Thoughts on the Way

‘As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.’ Isaiah 55:10-11 I want to tell you about Brizzle Drizzle. Coming from one of the driest places in the country, this is a new phenomenon to me. It’s utterly incredible and what happens is this: you look out of the window and it’s definitely not dry, but it doesn’t really look like it’s raining. So, you go outside and realise there’s a kind of heavy mist in the air, but it still doesn’t feel like it’s raining. You walk to where you’re going and when you get inside you realise that you’re wet; like you’ve been out in the rain. But it hadn’t really felt like it was raining. This sums up welcome week for me (but please don’t associate the...

‘I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?’ Isaiah 43:19 In August 2016 I sat in the chapel at Bishop’s House on the island of Iona and read these words. As I wrote them and the surrounding verses in my journal, I knew that the new thing God was calling me to was priesthood in the Church of England. And I said yes… Well… Eventually… Today it is Friday 6 th September 2019 and I am sat in my new bedroom, in my new flat, in my new home of Bristol, about to embark on life as an ordinand at Trinity College Bristol. So I thought I’d write a blog about it all. I can’t promise it will be very profound but there’s a few reasons I thought I’d write it. Firstly, even my computer doesn’t know what an ordinand is and has put an angry red line under it, suggesting I’ve misspelt a normal word like ordinance or ordinary. So I thought it might be vaguely interesting to explore what being an ordinand really means and what it’s like in rea...