Back from – very productive, affirming and reinforcing – conference on clergy leadership, principally led by Rob Mackintosh of The Leadership Institute. Details of the course are here.

In the course of various discussions, I was working through issues associated with my deafness – bit of a theme at the moment – so I shared with my small groups the various problems I have been having in the parish, and the way in which I thought God was leading me through it. I said, in particular, that the most difficult times were at common meal times – when someone sits on my left, there is lots of background noise, and I find it difficult to have a conversation.

So, as you might expect, at the next meal (supper) I end up sitting with a free space on my left – free until the guest speaker sat there, that guest speaker being the Bishop of Chelmsford….

Had to laugh.

Bizarrely, I also went to a formal meal on Friday night, where I was placed in the worst possible position – at the end of a huge row of tables, with a person to my left and nobody to my right. But in fact – running with the way the spirit is moving me – I thought ‘sod it’ and just got on with conversing – with a hand next to my right ear to deflect the noises from my left so that I could hear my neighbour’s speech. It worked OK – only missed a few sentences – and all this with a jazz combo in the background as well.

God is certainly up to something at the moment – which is reassuring, in it’s own way, however difficult things might get this week.

It’s good to be back.