Sunday 7 October 2012

Keeping it Simple

The seasons are changing and with it our habits. Where we wanted to be outside with a chilled glass of wine, the bottles of red are being dusted off and the sofa is the location of choice. Box sets are our friends, cups of tea our staple. It won't be long before the mulled wine is brewing again. This week was ripe with challenges and by Friday I'd lost all energy for them, just wanting to curl up as the season demands and let the world pass me by for a minute. But luckily this weekend has been everything that this week hasn't been, an antidote to all the confusing, complicated strangeness where I've desperately longed for simplicity.

Last night I cooked a huge lasagne, is there anything more rejuvinatingly simple than that? Two of our best friends sat around our dining table and we laughed and chatted. We all have responsibilities now, shoes to fill and worries that our feet are not big enough to fill them. Like toddlers walking in our parents shoes. For a while it was good to realise that life can be as simple as the popping of a cork and leaning back in your chair and laughing.

This morning I went for the first time to my placement church where I will be each Sunday for the next year. After all the theorizing, the debates on how church should work (and frankly all the sheer complicated nonsense that surrounds that!), I could finally breathe again. It's an almost comical irony that training for church ministry takes you so far our of the world you are training to be in. Vicar School is so earnest, so slick. Does that sound ungrateful? Perhaps it is. But I've been missing the roughness, the patched togetherness of ordinary church services, of life in the community.

That is the Kingdom of God to me and where I know I belong. I'm a thoroughly ordinary person, constantly saying the wrong thing and laughing far to loudly. These are my people! At church today the children took to the front and sang a song with beaming smiles on their faces, gifted little things full of happiness and possibility. We celebrated someone's 100th birthday with a posy of flowers. We talked about chicken recipes over coffee. Glorious simplicity.

I realised this week how much I need those moments. Like a shaft of sunlight cutting through the clouds on a grey day. It's a well needed reminder of what it is all for. As the lady who lead the prayers at church today said 'There are so many divisions in church, remind us that what you ask of us is so simple. To love you, to love our neighbour, to include and put up no barriers that stop people from knowing you.' I'm holding on to that this week. To going for it with the abandon of children, to caring less when I get it wrong, to looking for the heart of the matter. To a bit more simplicity.


6 comments:

  1. I'm glad your placement church, plus a simple supper with friends is rooting you in the real world again, Nicola. Part me always wished I could have gone to college, rather than training part-time via a course, while still working, but at least I never had to feel cut-off. I do hope the balance comes right soon.

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    1. Thanks Perpetua. Do you know, I think there is no easy way with this journey! It's so much mixed up with your personal development that all arenas have their challenges! That said I do feel very lucky to be able to study full time. There is no way I could do my course part time and it really is an exceptional grounding in theology and ministry.

      I'm sure it will balance itself out with time, like you say!

      x

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  2. Beautifully written Nicola. Thank you for the reminder of the importance of simplicity - good food for my soul : )

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    1. Thanks Hannah, wishing you a happy and blessed week x

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  3. And this is why I chose to train contextually...
    I couldn't bear the thought of being shut away in a college without really being part of a church community & doing all the things that will be so essential in ministry!

    Hope you find you get a good balance of the academic, essay writing life & of the church community stuff!

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    1. Thanks Liz! Yes, it's rather tricky. On the one hand I would love to be out doing the work a bit more but then I know I could never do the course I'm doing at Oxford as it is very much full time (and then some!!) and it really is giving me a brilliant grounding. I have two placements a week and over three years that will get me out to a fair few places so that it is the positive. The ministerial training is pretty thorough at Cuddesdon too, it's now just fitting it all in and finding that balance as you say!

      Socially I am very much a free spirit so the institutional nature of full time college is probably what is doing me in more than the nature of the training itself. Luckily friends and family are local so I can return to the 'real world' at regular intervals!!

      x

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