maggi dawn

forgiveness

I have been reading AnneDroid lately, a prison chaplain who blogs at Get Out Of Jail Free.

There is some great stuff on her site, including this really good post on Forgiveness - in a few short paragraphs she sums up some of the most profound truths about forgiving wrongdoing, what forgiveness is, what it isn't, what are the limits and its freedoms.

Bitterness is more than just a negative outlook on life. It's a very destructive and self-destructive power. It's just like a dangerous, poisonous mould or spore because it thrives in the dark recesses of the heart and feeds on every new thought of spite or hatred that comes our way...

...On the other hand, forgiveness is a door to peace and happiness. It is a small, narrow, hard-to-find door, and can't be entered without stooping humbly. But no matter how long the search, it can be found and it has the potential to lead to the most amazing freedom.

Forgiving has absolutely nothing to do with human fairness...

But it does mean making a conscious decision to stop hating, because hating can never help...

She also has a recommendation for further reading, always good. Go read!

SLOW priesthood

MadPriest and RevSam have been having a conversation about work, priorities, working hours and so on. This is MadPriest on being a priest:

I stick to 3 jobs as defined by the Ordinal. Preside, teach, visit. I got rid of all jobs outside of the parish, including at deanery level and never attend meetings or courses unless my people will definitely benefit from my attendance. I got rid of my need to be in charge, even if I thought I could do a better job. There is no reason why the local church leadership should not come from members of the laity. This even includes PCCs. Certainly people can be found to do most of the admin jobs and do it far better than someone trained mainly in the niceties of Biblical hermeneutics and church history. I stopped worrying about the Protestant work ethic. I don't care if I'm not busy. Nobody acknowledges the fact when you work all hours anyway.

All this leaves me with plenty of time to do do my pastoral work properly. Visiting, arranging funerals as if each one is a major society wedding, walking round the parish, talking to people in the street. And you know what Sam, everything still gets done and people believe I am the only priest in the neighbourhood who does his job, even though I am the laziest sod in the priesthood.

I aspire to be lazy but haven't achieved it yet. But like MadPriest I too have re-aligned a lot of what I do over the last year or so. Even in a Chaplaincy (where the popular myth is that we only work in term time) it's entirely possible to take on more and more and more things, not only beyond the call of duty but beyond the limit of human capacity. I chopped out a large number of things that weren't necessary, stopped doing other people's jobs for them, and found that not only did I have enough time left over at work to do the important things, but was less tired when I got home, and managed to write a book in my spare time.

Wait - Books? Writing? - where does that come in the Ordinal? (unless you include it in teaching, I suppose...) But because of that, I also like Rev Sam's response to MadPriest, which includes this:

"...in the end I did come to a resolution and a sense of peace: that a) I was called to parish ministry, but b) I had to work out for myself what it meant for ME to be a parish priest - not what being a parish priest was in general, but what sort of ministry is God specifically calling ME to - and that the model of ministry that I had been trained and formed for was not appropriate; that in fact, if I allowed that model to dominate who I was, that I would simply be repeatedly broken."

I like MadPriest's comment because it takes you back to the starting blocks - why am I in this job? What am I supposed to be doing? And what did I just accidentally get talked into along the way? But I like RevSam's development because it recognises there is more than one way to skin a cat.  MadPriest's conversation with RevSam is serious food for thought for anyone in ministry whose work load has got out of control.

writers block

I "met" Roger von Oech recently in cyber space, and have really been enjoying his posts on creativity. A few days ago he wrote about deadlines (the deadline for the book I am writing right now is 15th January, and if I am very lucky I might just squeeze in under the door.) But today he writes about the opposite thing - that phenomenon where it's only when you leave the studio or the desk and wash the dishes or walk on the beach that the rest and space suddenly gives rise to the elusive inspiration. Roger has a lovely story here:

designer Christopher Williams tells a story about an architect who built a cluster of large office buildings that were set on a central green. When construction was completed, the landscape crew asked him where he wanted the pathways between the buildings.

"Not yet," the architect said. "Just plant the grass solidly between the buildings."

This was done, and by late summer pedestrians had worn paths across the lawn, connecting building to building. The paths turned in easy curves rather than right angles, and were sized according to traffic.

In the fall, the architect simply paved the pathways. Not only did the new pathways have a design beauty, they responded directly to user needs.

go read the rest of the post here: Creative Think: Pause for a Bit.

eBible.com - preview

Tim Bednar has published an exclusive first preview with screen shots of the new eBible.com search engine. If you are interested in what Web 2.0 developers are doing to serve the church, do drop by and read it. Tim gave me access to the eBible site - although it's still under construction to some extent, it already looks good, and I think it will be a good addition to what's already available.

how to say yes

How to say "no" is all very well, but it would be a crying shame to pass up some opportunities. I remember having a moment of complete panic when the birth of my son was approaching, and I began to realise what a juggling act I was going to face if I was to finish my half-done PhD as well as look after a new-born baby. A good friend made me enumerate all the things I had to do. "OK," he said. "If you assume that the baby and the PhD are essential, how much of everything else could you give up, delegate, or hire help for?"

I gave up quite a few pleasant but unnecesary commitments. I also learned to put my foot down with some people who insisted that unnecessary commitments were actually obligations. I got enough help to do what I needed to do, and I learned to buck the system here and there. Saying "yes" to the right things necessitates the skill of saying "no" to other things. Sometimes it means saying "no" to other people's agendas too.

left unsaid

I've been writing a lot lately. Some days it seems to flow along, and others I struggle. But even when it's going OK, I end up feeling that if I even manage to articulate 10% of what I set out to do,  that's about the best I ever manage.  Writing - good writing - is in itself something that demands a bit of the philosophy of SLOW; you can dash off a bit of writing, of course, as anyone who lives under RAE pressure knows very well. But you can't just dash off something really good.

Life itself is much the same.  Sure, we all have things to celebrate, things to be thankful for, things to be proud of.  But only in the privacy of your own soul do you know the huge discrepancy between what is and what might have been; the ragged remains and the false starts and the failures to complete and the unfulfilled hopes that, for the most part, no-one else is aware of.  George Eliot once said, "It is never too late to become what you might have been." That's hopeful, and offers the inspiration never to give up. But in a way, I think Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy got closer to the mark with this mixture of hope and resignation: 

I cannot read the writing of the years,
My eyes are full of tears,
It gets all blurred and won’t make sense;
It’s full of contradictions
Like the scribblings of a child.

I can but hand it in, and hope
That Thy great mind, which reads
The writings of so many lives,
Will understand this scrawl
And what it strives to say – but leaves unsaid.

read the rest of the poem here

how to say no

I heard someone on the radio the other day talking about how he "changed his life" by learning to say "yes". All his life, he said, he was inclined to say "no", because things were too much effort, or he was tired, or he couldn't be bothered... and he ended up doing a lot of watching the TV and feeling pretty lonely. I was intrigued by this, as it's pretty much the opposite of my own inclination, which is to say "yes" to too many things, because  I like a challenge, hate being bored, love being in the middle of a creative project, hate having nothing to do.

While the man on the radio was learning to say "yes", I was learning to say "no" . And that, I have discovered, is not simply learning the habit of not saying "yes", but of developing a clear idea of how much time and energy a particular commitment will require, not just on the day iself, but in terms of preparation of material, travel, and recovery time. It's not enough to look in the diary and say "yes, I'm free on that date", you also have to judge whether you can build in the time and enrgy before and after the event. Here's three things I do if I'm not sure whether to say yes or no to a really interesting sounding project:

1. Don't say anything right away - say "that sounds fantastic, but I'll need to read through the diary carefully before I commit to it. Can I call you back tomorrow?"

2. Ask myself whether this opportunity will squeeze my existing commitments too much - time with my son, good performance in my primary place of work, time for friends and family, "down" time...

3. Ask myself whether this is an opportunity that someone else I know is absolutely gasping for. Once you are known for something you are constantly swamped with invitiations. Talented unknowns need to be put in the spotlight. say, "I can't do that date, but if you're interested I know someone else who I think might be very good."

4. Bear in mind that if I say yes in good faith and then circumstances dictate otherwise, it won't be the end of the world. Recently I've had to pull out of several dates due to family illness. It goes against the grain to let people down, but it's essential to one's sanity to know that you are never indispensible.

sleeping on the job

To add to my meditations on SLOW, here's a clip from Simply Simon:

The latest research by the Sleep/Wake Research Centre at Massey University in Wellington has found that a workplace nap is one of the most effective strategies to greater productivity. Up to forty minutes of sleep, they say, can make a world of difference to the well-being of workers, to the health of workplace relationships and, ultimately, to the financial bottom line. Even a ten-minute doze sharpens the fatigued mind far more effectively that copious cups of coffee.

how to delegate

It's worth learning how to delegate. It doesn't come naturally to everyone. Managers who do their team's tasks for them, mothers do everything for their kids (or even their partners), and anyone who ever does it themselves because "it's quicker to do it myself than show someone else how to do it..."   need to learn to delegate.

There's more to delegating than just lightening your own load.  Delegating means managing a large number of tasks for a team of people; the team gain a sense of ownership and responsibility for the tasks, the team leader ensures that she has the time and space to lead properly; the junior members of the team get the chance to take on some more of the "senior" responsibilities and therefore grow into the role.

Creative and co-operative delegating is even more exciting. Once you've built a sufficiently good team dynamic to work out the delegation together, the team can make major decisions together -Which of these opp0rtunities and ideas do we have the time, enthusiasm and resources to take on?  Who is under-or overworked, under-or over-challenged, how can the rest of us pull togheter? who would like to lead on this or that task? Whose skills are most appropriate for it? Who would like to try but has never done it before? Who would like to shadow me this time and take on the responsibility next time?

Take the time to teach and instruct clearly. Then take your hands off and trust your team to get it right. And give them a few dummy runs before you jump in and take it off them again - no-one gets everything right first time.

I'vebeen at the helm of liturgical installations and events for years and years. My natural instinct was to design and lead on whole projects, wanting to have a close hand on the sense and concept of the whole. But liturgy, by its very nature, is not the same thing as a work of art by an individual artist. Learning to create liturgical events is an therefore an interesting exercise in delegation, becuase it involves not simply giving people tasks to do, but giving people who have the capacity for it enough space to create beyond the scope of what you might do yourself. It's taken me some years to work on this balance - of keeping a good level of creative design over liturgy, while at the same time nurturing the creative gifts of others. You identify as you go along what the skills and gifts are that people have. Some people don't flourish with an open-ended creative brief; they need specific, clear instructions to do a job to order. Others lose interest if there is no creative space, but lack the experience to pull it off without considerable help. Others come into their own and amaze you with their hidden skills. The trick, I think, is to pace the planning according to the size and signfiicance of the event, leave allowances for people to emerge as more or less creative, more or less in need of help than you thought they were, and keep talking. The person at the helm would ideally have a lot of time to walk around and watch others' tasks evolving, finding out whether they are "on a roll" and leaving them to it, or really stuck and needing some help. There's been alot of talk around the Alt*worship conversation about allowing for creativity, and rightly so. But moving forward with that vision needs to involve the inclusion of people who aren't very "creative" in a visionary, design sense, but do want to contribute all the same. To co-ordinate this kind of worship, you need to be able to encourage, delegate, instruct and take your hands off as appropriate, not just to be creative yourself. 

setting your pace.

During Lent this year, I had planned to meditate on "slow" - a humorous take on "Fast". Life spins a bit sometimes, and I was due for a bit of Zen treatment to my life. As things turned out, my intended theme for Lent was forced on me when first I, and then one of my close family, fell ill. Duvet time was imposed from on high, and I had to leave all my planned work for other people to take over. This was a scary prospect at first, but it became amazingly reassuring to discover that I have my little department well-enough organised that it was relatively easy to write myself out of the script for a week, and let others take over. It was good for some of the team to discover that they don't need me as much as they thought. And it was amazingly good for me to have to sit in a chair for a few weeks and let other people do all the things that I usually do myself. My Lenten meditations on "slow" were somewhat intensified as a result, and I've emerged into the Easter season not merely with a de-cluttered diary, but with some deep-running thoughts about the pace of life.

Setting your pace is perhaps a rather apt theme on the day after the Marathon (and hats off to my friend Laura for completing her 4th marathon in a personal-best time). Setting your own pace involves applying a few managerial skills to your life, all the more so if you have kids, employees, or anyone else whose life is closely linked with your schedule. You have to judge decisions according to time and energy requirements, you have to know when to say "yes" or "no", you have to learn to balance people with projects, and you have to know when to take charge, when to delegate, and when to take time out to do nothing.  I'll post some more of my post-Lent thoughts on the pace of life during the week.