From the Corner of Bayswater & 5th
Volume 19
Bill that runs the Regent Bookstore is a quiet man not prone to excitement so much as understatement. So there I was standing waiting for my Mocha which gets a free upgrade on a Monday and Bill wanders past and matter of factly says, “We got you your book in there today.” Which one,” I reply, “a little confused as they have them all already.” “The new one,” says he, as if getting a book we just finished four weeks ago, not due until next week but not expected until July 12th was not a little bit spectacular never mind the fact that it was mine! “The new one,” I say, not quite believing. “Yeh,” still matter of factly! A few minutes later and there it is in my hand! I was excited!
An updated book is a great book to get published. The first time Walk On came out I was wrecked with doubt and insecurity. When The Rock Cries Out came out I was so sick of a lot of what went on around it and had lost a bit of excitement about it. Excitement is the only thing that carries you through that doubt and insecurity. I didn’t even do a launch night! And now when I read it I realise that I am proud of lots of that book and happy with most of it. I am now gutted that we never got it out to a lot of people who wanted it but never got the chance.
Anyway, ( I love using that link word and you can use it in a diary so I’m making the most of it!) having an update is fun because the book has already got its place and having been well accepted and affirmed in reasonable sales – who am I kidding, when I told the Regent Book Store people what it sold they were astounded! Also I would say that I am happier with the new chapters than I was with the original book so I am not having the insecurity, just the fun of having a book out! Get ready for a fall is I guess what I should be doing! The fact that a Florida publisher thinks that adding to Roisin Ingle’s quote from the Irish Times on the back cover would be a quote from the National Catholic Reporter is hardly going to be a recommendation to evangelical Northern Ireland makes me laugh more than cry! It’ll maybe save them from reading the stuff in it that would make me a heretic in their eyes anyway. I’ll see it as a safety net!
My only regret really is that I didn’t get to work on the original much. I probably should have re-written but I hadn’t the time really to think through how to do that, how to deconstruct something set in stone and rebuild it. Maybe actually I only needed to look at the early chapters and give more of the later formula of looking at the albums and live shows and building the stuff around that. Anyway that is probably just me and I am not a full time writer so I did not have the luxury.
Heading back to the office with your new book in hand should excite you about the one you are working on. And it did. I am just in this place of not sure where to begin with the new one. I have people in mind that it is for. I know the kind of feelings I want the book to ignite, the kind of effect I want it to have, the ideas I want to explain, the conversation I want to start but how to shape it is stumping me just now. I reckon that this is a battle for the writer and that I’ll get through this and I have to be content that this wrestling with the shape and not typing all day more fruitful than word counts!
Yet, there is so much else spinning around my head. New books. A new desire to read theology and to grapple with the context of the Gospels. So much of that I had been put off by ethereal theological cerebral posing. I never want to get so theological that the action loses out. But I have a new desire for praxis. I know that my teaching in Chaplaincy is going to be better as a result of what I learn in this time but more importantly what I now want to continue to learn in the time after we get home. I am reconfiguring my preaching techniques and running with a million ideas of what I want to do with students next year. So I am reading for the book but also reading for the teaching at home and jotting down a new mission statement for Chaplaincy.
You might think that this doesn’t sound too much like a sabbatical. Well the truth is that this was never going to be a holiday. Sabbatical is not like footballers between seasons with their feet up at the pool in Barbados. This is more like pre season training. Well, kind of more limbering up for pre season. It is about not having the pressure of matches. Jani and I were just chatting tonight about how great it is to not be answerable to or having people answerable to you. I can go to the office in the morning and think and read and write, leave the office about 4 and head to wherever the girls are and not be bale to give them that time. Today, they were at Kitsilano out door pool.
How dare I forget to mention! The sun is out! I have my shorts on for the first time in 5 weeks. We were about to give up hope. People would say, “it is going to get good soon.” We were not sure if they were trying to fool us or themselves but after 8 weeks (yip 8 weeks!) we knew better and had come to rely on our good friend Judith Mary Webb from home who kept saying “rain” and “plastic macs” that made her begin to sound like Father Jack. She is so right! Anyway, the sun is out and in Kitsilano that means everyone and everything is out. The skimpiness of clothes is scary at times! My make students would love it here. I think Paddy Stirling did!
So, I picked up the girls had a lolly in the shade and was able to take them to their favourite little park at Jericho Beach while Jani made tea. This kind of thing is such a luxury and then to end up in bed watching crap TV with my wife at 10.30 with no pressure is great. It is relaxing in comparison to the madness of home and yet it is productive too.
Having said that yesterday was far from a Sabbatical Sunday. While we were in Sun Peaks last week (and I should say we learned to love that quiet though the journey home through clouds and lashing rain was no fun!) the minister in Fairview Presbyterian where we have been attending went off on the sick. I was able to step in. I have the resources on my lap top and could preach at the drop of a hat but that is when I realised that I was unhappy with my old techniques and started to critique my sermons and reshape them. Anyway I preached on Sunday morning and was able to be the ordained person to do the communion on Sunday night. I’m on again this week. It is good to be able to help out in a time of need but again a little non Sabbatical!
Time is rushing off on us. We have six weeks left and we want to make the most of it. Times like these start off pretty slowly but once you hit half way you are hurtling out of control towards the finish line. It is getting a little scary that way.
Reading at present – Stanley Haeurwas’s Resident Aliens, NT Wright’s The Challnege of Jesus and Nick Hornby’s new novel A Long Way Down.
Listening at present – Coldplay, Ryan Adams, Daniel Lanois, Joel Plaskett, Amos Lee and Last Tuesday.
Back
