I’m back online (which feels like home) and in the airport in New Orleans waiting for my flight. CREDO was wonderful, an opportunity to take some time to reflect on where my life is going and what I want to be doing with the next 10 or 20 years of ministry that God may be giving to me. CREDO II follows on the work of CREDO 1 by inviting the participants to focus less on the vocational aspects of the ministry and more on their sense of who they are as a whole and integrated person. (Or if they’re not particularly feeling whole and integrated, what they might want to do about that.)

I finished reading “Failure of Nerve” and I’m hoping to steal some time to write up a review. There’s a great deal of good stuff there and reading it as I’m starting to get my feet firmly on the ground here at the Cathedral has been particularly helpful.

I’m planning on curling up with the Rex’s “Millennial Matrix” on the flight home – I started it last night and it’s going to be a quicker read than was my other book. I’m already familiar with many of the concepts he’s raising and his writing style has more flow to it than Friedman’s posthumously published book does.

The CREDO experience didn’t bring me any moments of sparkling clarity about the future of my life, but then I wasn’t hoping for any, and frankly would have been a little frightened if such things have burst forth. I’m more used to my insights bubbling to the surface for a bit, then sinking back down to be absorbed and re-released again and again until they’re ready to float up and stay on the surface. On the other hand I did have two or three moments of insight into things that I wanted to think through while I was on retreat, and for those I“m grateful. Nothing life altering – more like little tweaks to what I’m already doing.

The one lesson that I’m particularly taken with at the moment is something the conference leader stressed in a couple of his talks: ”You can’t undo the past or change it, but you can give the events a new meaning and/or context.“ I had a chance to do some of that re-contextualizing (to borrow a phrase from the ”Millennial Matrix”) and those little bits of learning made the whole week worthwhile on their own.

There are lots of other reasons the week was worthwhile, but I probably won’t know what those are for a couple of months at least…

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