A new week

The start of my sabbatical was planned around my friend and colleague, James' 60th birthday celebrations. They were perfectly timed so that I could have a couple of weeks in France, get home for the weekend, join the celebrations and then get going on the UK leg of my travels and pilgrimage.

I've not written about the 'theme' of this time of Study Leave or Sabbatical. A number of people will know that I orginally had planned to walk the Portugues Camino from Lisbon to Santiago de Compestela. However, thanks to Brexit, I would need a couple of visas if I were to do the whole lot (which I wanted to do) so the easiest thing was to 'lift' that time out and plan something else. With my connection with Taizé, I turned to one of Br. Roger's journals - 'The Dynamic of the Provisional' with these words, in particular touching me:

'Contemplative waiting upon God leads us to the acceptances necessary each day: acceptance of our state of life, our growing older, acceptance of opportunities lost. Regret itself is transformed into a dynamic act, repentance, which stimulates our advance.....it is only in contemplative waiting upon God that we can find a new momentum.' 

I loved the phrase 'it is only in contemplative waiting upon God that we can find a new momentum.' So that is the theme of these few months as I spend time in contemplative waiting upon God.

I begun this next phase with a few days camping with friends. This has become a bit of a yearly event, in May/June time at a wonderful campsite just up the road to home. No light pollution, an oasis of calm and still. From there I started in earnest with a couple of days in Canterbury.

On route to Norwich, I popped in on my long-time friend, Fr Clive who was good enough to buy me lunch at Rochester (in the cathedral) as well as showing me the two churches in his care in the Kent Countryside.

Onto Norfolk and Norwich. The county of my birth; it is a place that I hold great affection for. My grandfather was a parish priest here, my aunt and uncle and parents married and me baptised. I'm being joined by Nikki for a couple of nights and on Sunday we will worship at the church my grandfather ministered in until his death in the early 1970s and where he and my grandmother are buried. I was fortunate to get to Norwich Cathedral for evensong (thanks to some speedy cycling).

During evensong, there was someone in the set of pews opposite mine, across the aisle, who was loudly commenting throughout. He seemed agitated. During the announcement of the anthem he became more vocal, so much so that he interupted the spoken introduction. He then wandered, out of my site, down the quire. I wondered what had happened to him. On my way out of the cathedral, I saw a the Dean, still in robes, talking with them. I was glad that there had been this engagement. It is a challenge for all in church life when this happens. On one hand, it was an interruption of worship but on the other, here was someone who clearly needed to talk, to be listened to. As clergy, when these things happen, there is often a period when we think to ourselves 'how do we deal with this?' - often people don't want undue attention; but they do want the opportunity to talk, to be heard. The individual and Dean were in my prayers last night. I hope the individual found some peace.

Over night there was a good amount of rain. I'm walking into the city centre for a wander, time to pray in the cathedral before meeting Nikki. Some photos below of my last few days.