Rivers, hills and a funky app.

I have a feeling that all three elements of this title are going to feature prominently throughout my sabbatical.

A view down a gentler bit of the valley

Yesterday, I decided to amble along the Rivelin, a river which runs along a valley just below our bit of Sheffield. Almost from the end of my road, I can see right across the valley and I can be down by the river in 10 minutes. I chose to meander down via a scenic route through the woods, but even so, it's amazingly close. My walk took me right to the border of the Peak District National Park, but not quite into it.

I love rivers. I love pools and waterfalls, and water in general. This stretch of the Rivelin is very pretty, with some fun stepping stones (and some slippery ones, as I discovered).

The stepping stones that didn't tip me in...

...and those that did.

It has a small but perfectly formed waterfall and some picturesque spots. 

Very pretty waterfall

And it has small wiers and mill pools - a reminder of the importance of Sheffield's many rivers in its industrial heritage.

My legs, today, are rather aware of the climb. Most of the walk was fairly level, but the river is over 300ft below where I live, and so the last leg was pretty tough. But coming up a little further along from where I descended did give me country walks and views I barely knew existed, only about half a mile from my house!

Country lane, just up the road from home, complete with goat.

And all was logged with the help of a funky app, called MapMyWalk, which recorded where I went, calculated the height climbed, let me know every time I'd covered another mile, and let me take pictures which were saved against the walk. More depressingly, it gave me my average speed (which could have been higher, had I taken fewer pictures). Sadly, I forgot that I'd downloaded it until about a mile into the walk, but I'll know next time.

The point of this countryside rambling is supposed to be to engage with the beauty of creation as a spiritual experience. I'm not sure I really managed that this time, but I'll work on it. I have three months, after all!

And I'll try to remember that, beautiful as the heart of the Peak District is, there's countryside to be enjoyed even closer to home.

 So here are some more pictures, of tranquil millponds and a hungry sheep.

The pressure to rest

I'm on sabbatical. It's been a long time coming - or at least it feels that way. And although three months feels as though it's stretching away gloriously into the distance, I know that a return to the old routine will be appearing over the horizon sooner than I think.

And herein lies the problem. The pressure to be rested, fulfilled, spiritually enriched. The pressure to make the most of my sabbatical.

There are a few things I want to achieve during these three months. There are my sabbatical projects. The first (and primary) one is to explore a spirituality rooted in nature and its beauty. I live on the edge of Sheffield, only a millstone's throw from the breathtaking beauty that is the Peak. And we use it as a family - not as much as we should, but a little. We've walked there, camped there, driven through there as a more scenic route when visiting family, bouldered and scrambled there, picnicked there... The countryside is something I love, but it has never been, for me, a spiritual place. I find God at my desk, in my books, in conversations with others, in the day-to-day. Not in trees, fields, hills or dry-stone walls. So I'm going out to the Peak, on foot, by bike or with my bouldering mat; sometimes alone, sometimes with others. I'm going to see if God is there.

My wet-weather plan, however, is to recover my German. I used to be pretty good - half a lifetime ago, I did A-level German. I read some Germany secondary literature for my PhD thesis. But it's got increasingly rusty over the years, so I'm on a mission to brush it up, polish it and then use it. I hope to go to the SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) meeting in Vienna in July, and find a little time to practice my (hopefully by then at least partially recovered) German in the restaurants and coffee houses of that amazing city.

And then there's the little matter of writing a section for the Methodist Church's new Local Preacher training course... It will be fantastic to have time to write, without having to fit it around the day job!

But in addition to the official projects, I'm looking forward to having time - time to do all the things which keep me sane, which I enjoy, and which give life a little extra vitality. Swimming and other exercise, reading, decorating my dolls' house, playing the piano and the drums, knitting... Things which have been increasingly squeezed out of my life in recent months, but which really need to be there.

And I'm looking forward to real sabbath. Rest. Not just time for a different kind of business, but actual rest. And if you're now spotting a bit of a flaw in my plans, so am I! This week has been great. I've spent time with the children, while they're still on holiday. We've watched films together, gone to Eureka! children's museum together, gone to the park together. We've even gone out into the Peak (Castleton, to be precise) together. I've managed to get in a bit of German time, in the evenings. I've been twice on my exercise bike and done some abs and pump exercises every day. I've read a bit, watched a bit of telly and done some overdue housework. But I've not done so well on the rest. I'm shattered!!

The gift of 3 months away from the usual aspects of my ministry is a gift to be treasured, but the danger is perhaps in trying to fit everything into that time. In feeling the pressure to fit in all the things I often wish I had more time for, so that I end up feeling more exhausted at the end than the start. Like the sort of holiday I always manage, where I charge round a foreign city for a week, guidebook in hand, desperate to see absolutely everything there is to see. Before going back to work for a rest.

Maybe my next sabbatical (for which I need to wait another 7 years, but no harm in planning ahead, right?) should be more Genesis-based. "On the seventh day, God rested from all the work that he had done." (Gen 2:2, CEB). Not, "God decided to spend more time with his family", and not "God relished the opportunity to explore aspects of divinity that normally got squeezed out by the pressures of creation." Just, "God rested". Because rest is a good and worthwhile end in itself. Real Shabbat isn't about having chance to do a different load of stuff. It's about stopping doing the stuff that's normally there. So maybe I need to shove the 'rest' part of my plans a little further up the agenda. If necessary, the dolls' house can wait.

"God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all the work of creation." Rest is holy. Sabbatical is rest.

I'm off for a snooze.......