous society, then I am disappointed - we should be inviting people to covenant their committment to CMD because it's the right the to do, not because we want to protect ourselves from nasty court cases.   Alas, the timing and motivation suggest more of the latter than the former - even if the intent is, I am convinced, good.  At £75 per year, it's not cheap (it was pointed out to me it's about half what I pay the engineering institutions... but then I get paid less than half what I would if I were in industry) but I expect that once I've mulled a bit further, I will sign up, at least for an initial couple of years.

In between I got to watch 'Rev' sat next to the BUGB Team Leader for Ministries and his wife.... :)  Divine humour in every sense of the phrase!!