Title and tagline

Today’s Blogging101 challenge was to come up with a new title and tagline. But, having spent a lot of time quite recently coming up with a better title and tagline, I’m really happy with them for now. The tagline was the easy bit given the way I see the blog and its purpose at the moment. It’s a place for me to journal life’s journey instead of writing it all down in the paper journal I’ve kept for years. I realise I won’t journal everything on here that I might in a private handwritten book, but the act of having to press ‘publish’ really makes me think much more carefully about what I’m writing and helps me to think through all of the thoughts and ideas I write about. My first steps have also encouraged me that engaging with the blogging community might help me to get so much more out of all my thinking. The title was much harder to come up with – it’s obviously a play on the phrase More tea, Vicar? which applies because I am a vicar. But then it suddenly hit me that the reason for blogging at all was to get some of the thoughts that clutter up my headspace typed into the blogosphere.  All of my blog content is going to come out of those thoughts, so the phrase seemed to work – and seemed to be a bit lighthearted and fun as well. I’m interested to know how the title and tagline come across to others

Changing the world

Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, would have  celebrated his 186th birthday this week.  He once wrote this:

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

Or herself! I long for change, for a better world, and I know I’m not alone in that. Humans have been doing unspeakable damage to the natural world, and to one another, since long before Tolstoy’s birth in 1828. And not just the big stuff, but also all those small daily things we think and say and do; the ways in which we hurt other people, whether intentionally or not. Tolstoy’s words here take us to the heart of the problem: changing the world means changing people. We have to be willing to live differently for the good of all. And, since I can’t change anyone else – beyond trying to encourage that process – changing the world needs to start right here with me today.

In the bloginning – an anniversary

In the bloginning . . . Today seems an auspicious day for launching the first post of this new blog as it’s one of those milestone days we have in our lives.  It’s the first anniversary of my licensing as Rector of the two parishes in Manchester where I now live and work.  The purple plant is an anniversary gift from one of the churchwardens.  I think I have to take that as a good sign – I’m sure she wouldn’t be buying me a gift if it had been a disastrous first year.  And purple is such a good choice – it was my all-time favourite colour when I was a child and it’s still one of my favourites now, but not one I get to wear when I’ve got the work uniform on.  Purple shirts are reserved for bishops, so I don’t have any of those in my wardrobe.

So, what is there to blog about when I think back over the last year? Unusually for me, my mind has gone blank – but I think that’s because the alternative is complete overload.  It’s been an incredibly busy year and there have been so many different experiences.  Some of those were things I’d already experienced as a curate (a trainee vicar on the job), but then these are different parishes, different people, different church buildings and so on, so even familiar things have been different.  And then there have been things I hadn’t done in curacy and, with two parishes rather than just the one, I’ve sometimes felt like juggling and plate spinning would’ve been better skills to have brought here with me.  Perhaps the year ahead will find me posting some reflections of some of the many experiences that come my way as a parish priest.  But I also wonder if there’ll be far more posts that just look like the random jottings of a whole host of thoughts that have nothing at all to do with the day job . . . time will tell.  But, for now, it’s a bloginning.  Time to hit publish!