Mike's musings

Fellowship and the Body

Fellowship: it's what's missing in my Christian life at the moment. Maybe in life more generally. On the more general side, we've never had a great number of friends: more a few that we are very close to. Since Jo, we've been out less, and over the past few weeks, a couple of things have happened which means that we've seen even less of our best friends than usual: Si and D have bought a caravan, and are enjoying themelves away a lot over weekends, and the weekends when they've been around, we've been out doing other things. That's just one of those things, and we're getting to the stage where we know we should be getting out more, Jo's settling down better at night and, crucially, we can afford a babysitter from time to time. We've got some other friends we need to catch up with, too, so that's out of the way.

On the other piece, then. Since starting the ERMC course, I have a peer group, and I really look forward to the weekends when we get together. There was a blip a couple of weekends ago, but I had such a good time last month that I'm really looking forward to this coming weekend. John, my spiritual director, is very good for keeping my feet on the ground and helping me to iron out the wrinkles, tutorials with Alan show me how to apply theology to ministry, and supervisions with Keith are about integrating things.

But I don't feel fellowship, really. I make it to some services locally (though with lots of family visits at the moment, ERMC and my trip to Canada a job interview, probably not enough). I feel welcome and at home in our local church, but it's a small congregation, and it doesn't feel like home. In order to feel part of the Body of Christ - for me, now, at least, I want to feel closer to some of the members. Sally's helping. I need to call on a few more members of ERMC. Unluckily, noone lives near me from the course. I'd go to evensong at King's from time to time, but I don't want to miss Jo's bedtime, or make Moo have to do all the work on her own.

Not helping, also, that I'm snowed under by assignments, and I'm sure that the uncertainties of a new job provides more unsettlement (is that a real world?).

I shouldn't whinge ("Whinge" was nearly the title of this entry), but I am. I decided early on in this blog to attempt to be as honest as possible about how I feel at any particular time, so that's what I'm doing. Thanks for listening - or just ignoring, which is probably what I need.

# posted by MikeCamel @ 8:54 pm