led assemblies for 400 children, with just 15 minutes to give a Christian message relevant to age, culture, religious diversity, and without any teachers present;

chaired a meeting, at no notice, for which I had no minutes;

sat at the bedside of the dying, and held the hand of a mother who had lost her baby;

led a service in a home for EMI patients, who had no concentration, but a love of singing hymns

led funeral services, Communion by Extension, home communions, and taken the diaconal role at every Eucharist;

preached on occasions when there were children, and/or families, and only adults present;

taught small groups of adults;

written a faculty application for the Diocesan Advisory Committee;

negotiated on a significant purchase, agreed a price, renegotiated, and started a fund raising campaign.

I expect there are things I have forgotten. And what is amazing is that this is no different from the work that most clergy undertake. It’s what I love about my job, and what is really tiring. No wonder we need a broad skill set! Pastoral care, administration, appropriate teaching for both children and adults (and all age), presentation and teaching skills, conflict resolution, biblical knowledge, and so much more. Not to forget time spent in prayer…  I am trained for diversity!

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Apparently we had more people at my church than the Catholic one the day before, but our soup-warmer was faulty, so the beautiful butternut soup made by a URC friend was served rather cool.  Some churches served scones, others biscuits, but most served soup.  And you could see the metaphorical score cards for whose was the best

This seems to me to be a metaphor for the Christian church in post modern Britain.  The in-crowd compete with each other to produce the best experience of church, completely forgetting that what we offer is not product but relationship.  It is the warmth of our relationships, the love which we share, that is our calling.

Which is all a bit of relief, after the cool soup debacle.  Another gaff to add to the curate’s list of failures – of course my greatest strength is that I can laugh at myself!  And my gift to the church is a redefinition of failure and success….

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Now that I am wearing a dog collar, people keep asking me how it feels.  When I said it felt a bit tight the other day, a friend commented that yes, of course, because it keeps me leashed to the church!  Usually it just seems to illicit funny looks (especially when I’m driving our sporty little two seater…)

Today, though, it resulted in a very special encounter.  A crowd of kids at the pedestrian crossing acknowledged a woman coming in the opposite direction with such obvious enthusiasm that I asked her if she was a teacher.

She was, and then she bought me lunch, and told me that she had just got engaged to her partner of 20 years.  I offered to pray for them, and she asked for my details.  I don’t think we would have had that conversation if I hadn’t been wearing a dog collar, and now I’ve met my first person in the parish who isn’t a Christian, and I have my first people to pray for.  I’m so excited….

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What makes the picture so fascinating to me, aside from the great depiction of women serving Jesus, is the fragmented nature of the story.  Because I like to bring order to chaos, I would start with at the beginning of the Holy Week story, and move on through the story to the end.  But this depiction is haphazard, jumbled, and not at all linear.  The stories appear out of time, almost as though the glaziers were learning their job (which of course they were, since St Mary the Less was the parish church of the Cathedral workers).

Some of me is irritated by this disorder, and some of me refreshed!  I can’t decide… There should be order, but perhaps it is simply good for me to see the story in a different way, without the interpretation that my ordered mind expects.  Like seeing a story I know too well, from a different place, and being surprised by it again.  Like being an ordinand too, looking up at the story played out, morning and evening in the chapel.

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There is a strong pro-Palestinian emphasis at Greenbelt, which was not interpreted. I think it has been in the past, but this year at Greenbelt, it was not. I cannot comment on the Greenbelt leadership’s support or otherwise of Israel, but without interpretation, the publicity gave leave for anti-Israeli sentiments to flourish. I heard them vocalised often. The situation there is simply too complex to offer only one side of the war.

I missed collective prayer and worship. Sunday morning’s service felt musically pedestrian and was made ‘creative’ by an abundance of unrelated symbolism. There was little in the way of prayer ministry, and an emphasis on maintaining Greenbelt, rather than a proactive challenge to a group of rich, educated Christians to get out there and change the world.

I’ll leave the little grips (queuing, prices, consumerism, commercialism!). And I’m glad there are people who benefit from Greenbelt, and have their faith enlarged by it. But I won’t be going back.

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Last Sunday, the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary (used by us Anglicans, but also by the Methodists and the Roman Catholics) put together the lectionary readings which fulfil a liturgist’s dreams. Isaiah 58:9-14 speaks of the importance of keeping the Sabbath day for worship; Hebrews 12:18-29 suggests that worship should be offered in reverence and awe; and Luke 13:10-17 shows how Jesus honoured the Sabbath by offering an act of worship which included a healing. Not everyone was impressed – the healing certainly disturbed the awesomeness of worship, but it did inspire the worshippers to turn to God.

Worship needs to balance awe with relevance. There is no point in creating beautiful worship if God is not allowed to meet the needs of the worshippers. There is no point in relevant worship that fails to honour God. How exciting to envision worship that encompassed both Sunday by Sunday.

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This year, George tried to move on to fresh pastures (Poplar and Limehouse), where he came a poor third to labour.  And the good people of Bow have returned another woman to parliament:

Rushanara Ali is the first ever Bangladeshi born MP and the first Muslim woman MP.

Hurray!

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At the moment, the vicar knows the names of the whole congregation (what a gift, to remember names so effectively) but if the church continues to grow that will inevitably change.  Will that irreversibly change the dynamic of the church, and will that change be positive or negative?  Or should the church remain at about this size, and continue to assess and change its focus, adapting to the needs of the community around it.

There is an assumption in church leadership that bigger is better, but is that right?  In a place without congregational members who are educated and honed in leadership, would it be more appropriate to espouse the ‘small is beautiful’ model?  Answers on a postcard, please….

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Last week at college we were asked what we were passionate about. Obviously a God-question, requiring a God-answer rather than a relationship/culinary/work one. And I realised that a lot of the things I have been passionate about in the past have faded into the background.  I know that I may be passionate about them again, but while I’m at theological college there doesn’t seem much energy for the people that I would like to be sharing Jesus with, and haven’t recently.

I think I may be caught in an Easter Saturday experience.  The day before Easter Sunday is a grey day, a waiting day, when it seems wrong to laugh or play (the Lord is no longer with us), but it is only for a time. He will return, but at the moment I bide my time, and wait in hope and expectation for the new thing that he is doing. Roll away the stone, Lord; I look forward to the sunshine of a new dawn.

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A few friends around me are gay or lesbian, and I don’t envy them the awful sexuality double speak they have to do in order to survive in our Church of England. In true Anglican style, we don’t want to discriminate against people who are LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender), but we don’t want them to be sexually active, even within stable, monogamous partnerships. I welcome inclusively. The bible appears to teach many things that I would not. But I remain under authority as an ordinand and in time to come, as a paid up member of the clergy.

I fear that my nearly 7 year old friend will see discrimination still at work when she is old enough to understand sexuality. In the mean time, friends suffer exclusion and robbed of a voice. This isn’t just an intellectual argument: this is about people with whom we have relationships, friends, neighbours, colleagues. And as a church we must find ways to hear their voice, personally and institutionally.

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