New Responsibilities

From now on, when he occurs, I will refer to the new incumbent of Lamford as Fr Dominic to distinguish him from Fr Donald the retired hospital chaplain in our parish. So, that said, today Fr Dominic served me vegetable soup (‘During the vacancy the Diocese cut off the power and water supply to the greenhouse; it would be very handy to be able to grow some tomatoes’), bread and cheese for lunch. Very Lenten, though St David whose feast day it is would have baulked at such indulgence as cheese. We were meeting to discuss my potential taking over as Rector of the Guildford Chapter of the Society of Catholic Priests. ‘The Bishop’, he went on, ‘will see you as more congenial than me after my civil partnership with Jake, but probably only just. All these things are relative.’ SCP has been doing next to nothing lately while Dominic has been relocating to Lamford, the Secretary is looking for a new job and the Treasurer is run off his feet. I will probably assume the role in July, provided the existing committee – all three of them – can work out some dates to meet.

And the evening offered another gathering, Churches Together in Hornington & District. Now, this I’ve known I will be taking on for quite some time as I’ve been Vice-Chair for the past year, preparing to ascend to Chair at the AGM. I’m not sure what to do with SCP particularly, apart from providing a space for my colleagues to bend a sympathetic ear, but I do have some thoughts about Churches Together. The schedule of events could do with being pruned a bit; for instance, in this year’s calendar a ‘Pentecost Songs of Praise’ appears which was done last year over the Jubilee weekend as part of those celebrations, and I would quite like that not to become a regular fixture without anyone actually taking a decision about it. We also claim to be co-operating in service to the community, but we don’t really. I wonder whether getting our various pastoral assistants together to swap experiences and think about issues of concern to the Hornington area we might be able to tackle together in some way. It might come to nothing, but it’s a different way of going about what we say we do.

How I fit it all in is another matter, but as our Area Dean is resigning and I really did not want to be considered for that thankless task, I thought it a wise precaution to do take on something else instead!