NEWS & Events

Many of you will recall that when I came back from study leave at the end of July last year I was struggling to put into words what we had experienced while we were away.

In part that was due to the emotional intensity caused first by Fred Muntz’s death the night before we left, and then by the death of my sister’s husband the night before Fred’s funeral, and the consequent shuffling between Scotland, Tanworth and Eastbourne, along with helping my grieving family.

This was combined with the internal processing of discovering an unexpectedly deeper connection with the Holy Spirit’s presence in the natural world through the rest of those three months reflecting on the presence of God in a wild and beautiful place.

When taken together there was a sense of the beginnings of something, but I couldn’t put it into words, even to myself, which is why I found it difficult to explain at the time. I think perhaps you could describe it as seeing a shoot peering up through the ground but it’s so new that there aren’t any leaves yet so you don’t know if it’s a weed or an oak tree. A series of events since then gradually increased an awareness that change was coming. Added to that was an increased worry about the distance between us here and our families, especially our parents.

I remember asking colleagues a few years ago how one would know when one’s time in a parish was coming to an end. It seemed rather unhelpful at the time to get the response, “Oh, you’ll just know”, but that’s what I began to feel. I spoke to a few trusted friends in the parish who confirmed what I was thinking, that God was moving us on.

So it is with a mixture of sadness at endings and excitement about new beginnings that I need to tell you that this will be our last Christmas in this parish, and that we will be moving to Oxford Diocese, probably towards the end of February where I will be the next vicar of Wooburn Green.