New Kid on the Blog

I realise that over the last few blog entries I have had a few polemical moments and thought it was about time for a more mellow and positive entry - particularly as this is the 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'! Even though its my day off (not really happening today as harvest festival for school, will try to take tomorrow instead) I want to say something about ministry and to get rid of the last less than cheerful heading for my blog :-) A funeral, a wedding rehearsal, village eucharists, schools services and various visits and events in this last few days have served to remind me just what a privilege this ministry is! Likewise a conversation with a gentleman who is congregational member, deep thinker, and deeply committed to the life of both the parish Church and community in where I live has helped me to see again just how fortunate (or blessed if you prefer) I am to be in this place, with these people, doing what I do. And grateful for dedicated members of our...

Don't worry, I'm not drowning in the depths of despair or anything like that. I am just a little bit less of my usually cheery self than usual (or as a newspaper recently described me - a bit less of a 'jolly Motorcycle-riding Vicar'). The news that has brought about this alteration to my disposition is that the friends with whom we share ownership of a property in France would like to 'buy us out' and in return for a share of our contributions over the past five years, less a few expenses. would have complete ownership of the property (which they pretty much have anyway). An odd thing to feel upset about, but on reflection I realise this is because of a number of factors which I do think its worth mentioning here - partly because this is meant to be a place of reflection and meaning as well as home to my occasional rants! Firstly this represents the end of a certain stage in our friendship with this other family. Not that we aren't friends still, but tha...

I haven't got around to putting up a number of good bloggers on my sidebar - or weeding out a few out of date ones... For now I would like to encourage you to visit good folk such as the Church Mouse , Revd Lesley , Charlie Peer and Phil Ritchie . I think Mouse might already be on my feed on the right but need to go into the list on the left! I can't bring myself to remove link to the late Dr John's blog though. Still missed....

Thanks to a bit of prompting from three excellent posts The Church Mouse , Charlie Peer and Red I have been inspired to add my bit about harvest festivals and their relevance in today's world.. I would recommend reading the above posts in the order I've put them, and look through the comments too, it's an interesting read. Harvest Festivals could be considered the bane of some Clergy lives! I have done around a hundred or so (by my rough guesstimate) in the past fourteen or so years since I was Ordained. We had a school one and a Church one in my first Suburban London parish, nice and simple. In my second parish in Central London we had a Church Harvest Festival, and I was chaplain to four schools who liked a good Harvest Celebration. Then I moved to a Thirteen Parish Team with four schools who all celebrated Harvest in our 'soft rural' setting in South Cambridgeshire and after eight years there I lost track of how many I covered... I usually did two of the sch...