Writer's block

Strange thing, writing: you flow, you stop. Deadlines may apply but not in many cases. Some of us do not have editors to cajole, love, threaten or otherwise move us into working.

Writer's block. Now that is something.

I have months of inability to compose (poetry). Usually because my psyche is decomposing. That is, my mind is gripped fast by anxiety and depression. Worse, the legacy of guilt which Evangelical Legalism and the Protestant Work Ethic strapped onto my soul and dug deep into it not long after I accepted the unconditional love for me in Christ and began my journey of discipleship. I had nothing to lose but my liberation, in some ways, in those years. The scars persist.

Recently God brought to my mind other psychological events: the fall-out of a pastoral intervention when I was a Vicar. There was a crisis in my church involving a man whose behaviour was abusive and tyrannical and, due to the fear he inspired in others, had garnered to himself key positions of lay leadership. His wife came to see me (and my wife)  in the dead of night while he slept, saying she would leave him due to his abuse and neglect. I said I would call next day and tell him to resign and out his house in order. By the time I got there they were equally in denial and vitriolically aggressive to me.

I did sack him, but he took his time to hand over his jobs. In the end the church was liberated into fresh growth, but as they frequently attacked me in public and I felt unable to disclose confidentialities, I went downhill, eventually into breakdown and out of ministry.

One night of sleeplessness, several months into illness, I wrote down a phrase which buzzed round my mind. Like tissues out of a box, words kept coming which formed my first poem.

Twenty five years on my poetry still flows - and stops. So much depends on where I am on the illness cycle as well as other contingent factors. But the fresh water rule applies: allow water in and water will flow out.

I am at the moment in a highly productive phase of poetry, and I thank God for all that I am learning as I write. It gives the lie to a joke a son once made, that you have to be dead to be a poet. My vocation is to be priest/poet, a pastor and theologian who uses words to explore beyond words. I agree with the saying that poetry is saying more in less, though earlier generations were prolix at times.

I offer you these reflections because they are flowing out of me, and I need to read them.

Thoughts on being a Cathedral Chaplain

I've been away from it, on Crete in blazing sunshine and welcome heat. Jane and I saw Knossos and the museum but were often content to laze around the swimming pool and 'be', and read. (Jane unfortunately had a virus for three days which knocked on the head a five hour walk in Samaria Gorge).

I read the whole of A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel's wonderful novel about Desmoulins, Danton and Robespierre. I also re-read (backwards!) Fr Dumitru Staniloae's first of six volumes of Dogmatics, The Experience of God, and learnt much to my blessing.

So I've been away from Chaplaining for a short while. This is a good thing. I'm so looking forward to being back. I always think that a Chaplain, when (s)he is there is God's person for the task. But so what? God has other people too. It doesn't matter who is there so long as someone is who is going about the task, being on pilgrimage, and not too full of self.

Chaplaining is an -ing as well as a -cy. It is service in motion. You need to expect to be changed by it, and come back again and again to be refreshed as well as to serve. You need to expect the unexpected each time, the serious, the funny, the sorrowful, the uplifting, the (let's face it) boring, the   alerting of spiritual antennae, the willingness to love right through the day.

For me, starting at the Feretory and often continuing round different stations is vital. I know that others have their own important places within the Church. But we must be on pilgrimage, whether it's on our own or in the company of others who happen to be there. The Vergers, Stewards, Guides, Bedespeople (have I forgotten anyone? Oh the Canons Residentiary and the Celebrants) are all your ministers as well as people to serve. I learn so much too from the ad hoc conversation, no matter what depth it is at.

I've been Chaplaining for very nearly twenty five years, and am still practising. The Church continues to amaze me, and come up with new revelations. Visitors, Pilgrims, Congregants likewise.

I'm writing this because I need to read it and remind myself of what a blessing and privilege it is to serve God and his people in this way.