Month: March 2025

I woke this morning at a self-congratulatory 6:30, delighted that I had gotten some extra sleep in the morning hours, and only somewhat chagrined when Radio 4 reminded me that it’s now British Summer Time, and I had lost the hour of sleep I had imagined I’d harvested. Got up slowly and ran, a decent pace apart from several pauses to rest body parts that spontaneously decided they wanted not to cooperate.

I remembered that I needed to print the tones for the Preface, and to find and print the Collect, and I printed some prayer cards for the Wholeness & Healing service (though Susan found the ones we had missed last week in a second, separate folder from the one with the orders of service). I was heading up to shower and dress at 8:45 when Margaret stopped me and asked what time it was. I estimated ‘between 8:30 and 9:00’, right on target to leave for church at 9:30 to do some vestry errands before the service. Margaret, just awake herself, answered ‘Cos my phone says it’s 9:45. I must have set it ahead, or maybe it didn’t…’ She didn’t need to continue — I realised that I had been looking at the clock radio to watch the time, and the clock radio doesn’t ahve an auto-update for time changes. It really was 9:45, and I was already 15 minutes behind schedule.

In a whirlwind of activity, I completed my dressing, gathered up my Sunday bag of service books, cincture, and various other impedimenta, and got to church in good time. The service went well, Margaret and I returned exhausted, and now I’m doing odds and ends in preparation for tonight’s Sacred Concert. My job will be to welcome people, offer a wee prayer, and introduce our organist; then after the performance, to greet the audience again, remind them that we’ll host a concert of and for young organists Saturday evening. And return home, weary and hungry and ready to start over tomorrow morning.

I have indeed been running every morning; ‘running’, or going two miles at varying paces anyway. I haven’t taken a timed run in a long time, since that was both making me [more] miserable spiritually (the gains were a rush, but the experience of haunting competitive pressure was bitter) and was making my legs feel worse on subsequent days. That probably means added strength, but the sensation of stiffness, leadenness, knocked-back-ness following timed days was frustrating. Having written this out, I suppose I’ll begin taking intermittent timed runs again — especially since I registered and will be participating in the Bannister Community Mile, my first-ever ‘official’ timed running event. I estimated an 8:30 time, though I think it’s likely I’ll do better than that.

Parish work has been demanding for the past week or so, at or near full time. Preparing service sheets for Holy Week (and eventually, Easter) along with leading services and preaching, and working with wedding couples, staff meetings, and the accursed emails (not the ones from you, of course, but the cascades of emails…. But the PCC is making promising progress toward advertising our vacancy, and heaven permitting, we may have a Team Rector in a few months.

With a friendly mixture of applause and pushback, I want to flag up Fr Mark’s observations on burnout, and to add some complementary observations.

First and most importantly, whatever Mark and I agree or disagree about, we are on one page with regard to the desperately vital importance of supporting clergy in doing what they’re called to do — in most cases, that means providing spiritual and sacramental leadership for a given community. This is the sine qua non of the vocation, the thing that having a savvy churchwarden or a compassionate archdeacon or bishop can’t replace. This is what clergy [should be] [are] called and trained for. Not maintenance, bookkeeping, IT troubleshooting, or any of a platter of useful skills that other members of the community can help with.
Re: ‘decline’: I’d be interested to see a report on the correlation between ‘decline’ and the quality of the match between clergy and congregation. You can take a healthy, thriving tuna and put it on land, and it will decline — not cos it’s an unhealthy tuna nor because fresh air and earth are bad, but because they don’t belong to one another. Likewise some ‘failing’ or burned-out clergy are quite possibly misplaced, or given an impossible task (Mark’s two-congregation benefice separated by mountains and no public transport). I would wish that DDOs and bishops played a fuller role in match-making (and that DDOs and bishops were called to those roles with that in view, obvs; some are poor at this discernment, and they shouldn’t have that responsibility). A role for ecclesiastical headhunters.
It’s not the houses. Yes, they don’t always suit, and they should often be renovated for contemporary patterns of climatic and vocational needs, but living in the parish, in church housing, provides a deep sign of inhabiting the life of the vicar (or whatever other role). And plenty would envy clergy housing.
It’s not the buildings, either — or it shouldn’t be. PCCs and diocesan/national officers should be responsive to matters of upkeep and adequate renovation. If you don’t like a church, don’t take the call with a sledgehammer in your hand; these buildings are a precious gift from generations of the faithful, imbued with the hallowing prayers of thousands of parishioners over the years.
But yes, the parish system needs reinforcement and support. The relentless shuffle of clergy around a multi-point benefice, and Mother Agatha moving on and Fr Stavros arriving and Just Call Me Fred popping up once every six weeks does no good to a congregation that’s trying to pull itself together and grow.
Email. (I will say no more, except that it can take thirty minutes of scrolling and backtracking and reading follow-ups and new messages to figure out a problem that could have been resolved in five minutes of conversation.)
Isolation: as an introvert, isolation is not a big problem for me — but I combat the temptation to hunker down alone by spending as much time as I can in public, in clericals, greeting people and sipping coffee or a pint. The responsibilities of executive parish leadership are isolating (as is the role as repository for much non-public backstory for all the people); but there are other clergy and other professionals with similar roles. Your mileage, of course, will vary; horses for courses.
Families: Your fam didn’t fully volunteer for this, and few outside agencies will appreciate oddity of life in a clergy family or the stress that falls on spouses and (especially) children. The church needs to step up here as well.

There’s more. But I want to wind up, for now, by noting that the single greatest impediment to clergy flourishing is the demand on their time. The church needs clergy who are not running at full speed fifty hours (plus) a week. Spiritual leadership absolutely requires more leisure than neoliberal economic models will countenance. But that’s not the worst aspect of neoliberal policies; they bear down on most members of the congregation, too. If anyone wants a pastoral leader to help strengthen people out from political-economic immiseration, though, they will absolutely have to allow that leader slack time. With no carping.

My miles this morning called back the good ol’ days of non-timed runs: a good pace, comfortable stretching and exercise, no desperate strain to go faster. Then coffee and fruit, shower and Morning Prayer for the Feast of the Annunciation, home for another cup and some parish duties, service booklet writing and editing, and a couple of phone appointments.

I walked my miles this morning. I mean, several times I tried jogging, but even the lightest push toward forward motion sent a message from my groin muscles saying ‘No’. Most of the day yesterday, and certainly this morning, my timed run yesterday cost me a lot of energy and some flexibility.

Coffee and fruit, cleaning up, Morning Prayer and an appointment, then home to any empty house (except for the dogs). Soup for lunch, work on homilies and Lenten lesson, and looking forward to seeing everyone back for dinner.

Another best time for my morning run — though I was sure I’d fallen way behind my recent good times — takes my rolling average down to 17:52. I notice that theere’s a community mile run on 5 May in hoour of Roger Bannister; I’m thinking of giving that a go, since I have copious evidence that I’m capable of running a mile, whereas I have only tenuous evidence of having a fair shot at 5K, and 10K sounds like a pipe dream.

I’m preaching twice on Sunday again (next rota I have to work harder to avoid those days), and I need to hammer the Palm Sunday service book into shape. Those are my main tasks today, after my coffee and fruit, shower, and Morning Prayer. Margaret and I will stake out a place at R&R after Morning Prayer.

Plus, our dear visitors return from London this evening, so more delight again tonight.

[Later: Oh, and a talk on the Holy Week liturgies, too. Wheeee!]

Took a good non-timed run, coffee and hot breakfast, gave my homily a once-over and spotted a coiuple of places to expand ex tempore, then went in to Morning Prayer, Holy Communion for St Joseph, and home to a restful afternoon. I worked intermittently with the Palm Sunday liturgy and pondered several mysteries of the universe with my eyes drooping.

The house was a veritable hive of activity this morning before 8:00, as first I ran my miles (good pace, physically comfortable), then Margaret made her way to a bus stop to catch a train to a teaching day in Nottingham, then our US visitors took a taxi to a train to the Big Smoke for the peak sight-seeing part of their trip to England. I had my coffee and fruit, cleaned up after everyone left, went to Morning Prayer and then a visit to R&R to do some office work. I stopped at the Cooperative for groceries, came home to the ladies, and spent the afternoon trying to concoct a sermon for tomorrow.…

Two miles at a leisurely pace — my legs were positively leaden for the first mile or so, and when they started to move more freely my adductors were tight and resisted my hitting a good pace, or stretching out for longer strides. No worries: I pushed hard yesterday, one can expect a day-after effect. Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, and we’ll see what else the day holds. PCC meeting in the evening.

We had a wonderful first afternoon (and evening) together with Laura and Shannon and Ayres, and this morning I ran my two miles in an unpleasant personal best time that pulled my rolling average down to 18:08. It’ll be hard to push it below 18:00, but that’s going to happen eventually; for now, though, I’m very very glad to be making timed runs only once or twice a week.

Then coffee and fruit, a shower, and made my way to St Michael and All Angels for the 9:30 service, then to St Helen’s to give the post-service Lent ‘Spiritual Snack’ talk on Lenten Spirituality, then to the Nag’s Head for Sunday roast with Margaret and the Exeter (NH, USA) family, and now I am shedding vast waves of stress, sitting still on the couch and deliberately not doing anything useful, unless you think blogging is useful (in which case I’m doing only one useful thing).

I didn’t preach this morning (Fr Paul did), but this is Three Lent Year C and the readings include the Covenant Between the Parts, which was one of my favourite homilies from my last year at St Stephen’s House. I’ll tuck it in beneath the ‘More’ option so that uninterested readers don’t have to look.
Continue reading “Sunday in Lent Vac One”

I mean, it should be ‘Lent Vac’, shouldn’t it, since most of the vac comprises the last five weeks of Lent, and Trinity Term follows hard on Easter Day? But call it what you will, it begins today and to celebrate it we will welcome Shannon, Laura, and Ayres for a week’s visit.

Two decent miles this morning, coffee, and in a short while I’ll shower and make a hot breakfast. One or both of us will go in to That Oxford to meet the travellers, and the rest of the day will focus on their needs and interests.

I have some essays to mark, I promised to send my prelims students some guidance on gobbets, and I should talk with Sarah about setting the collection — but I’m through with tutorial teaching now for a few weeks. Indeed, I don’t expect to have tutes in Trinity Term, so it’ll be October till my next tutorials.

I took a very leisurely run this morning, followed as usual by coffee and fruit. I’ll feed the dogs and make tea for my better half, clean up and go to Morning Prayer, then I have a veritable mountain of emails to try to clear. I should prepare my talk for Sunday about Lenten spirituality, and after lunch will go to Oxford for the NT Seminar. I’ll join with Margaret in last-minute cleaning and arranging for a visit from Shannon, Laura, and Ayres tomorrow….

Merciful heavens, I’m relieved to have gotten through this four-week interval. In Hilary Term, I continue teaching whatever tutorials I usually offer, plus I take up the last four tutes for the Introduction to the Bible class for first-years. It’s a lovely time with wonderful students, but the sudden influx of essays and marking and tutes puts a lot of extra pressure on my late winter/early spring. Today’s the last day of that double fortnight. My preliminarians have been wonderful, and Sarah (my HB colleague) and I are hoping to give them a little extra coaching before they sit their exams, but today marks a real turning point for my diary. Oh, and I have the last Gospels tutorial for my Year 2 student as well.

So I started the day with a timed run, expecting that it would mark a real fall-off from my personal-record last two miles. I think I timed my energy-burning a little better, but it was still a few seconds off my previous timed run. No worries, though; it was my second-best time, and pulled my rolling average down to 18:22, with which I am well pleased.

So my day shapes up as run, coffee and fruit, shower and dress, Morning Prayer, rush to the bus, coffee in Oxford while I read essays, tutorial, lunch, two more tutes, then home to unwind and toast the end of Hilary Term teaching.

Easy (non-timed) run, 1° weather, coffee, hot breakfast (minus eggs), shower and Morning Prayer, meeting with a wedding couple, follow-up paperwork, long Staff Meeting, homework assignment for safeguarding certification, follow-up paperwork, tutorial essays to read…

Did I say that yesterday morning, between Morning Prayer (or more precisely, ‘beginning in the middle of Morning Prayer’) and the bus to Oxford, I spent some time in prayer and conversation with the legitimate heir to the throne of the United Kingdom? The basis of his claim was not perfectly clear; the sentences went by very rapidly. It seems, however, that his ancient family settled Abingdon in times past, one of the eight original families. Their claim to the throne was gazumped by Henry the Eighth and the Windsors in the nineteenth century, along with the spoliation of the monasteries. He was particularly anxious that I find and put him in contact with the first Black Canon in the Church of England, who is the descendant of one of the other original eight families. Alas, and somewhat oddly, although it’s not hard to find the first Black Bishop (the Rt Revd Wilfred Wood) and the first Black woman ordained to the priesthood (the Revd Eve Pitts), finding other Black ecclesiastical pioneers poses intricate web search challenges. If someone in Lambeth is reading this, may I suggest making a web page that covers Black and South Asian leaders in the Church?

I took my morning run widdershins today, as that takes me to the Iron Bridge earlier, and Thames Water has posted signs to the effect that they expect to cut off all vehicular and pedestrian traffic across the bridge between 10 and 14 March. I wanted to check this out at the beginning of my run rather than the end, so that if they followed through on their promise would find out before I was committed to retracing a long way back home.

No evidence that anything was going on today, though, at least not at 5:30. I ran a good non-timed loop, I’m home for coffee and fruit, in a while I will clean up and get ready for Morning Prayer. Margaret will head in to Oxford this morning for a meeting and lunch with an ethics colleague of hers. I have a Safeguarding homework assignment to do, and another for the Sodality, and I may receive an essay to mark, plus I can begin to prepare for next Sunday’s ‘Spirituality Snack’ for St Helen’s. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, as my dad used to say.

This morning, I really did not want to run. I didn’t feel achey or even especially leaden, but just weary through and through. Hey ho, I did some cursory warm-ups and started on my way, hitting a pretty strong pace on the out mile. A little before the end of my first mile, though, I felt that I was running out of gas, and the rest of the run was unpleasant in the extreme — again, not in terms of pain, but gasping for air and forcing my legs to do their best to keep up the pace.

Along the way, I realised that this was the reason I stopped timing my runs in the first place. The felt urgency of contant improvement, of never letting my time get slower but always faster, makes me… not so much anxious (an internal feeling) as driven (felt as an external necessity). There’s no reason in the world that I should be obligated constantly to improve my running time; I’m in my late sixties, I’m already in plausible health so far as I know, and being able to make a two-mile run at all is a significant victory over where I was five or six years ago, when I started by skipping rope in the back garden on James Street.

At the same time, I do relish the sense of some sort of progress, even just a tiny bit, so as to feel as though I’m not in exercise stasis. So I think that I may ratchet back my timing even more, perhaps just once a week or only when I feel like it, so as to allow mywelf to just run most days without pressure, but to have a check-in every now and then. We’ll see what happens.

I got home in significant discomfort (again, not pain, not torment, but overall discomfort) and had trouble hitting the ‘Stop’ button of the timer. When I could make the clock stop, it showed a time almost a whole minute faster than my previous personal best; that two miles pulled my rolling average down to 18:38.

Fruit and coffee, some continued preparations for this morning’s ‘spiritual snack’ session on the history of Lent, then in some order a second cup of coffee and some toast, cleaning up, I”ll lead the Sung Eucharist at St Helen’s, then the short talk, then home to do more work (I owe homework to the Diocese and also to the Sodality), and heaven permitting, a good rest. I could use a break — this part-time work, as all part-time workers know, can be a backbreaker.

I started my morning run at speed, but my legs were very stiff and my upper legs sore, and as I pushed to get some momentum and limberness, I accidentally did something off-kilter to the timer, so when I noticed halfway through, I just shut it down and took it easy the rest of the way.

Coffee, hot breakfast, Morning Prayer at home.

And a joke at my own expense: last night Margaret was making a late-evening pudding to supplement the Subway GF sub that constituted her railroad dinner, and she handed me the yoghurt to put back into the fridge. I put it back onto the upper shelf (according to the transcendent refrigerator law of ‘Always put items onto the smallest shelf that they’ll fit onto’), but it didn’t quite fit onto the shelf; something further back pushed it off the shelf when I let it go, and I reached back in a flash to catch the falling pot. Sadly… I mishudged the catch, and was just trying to push the (flexible) yoghurt pot back into the fridge, on a shelf — but that had the effect of squashing the (nearly-full) pot against the shelves as it fell, squeezing the pot and spewing yoghurt all over the kitchen. Margaret and I cleaned up, with some laughs and chuckles, but when we came downstairs again later she spotted another splatter of yoghurt… and another… further and further from the fridge. This morning she came downstairs and, standing in the front hall, said ‘I can’t believe the yoghurt reached even here!’ (It hadn’t. She was having a laugh on me. I am expecting to take a walk to church with her, and for her to say as we’re corssing the Iron Bridge, ‘Look! There’s even yoghurt here!’

So, a non-timed run this morning (good thing, because my legs were weary after my stretching them out yesterday morning for my timed run), bade Margaret good morning as she made her way to Wolverhampton for a catch-up with the Feeneys, fruit and coffee, cleaned up and went to Morning Prayer, then to my station in the Square at R&R, back to the Parish Centre to check messaages, home to feed the ladies their lunch (and to eat my own), then back to church for the ecumenical World Day of Prayer service (not live from the Cook Islands, but the chain of the day’s prayer begun from the Cook Islands), back to check for afternoon messages, and home at last to feed the ladies again, and to rest my bones.