Work and worship at Christmas

If I had £1 for every time someone said to me during December, "ooh, it must be a busy time for you," I could retire in luxury and drink cocktails all day long. (That's not something I *ever* dream of though...)

It's hard to know how to respond. It is busy, of course it is - this is 1 of the 2 'most important' points in the Christian calendar, and, of the 2, it's by far the most commercially and culturally popular, and therefore the busiest. But (as I've found myself saying often to people over the last few weeks), although I'm busy, it's "good busy" - I'm busy doing lots of fun things.

This week, for instance, among other things, I've made heaps of mince pies, had an 'open house' for church (eating said mince pies), watched a Y1/Y2 and an EYFS Christmas play, signed Christmas carols for a service in a special school, and had a pub night out with a local community group I'm part of. That's in addition to the 'normal', non-Christmas stuff such as planning weddings, baptisms and funerals, visiting people, and writing sermons - LOTS of sermons!

But it's brilliant, isn't it?! Why would I not love doing all that. Preparing for Christmas and Easter, and leading and preaching in church on those days, is right up there at the top of the list of "reasons I love my job". People who don't usually come to church turn up and I get to part of welcoming them in and telling them how much God loves them. That's never not going to be fun.

I don't want people to think I'm "busy", if being "busy" means stressed, or distracted, or 'haven't got time for you', or 'my job's more important than yours'. Mind you, it's perhaps better than that other favourite, £1-earning saying about vicars only working one day a week. Ha ha, how we all chuckled. Through gritted teeth... Although I suppose I do get that people find it very hard to imagine what vicars do actually do from Monday morning to Saturday evening.

I was once asked by a hairdresser what I did and when I told her, rather than looking blank, or saying "you don't look like a vicar," which is what I've come to expect in such conversations, she immediately beamed and said "oooh, that must be such a LOVELY job." I've wondered about that since. I wish I'd asked her what she meant, but I was so surprised that I didn't. It IS a lovely job, actually, but I don't think she meant it for the same reasons as I do. Maybe she thought I spent my whole day cuddling babies, or drinking tea and eating cake with old ladies.

Anyway, I've been thinking this week about the whole 'busyness' thing, specifically as it relates to Christmas, and to Advent, the time of preparation for Christmas. Because one of the big dangers for clergy, or vicars, or ministers, or whatever you want to call us - and indeed for anyone whose job it is to 'do' Christmas in church - is that the whole thing will just become work instead of worship.

That's always a danger - the 'professionalisation' of church so that it becomes something we simply 'do'. I think, though, that it's even more of a danger at Christmas and Easter. We find ourselves dashing between carol services and home communions and toddler group parties. We have so many talks to write that we just dig out and dust off a few from previous years (*nothing wrong with sermon recycling every now and then by the way - as long as it doesn't become a way to avoid engaging with the Bible and what God is doing right here and now). We try to balance the church/work/personal, and something has to give - so either we have brilliant services but don't write any cards or buy any presents, and burn the roast dinner; or church is a bit pants but we go all Kirstie Allsopp and Mary Berry at home.

I really, really, don't want the joy and wonder and delight and excitement of leading a church at Christmas to become a chore. I don't want the awesome, incredible, beautiful, timeless story at the heart of it to become commonplace. I don't want the mindblowing privilege of telling people about Jesus - God's Son, come to earth as a tiny baby to be 'Emmanuel', God With Us - to become just another item on my to-do list.

Before I can do anything else at Christmas, before I can write the cards and wrap the presents and cook the food; and definitely before I can sing the songs and watch the plays and preach the story - I must first stop and be still and simply worship the God who loved me, you, us, enough to come into our world as one of us, to save us.

Here's a picture of our church Christmas tree after we'd decorated it to tell the whole story of Jesus (probably my highlight of Christmas every year):

Just being there

Well once again I'm afraid it's been ages since I wrote a blog! Here though, at last, is the 5th post in my series looking at the Five Love Languages - http://www.5lovelanguages.com/ This time I'll be thinking about 'Quality Time'. I've already looked at the other 4 - Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts and Physical Touch. You can find them all if you scroll back through the last few months' posts.

So what is Quality Time all about? Well it's about really being 'with' some - genuinely present, in the moment, giving them your undivided attention. It might involve doing something that they want to do although you'd rather not, or it might simply be 'doing nothing' together - that companionable silence and shared space which can be really lovely when we're comfortable with the other person.

I guess Quality Time is important to many of us in some way - none of us wants to feel like we don't matter, or that someone is looking over our shoulder to see how fast they can get away, or looking at their watch thinking about where they need to be next. Whether it's an appointment with our GP, a chat with a friend over coffee, or a meeting with our boss over an issue at work, we want to feel that the other person has got time for us, that they are genuinely present in the conversation and that they've got time for us. If we don't feel like that, but instead feel that they can't wait to get away, we'll be far less likely to say the thing that we've actually come to say, or to be honest and open.

With friendships too, this is really important. Quality Time doesn't have to be long, and it doesn't have to be all the time. It might consist of seeing someone for a day a year. It might be an hour a week. But in that time, however long and however regular, the person's time will be given completely to the other, as an act of generosity.

So Quality Time is important for many of us, but how does it specifically affect single people? It's probably more of(although not exclusively) an issue for those who don't have children and who live alone, because there just isn't someone 'there' to spend time with.

Sean Doherty, in Part 1 of his brilliant series 'The Only Way is Ethics' (Authentic, 2015) makes a brilliant point:
"Once when preaching I talked about needing deep friendships. But someone pointed out to me afterwards that depth is not enough. She had deep friendships. What she missed was someone to share shallow things with. Maybe 80 per cent of marriage is the 'shallow' stuff: emptying the dishwasher, sharing how your day went, watching a movie, knowing someone will miss you when you're away. Intimacy is built on small things."

Yes! This is so true. Sometimes as single people we find ourselves invited for 'special events' but still excluded from the mundane and day to day stuff of life. That's not meant to sound like a complaint! But it's lovely also to be invited to just hang out with people, to watch TV, to have a 'normal' tea (not just a fancy dinner party), to go for a walk, to mooch round the shops... Living alone I find I really do miss doing that 'normal' stuff with other people.

Although Quality Time is about being present it doesn't have to be intense, I don't think. Today I popped round to my friend's house to pick up some things I'm borrowing for a school assembly. I then spent an hour hanging out in her kitchen over a cuppa. During that hour she made tea for the kids, who came and went - they laughed, cuddled, argued, cried, fell out and showed me their homework. She and I had a conversation interrupted by spelling practice, sibling arguments and post-football-reports. But it was still Quality Time because I know they love me, and I'm allowed to be part of their family, and my friend wanted to hear about the important conversation I'd had earlier.

Quality Time takes a bit of effort. Sometimes we end up seeing time with friends as one more thing on our to-do list, and after a half hour chat and cuppa we can cross it off and crack on with the next job. But Quality Time is about being generous with ourselves and our time, being there for one another. It's definitely an investment worth making!