It was because there was nothing to do that I did it...

No, not a confession but the opening line from R.S.Thomas's poem 'Pluperfect,' from which the name of this blog is taken:

". . . There was a vacuum 

I found myself in, full of echoes

of dead languages. Where to turn

when there are no corners? In curved

space I kept on arriving at

my departures . . .

. . . Where are you? I

shouted, growing old in

                        the interval between here and now."

I am no longer surprised to see the Phoenix collection of Thomas's poems on the study shelves of ministers. For, though we may not all inhabit the same depths of anguish as the Welsh poet-priest, there are - for me at least - times of frustration that I spend much energy being active in the name of a sometimes elusive God. Which is not to say 'absent' but perhaps not as obvious as I would wish. Like another religious poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, "I greet Him the days I meet him and I bless when I understand."

So why a new blog? There are some excellent ones which I have noted on the main page here but does the world really need another blog? I wrote an occasional one for Church from Scratch and have added the archive from this here also.  I kept a journal for a while. Neither of these helped me to address two unresolved needs.  Generally I only  know what I think on a range of topics when I begin to write about them. Secondly, after 30 years exploring the Christian way as a preacher, and despite enjoying an itinerant ministry as a guest speaker in a number of churches, I have no weekly pulpit.  As someone reminded me again this morning, we are what we do. It is part of who I am to want to explore and unpack truth in the company of others, by preference in dialogue. I have also written an occasional newsletter to friends who have supported and encouraged us since our move to Southend in 2009 and it is now time, I feel, to move on to different ways of sharing news.

Finally, Thomas's concluding lines hint that God is often sought not in the hurry and busy-ness of everyday life, which I find only anaethetises me to what is most important, but in the spaces between activities - echoes of the 'timeless moments' in Eliot's 'Little Gidding' - more poetry... 

Therefore, one hope for this blog is for a little more time to think aloud among friends, on many topics and I'd be glad of the company of anyone who wanted to join in.