Singing New Songs

I went to see my Grandma yesterday. She enjoys spending time in her "happy places" - those bits of her memory where she feels secure and able to talk freely - so a lot of our conversation covers her childhood and her family and friends as she was growing up. However, there was a moment yesterday where she seemed to have a moment of complete clarity. She looked at me and said, "Just imagine. Your Grandpa and I started as just two people. And look at what grew from there!" Three daughters, three sons-in-law; six grandchildren and now six grandchildren-in-law; and, at the last count, eight great-grandchildren. Even taking into account the fact that my Grandpa is no longer around, that is a family of 27 grown from one wonderful, loving marriage. That is their legacy of love and experience. And it's not just about family. I have been feeling that way about long-lasting friendships recently. I have been trying to catch up with old friends here and there over t...

As you will know by now - from my Blog's name, if nothing else - I was a singer before all of this newness started. If you want an idea of the kind of thing I did, take a look at this  (but please don't feel you have to!). At work in a recital in Southern France in 2014 This was a real job, which took time and effort. I worked hard to keep my "instrument" in shape and have lost count of what I have spent on coaching over the years; I made sure I looked the part; and I studied for qualifications in both performance and teaching so I had credentials. I wasn't a big star and was by no means the best professional singer but I was (and continue to be) grateful to God for the gift of a voice I can use and that other people seem to enjoy hearing. As I mentioned in a blog post last year , as I began to explore my call to ordination, it felt right to lay down any active pursuit of performing.  I don't regret this one bit but it has left me with a bit of a g...

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 ...

There are moments in life when the old and new come together; where what was and what is hold the same space for just a moment. I have been helping a little bit with my Grandma who, at the grand old age of nearly 92, has had to have an operation on her eye. She can’t be left alone at night and needs copious drops during the day, so we have shared out the night and day shifts, to make sure that she has the care and support she needs. When I was a non-sleeping baby, over 40 years ago, Grandma would come over once a week and walk the floors with me all night, to give my parents some sleep.   It's a special privilege to be able to return the favour on a smaller scale (at 92 she sleeps better than I did at 1, I’m pleased to say!). As I sit, tapping away on my laptop now, listening to her old clock ticking loudly as it has done for as long as I can remember in every house I remember her being in, there is a real sense of the old and new colliding. The more hazy Grandma’s sh...

I've had a week or so to think about my first Holy Week and Easter in my new church. With essay deadlines just beforehand and a busy schedule, it all felt quite intense. But the intensity I felt didn't come from the busyness. I seemed to feel every conversation, every talk, every hymn and song much more keenly than I would do normally. The sense of walking through the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Day was very real - following the steps of Jesus as he went, inescapably, to his crucifixion and then the joy as he rose again on Easter Day. I have felt like layers of meaning and understanding have been peeled back slowly and deliberately this year more than ever before. On Maundy Thursday evening, there was a communion service with washing of hands (rather than feet), followed by stripping of the altar and the rest of the church and then a silent Watch.  My wonderful and thoughtful supervisor, knowing that much of this was quite new to me, invited me to help throughout the se...

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...

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...