Another Sunday when I am not rushing out to get to the eight o’clock communion! I’ve got used to it now....there are joys as well as miseries in this daft situation. Strangely I have no wish to attend a service in what were my churches. They are in the middle of an interregnum so I’m saving us all the embarrassment I could cause right now by staying warmly tucked up in bed. I might drive over to the next village at some stage but as yet staying put here feels a more attractive proposition.
I have visitors here tomorrow...plus my cleaner comes on Monday...so a quiet day today is looking good . I might watch the various political programs at some stage...the coming election is generating a plethora of requests for our votes... and I have to admit that I don’t much like any of them so far.
I sometimes call in on old friends on Sunday’. I enjoy their looks of surprise at seeing me without a dog collar .
I haven’t worn it since getting effectively sacked for doing a funeral service instead of attending a mandatory course...because I didn’t know it was mandatory but I’m learning to live with that now. It’s just that filling my Sunday’s have now become a series of choices instead of dashing off somewhere. .
Having to change my bank card has also produced several fairly polite emails telling me that various things are not working... it’s amazing how much I have taken for granted...from paying for my groceries to Amazon telling me that I can’t have the videos I had ordered previously. So it’s time to sort it all our with the added joy that time is something I have in abundance these days!
So will I go or shall I stay? Making decisions has never been a problem for me....until now. But having time on my hands is such a novelty that I have to admit to enjoying it most of the time.
1 comment:
I suspect that despite your apparent happiness at having the freedom to do what you want on a Sunday morning, you do miss the services that you used to take and the people you met doing them.
The unfairness of your situation still irks me, having been on the receiving end of age discrimination and academic snobbery while in the discernment process. Its the past, another life, in a different place and diocese and parish.
Things are so different when you are valued for exactly who you are, without any comments about a lack of academic achievement or that due to your age, you will only ever be an "assistance priest" or worse, "By the time you finish training" it will be retirement age.
I accept that these were challenges to my vocation, but when said by important people in the discernment process, they sting and could have made me throw it all in, and even leave the church. Thankfully I persevered and am now happily doing what seems right, in the right setting, with the right people. I might not have a bishops license anymore, but I do have the next best thing PTO for three years. And opportunities for further development, whether or not I feel called to spread my wings or not.
I did pray that your Diocese would see sense, but I now just rest in the knowledge you are happy and settled with what is happening - for now.
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