Portlaoise GFS had its end-of-season bash last night. Terrific! The star event was the dance routine. On the stage behind us, the dance teacher was strutting her stuff for the girls in front of us to follow. After a few minutes I became aware of a small commotion behind me. The girls’ infant sisters and brothers were themselves ‘copying’ the teacher—that is to say, jiggling about with giggles and fallings-over and great glee. It was all quite wonderful.

A three-tiered performance of leader at the back, performers in front, and uninhibited joyful randomness between says something profound about life, the universe and everything. Maybe an improvement on Plato’s cave allegory that I need to tease out a bit.

As a leaving present the GFS gave me a mantelpiece clock with Roman numerals (including IIII instead of IV, very proper) duly inscribed for SWMBO and me on the back. Lovely. In turn, I thanked them not only for the present, but also for simply being. As with students at Maryborough School, I feel as if I’m at their level and they at mine. Heart speaks to heart when we get together. I treat them as colleagues, they respond as colleagues. This isn’t always the case with congregations. A clerical neighbour has twice berated me for looking on them as colleagues: he says I should look on them as children. Try as I might, I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Is it that there’s something deeply infantilizing about attending church? Actually, this is now widely accepted, so there’s no question about it. There’s a container in the church porch for people to put their brains in as they arrive.

Is it that there’s something deeply infantilizing about adulthood? It’s certainly the case that the education system results in people knowing more and more about less and less. Vision becomes more and more restricted. You see this medical education: I regarded it as my job to help remove blinkers. Still do. ‘Education is what’s left after you’ve forgotten what you learned at school.’

Maybe it’s quite simply that I’ve never grown up. Yes, that’s it! My aim is to immature with age. This is why I’m not old enough to play golf.

A local National School visited St Peter’s yesterday. They asked intelligent questions about the church and items in it. An observant young man wondered why there was a decorative Star of David on some of the chairs. ‘Because Jesus was a Jew’ was my immediate answer, followed by consideration of all the symbolism in church and liturgy that comes from the Jerusalem Temple.

Before long, a black boy asked: ‘are you English?’

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘why do you ask?’

‘Your accent,’ he replied.

What would have happened had I asked him if he were African because of his pigmentation?

The straightforwardness of young people has much to commend it. For myself, increasing the size of the oral aperture in readiness for the articulation of phonation is often merely an opportunity to change feet, and then to wonder to whom the letter of complaint will be sent.

Be ye not like to horse and mule, which have no understanding: whose mouths must be held with bit and bridle, lest they fall upon thee.

The Church Times this morning announces to the Anglican world that I’m leaving these parishes. People here have known for a couple of weeks. What have they said?

Most are sad to see us go. ‘You’re the best rector we’ve ever had.’ Beware Irish charm. The most common comments have been ‘a breath of fresh air’, ‘don’t know how you stuck it so long’, ‘good sermons’ and ‘we’ll really miss you both’ (I’ve long held that SWMBO is a better rector’s wife than I’m a rector). There have been tears. Such responses, the majority, have been affirming. Of course there have been a few negative comments. There’s a sense of satisfaction in some quarters, for ‘you can be controversial, but we’ve tolerated you.’

Some comments relate to the nasty mess that I inherited, that escalated between my appointment and arrival, and that goes on and on. Remarks on how I handled it range from my having been too bullish to my not having been firm enough. I must have got it right, so. Anyway, my shoes contain my feet, and nobody else ever stood in them.

It’s easy to let negative comments weigh more than the positives, but I want to tease out some of them. They’ve included: ‘you’re not one of us’, ‘you don’t understand’ and ‘this is not your culture, so you don’t realize what happens.’

• First, it’s quite likely that someone looking from outside sees exactly what happens better than people in the midst of it all.
• Second, these comments implicitly assert that clergy should be emasculated lapdogs who never challenge those in the circled wagons. Just like Jesus I don’t think (though perhaps he’s been emasculated too).
• Third, they imply that the clergy of the future will be ‘one of us’. The trouble is that ‘one of us’ is not in the clergy-training pipeline. AFAIK there are no ordinands from this group of dioceses, and certainly none from these parishes. My successor is unlikely, therefore, to be ‘one of us’. Yes, more could be done to encourage ordained local ministry by ‘one of us’, though you’d have to beat sense into the Bishops’ ideas for training to be a real possibility for real people with real jobs. Good luck with that.

Members of the Church of Ireland will have to get used to clergy not being ‘one of us’. They may even have to tolerate yet another immigrant from—God forbid—England. Or Africa or America. If incoming clergy need sensitivity and flexibility, then so do the flocks they tend. Any expectation that ‘our ways’ rule the roost has to go—particularly if ‘our ways’ are no longer acceptable. People will have to grow beyond the culture of entitlement, profound in these parts. And there needs to be a rethink of the concept of ‘confidentiality’ that means passing things on by behind-the-hand and corner-of-the-mouth mutterings. Or telling only one person at a time.

I have learnt a huge amount in the last 32 months. Cross fertilization is essential for a healthy organism.