Something I have learnt during Lent

I am a Yorkshireman

I am male

I am married

I have a son

I am a priest

I preside at the Eucharist; and with some audacity stand in the place of Christ.

I preside with my arms in a cruciform position; yet am resentful when people take advantage of me

I open my home to people, and get fed up when they do not go away.

I am not an administrator, nor do I want to be

I am a scholar, who does not have enough time to read – and then can end up reading all the wrong stuff that turns out to be poetically right all along.

I spend lots of time with people, when I love to be alone.

I am never more content than when walking my hounds, and wonder how they can live such uncomplicated lives.

I like music, but do not understand it.

I am forever pacing the cage

I like art, but do not comprehend it.

I am on a journey, with many and with a few.

I am still discovering what it is like to live with image that stares back at me from the mirror.

I am learning to like living

to enjoy chasing the wind and smelling the rain.

the touch of the sun and caress of the grass

I am learning to be me in this place

I am a priest. It is sometimes like being a shaman

communicating the divine through the fractured prism of the world

I am a new thinker

I keep to traditions

I cannot make a decision alone

for a priest does not exist in isolation

I am an introvert

I am learning to be me once again

I did not enjoy being young

I did not enjoy being a child

constrained and hemmed in

frustrated by a poverty of the imagination

living without the kaleidoscope of expectation

change came with movement

change came with an opening

I am learning to be me once again

I am priest

I chase rainbows in the rain for people

I laugh at their stories

and help make holy their narratives

I cry and I rage

I stamp and I shout

I lose temper when I should not

I am discovering who I am once again

I can skim a pebble in the stream

I can spend hours waiting for the kingfisher

I can listen to TMS for hours

I can lose myself in the poetry of the word

I can be silent and still embrace the sound

For all that I am is precious

Untarnished

Gem-like

and wonderful

Fearful

carefully crafter

I am learning to be me once again.