Category: Personal
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119. My father’s blessing
November 2022 My father was a pacifist and registered as a conscientious objector in the Second World War. He’d been brought up as an Anglican, but not finding the Church of England a comfortable place to be as a pacifist, he joined the Quakers. My mother was brought up an Anglican, and I grew up…
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113. A Feral Spirituality
September 2022 Spirituality..is our search for depth and meaning in our lives, beyond what we know is superficial, and living out of what is discovered. Spiritual direction encourages & supports someone in that search. Feral spirituality is searching beyond an institutional religious framework. Becoming ‘feral’ 1 On holiday in Falmouth a few years ago,I was drawn…
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109. Here am I
July 2022 This past Lent I sensed that my life was at a turning point, so I set myself the task of wondering what straws in the wind might give me a sense of the way forward that God was pointing me to. There were a number of ideas that had energy in them, some…
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92. Anniversary Questions
January 2021 Last summer I was reminded that the autumn would mark the 50th Anniversary of my ordination, and that prodded me to think about whether I should mark it and if so how. A personal review seemed like an obvious thing to do, but I reckoned that might benefit from some outside questioning. So I wrote…
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91. Journey into Priesthood 2
After 50 years, I’ve been wondering about what God has revealed to me on this journey into priesthood, what I’ve learnt? When I wrote it down, I found to my surprise that there was more there than I’d expected to see. I was also intrigued to notice the means by which revelation had taken place, not…
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90. Journey into Priesthood 1
January 2021 When I first sensed a call to ordination, I naively thought it would mean that ‘I shall have paid time to walk in the woods to wonder about the big questions of the existence of God and the meaning of life, and that I will find myself in conversation with others about these…
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75. A Vision Statement
December 2019 My Assumptions 1 Every human being has a vocation [a calling from God], probably several, and honouring them is what brings us fully alive. One of mine is to be a priest. I will only be fully myself by being a priest, and I will be the priest I am called to be by being…
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60. Going Feral
October 2018 In September of this year I marked the 48th anniversary of my ordination by writing to my Bishop and returning the Permission to Officiate [PTO] that he kindly gave me when we moved into his Diocese some years ago. It seemed in some ways like a very small thing to be doing, although in…
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34. What have I learnt?
August 2016 I’m just over half way through my course of chemotherapy, and having determined to try and use these six months as a sabbatical space, as best I could, found myself wondering what this time has taught me so far. I then broadened the question so that it became ‘what has life taught me…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 