Friday 22 March 2013

The empty days

At the last session of the Benefice Lent course on Wednesday day evening, I spoke about 'refilling the jug'. We were considering the importance of rest and leisure alongside rest in making a good life balance. Without a good balance, the jug empties and the work can't be done.

I sometimes wonder about using this blog as a diary, or publishing diary highlights in the church notice sheet, to share with people glimpses of what I do on weekdays. So often people comment on my Sundays, and yet that is far from all that I do. I can't decide whether sharing in this way would be helpful to others or merely an exercise in preening my own ego. Sharing the variety might be interesting though.

One of the dangers of refilling the jug in a public blog is of how the blog reads when the level of the jug is low. Right now, with passiontide started and Holy Week just ahead, my jug is definitely feeling half empty. I have, I am told, a reputation for positive attitude and energy. A jug half full person. A jug brimming over and splashing those around person. Taking Barnabus as my personal patron saint, I'm always glad when I hear that people feel positive when I work with them. On my own at home, though, the effort of being a Barnabus for others empties me. This is perhaps partly because I'm not naturally a confident, self assured person. I live in fear of being found out for the failing, weak person I really  am. Anything good that happens in my ministry can only be attributed to God, because it certainly isn't me.

So when I sense any kind of unhappiness with what I do, even if it might not be justified, that affects me deeply. Critical voices always drown out any praise I might have received. I emerge from PCC meetings and other similar evenings feeling that I can't ever be good enough to do the job, that I can't possibly meet the expectations of the others around the table. It doesn't matter that the meeting might have involved many good decisions and made good progress. I can still emerge feeling miserable, because the one critical person in the room has had a powerful effect, and the others, working hard but being neither positive or negative, do nothing to counter or balance the trickle of negativity. I just want to curl up and hide. The jug empties very quickly some days, and a lifestyle based on a six day working week and regular 12 or 14 hour working days does not give enough space to refill when the jug is suddenly and quickly poured out.

Why am I writing this today? Because my day off so far isn't one. I just haven't been able to set aside the mental and spiritual burden laid on me at a PCC yesterday. The sense of being not good enough because I haven't yet brought in lots of young people and lots of money, because I have brought a change of culture that one person doesn't like, is powerful. It pervades my thoughts, disturbs sleep, dominates waking thoughts. And of course the phone keeps ringing. I don't answer it, but that doesn't matter, the fact that it rang is enough to ensure that I am reminded of work. It is ever present, and today its presence brings me lower all the time. I'm on my own in a vicarage, not standing a chance of  refilling the jug before the huge busyness of Holy Week sets in on Sunday.

Psalm 88 is the only psalm that doesn't manage at any point to be positive and offer some praise to God. The choir will be singing it on Thursday evening. In a way it is a psalm of the empty jug. Choir practice points to the bigger truth though. Singing psalm 88 and then turning to the Easter anthem and    praising God holds together the big Godly picture. Resurrection follows death. God refills the empty vessel with His living water. And in a day or two I'll get over the post PCC misery. School Easter services and an Easter bonnet parade will hopefully remind me why this is ok really. So I'm not in a psalm 88 place yet. More psalm 42.


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