Years and years and years it's been. But why start a new blog when the old one is just sitting there gathering ether-dust?

It's May 2020 - there's a global pandemic.  I never want to hear the word 'unprecedented' again as long as I live.

I started a new job one week in to the lockdown which is supposed to help us get through this pandemic as well as we can. I'm now the Vicar of Huddersfield (yes - I rolled all the way down the hill to the town centre).  It's quite unusual to move jobs within the same Deanery but I'm absolutely certain that this move reflects God's continuing call to serve, and God's care for me and my growing family (I've become a grandma since we last spoke - and my oldest baby boy is now taller than me).

I'm doing some blogging on the parish website - in particular there's some 'getting to know you' stuff on the "Love in the Time of Corona" blog thread and some bits on their way on the "Stories of Song and Scripture" thread.

I think writing here might be a good idea - but I thought that the last time I was here - we'll see.

Motivational Talk

.... by which I mean some of my very nice real world and tweet world friends telling me to make my blog more visible on t'interweb and, oh yeah, write some more stuff on it.  So that would be motivational in the gentle thump with boot sense.

I've been struggling recently to decide what to write here on the blog because I like to have clear, concise, well formed (if not always well informed) ideas that I feel make a bit of sense, before I write. However in the light of getting my first appointment (will be vicar of St Stephen's Lindley from September 21st), trying to get my oldest boy into a new school, trying to redecorate a vicarage, make wills, prepare for my first trip abroad in 9 years, plan a trip to Greenbelt and carrying on being a curate (why is there no Carry On Curate???) - I have relapsed into unfeasibly long sentences or long periods of silence!

@changingworship has had a point tho - I should be blogging about all this. I hope it will help me make sense of it all, and how despite all the above being good positive things for me and my family, I am currently wavering between grumpiness and ambivalence.

Down - but not Out

Having launched myself into blogging with great enthusiasm in January I found myself suddenly lost for words at the beginning of February.  Two of my parishioners died 10 days ago, on the same day. Both were wonderful men, much loved, who had lead full and interesting lives, who had loved the church and worked hard for it for many years.  One lived a good long life, and the other one not long enough. That is all I will say of that - but the grief and shock which has struck our community has been heavy indeed.

I have always known that at times of great emotional stress that my voice is lost to me.  I am a singer - and a talker - my voice is a precious gift to me which brings me great joy of itself and in service of others. However at times when things are really good - or really bad - and at the indefinable times when I have felt closest to God's presence - it is gone.  My blogging voice has been gone too this last 10 days - it seemed there was no reasonable or respectful way to use the typed word.

Both kinds of silence - the vocal kind and posting kind - seem in some way to be a gift rather than an absence.  It is like an insistence that I just be in the place, be it thorny and uncomfortable or otherwise, without the pressure of mediation or self-narrative.

"The grace of God comes close, to those whose grace is spent,
When hearts are tired or sore and hope is bruised or bent."


The voice is back - and by the grace of God life now goes on.