Sabbatical reflections #7: threshold spaces

Mirfield I

my body

disciplined   enveloped

in a new habit

gifted    imposed

by this blessed place

my pace

slowed

down stone-lined corridors

my steps

shortened   quietened

yet insufficiently for

the nervous

squirrel startled

amid the bracken

my breaths

lengthened    quietened

not to crash

the echo

in the pause

in the plainsong

call and response

in the treetops

my shoulders

bent profoundly

as I enter under

the bowed branches

glory

to the father

and to the son and

a shimmer

a splash

"an iridescent

little downpour"

on my

anoracked head

preceding

my reaching

to cross

myself

drenched with

prevenient grace

"it is easy

to believe

in such moments

that

water

was made

primarily

for blessing" *

(* quotes are taken from Marilynne Robinson, Gilead)

"Here, there is holy water for making the sign of the cross, on entering and leaving the church.
What would it be like to do the same on entering and leaving the woods?
Or some of our community spaces?" (Thursday, 10am)

The week's silent retreat was, indeed, a changing of gears, a slowing of my pace, which allowed me to begin again, to pay better attention, both inwards and outwards. One of the things that was quite remarkable about the week was how much the "sacred spaces" of "church" and "woods" flowed, blurred, merged into each other. Retreat turned out to be a special kind of "threshold space", opening wider my eyes, ears and heart to the "threshold spaces" all around us. Most of the rest of my three months' sabbatical would not - quite intentionally - be spent in and around "churchy" spaces. But the profound "formation time" of this first week, at Mirfield, would, I hoped, ready me for encounter in all kinds of other spaces, more "worldly", more mundane, and just as beautiful and heart-breaking.

"Sabbath reminds us that we are made for joy, for beauty, for glory: to shine out with the particular glory that is ours and ours alone and that will reflect, in a way that no other life can, something of the glory of God" (Nicola Slee, Sabbath, p.156)

The journey of the week at Mirfield gifted me, among many other gifts, a renewed "in touch-ness" with what Wendell Berry's poem called "my song" - what the Mirfield compline liturgy called my "first love"... That renewal has unfolded in thanksgiving, in confession, in adoration and in intercession for others. In short, a rediscovery of what we generally call "prayer"...

"O Love,
open my eyes to look for you,
my heart is restless in longing for you,
let me seek you out and find you,
hold me close, that I may rest and delight in you,
take me by the hand, that I may go with you where you lead me;
open my ears, to listen for the song creation sings,
fire my heart, that I may hear and sing my song within it,
still me, that I may hear others to song,
filled to overflowing with your beauty,
your joy, your glory."

(Thursday, 8pm)

"During the hushed solemnity of Evensong,
the sound of raucous laughter

echoes through the near-empty, cavernous church.

Bridesmaids,
sheltering from the rain in the church porch,
waiting for their big moment -
destined for the college chapel, just across the lawn.

Later into the night,
the Vigil of the Resurrection -
high-spirited children
playing outside,
the wedding party in full swing.

It is Pentecost."

(Saturday, 9.45pm)

One of the remarkable things about the Community of the Resurrection's church in Mirfield is the Reconciliation Chapel, its semi-transparent, sound-proofed screens (installed in 2015 to enable confessions and one-to-one counselling to happen safely inside) covered with beautiful etchings by artist Mark Cazalet, telling the story of Mary Magdalene's encounters with Jesus. The third of three panels depicts the Easter Sunday scene in the garden: "the instant of recognition, when the unknown becomes the face of the beloved, and all comes back into focus". The artist, in his commentary on the scene, directs our attention particularly to the little details between Mary and Jesus. "I have always liked the element of the resurrected Christ being busy gardening, sowing and tending the first things he is concerned with. The work of a gardener speaks of order, fruitfulness and the seasons' cyclical change."

I am not, in any sense, a gardener. One of my resolutions I brought home with me from retreat was to find new ways of getting my hands dirty, literally. We have a fantastic "Green Connector", Cath, working on our estate, whose job is to bring local people together in our green spaces, and to support people to develop and share their passions and gifts to grow things and tend our growing spaces. So far, I've mostly been involved in the fundraising and project management for Cath's post. I want to find ways of getting "stuck in". Being present in my neighbourhood in new ways. Learning a skill that I'm clueless about. 

That was another of Mirfield's gifts to me. And it's connected to something much, much wider too. I've mentioned already that one of my "sabbatical hopes" was to try and get "up to speed" with eco-theology, in ways that can connect with, inform and transform both my thinking (extending the idea of "radical receptivity" to the more-than-human world) and practice (particularly our community-building work locally, and the life and mission of the church here - but also, and perhaps most profoundly, my day-to-day living). My experience of sacramental confession at Mirfield was of a "burden-lightening", a liberation - but not a "wiping out" of habits that I had come to be aware of as destructive. Forgiveness here has been a freeing up to begin to live differently. Only the beginning of the process of transformation. Another Wendell Berry poem, also quoted in Nicola's Sabbath book, pointed the way forward...

"To save yourself heartwhole
in life, in death, go back
upstream...

...to the waters of origin...

With the land
again make common cause.
In loving it, be free.
Diminished as it is,
grant it your grief and care...
So late, begin again."

(Wendell Berry, This Day, p.299)

Sabbatical reflections #6: into the woods

I've already mentioned Nicola Slee's book Sabbath, and one of its central questions: "where for you are the woods, the wilds?" Nicola's book takes its structure from one of Wendell Berry's sabbath poems: each chapter dwells with a different verse, or part of a verse, of the poem.

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places

where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

(from Wendell Berry, This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems)

Berry's poem, and Nicola's book, guided me through my week's retreat just as much as my retreat guide, a brother from the Community of the Resurrection, did. And although the woods behind the retreat house were far from 'wild' (many of the trees were old, but most had been planted intentionally, and most of the paths through the woods showed tell-tale signs of human construction - steps here, a little wall there), they too became an invitation to explore, to journey, to be still, to look and listen, to encounter.

"I wonder if this is natural, very normal, for this stage of a retreat? Space cleared, mind cleared, of the more mundane, day-to-day worries and 'to do' lists, the stuff of our deeper desires [and fears] surfaces and prowls around the clearing?" (Thursday, 7.40am)

"the invitation into the woods is surely an invitation to play... Sabbath is the invitation into the free, wild space where we may play with the magic of the woods, explore off the beaten path, enter the unbounded space of our hearts and imagination" (Sabbath, p.60)

One of the many 'surprises' of the retreat week for me was the reminder of how much my spirituality and sexuality are entangled. Thirsting. Fainting. Aching. Longing. Wanting. Words that occur again and again in the Psalms. But words that are intensely embodied.

"longing... For more than the homely image of the loving Father putting his arm round my shoulder and kissing me on the forehead - as welcome and as 'settling' as that image is, for me. It's more akin to the image of the wild Spirit tugging me by the hand and leading me, playfully, into the wild woods. Playfully? Yes. But more. Seductively." (Thursday, 8.30am)

I spent much of that Thursday walking with the Song of Songs. Its loving, and seeking and not finding, and seeking and finding, and holding and kissing and not letting go.

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away... for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come..." (Song of Songs 2:10-12)

I was, I may have mentioned, a nerdy, socially awkward child. My discovery of a real passion for faith, for God, for Christianity, liturgy and worship, happened to coincide with the teenage years in which I would repeatedly fall head-over-heels for girls who - without exception, I think - never felt the same way about me. And being a nerdy and socially awkward teenage boy, I repeatedly made a complete mess of navigating the fine-yet-blurry lines between 'friendship' and 'something more'. There are women in the world (most of them, thankfully, still friends in one way or another) who were, for much of my teens, the long-suffering recipients of excessively wordy love letters. But over the same time period, I was also writing diary entries about my faith in just such wordy and passionate terms.

It's perhaps little wonder, then, that as a slightly-more-grown-up adult, with a rather more stable love life and a ministry as a priest in the Church of England, for a long time I looked back at my teenage years and wondered, with just a trace of concern, whether the passion of my Christian faith at that time might just possibly have had something to do with the lack of passion in, er, other parts of my adolescent life.

And from this distance, aged 43-and-a-half and with the generous space of sabbatical to think fresh thoughts in, I still think that's a pretty likely hypothesis. But. It doesn't mean the holy and intimate God, who was my loved and beloved, wasn't then - and isn't now. One of the dangers of doing faith for a 'job' is that it is possible, over time, to slip into believing that, if I wasn't paid to do it, I wouldn't do it. When faith becomes rotas, and committees, and the arrangement of chairs, and strategy, and all the other stuff that is a necessary part of the role of vicar (and it's not just true for vicars!), it's all too possible to lose sight of the love story between God and all of God's creation, at the heart of everything. Sabbatical time, retreat time, time in the woods, reminded me of this fundamental heartbeat. Every night at Compline in Mirfield, the final prayers included asking God to "renew [the Church] in her first love". At the heart of that retreat week for me was just such a sense of being renewed. And for that I'm thankful.

But unlike my teenage faith, the faith of this sabbatical-rested 43-year-old is perhaps liberated from at least some of the seriousness I had back then. Marriage and children have gone a long way to awakening a playfulness, the possibility of fun, in life for me - but both marriage and children can all too easily lapse into the domain of the serious too. Diary sessions. Having to plan in even the days off. Co-ordinating childcare. Deciding on secondary schools. Making sure homework gets done. And so on. This sabbatical time has re-awakened in me the desire to play with my nearest and dearest. To find new ways of playing, if the old ways no longer fit.

Among other things I brought back from my retreat week, was the decision (or better, enthusiastic acquiescence to growing pressure!) that we needed to get a family cat.

Sabbatical reflections #5: confession

"it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it...
This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it."
(Marilynne Robinson, Gilead, p.32)

Monday was my first full day on retreat at the Community of the Resurrection. Early on that day I had realised that I was carrying a 'heaviness' with me - a heaviness that was at least three-fold: I was feeling enclosed, cut off from everyone, everything that usually sustains me; I was aware of how much I had left behind, back home and at work, that felt 'left undone', half-finished, unresolved; and, if I was honest in my deepest depths, I was feeling unready for an honest encounter with God.

On Tuesday afternoon, after another lengthy daytime sleep ('nap' would be understating it!), I found myself writing a confession. You'll understand if I don't share the details here, I'm sure! But I will say that it covered everything from my presence and attentiveness to my family, my neighbours and my congregation members, to some of the relationships in my life that are at times more strained, to my over-reliance on a car and my slowness to respond to the urgent challenges of our planet-destroying habits, to my insufficient attentiveness to white privilege and racism - to acknowledging that the book I was supposed to be finishing by the end of July was not going to get written any time soon. If there was one headline that encompassed most of the detail, it was my failure to receive my fellow human beings, my own inner life, and the earth itself, "as the precious gifts of God - to be treasured, and to change me - that they all are".

When I had written out all that I could write, I went for a walk in the woods...

"Walked through the woods in the pouring rain. The rain poured down my eyes like tears, drenched my feet like a Maundy Thursday foot-washing. Cleansing, forgiving rain. For me, yet indiscriminate - for all who choose to walk in it, or who are caught up in it unchosen.

I've come to see the heavy burden of guilt I've been carrying. Some of it I can see ways to amend - some I'm not so sure. I've never made a sacramental confession before - I'm not even sure how to do it. But tomorrow I will ask for help to do so." (Tuesday, 5.20pm)

Having resolved to 'make my confession' with my guide when we next met, I woke up on Wednesday morning feeling really, really nervous.

"The best comparisons I can think of are:
- my first date with Janey - the risk of offering / exposing a good deal of myself, in the hope/longing for acceptance, love, reciprocation, desire - but genuinely not knowing what the response would be
- going into a meeting / conversation to address head-on a conflict, or a failure
… and I guess, in a way, it's a bit like both..." (Wednesday, 10.25am)

It didn't take long...

"OK, so... That was, on one level, utterly straightforward. I read some words off a card. I read my 2 pages of confession [that I'd written the day before]. [My guide] suggested I took the rest of the day "off", other than reading the story of the Prodigal Son, from the Father's perspective. He read the words of absolution. And I left. Back to my room, in less than 15 minutes.

On another level... I could feel the tears welling as I came to the end of my bit. They held off, until half way down the corridor. And then they came, in floods. I'm writing this with red eyes and a snotty nose..." (Wednesday, 10.50am)

"But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion,
and ran and embraced him and kissed him...

"But the father said.... 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him;
and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet;
and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry;
for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."
(Luke 15:20, 22-23)

Sabbatical reflections #4: "what are you looking for?"

"What are you looking for?" (John 1:35-39)


"Waking from sleep after about 3 hours. The first hour or so was resting, listening to a (noisy!) lawnmower just outside the window. After that, deep sleep! Waking, my first instinct is to reach for my phone. 'What are you looking for?' What are you seeking, longing for, desiring, wanting, needing...? Mostly to see if Janey and the kids have texted. Some contact. Touch. Being in touch." (Monday, 4.45pm)

In our household, we often talk about the 5 'love languages', different ways of expressing and embodying our love and care for each other: 'gift giving', 'quality time', 'physical touch', 'acts of service', and 'words of affirmation'. They're a helpful tool for us to remember that the ways in which I naturally express my love for you - and the things I most readily appreciate in the way you express your love for me - may not be quite the same as your natural ways of expressing love, and the ways that you most want or need me to show love to you. They can also, in self-reflection, helpfully highlight where we're feeling a bit of a 'hole' in our lives - ways of feeling loved that we're missing, lacking - but without instantly jumping to pointing the finger at someone else to make it better.

I'm conscious that the 'love languages' I long for, want, need, seek, crave the most are touch, words, and the kind of loving attention, presence, company that is here labelled 'quality time'. I struggle when I feel 'out of touch', physically and communicatively, with those with whom I share, to broaden an over-narrow phrase, a 'love life'. Some of the deepest longings I've plumbed in psychotherapy, and longings that have been close to the heart of my work in Hodge Hill, have been about being in the midst of a community of people 'in touch' with each other, present to one another. Home-making. 'Growing loving community', as our church mission statement puts it.

And entering this guided retreat, I was very conscious too of the ways in which I've found myself less present than I long to be. Less present to my wife and children - by not being around as much as I want to be, or being around, but with laptops, screens and phones getting in the way of us being truly present to each other. Less present in my neighbourhood and church - partly through various 'steps back' to support and supervise others, but partly also in responding to invitations to travel, teach and speak beyond the parish.

In John chapter 1, Jesus asks the first disciples, 'what are you looking for?', and they respond by asking Jesus, 'where are you staying?'. It struck me that these are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps, as well as asking us, 'what are you looking for?', the question, 'where are you staying?' is a question for us too. Where are you abiding? living? calling 'home'?

Nicola Slee's book, Sabbath: the hidden heartbeat of our lives, was one of just three books I got out of my heavy holdall during the retreat week. Over the week, on so many levels, the journey of the book resonated with where I found myself at the beginning of my sabbatical, with the journey of the retreat and its questions and themes (both those offered by my guide, and those which emerged in all kinds of unpredictable ways), and with the physical surroundings of the retreat house where I was staying. Three questions from the book, in particular, framed the beginnings of my time there:

• where is the place where you feel most at home, most truly yourself, the place that tells you who you are in the world?
• where is the place to which you seek to return for rest, renewal and recreation?
• where, for you, is the woods or the wilds? [Sabbath, p.73 - in reverse order!]

These are simple, profoundly important questions. They are questions that I realised on retreat that I'd not been asking myself enough over the last few years. I find it fascinating, right now, that the locations of 'home' (our 'abiding place') and of 'the woods / wilds' might overlap, as well as being different. And fascinating that the Spirit of God is both the 'wild spirit' and 'home-maker' - as well as the 'guest' who helps, enables, encourages and equips us in the work of 'home-making' and hospitality.

Sabbatical reflections #3: fleeing and staying

"Where can I flee from your presence?" (Psalm 139)

Looking back on the journal entries from my week of 'individual guided retreat' (at the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield), one of the things that strikes me is how quickly my internal (emotional, spiritual) state seems to shift - in tandem with the 'slowing down' that I've already noted. The retreat lasted just six days, which at times during the week felt like an eternity, and while I can point to very little activity during that time, a lot happened nevertheless.

My days were made up, mostly, of sleeping (during the night, but also napping during the day), eating, wandering in the woods, gathering for prayers in the church (four times a day), plenty of time for solo reflection and a tiny bit of reading (alongside the Bible, I allowed myself one novel - Marilynne Robinson's Gilead - one reflective book - Nicola Slee's Sabbath - and one book of poetry - Wendell Berry's collection of sabbath poems), and about 10 minutes each day talking with my 'guide'. This could hardly be called 'busy'. But on my first full day there, Monday, I wrote 13 pages of my journal, and I can trace significant internal shifts even over the course of that day.

On the first morning, at 8.15am, after breakfast, I was all set to escape...

"I've already contemplated leaving. Going home. Or getting on the bike and cycling a good distance. There's a cycleway by the River Calder that would take me to Hebden Bridge. Then Rochdale. Then Manchester. Or, in the other direction, towards the sea - at least, that's what Google Maps told me this morning!

But this is a Benedictine house. They have taken a vow of stability - a vow that I, just for a week, am being invited to adopt. Staying, not fleeing. Being here. Within these walls, the confines of this place, and no other.

Something about that weighs heavy. But not that it is too little - it is too much. "Too much God" - was that how [a wise friend] described going on retreat? …

I want to explore this place - to see what treasures are hidden in its grounds. And yet part of me resists. Am I afraid? Of disappointment? That what there is, is all there is? Or am I afraid of who I'll bump into, walking in the cool of the day, and of discovering that I'm naked?"

By 9am, I had found my way to the woods behind the house - a maze of winding pathways that seemed to reveal new routes every time I went to explore them again.

"Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?" (Psalm 42)

"Part of the heaviness is things not done... And all those who have taken on extra responsibilities, for me to be here... Part of me longs to just sit down with the laptop and write. Finish something. The article. A chapter. Whatever. Part of me longs for the wind that is blowing the trees around me to just blow those commitments away - postponed, if not cancelled. But those commitments are relationships. Friendships. Trust. They will not, should not 'blow away'. But I do need them to 'settle', somehow. Is that what 'confession' means? 'We have left undone those things we ought to have done...'?"

At 10.30am I met with my guide. We briefly introduced ourselves to each other. And then he offered me two short bible passages, to take away and 'sit with', 'chew on': Deuteronomy 2:7, and John 1:35-39.

Back in my room, I read them and re-read them, consciously slowing down, resisting, my habitual tendency (entrenched after 6 years writing a PhD!) to skim-read, dissect and move on. And I found myself staying with just one phrase of the Deuteronomy passage:

"these forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing"

I'm 43. "These forty years" is effectively my lifetime, more or less. I found myself looking back over that lifetime, remembering parts of the journey that had been long-forgotten, submerged. Remembering some of the harder stuff - lots that I've attended to, wrestled with, in 9 months of psychotherapy, but is by no means just 'past history'. Remembering also so much that has been good, so many blessings. And remembering too a faith, a conscious journeying with God, that I can trace back into early childhood. A faith journey entangled, as a teenager especially, with other parts of my identity: the nerdiness of someone who was a high achiever academically and loved words; and the social awkwardness of an only child who moved schools a lot and was a bit clueless about intimate relationships. But in the remembering, a profound thanksgiving - "the Lord your God has been with you... has blessed you in all the work of your hands... you have lacked nothing". A blessing often only half-acknowledged.

"Walking the woods again tonight, I took a flight of stone steps that, at first glance, looked like it came to a dead end at a wall. In fact, at the wall the steps turned a corner, and then the path bent round into a clearing, overlooking houses. At the other end, it narrowed again, and took me over the top of the big locked gates I'd peered through earlier in the day. A twist and a turn, and I was back at the bench overlooking the valley. A little sigh of relief, the gentlest thrill of excitement, at finding a new path, at coming back to a familiar place from an unfamiliar direction, at the secret treasures of this confined space not yet being exhausted." (Monday evening)

Sabbatical reflections #2: changing gear

My sabbatical started with the May half-term holidays - a week of adventures with the kids, and various combinations of friends and wider family, climbing hills, whizzing down water-slides and, over the second weekend, cycling 70 miles around the Isle of Wight with my father-in-law Jim and brother-in-law Steve, celebrating Jim's 70th birthday.

The day after the cycle ride - my first Sunday off work! - I drove Janey and the kids home to Birmingham from the Isle of Wight, and after a swift bit of re-packing, continued driving further north, on my own now, to the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield, in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales.

I arrived at the door of the Retreat House, my laptop in a bag on my back, and weighed down by a holdall full to almost-overflowing: enough changes of clothes for the week in one corner, and the rest of the space taken up by a small library of books. My plan for my time there, among other things, was to read and write for a journal article due to be submitted the following week, and maybe to write two or three chapters of my book, the deadline for which was also fast approaching.

A kindly monk answered the door: a gentle smile, and eyes clear enough to see right through you. We move slowly through the house, down corridors, through doors, up staircases. On our journey, my welcomer points out the common room, complete with well-stocked bookshelves. "But we don't encourage reading on a guided retreat." Not weighty words, merely clarifying. But stirring within me a lurking fear: I have things to do; things that need doing. My laptop and book-laden holdall suddenly feel much heavier on my shoulders.

By the time we reach my room for the week, the penny has begun to drop for me; a lesson not just for this week, but for the whole of the 3-month sabbatical that begins here: there is an invitation here, which is also a challenge, a struggle even... to not do; to not need to do; to not be needed to do...

My other realisation on the way up the stairs was that "silent retreat" meant silent. Before leaving home, with Janey and the kids we'd agreed to try and get in a daily phone conversation. But my arrival at Mirfield clarified that the most communication I could reasonably allow myself would be a brief daily text conversation.

"And then the bell rings, summons to Compline. Navigating the warren of corridors. The smell of incense. And the opening out into a cavernous space - the church. A cavern that echoes with my every cough, and sniff, and fidget [predictably, I'd come down with a cold in the first few days after stopping work!]. That echoes with the words of prayer, so that the pauses are needed to let the echoes fade to silence, to make space for the next phrase to be said. Compline. Familiar yet strange. Navigating a different book. Realising that we've entered Ascensiontide. And complex plainsong that seems to defy the rubrics given. A secret code known only with the practice of time. I am a stranger here. Not a tourist. A guest, welcomed. Not yet at home."

This first entry in my journal I headed "Dis/orientation". A sense of being a bit lost, but also discovering a new direction, at least for a time. But looking back, I've found myself also talking about "changing gear": a slowing down of my walking pace, of my breathing, of my activity, of my over-active brain. A slowing down not just for its own sake, but for becoming more able to pay attention. A slowing down for sabbatical time - but perhaps (and this first stirring deepened in the weeks that followed) even for the "ordinary time" beyond sabbatical...

Sabbatical reflections #1

From June to the end of August, I've had the immense gift of "sabbatical time" - a whole three months of space, away from my usual pattern of working life as vicar in Hodge Hill, to rest, reflect, recharge the batteries and, in temporarily "disconnecting" from some aspects of life, to "reconnect" with some other vital, but perhaps neglected, dimensions of what it means to "live fully". I jotted down some of my hopes for this time, towards the end of May, in a blog post here.

The last few weeks of sabbatical time were spent with my lovely family, on various holiday adventures together. So it's only now, "re-entering" working life in September, that I'm beginning to reflect in a more focused way on what gifts "sabbatical time" has given me. As I've said to one or two people already, the sabbatical felt like it was a time in which many seeds were planted, deep down in the ground, and so far they have barely begun to poke their shoots above the surface. But in the coming weeks I want both to look back on what some of those seeds looked like, and begin to discern what new growth might be emerging.

As with most of my blog posts, I'm writing this mostly for myself. But if, by chance or the mysterious workings of the Spirit, there might turn out to be resonances for anyone else who happens to read this, gifts that somehow spread and multiply (a bit like the more beautiful of weeds!) - then I'll be doubly thankful.

(I'll try and remember to label sabbatical reflections with the "sabbatical" tag, as there may well be other posts that end up here in the coming weeks!)

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.