Love and Anger

We were celebrating communion at Widelake House yesterday. We'd arrived later than usual due to interesting times on the roads of the parish, and I'd forgotten to bring a pall, the stiff linen square that sits over the chalice to stop flies dropping in it. Bella, who was a regular member of the congregation but is now resident in Widelake, was extremely upset at someone coming into her room overnight and was so anxious to see the manager when she came back that we only persuaded her to come to the service with some difficulty. As usual, a couple of the souls present pretty much know what's going on, a couple drift in and out of sleep, and it washes over the others in what I have to hope is a holy miasma. 

One of the important things in parish ministry, which is only a more acute version of the same dilemma that faces a lot of people in their daily lives, is to come to terms with the apparent pointlessness of a lot of what you do. I think priests who are anxious to be demonstrably useful are a hazard to themselves and others. My predecessor was very determined to be useful, and I suspect this was probably why she had her breakdown: reality never lived up to her expectations. 

In the afternoon Cara came for tea and as we sat in the café she described her first few weeks looking after three churches of different character in the wilds of inner Surrey. She's spent quite a bit of that time fighting an inner rage. She met the bishop who conducted her installation at an event this week and who made the mistake of asking how she was 'and I could feel my eyes filling with tears and I could see the panic in her face'. I recalled what it was first like in the much easier circumstances of Swanvale Halt, and my own sense of anger and unsettlement, a completely unreasonable feeling given the lovely people God had provided for me here. Marion our curate once told me how she thought her character had deteriorated since her ordination and 'how much more bad-tempered' she'd become. So many clergy report the same sort of thing, quite separately from the actual conditions in which they find themselves, that it's worth thinking why it happens. It is something to do with the uncertain expectations of the priestly role, which once upon a time was exercised within the clear context of social authority but which is now one onto which everyone around you projects a set of their own, often conflicting, expectations. These are often communicated to you very subtly, and sometimes not so subtly. It's not surprising if a person suddenly projected into this situation resents it, and feels guilty at resenting it, because they've chosen it and because of the privileges that accompany it, and that certain character types will find the mixture of emotions harder to process than others. It's also why new incumbents have to pay special attention to the first few weeks of their ministry: everyone will always remember the impression you give right at the start, and yet that's the time when you are most unsettled, uncertain, and vulnerable, when you don't really know what's going on and are trying to work out what you feel as much as what everyone else does.

'My spiritual director would said that these feelings are potentially creative and properly handled are all part of the process of priestly ministry,' I offered.

'Yeah, thanks,' said Cara.