Very Slightly Ajar

I am a gardener who used to be a vicar.  Simple statement.  Gardening isn't the only work I do in fact, as I also work for a funeral director . . . but I'm self-employed as a gardener, I have the interest and the fairly steep uphill learning curve of trying to start a small business (and in a recession!), and I am to a degree fulfilling a dream and a calling, as I have always enjoyed gardening, was educated to degree level in botany, and am, on the quiet, something of an expert on weeds.

But I also had - and have - a dream and a calling that is to do with the ministry of a priest.  The reason why I'm not currently operating as such is complex and painful, though not - I would dare to say - scandalous.  I hit the buffers, let us say;  I hurt some people, perhaps in the end myself most of all, and I let some people down.  I also - thank God - had good friends who stood by me and walked with me, and good advisers who let me talk and, where necessary, talked to me, sometimes in pretty hard words.

And I find myself to be in a good place.  I enjoy the view from Brookfield.  But the dream and calling are still there.  Is there a way back?  No, not least because I don't want it.  I shall be very happy never to be a vicar again (a vicar being someone who has the job of running one, or these days very often many, church parishes).  But I am still a priest;  I'm not sure I want to be, exactly, but it is what I am, and what I ought to be, it is something that God is still calling out of me.

I have investigated whether there is a way forward, into a new stage of priestly ministry.  I could be used;  I could be useful;  I have my hopes. Or had. A letter this morning rather suggests that - in the short term at least - my hopes may not be well founded.  I have felt very discouraged, reading it . . . or at least, on first reading it.  But it is not an unfriendly or unsympathetic letter;  and, even if only very slightly ajar, a door remains open.  There is the chance to talk.  Before that, though, there is also the need to pray.