Singing New Songs

I did some curacy training recently at which we were asked to ponder some big questions. One of those big questions was, "Do you feel good enough?" This is an issue I have long pondered over many years. I kind of know what the answer should be but God seems to take me on a different journey each time I ask myself the question.  This time, the journey took me along all kinds of paths, meandering around personal and ministry stuff, all bathed in the shadow of the news and the coverage of how women are treated and what, if anything, we can do about it.  And, as I meandered alongside this big question, a phrase met me:  "Stop trying to be a good girl and be God's girl."  This sounds obvious but to someone like me who has always tried to be "good", it's actually something of a revelation.  There is a difference.  So I wrote another poem to try and articulate this.....  Good Enough Be a good girl. Don’t make a fuss.   Be a good girl. Stay sma...

I was ordained at Coventry Cathedral on the evening of the 30 th June. It was an extraordinary moment – Spirit-filled, love-laced, and awe-inspiring. I stood behind the communion table looking down the Cathedral, ready to undertake my first task as a deacon, and held the hand of one of the other new deacons next to me as we sang And Can it Be and took in the enormity of what was happening to and around us. That sense of privilege and awe at the enormity of the role before me has not diminished, nearly two months on. I have been on holiday for a week or so and I’m just starting to work through some of my first reflections on this new life…. 1. Lots of my ordained friends told me that I would feel “different” after ordination but I didn’t believe them. I should have done. It’s not like I have become a different person or have suddenly sprouted a new, more holy outlook. I am still me – with all the flaws and potential for gaffes that I always had. But at the moment of ...

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 ...

Very recently I went on a silent retreat..... (I'll wait while those who know me finish laughing.....) Better? OK. I wasn't planning on going on a silent retreat but my college allocates you a retreat every year and, whilst you can express a preference, you generally have to just go with what you're given and trust that it's where God wants you to be. Well, I had put this retreat high-ish on my list, mainly because it avoided me being away at half term, but had missed the fact it was a silent retreat. That came as a bit of a shock when I received the confirmation email but I decided that it's good to try anything once, and went along, equipped with books and a general sense of curiosity of what it would actually be like to keep silence for 40+ hours.   I'm pretty sure that it was no coincidence that the wifi went down as we all arrived. The retreat centre is set in beautiful but pretty remote (and therefore almost signal-less) countryside so I c...

St Abbs Harbour This is my church today. The waves breathe in and out over the rocks and breathe into the harbour.  The wind breathes over the scene, lifting seabirds higher and then bringing them down gently. As for me, I am breathing in the clean, salty air and breathing out the cares of the last half term.  Breathing in the quiet and calm and breathing out the busyness of the new routine, the essay deadline, the reading, the meetings and rehearsals, the busy life that my whole family lead. I am taking the time that I have today - this precious, rare moment of not having to be anywhere or do anything - to breathe in all that has been good about this term so far: the new friends made, the things I have learnt, the kindness and hospitality of my new church. I am taking time to breathe in the sense of being God’s beloved daughter. I know that it’s always there but it does me good to consciously look for it and feel it, listening to him, knowing he deli...

This week saw my first New Testament Greek lesson. There were about 50 of us intrepid early risers gathered in Lecture Room 2 at 8.30 on Monday morning, the rest of our cohort having decided (possibly wisely) to take the extra hour in bed, rather than get up to do a purely optional course. And, by the way, my journey felt even more of an adventure on Monday morning, thanks to a fabulously eccentric (award for understatement of the century) man on the Victoria Line Tube train.  He was wearing what was clearly a home-made cone hat made of foil and coke cans and brandishing a stick wrapped in the same kind of thing. I was only on the train for 4 stops or so but in that time he had managed to hold forth, in a high-pitched, slightly odd voice, about what "space" was and how the doors aren't just closing on the train but they are closing to heaven and we're all too late. As I got off at Victoria, he was just starting on a monologue about what peoples' eyes were do...