Reflecting on a Sabbatical a year on. Part 1 - I needed that
It is just over a year since I went on my three month sabbatical last year. I cannot believe how fast that time has gone. I am enormously grateful for that time away. It was a life saver really. It gave me space to reflect on life and I made some big decisions while I was away, like stepping down from being an archdeacon and retiring this year. Looking back I was pretty exhausted. The COVID years were tough. While some of that time was exhilarating: working out how to be church in lock-down, how to be church when we came back, how to gather safely, how to help people reflect on that time in a healthy way, how to navigate the restrictions and vaccine passes and all the raruraru around that; it was also draining. And then people changed their attendance habits in the middle of all that, so the numbers attending church dropped by a third. We were not unique in that. But it was hard seeing all that work over 10 or so years undone. and people were left tired, and it was hard to get thi...