I thought this worth posting here - my final piece for our deanery magazines before retiring :-
One of the things I’ve enjoyed doing while serving in Hereford Diocese has been editing the Diocesan Prayer Diary - I’ve done it since 2016, and before that I edited it between 1994 and 2004, so it has taken up quite a chunk of my life. I’m in the middle of editing next quarter’s as I write this piece - this is the one they need in the Diocesan Office as early as I can get it to them, since they, like everyone else at this time of the year, have to contend with the Christmas rush.
It’s something of a bittersweet exercise this time, editing the Diary, as it will be my last; and, as I put together prayer biddings for February and March, I’m very aware that by then I’ll no longer be part of the Diocese. January is my last month as a parish priest, and at times these last few months have felt like heading towards a precipice. Like Wiley T. Coyote in the cartoons, I’ll step off the cliff, spend a moment or two realising that there is now nothing under my feet, and then disappear from view.
I’m quite sure a lot of people feel the same when they head towards the gate marked “retirement”. And it’s surely even worse, I should think, when the gate you’re heading for is one marked “redundant” - an appalling word, I’ve always thought, with overtones of “no longer useful” and maybe even “no longer usable”.
I recall Bishop Richard saying at a clergy meetings that “There’ll be no clergy redundancies in this diocese, on my watch.” I was glad to hear that - not least because it’s quite clear that there are no redundancies in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom no-one is cast off as “no longer useful”. And I confess that by now I’m beginning to look forward to a busy and useful retirement. It’ll include a little more rest and a little more time for family and friends, and outings and visiting, than maybe life has over the past few years, but it’s certainly not going to be the end of either ministry or discipleship.
Having said that, we can make ourselves “no longer useful” - as the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25.31ff makes clear. The goats in that parable hadn’t ceased to be religious, in a churchy sense, but they had stopped being useful, because they’d stopped being kind. They’d stopped noticing and responding to their neighbour in need.
As it happens, Random Acts of Kindness Day falls within the next quarter of the Prayer Diary (it’s 17th February in fact, but don’t wait till then!). Kindness is the currency of the Kingdom - not random in the sense of only doing it when we feel like it, but certainly random in the sense of “It doesn’t matter who or where you are, just that you need help or comfort or encouragement, and I can give it.” So, welcome 2025, I say! Every year is a whole new adventure, and this one certainly will be for me. And whatever resolutions you make as you look ahead, make sure kindness is at the head of your list!