SLOW MOTION SUMMER

In the summer of 2024 I took a sabbatical. It was my first since 2009 and will be my last in stipendiary ministry as, being 61, retirement will come next.

 

It’s inevitable people ask: how was your sabbatical? Yet the true answer is more complicated than a simple: great. It has been great, but life’s challenges are not suspended when we rest. My time began with a deeply traumatic death in the wider family, whose implications will be lived with for years to come. There has been plenty of time to think about those I love who have been most affected by this. It also allowed me space to reflect on the deaths of my own mum and dad in recent years. The unusually heavy demands of ministry at the time of my dad’s death meant I did not grieve him as I wished to; the sabbatical released more of this.

 

Rest is the most wonderful gift. At the end of my sabbatical in 2009, I had an unusually strong sense of God’s whisper to me. Relaxed, refreshed and full of hopeful energy, the words I heard were: this is the eternal rest you will inherit. Rest is a sign of the coming kingdom of God. When people are deprived of it – and countless numbers are – it robs them of a specific kind of hope.

 

In 2024, I had an equally powerful sense that I should vacate the role of older brother in the parable of the prodigal son – dutiful but resentful – and embrace the words of the father in the story: all that is mine is yours. To dwell deeply and slowly on creation; to be entertained by live performances in London’s theatres; to indulge in matinee screenings of the local cinema; to read both systematically and spontaneously. Above all, to spend time with a wider family that lives so far away from me that the one day off I have a week I have keeps me from them.

 

The systematic reading has been round the impact of digital technology on the human soul, our relationships and how we form and preserve society. There is today what I would call social climate change. The invention of the internet, the development of profiteering social media platforms and the explosion of disinformation, misinformation and conspiracy theory is very

 

Even during these three months of leave, we have seen an assassination attempt on the life of US Presidential candidate Donald Trump that has produced a vast trove of conspiracy theory and a series of far-right riots in the UK sparked by intentional disinformation surrounding the awful murders of several children in one incident in a quiet, genteel Lancashire seaside resort. Social media companies and their owners have been given an extraordinary amount of leeway by lawmakers and societies beguiled both by the sophistication and utility of tech and the untold riches of those who provide it. As ever, we are in awe of great wealth, as if with great wealth comes great wisdom.

 

These are questions that require urgent attention because artificial intelligence is going to make these questions exponentially more complicated in the years ahead. The challenge will be to secure multinational co-operation when several nations already use disinformation and misinformation as tools of hybrid warfare. More of all this in posts to come on this website.

 

At times it may feel like ‘the word became digital, full of bile and lies’, but the Word was in the beginning with God, and the kingdom of God draws inexorably nearer both because of us and in spite of us. The eternal rest which those who labour with heavy burdens long for is only ever round the corner for mortal bodies. But what we do with that hope in the meantime has deep meaning for those who suffer today, and for the new creation we are helping to shape.

 

Ecclesiastes didn’t say there is a time for rest and a time for work, but it is in that spirit that I return to work, without forsaking the time to rest.