part time priest

lent in the time of corona

There’s a much more serious feel to Lent now. Normally I enjoy Lent as a time to focus on some new practice or helpful habit like (for instance, this year) listening to a poem every day around 4-5pm (that’s the lull in the day when I’m tipping inexorably from productivity to sleepy down time (know…

taking a moment

Visited a pleasant town with nice coffee shops. Took the car. Drove slowly. Read my book at a window seat facing a sunny street, not wearing my dog collar, not looking at my phone. Ignoring deadly viruses and failed impeachment trials I perused a new painting on the cafe wall. Smelled my flat white. Noticed…

how much should a priest work?

It might seem an odd question, but it’s often quite difficult to categorise what is ‘work’, and how much to ‘work’ when you’re a priest, or even if the word is at all helpful to describe what a priest does. Having recently changed posts from part time, to ‘full time’ (and no, I haven’t worked…

thou shalt not be distracted

Recently the Church of England published a ‘digital charter’ encouraging online behaviour to be consistent with values of kindness, respect and tolerance for different views. As one headline put it: ‘Thou shalt not tweet in anger’. It was all helpful stuff, but stopped short of reflection on the possible spiritual effects of spending large amounts…

coming back to my rest

The first time a wise minister suggested to me that all ministry should flow from a place of rest, I had no idea what he was talking about. I probably thought, ‘it’s alright for you mate, you’re retired’ (which he was). Nonetheless I decided to think about what he said, ponder it, chew it over….

your wound, your blessing

They say that a cracked mug mended, is stronger along the glue line than it was before it broke. Like the wound has somehow made it better. We have a number of cracked mugs in the utility room which have yet to prove this theory. I buy strong glue. Usually it comes in two tubes….

crying in church

Recently more than one person has told me of what invariably happens to them when they go to church. Namely, they cry. I hope the services aren’t that bad, obviously. But no; something is going on and I have been wondering what it is. It could be something to do with silence, prayer and release. Although…

St Luke: love, loss and healing

Today the Church remembers St Luke, writer of the gospel of that name, and of the book of Acts. Luke the physician, healer of bodies, whose subject was Jesus the Healer-Saviour. As a boy’s name, I hadn’t come across Luke much before 1989 (apart from Star Wars, obviously). That year I taught a Luke in…

the stories we tell ourselves

I had a virus on my laptop. To be specific, a browser hijacker. It meant every time I logged onto Google to open any internet page (which is probably in a normal day, about 30-40 times) it reverted to a bogus homepage, pretending to be Google, in Google colours, with weird shopping button and invitation to…

in too deep

From time to time someone asks what is the ‘greatest challenge facing the church today’ or the church of the future, or some other construction of the same kind of question. It’s a fun one to wade into, but the best answer I ever came across was the best, I think, because it was so…

in it together

I’ve been doing “The Exercises” and I don’t mean pilates (I do that as well) but the Exercises of St Ignatius, a sixteenth century saint who founded the Jesuits. Ignatius was a romantic and a knight who dreamt of glory and heroism in battle. (He was probably a 4 on the Enneagram, which is why…

on the rights and wrongs of busy priests

There’s a trend for clergy to decry busyness and I get it. Being busy has become a badge of honour, especially among the middle classes. For some reason, lots of people also want their priest to be busy and they naturally assume that you are, so you go along with it, because it makes you…