Rectory notes This is the strangest ‘Rectory notes’ I have written. It is still January, and I’ve only just written February’s notes, yet I’m now writing March’s. I start a month’s mini-sabbatical tomorrow. I will be back by March, but the magazine deadline will be gone. ‘Why didn’t I delegate this one to someone else?’ I ponder.
Yet it offers a chance to reflect. The mini-sabbatical is a gift, for which I am deeply thankful. In my ten-plus ordained years, I have glimpsed the dark side of the institutional Church; this is its caring side: a gracious response to emotional attrition and more house moves than we care to count, and an unsolicited recognition that replenishment was needed.
So tomorrow I step away from responsibilities, in the parishes and in training. I will switch off the engine which seems constantly to be running. I will get out of the car, and stop, and listen to the quiet. It will take time to hear the silence, I am sure of that. The noise of the engine will still be drumming in my ears. And it is a good engine, after all, for it is the sound of people and their lives, the ebb and flow and joys and pains of existence. What about my own existence, when all this is absent? Will I like this silence? What will I find in myself – what bright lights might shine anew, what dark shadows be revealed in hidden corners?
‘Travel light,’ a friend advised. These words themselves feel like light. For how else are we to sense natural rhythm, discover new treasure, or glimpse fresh vistas? How will I hear new tunes, if all I listen to is the old? A month now seems but a short time for journeying, in the scheme of such things.
Some of the time I will travel physically alone. Most of it Dawn and I will travel together, and we will value this bonus space and time to be shared. We will often be blessed too by the company of others. How will the gift of their voices, their love, and their laughter help us sing new songs?
By the time I read these words in the parish magazine, I may know some of these answers.
