Singing New Songs

It feels hard to believe, but today was my last Monday at college of this academic year. One whole year has passed already and I am halfway through this particular New Song. The next New Song beckons - I watched my Twitter feed this weekend fill with pictures of new deacons and priests ordained in cathedrals all around the country and that will be me next year, assuming all continues to go well. The conversations with the diocese about curacy have started and I find myself gulping down a mixture of anxiety, excitement and disbelief that, in a year's time, I will have moved church, left college, bought a cassock and a dog collar (or two), and be setting off on the next part of the adventure. To be honest, I still feel new. I still can't quite believe that this is my path now. It was not expected. It was not anticipated. It was not an ambition held for years. God has led me this way and I have to trust he will continue to lead me. I am following where he leads because ...

I have never been diving but, at the moment, I feel like a deep-sea diver, who has spent a reasonable amount of time under pressure in the deep - I am slowly resurfacing, taking time to get used to normality again and thinking of the wonders that I have just experienced. I knew that Advent and Christmas time would be busy in this new life of mine but nothing had completely prepared me for the extent of the stretch and the sense of eyeball-bulging tiredness that would be the result. I left for a week-long college residential just as Advent was starting and, thanks to the shortest-possible Advent (what with Christmas Eve actually being the 4th Sunday in Advent), came back to full-swing preparations for Christmas services and events. Since then it has been a rollercoaster ride of services, school assemblies and carol services, community and churches-together events, whilst trying to organise family things and plan ahead for next term! By the time I got to lunchtime on Christmas D...

Ever wondered what the definition of bleary-eyed looks like? Look no further..... This is me pondering my New Normal - at 6.45am yesterday morning, waiting for the train to London. I will be doing this journey every Monday in term time for the next two years and so, although I wasn't outside the front door, it still felt right to mark my "first day at school", in the now time-honoured fashion. 6.45am doesn't sound too bad when you write it down but it felt much earlier than that, as I'm not a great morning person at the best of times. Getting up and getting going has always been M's strength, not mine, and so my 5.50am alarm yesterday got short shrift and a few choice words from me and a quietly knowing chuckle from the sleepy form next to me! The early start was worth it, though.  I really loved my first full, proper day at college.  I think it's probably safe to say that everyone took things gently for us newbies but we did have real lec...