What a different person, retired from ministry, is taking up this blog again. I look back at my previous entries and resonate strongly with the chair making episode, but feel not a flicker of connection with the former self who wrote about hearing God's voice.
After my Sabbatical I arrived back in the parish in time for the departure of my two colleagues, an NSM and a House for Duty. I still had an active retired priest and a reader to help across my three churches.
The following Summer my wife and I moved into the benefice vicarage. The winter of 2012 was severe and the beginning of 2013 saw a foot of snow lying on the ground in the run up to Easter.
22nd July 2022
I broke off my blog five and a half years ago just before describing the events which led up to my retirement on health grounds. I still find it hard to write about the time which included a consistory court, and deteriorating mental health. This included a searching look at the basis of my previous life in trying to succeed as a Christian and as a minister. Gradually I found that I could no longer support the arguments I had frequently made in defence of the Christian faith. I discovered that I no longer accepted that the Bible is the word of God, or that there is such a thing as the Holy Spirit. I could no longer deny the strength of the evidence against both of those propositions .
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