Thank you all very much for giving me such a wonderful ‘send-off’ after my last service with you on 29th. Thank you too for your wonderful leaving gifts.

Some of you may not know about (or never saw), the really beautiful opal earrings presented to me at our lunch together. Here is a photograph of them. They look great with the ‘Di the Builder’ hard hat that friends at Pittington gave me the week before!

You also gave me a very generous cheque which I am carefully thinking about. I am waiting until I have moved house before deciding what to spend it on but I know I would like to get something that lasts, is beautiful and which I can look at and remember you all by.

Thank you too for the many cards and good wishes I received – and for the flowers which are still looking good even after a couple of weeks.

Above all I want to thank you for giving me so many happy memories of my time at Belmont and Pittington – I will always hold them dear.

Someone commented that the picture on the front of the St. Laurence Pew Sheet on my last day was of a path, not heading into a restful sunset, but rising towards some mountains!
Perhaps this is what retirement feels like at present – a new path ahead with some exciting climbing and some new horizons. However I am already missing you very much as my ‘companions on the Way’, as well as missing the familiarity of my role in the parishes and of the structures of my day. Everything is new!

There will be much that is new going on for you too as you prepare for the appointment of your next incumbent. Someone, somewhere, will already be preparing (probably unknowingly) for a move that will bring them to Belmont and Pittington. The great thing is that, if the listening is done carefully, you will find that it is the same Voice that is speaking to them and to you – even though the exact words may be different! And that is all that matters.

With my love and prayers in all the careful listening and all the newness,
Di

Starting from St. Michael and All Angels, Witton Gilbert, (c.1170) and St. Laurence, Pittington (c.1100), we plan to walk our Small Pilgrim Places paths, on St Cuthbert’s Day, Tuesday 20th March .

We will meet together at the Cathedral for the 12.30pm midday Eucharist, and after in the Cathedral restaurant.

Both walks leave from the churches at 9.30am. Join us for all or any part of this event. Bring sandwiches if you wish, but do book if you want to eat in Cathedral restaurant (places are limited there).

Download our poster for this event if you want to advertise it in your area.

Pittington:
Sylvia Hope – 01913721190
mrshope@hotmail.co.uk

Witton Gilbert:
Penny Minney – 01913711295
pennyminney@talktalk.net

The loft conversion, the new space I have discovered, is virtually finished and the builders are now working on most of the other rooms. It is all very dirty and seemingly chaotic but it is slowly coming together. I am very glad I am not living there at the moment! Hopefully all will be ready by February for the move.

I am of course very mindful of so many good things that I will need to relinquish now, even though I am not going far. These are mostly centred round people and places that have been part of the privileges and pleasures of being both priest and vicar of our parishes. I hope to continue work as a priest in the diocese and Canon of the Cathedral for some years to come and there are some things ‘waiting in the wings’. But I will cease to be your vicar and I shall miss that very much.

I have so enjoyed my time with you all. Thank you to those who have encouraged and cared for me. Thank you to those who have challenged and stretched me. Thank you to those who have laughed and cried with me. Thank you to those who have worked alongside me when I haven’t been easy to work alongside. Thank you to those who have faithfully shared the hard graft and who have joyously shared the many moments of reward.

Another New Year is about to arrive and I guess we are all wondering what 2012 will hold. There are many ‘unknowns’ for us all but those ‘unknowns’ give us the opportunity to trust God and experience his loving provision in a way we can’t when life seems more certain.

‘Lord, for the years
your love has kept and guided,
urged and inspired us,
cheered us on our way,
sought us and saved us,
pardoned and provided,
Lord of the years,
we bring our thanks today.’

I will be praying that you will know the Lord’s sure guidance and presence at every change and turn throughout 2012.

With my love and prayers,

Di

The prospect of ‘retirement’ is now only just round the corner and I am planning for my new home – among other things. Down-sizing from a four bed-roomed Vicarage to a small terraced house is one of the challenges! How will I fit in – not just in physical terms but also how will I fit in to this new lifestyle with all its changes?

A couple of years ago my family encouraged me to think about extending upwards into the roof with a loft-conversion as extending ‘out’ wasn’t possible. This week the builders have moved in and have broken through walls and ceilings into spaces that have not seen the light of day for 150 years! A new staircase has appeared that gives us access into a beautiful new roof space. There, large new windows allow light in and I will be able to sit at my desk with a wonderful view across fields that I have never had before, even from upstairs.

It has made me think about the unused ‘spaces’ in my life. Somehow I feel God is calling me to ‘extend upwards’ beyond the other very happy and familiar spaces that I have been ‘living in’. There is a space that has been waiting for the right time for me to inhabit and that time is coming. ‘Breaking through’, ‘making room’ are the words that come to mind often.

Between now and the end of January is a time of preparation for me in more ways than one and I expect it might be for you as well. In just over a week’s time we enter the wonderful season of Advent to prepare us for Christmas. I remember some years ago there was a Christmas slogan that said, ‘Make room for Christ this Christmas.’ Perhaps there is a new and unfamiliar space for each one of us to ‘break into’ and discover for the first time – a space that will surprise and delight us beyond our familiar traditions of Christmas – and there we can welcome the Christ Child in our lives for the first time. Let’s ask God where in our lives that might be!

Have a very happy and peaceful Christmas.

With my love and prayers,

Di

Di and Mary could hardly wait to get into the area to clean as soon as the builders left.