To everything there is a season.

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

I've always thought this the perfect Bible reading for Advent Sunday, though I have never yet heard it used that way. The end of the old church year and the start of the new one has marked two major "times" in my life, the one by choice and the other by coincidence.

Way back in 1998 I started to research the activities of the Usenet group uk.religion.christian, and shortly after I started, the then moderator asked if I'd like to take over the post. Once I had addressed the methodological issues this introduced into my research, I agreed to become moderator in 1999.
I didn't actually meet the outgoing mod until later that year when we staged an impromptu "handover ceremony" at one of the occasional real-life meetings of some group members. A year to the day after the handover, he and I were married.

Seven and a half years later, my research having finished, the PhD secured and with the pressures of full time work and new research pressing on me, I started talking about finding a successor way back in Spring, and after much careful consideration, a suitable candidate proved both willing and available, though not till Autumn because of other commitments. So we fixed Advent Sunday as a good date for the start of a new chapter in the life of the group.

Meanwhile, the machinations of the legal system mean that by coincidence I received through the post my divorce decree absolute just two days before I handed over to the next mod: my marriage lasted two days fewer than my term as moderator. There is a wretched sense of failure that comes with the end of a marriage, so that I could take little pleasure in contemplating my period as moderator as a job well done, though it was that, I believe.

The traumas of the weekend were numbed by illness as a vicious fluey cold made my joints hurt, my head ache with fever and confused my brain so that I remember little of Friday afternoon or evening at all. Perhaps physical collapse, and the disengagement from reality that conferred, was the merciful anaesthetic I needed to survive the weekend. I spent much of Saturday asleep or fitfully dozing, so that by Sunday I was recovered enough to tackle the Advent Sunday rituals of cardmaking, mince-pie production and setting up Advent candles. I also went to church for the first time in months, though I'm not sure I'm ready for regular attendance again yet, if ever.

Work, meanwhile, has produced highs and lows. Donning my red togs and processing around York Minster as three of our students graduated with MAs (two merits and a distinction with the University Postgraduate Prize) basking the in the reflected glory of their achievement was a delightful outcome of the learning partnership with three lovely people. My current cohort of undergraduates are blossoming as novice ethicists, and I'm hugely enjoying supervising research degree students (including our recent distinction MA graduate) in addition to some fun work with MA students working on research modules, dissertations and Liberation Theologies.

On the down side, the realities of the approaching term are starting to haunt my sleep. The colleague who works most closely with me on undergrad and postgrad taught degrees is taking a term's study leave to complete her doctorate, so that with only a little additional tutoring assistance, I have to manage, deliver, tutor and mark all the postgrad and undergrad taught, practical and research modules between January and Easter. None of the content is new, though I always do a complete revision whenever I dust off an old module, but the sheer volume of teaching means I shall be somewhat busier even than usual, and I'm rarely under-occupied now. The most recent blow has been a suggestion from the University that we might reconsider the module to be delivered at Level 1, occasioning a rapid review of the programme and the possibility that I may have to write 10 two-hour lectures on the Old Testament between now and January. It's going to be a term that will demand huge amounts of planning and self discipline if I'm to keep all the balls in the air.

So as a new church year starts, it's especially appropriate for lots of reasons to be keeping a disciplinary and penitential fast. I like keeping Advent this way: it makes it a thoughtful and frugal time of preparation in the midst of all the excess of secular Christmastide, keeping me surrounded by a pool of quiet, unadorned calmness with space in my life and my head to consider what is to come.

(Tree image from http://static.flickr.com/51/112367618_552587d7ea.jpg?v=0)