The next adventure

I feel like this is a blog post title I have probably used before ... But it seems fitting once again, even if the 'next adventure(s)' to which it refers are not in this case some concrete plan but a collection of nebulous ideas, which may or may not find a way to leap from the world of my imagination into reality! Hopefully, somewhere, there will be a meeting point between passion and possibility in which something will take shape.

There have been lots of changes at St Chad's Sanctuary in recent months, and while change can be daunting it can also provide a healthy space for reflection and discernment. Healthy doesn't necessarily equate to comfortable or easy, of course, and the last months have certainly also had their challenges as I have struggled with the process of figuring out the 'what now?' There have been tears.

I realise I am in a very privileged position to have a huge amount of freedom to reflect on and seek to pursue my dreams. I have the support of good friends, and I am grateful to those who have journeyed with me through this process. In some mysterious way that I don't even pretend to entirely understand, I believe God has been an important part of the process too.

I have always loved teaching through poetry and story. It is a standing joke that if I cover a class at short notice, my go-to activities usually involve resorting to poetry. This year, perhaps more than ever before, I have seen the power of the story. Through the play "Home" and all that preceded and surrounded it, I have seen the power of individuals whose voices are not normally heard finding their voice, sharing their story and understanding that they have something to say that is well worth hearing.

I saw the impact it had on the students involved: on their confidence and character, on the way they interacted with each other and their world. Others too, who knew and met them, commented on the changes they saw in them. And I also saw the impact it had on those who encountered those stories, confidently shared, by real individuals. I saw the ways those telling their stories could reach out, and make people think and feel differently. I saw a way of sharing this space for human encounter which has changed and shaped me over recent years. I came to the end of that experience thinking, knowing, "we need more of this."

And so, for these reasons and others, after three years of much of my life being intricately intertwined with the life of St Chad's Sanctuary, I am branching out.

I am not moving on completely, and even if I were, St Chad's Sanctuary will always have an extremely special place in my heart. I will never be anything but grateful for the opportunities it has afforded me: for me, no less than for the asylum seekers and refugees it seeks to welcome, it has played a very important part in Birmingham becoming a place I call "Home".

The current incarnation of my plans for the autumn is that I will continue working at the Sanctuary, but only for a few hours a week, running the family learning activities. Many of my other activities and commitments will remain the same. And then, somewhere in the space that is created by stepping back from my ESOL co-ordinator role, I will try to get a project off the ground using story-telling, poetry and drama to help asylum seekers find their voice, share their stories and in so doing contribute to transforming the communities around them.

After much soul searching, I have emerged from a period of inner turmoil with a sense of peace. I am stepping out, again, in faith and hope.

I am not naive. I suspect the coming months will have many challenges. There will, undoubtedly, be times when I feel I have made some wrong decisions. I will need much grace.

When I came back to my previous post, it had been sitting, incomplete, in my drafts folder for over a year. Some parts were less apt than when I started it. But the essence: that I believe in vocation, in a sense of calling, not as a static reality but as a journey of discovery; remains as true now as it did then.

Onwards! The next adventure awaits. It remains to be seen exactly what said adventure may be. Watch this space ...

Vocation

I really believe in the idea of vocation: not as a defined or prescribed direction we have to find and follow, but as a gradual and continual seeking out of God's will for our lives. Contrary to how it is sometimes presented in certain sections of the church, I don't think there is a list of 'vocations' that some people have and others don't ... I believe we all have a vocation, or vocations. Vocation is, I think, about discovering those things which make us feel most fully alive. It is the meeting place where that which will use our talents, that which will bring us joy and satisfaction and that which will do good in the world around us come together in harmony. If we're really lucky, it is also something that pays the bills!

A number of years ago (way back in 2005, long before I was writing a blog!), during a workshop in Taize, I discovered my vocation to be a teacher. I had already been working as a teaching assistant for a few months, and was due to start another teaching assistant post in the autumn, but it was there, in the midst of a reflection about Caravaggio's call of Matthew, that I knew that teaching was the direction I wanted to go. It is the closest I have come to hearing the voice of God in a very immediate way and is a moment I have not forgotten. A copy of the picture hangs above my desk. Come that autumn, it felt like everything fell, very simply, into place. A year later I began teacher training, and another year on I began my first teaching job. I knew that this was what I wanted to do. When we moved to Birmingham and I was looking for work there was not even a blink of hesitation, I knew that I would teach.

It was this love of, this vocation for, teaching which first took me to the doors of St Chad's Sanctuary. I didn't approach the Sanctuary because of a passion for working with and supporting refugees and asylum seekers. It is hard to recall exactly, but I was, I suspect, deeply ignorant of the related issues. I went because someone had mentioned that they needed English teachers and I thought I could probably help.

3 years later, I was faced with a choice: the job at St Chad's Sanctuary would of course involve teaching: I wouldn't be giving that up entirely, but it was certainly a change of direction and of priorities. There was much soul-searching. Partly because I was giving up a stable job for one which was distinctly precarious, but also because it was moving away from teaching in the traditional sense. I think it has been clear from many, many posts here, that I have no regrets about the decision I made. I also don't think it changed the realities of my earlier discovery of my vocation to teach: I think it was simply a reminder that vocation, like so much else about the lives we lead, is a journey not a destination, and mine was now taking me down a different road.

I am coming to the end of my third year working at the Sanctuary, but in some ways my role is unrecognisable from how it began. This too has been not a static vocation but a journey of discovery and adventure. I am aware it has been a privilege to have had a huge amount of freedom to develop new ideas, to bring much of myself: my own passions and gifts (as well as my own failings) to this place that I love. I am aware it has been a privilege to allow my vocation to have been shaped by so many precious encounters and beautiful relationships.

Family learning didn't exist at all when I first started, and the growth of first the Learn and Play group for parents and pre-schoolers, and then the Little School project for newly arrived children waiting for school has been a source of great joy (and only occasional stress!). I looked at the statistics recently. We ran our first family trip in the summer of 2016, with 5 mums and 8 children. This summer, on our most recent trip out, we took 37 parents and 78 children ... and it was truly beautiful!

I have had all sorts of opportunities to try out different creative teaching strategies (not least in the creation of Home, the play which took over much of my life earlier this term). I have worked with groups of students to produce two wonderful newsletters celebrating their love of the Sanctuary. I have answered queries with varying degrees of success or ability to make a difference. I have listened to stories which have evoked the whole spectrum of human experience. I have visited all sorts of places in the company of some wonderful people. I have shared delicious food. I have watched friendships blossom. I have had opportunities to share something of what is so special about this place and these people with lots of others, and hopefully, story by human story, helped challenge and change perceptions. I have learned far, far more than I have taught.

Most of all perhaps, I have had the privilege of standing alongside some of the most courageous, resilient and hope-filled people I know in a place which has provided a safe space for tears, as well as lots and lots of laughter.

I have, undoubtedly, discovered much about the vocation(s) I feel called to live out.

There are new adventures ahead, shaped and informed by all of the above, but this post is already quite long enough so I think the story of the next steps will just have to wait!