tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6861480576960760833.post3243945426750945214..comments2024-03-28T11:52:35.171+00:00Comments on Woolgathering in North East England: Michael Sadgrove's Blog: Gathering Fragments One Year OnAquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6861480576960760833.post-59914884904268861952016-09-23T11:00:55.928+01:002016-09-23T11:00:55.928+01:00Thank you for this. It's good to share stories...Thank you for this. It's good to share stories and insights about using retirement creatively and wisely. Entering the 3rd age feels as vocationally significant as beginning a life's work in ordained ministry 40 years ago. I think it calls for the same kind of spiritual discernment.Aquiloniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6861480576960760833.post-87235722332639552022016-09-23T08:15:07.710+01:002016-09-23T08:15:07.710+01:00A difficult and challenging first year. At the sam...A difficult and challenging first year. At the same stage as you, one year in retirement, I was just entering the discernment process for Ordained Ministry and all the challenges and hope and frustrations that it produced. It was a period of formation, while actively engaged in Lay Ministry, being nurtured and developed bu a very able and active 80 year old Reader, Margaret, herself a Vicar's widow.<br /><br />I was also engaged in Study at Christ Church University in Canterbury to build up my Academic credibility, as I'd let school without any academic achievement to show (no A or O levels) although I had a level 7 Qualification in Leadership and Management via the vocational route and evidence to support that from my career.<br /><br />It was to be two years before I went to BAP and was given the Not Suitable for Training for Ordained Ministry, so that disappointment was in the future.<br /><br />This was a huge time of hope, engagement, and spiritual formation and nourishment in my parish and through a hugely supportive spiritual director. I had to face myself, warts and all, and submit my whole life to close scrutiny, including my divorce, many years before, and my spouse had to open up her story to be aired in the Faculty process.<br /><br />I also found time to attend a 10 week Pastoral Care course in that first year, to equip me for work that I was going to be doing in the parish. This was rewarding, as it was the first time that I had actually studied the biblical basis for Pastoral Care, which I had exercised for a number of years (all of my career) when leading others, and latterly as a Battalion Welfare and Families Officer, which opened my eyes to the human frailty and fragility of personal relationships, in a very mobile working environment - long absences impacting on family life, frequent moves between homes, schools and countries, and spouses returning from operational tours, immensely affected by their experiences - and helping families to cope with changed circumstances.<br /><br />Putting all of that into perspective, took time, energy, heart ache and pain, but was an opportunity for forgiveness of others and of self, because carrying baggage into ministry, with out some sort of reconciliation with it, isn't healthy.<br /><br />Our lives changed. We didn't move house, just cultures. From the fairly enclosed culture of the Armed Forces family, to a wider world, where people thought differently from me, and whose experiences were also different. I couldn't really bear to share things that I had seen and done on operations, while needing to allow them to be shared with at least my SD. Healing was part of the process.<br /><br />Now, 7 years later, I'm about to commence the third year of LLM training, and will be licensed next May in the Cathedral. The journey isn't over, as in our Diocese, opportunities for LLM are intentionally wider than the parish - to the Deanery and further afield. I wait with baited breath for what Bishop James might have in store for me.<br /><br /><br />UKViewerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18114944341930758335noreply@blogger.com