My Dear Friends,

I have a small room in my vicarage which is my ‘workspace’. It’s used for different purposes, an ‘office’ when I do official things, a ‘study’ when I… well… study, and a ‘studio’ when I need a creative space to paint. I have a wonderful Trinity of uses for my small, relatively dark, and often cold little room. My desk is jammed up against the window (north facing) so I get some daylight during the day, and there are several lamps for evening work.

I often visit the workspaces of my clergy colleagues. There I often find serious, book lined walls, piles of papers and desktop computers looking like air traffic control. I’m glad for them but this isn’t my way - your vicar is less studious I’m afraid. If you knock at my door, I may answer it with a paint brush in hand rather than a heavy theological tome. Of course I do engage in theology, but usually I find a creative way of thinking about God.

I’m writing about this because I want to encourage us all that being a Christian takes many different forms, there is no ‘right’ way of being a vicar any more than there is a ‘right’ way of being a Christian – we are all different, and we find God in different ways.

God loves us all, and we can love him as we simply walk in nature, paint a picture, dig the garden, go for a run (I NEVER do this). However you spend your time, spend a little bit of it thinking about God, doing theology. As we approach Easter and move into spring, the most important message I have to offer is that God loves you - especially you - in all your wonderful and lovely difference. I say this over and over in church and where else I go, because it’s fundamental to our existence as human beings to know that we are loved by God.

love and blessings.

Linda