Another week of important and wonderful things

I read a blog by another vicar during the week listing the many things we are meant to be. Among them was 'endearingly disorganised'. I qualify for the second word, but infuriatingly might be a better word than endearingly. Of course there are all sorts of sensible strategies for being organised. Diarising time to do preparation, filing things immediately, all that sort of stuff. As it happens, I do diarise prep but that doesn't stop the phone ringing while I am doing it. My phone rings a lot. Occasionally the result of answering the phone or listening to a voicemail message is having to drop everything and go to that person immediately. It isn't often that a call needs such an instant response, but it did happen this week.

This week one of the wonderful things that happened was a lovely parishioner taking some admin away and making things happen for me. She left me free to concentrate on the things that must be done by the parish priest, and it was a great blessing in a busy week.

Another blessing was a lesson with year four at our church school. Teasing out what is distinctive about a Christian as opposed to any other human being via the formula Faith = Belief + Action led to some good thinking by the class.

Last week included a lot of time spent with bereaved people thinking about funerals that will happen over the next two weeks. Unusually, they are all to be church funerals, covering the whole Benefice, and seeing Benefice officers swinging into action to help make the funerals go well is another blessing. Some aspects have been troublesome, and my tendency to insecurity and self condemnation means that I wake up in the mornings full of anxiety about the difficult things, the problems and challenges. Today I want to remind myself that those moments, however much they affect my dreams, are tempered by so many good moments and good people. The warden and pastoral worker in one village who has attended every funeral visit with me and made numerous visits of her own. The warden who took on a large and unpalatable piece of research for the church, and the warden from a neighbouring church who offered to help her. The warden who spent a morning helping two inexperienced wardens sort out their logs from their terriers, and is willing to keep on helping. I could go on, and despite the last couple of sentences it isn't all church wardens who do marvellous things, though I am blessed with six great wardens.

To go through my diary in detail in a blog would be boring for you. For me everything in it is important. Everything I do, every concern of every person I see, is the most important thing to that person or group of people. I have to treat every meeting and visit and lesson as the most precious and important thing in my life, because for that period of time it is, and because that it is the most important thing for the people I am with. So whether I have mentioned the time I spent with you in this blog or not, you were and are important to me. You are hugely important to God.