Sabbatical hopes

I'm writing this two days before going on sabbatical. Although CofE clergy have (in theory) the opportunity to take a sabbatical every 7 years, this will be my first one in 18 years of ordained ministry. I thought it might be helpful to log, at this point, my own hopes for the next 3 months - for my own sake, as some kind of 'baseline' to look back on; and just in case anyone else is interested in what I'm doing - and not doing - and how it's going once it's begun.

Right now I'm excited, a little nervous, and very tired. The last few months has felt something like living on an ever-accelerating hamster wheel, attempting to finish some things that really needed finishing before now, and making sure everything else is handed over - today's regular day off mopped up the very last of the 'to do' list, and a few things just resolutely failed to get done. And there's also been a strange 'feedback loop' thing going on: as the sabbatical has drawn closer, I've been more and more aware of how much I'm needing it. It's something more than the tiredness of the moment: there's been an increasing awareness of a cumulative build-up over 18 years of ordained ministry, 9 years in the current post in Hodge Hill, around 6 years of writing a PhD - and probably other things too.

So my first hope for my sabbatical is rest. I've only read the first chapter of Nicola Slee's wonderful new book on Sabbath, but I've a good hunch that it will be one of my guide-books for the next few months. Sabbatical. Sabbath. Rest. As a good and wise friend put it last week, sabbath time is for refraining from creating, refraining from destroying - and for embracing opportunities to celebrate. As someone who is hard-wired, I think, to be busy, to be spinning plates and generating 101 ideas before breakfast, sabbatical time will be permission - and challenge - to stop. My body needs it (I'm aware of the inevitable cold/cough/sore throat brewing - one of the little but familiar indicators that I'm stopping). And my soul needs it too. I make no claims for the life of a vicar being any busier than any other job, and I'm acutely aware of the particular gift of grace that sabbaticals offer those of us in stipendiary ministry, a gift that is not available to most of my friends, colleagues and neighbours (including two of those I supervise regularly, and my wife in her own paid work). But there is certainly something about the role - and about the way it has unfolded here in Hodge Hill - that has meant that it has been a constant presence in my mind and heart - the 'what has been' and 'what could be' as well as the 'what is happening right now'. And letting go of all of that, for a little while, feels like a profoundly good thing for me. I am conscious, also, that I'm immensely blessed here with the wonderfully wise, competent, and gracious colleagues around me - both lay and ordained, paid and voluntary - in whose hands I can leave things with utter confidence and trust.

A second hope is to re-connect with God. After half-term holiday week with the family, I'm going on a week's guided retreat up at the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield (near-ish to Leeds, but far enough away to be properly rural, I think). I haven't done a week-long guided retreat since I was 18. I'm looking forward to the space, to the daily companionship of a guide, and to the opportunity it offers to transition into the sabbatical - to consciously and carefully do the 'letting go' of the entanglements and concerns of daily working life, and to consciously and carefully enter into a different rhythm, a rhythm that includes regular prayer. I'm not someone that finds prayer remotely easy. I pray best when I'm with other people - and in the encounters of daily life. That's deeply rooted in my personality, in my particular, God-given way of being in the world. But I'm aware that sometimes that can also be an excuse, a way of hiding from the honest, vulnerable exposure of all of me to the one who is closer than I am to myself - the one who knows me utterly, and yet loves me unconditionally. I hope that some of the rhythms I (re)discover in sabbatical time will extend into the time beyond - the time of returning to daily life and work, but hopefully not exactly to 'business as usual'.

A third hope is to be able to be present to my family - my wife and our two children - in ways that have at times become stretched a bit too thinly. It's usually me who does the 'wake up to school drop off' time in the mornings, but rarely have I been around from the end of school all the way through to bedtime - at least in ways that are free of the distractions of emails and phone calls, and without the need to hurry everything (and everyone) along, to make it out to an evening meeting. And the gift of weekends (Saturday and Sunday!) for us to get away as a family! Not to mention almost all of the six weeks of school summer holidays to play with together. And my intention is that this is not just about expanses of time, but about the quality of attention I can give too. I'm very conscious that my habits of phone use, and engagement with social media being a large part of that, come close to resembling addictive behaviour - or might possibly even have tipped over that line. Another way in which I hope sabbatical time will help re-shape the life that follows on from it.

Fourth, having discovered a love for cycling over the past 2 or 3 years, I'm hoping to get out on my bike a couple of times a week - between beginning and end of school. Maybe with a picnic, maybe finding a nice coffee shop, maybe with a book in my bag - but not much more than that. To inhabit the bodily rhythms of peddling and breathing, to enjoy the liberation of going somewhere but it-matters-not-where, but out in the fresh air and away...

Fifth, there is a book to write. It's a book that's almost written in my head, but it needs to get down on paper and its deadline is fast approaching. This one sits a little uneasily. I want to get it done - I think I will mostly enjoy getting it done (I'm one of those strange people who does actually love writing). But it does feel like a task. 'Refraining from creating' it certainly isn't. I could let it fill the whole time, but am determined not to let it do so. I also know there will be a sense of liberation when it is finished, birthed - when I am delivered of it.

Sixth, there are a handful of wonderful opportunities for travelling, listening and learning. Two weeks in South Africa, in and around Pretoria and Cape Town, visiting churches, communities and projects, and meeting with neighbours, community workers and theologians - with a focus on people and places that are intentionally bridging race and class divides. My hunch is that what people in South Africa have been wrestling with for decades, we in the UK (we white folk in the UK most particularly) are just beginning to get our heads round. And as well as the other-side-of-the-worldness of South Africa, sabbatical also offers the opportunity to visit and spend time with some communities and practitioners in this country who are wrestling with similar stuff. One of the questions I'm keen to ask in those conversations is: "how do you, in this place, enable people to listen on a deep level to each other, and share their stories with each other?" It feels to me like it's one of the most urgent questions of our time - and I'm keen to glean a bit of practical wisdom from people and communities who've been working at it for a while.

And seventh - seven feels like a lot, but there's something a bit apt about seven for a sabbatical - I'm looking forward to reading, and engaging practically, in an area in which I feel rather late to the party: ecotheology. There are a number of reasons why this has finally caught up with me with some urgency as well as fascination. Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion have been the 'tipping point' for me to finally appreciate the sheer emergency of the human causes of climate change. Hannah Malcolm's winning 'theology slam' entry was a vital spur to engaging theologically with the climate emergency. Our local efforts to connect our community-building with our neighbourhood's green spaces and the work of growing things and tending our environment, have been given a new impetus with the appointment of our 'Green Connector', Cath Fletcher, and the abundant possibilities for linking up growing, cooking, eating and developing community, have begun to blossom and flourish here, on a radically local level. And in our home, we've begun to take seriously the practical challenges of reducing our plastic usage and our carbon footprint - led by Janey and the kids. In so many related areas I feel like I'm playing catch-up. But in my own theological work (through the PhD and beyond), the theology and practice of 'radical receptivity' seems now to point inexorably towards the ways in which we humans can, and must, be radically receptive to the non-human creatures around us and the earth itself. This sabbatical, this sabbath time, seems to be a really obvious time to start trying to join up a lot of these dots in ways that integrate heart, head and hands.

So that's it for the moment. Seven hopes for a sabbatical. I'll try and 'check in' via this blog, at least occasionally between now and September, with a snapshot or two of how it's going.