We emerge blinking into the light of day after three days of Clergy Conference. It seemed to me to be a good experience – an excellent speaker, a very good turn-out of clergy and a very high level of engagement. And in the midst of all the serious stuff, we even succeeded in writing a hymn/canticle, a creed and a rap based on Ephesians 1 for our final eucharist.
And what makes the relationships interesting for me … It’s the fact that I find myself in a very close working relationship with people whom I know and like and yet hardly know at all … and vice versa. So just occasionally, like people in a marriage, we find that we suddenly don’t understand each other. Sometimes it shows itself when we use the same words but mean very different things by them – sometimes we feel passionately about something because of experience we have had. But it’s different experience and we haven’t had long enough to share it with one another.
None of that’s a problem – in fact it’s enormously stimulating. Probably a bit like it is to live and work using a second language – sometimes missing the nuances and not understanding the jokes. But definitely worth working at.