Updating my CV - Week 4

One of the questions I have taken with me through my career in ministry is this, 'What would happen if we did nothing?' So many issues are presented to the clergy as needing an urgent decision. It is good if you have the ability to spot those cases where doing nothing is an option. I call it specific and strategic indecision. Not laziness. Oh no. A very specific choice of the 'no action required' option. We all like to feel that problems come to us because we are recognised as someone who can solve them. It is humility, not hand-washing, that chooses not to choose. Not everything gets worse if you leave it alone. You'd be amazed how many things fix themselves.

There is a classic story in this genre here. It's the Mystery of the Great Ayton Dinner Plates.

I have one pastoral issue which I have been leaving alone for nearly two years now and, to quote a former colleague, 'While there's death there's hope.' There is a real possibility that this problem will go away. People of Trendlewood Church reading this - it's not any of you.

Now why did I start with that? Because I feel the whole of the current state of ministry in lock-down is grappling with 'What should I do today?' And I am tempted to answer 'What would happen if I did nothing?' It would be interesting, although I have currently stopped short of this, to do nothing and see what ends up being demanded of me.

We spend a lot of our lives answering the question 'Who are you?' It is tempting to reply with a description of what we do. Knee-jerk activism. I went through a period of answering with 'carbon-based life-form living on the third planet from a sun'. Mainly it pissed people off.

Friend of mine took a sabbatical. Told me he was going to concentrate on being rather then doing. Then he listed all the things he was going to do in order to be a better being.

I quite like being. I have a things-to-do list because I have a job and a mind that is usually occupied on some much deeper project than that which I am supposed to be doing. And, as a great administrator I once worked with said 'What's the point of having to remember something if you've got a things-to-do list'? Quite. But these last few weeks have seen me being more of a human being than a human doing and I like a lot of that.

So, how we all being? As I look around the neighbourhood, cars are cleaner, lawns are tidier, streets are quieter, the skies are empty. We've done loads. Meanwhile death and disaster may or may not have an appointment.

There is an old zen story. It goes like this:

A man was being chased towards the edge of a cliff by a wild animal. He fell and grabbed a vine which took his weight. As he dangled two mice, one white and one black, came out of holes in the rock and began to nibble the vine through. Reaching over he saw a wild strawberry plant, in fruit. He picked one and ate. How sweet it tasted.

So my friends. How are the strawberries?