Curate Conundrums

  I had a period of very bad mental health recently.  We've all got mental health, but some of us have more than others! I had to take a couple of weeks off to regroup, I couldn't cope. I started crying often and felt overwhelmed. A sense of darkness that I'd never had before. I was hurting.  It wasn't anything that anyone had done. I love our Parish and both our Churches, nobody was being nasty to me. In fact the outpouring of support and prayer from our parish when I shared how I was feeling was wonderful. My Team Rector too, his support has been invaluable, and others who know who they are have supported me and encouraged me.  Stepping away was hard. That voice within said 'you're a failure, look at you, you can't even cope. Your job's not even that hard!' Of course that's not true. I know that, but it doesn't stop that sense in those of us who have a really destructive perfectionism that runs through them.  I packed my bags and trundled o...

  When you look back on your life how many promises have you made? One hundred, one thousand, one million? Perhaps some of them are to yourself, others might be to other special people in your life. Perhaps some of them might be legal. For example promising to pay a mortgage, or in my case abiding by that restraining order… In all seriousness we all make promises all of the time. I’m sure you could list them if you had time and a piece of paper. Promises are important, and we should try to keep them faithfully. Though, sometimes we don’t. Lent is a time of promises . When we say we will try to turn away from sin, perhaps we’ve given something up, or promised to take something else on. But here’s a question, have you ever made a promise to God? Because God’s made a promise to you. Abram had been walking with God a long time. He’d been following God and finally when he was 99 years old God visited Abram and said, I’m making a promise to you. I’m making a special promise with...

I love Christmas. Hands up who loves Christmas? Hands up who thinks Christmas is a little bit meh? Hands up who really doesn’t like Christmas? Hopefully I can persuade you why Christmas is a good thing. What if I told you that Christmas isn’t about presents, or commercialism, or stuff. I mean I’m a minister, so you’d probably expect me to say that. In fact most of us already know that, Christmas isn’t about presents. What is Christmas about then? It’s about love. What if I told you that Christmas is about God’s love for you, each and every one of you. The reason I love Christmas is because it’s a time of year when love between people is so obvious, people out buying gifts, thinking of others, spending time with families and loved ones, in the same way God’s love for us is so clear too. The baby Jesus being born is not just a distant event from a long time ago, but affects us today.  You might remember the words to O Little Town of Bethlehem ‘But in thy dark streets shi...

I wonder if John The Baptist was around today, what people would make of him? Would he get through the selection process criteria of the Church of England? Would he get through a Bishop’s Advisory Panel? I’m not really sure training residentially around lots of other people would have suited him, and then of course there’s his diet, would the kitchens be willing to provide enough locusts and wild honey? ‘And lo there appeared a Man named John, in Norwich city centre, he wore a crumpled and stained shirt, and ate out of bins, and people in the Norfolk countryside came to him to be baptised in the River Wensum.” Can you imagine it? The Christian story is littered with strange people, and strange stories, which gives me hope, if someone as strange as John the Baptist can find a place within the Christian story, then there’s hope for me too. The bizzare, the strange, the outcast, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the unclean, the unwashed, the poor, these are all the kinds of peopl...