When the Church Said No - She Loves Magazine

She Loves Magazine is a brilliant collection of women's stories from around the globe and is a frequent inspiration to me so I am so happy to be featuring on their site today. I originally sent a more general article about the failure of the the vote on women bishops in the Church of England last November and its effect on women but they asked me to submit a personal reflection on what is was like to be a shiny and new female ordinand at that time. Answer? Tough.

Shelovemagazine.com/sarscreative.com

I have to say it was pretty hard to write. I spent a good twenty minutes staring at my screen and umm-ing and ahh-ing to my office mate about what I wanted to say. After the initial reaction of sadness and dismay shortly after the vote I hadn't really processed how I felt about the whole episode. There were certainly some things to work through to get these words on paper.

So do stop by and have a read and be sure to check out some of the other fabulous and inspiring stories on the site.

In which I know everything and nothing at all

Studying, what larks eh? Hours in the books, eons over essays and in our case a bewildering ninety minutes with our brilliant but brain fuddling tutor each week. You emerge, you hope slightly better informed, but more than anything completely, blatantly aware of you own huge inadequacies. Man, I love it! I can feel my wings spreading out with every passing moment, my mind stretching, my perceptions blowing wide open.

The whole process of coming into training has been a suspension of control. Rather than being able to plan out where my life is going and set neat little markers up so I can see where everything is and the way ahead now I just live day by day. Sure, I have hopes and dreams and a vague sense of where it is all going but the particulars and details are all in the imagination of God and I'm just doing what he has laid out on the table before me right now. Each day is completely spontaneous and entirely dictated by other people, it is terrifying and liberating. Every week I am asked to do something utterly bizarre that nine times out of ten I'm not totally convinced I can do. But then I do it and it's ok and my confidence grows.

What I'm learning is that if the future isn't meticulously planned out then there is nowhere else to live but the present moment. There is nothing but the opportunities that present themselves and then going for it with laughter and enthusiasm.

 

This week I spent an hour colouring talking about the merits of blue v.s purple hair with eight year olds, an evening dancing to the most insanely cheesy music man has every recorded to CD with a bunch of trainee vicars, mulled over the ins and outs of divine wisdom, plumbed the depths of my understanding of the mother heart of God and wore bright yellow shoes just for the fun of it. I find myself grabbing moments, grabbing life by the shirt collars, giving it a good shake and seeing what comes out.

As the end of term two beckons I'm so glad to be here. To be simultaneously discovering everything I want to be and landing firmly on my backside realizing everything that I'm not. Being a total idiot one moment and being more than I thought I could be the next. Knowing everything and knowing nothing at all.

Restoration Day

This last week has been tough and I have found myself very much in need of some restoration. Sunday saw me coming home from church and collapsing in a heap on the sofa. That is the pre-restoration stage. The 'too exhausted to think so someone bring me a cup of tea and stick a film on' kind of afternoon. By 11pm I staggered upstairs and fell into bed where I slept way past the time I should have gotten up and woke up to sunlight rather than darkness. It was a real treat.

It was a perfect start to the day I needed. A day for daydreaming, a real restoration. My Greek class was cancelled and the hill up to college was too snowy and icy to contemplate getting my bike out so I gave in to it guilt free. Finally, the time I needed. And so I wandered about my house, made a pie for dinner and sat in my favourite chair and read.

I used to live with someone who called these days 'mental health days' and that's kind of what they are. As much as you need a bit of time to let your body recover after an illness sometimes you need it just as much for your emotions, especially if you commit to your life, work and relationships with everything you have. In the study week on conflict I attended one of the course leaders said she could write a whole book on 'self care' and I quite believe her.

We're not very good at it are we? Looking after ourselves to the same level that we care for others? An insightful question is always 'What advice would you give your best friend?' I found myself in the odd position of talking to a friend in exactly the same situation as me this weekend. And do you know what I said to her 'Go easy on yourself, take time out if you need it.' But isn't it so much easier to give advice than to take it?

I know when a day of restoration has done it's job when I start to think about the future positively again. I deliberately do that on these days. What are my goals? What are the values behind them? What do I really care about? What am I really doing here? The answers to those questions aren't so radically different from what I'm doing day to day now and that is a great joy. But often it is a chance to remember it a fresh. To remember that it's the people in my life that make my world go round, the rest is just fluff, just stuff really.

Restoration days are a good day to commit to things. To mad plans that will make your year. Mine is a cookery course in Tuscany. I'm going to learn to make pasta this year in a kitchen in Florence and I can't wait. So what about you? Are you needing a restoration day? What questions would you ask on yours? And what madcap schemes will you cook up? I hope you get one soon!

Conflict? Bring it on!

At the start of each term we have an opportunity to study a practical topic in depth for a full week. This is such a luxury in an environment where everything is so fast paced and term very quickly turns you into a mini essay factory. I spent the last week learning about Conflict Transformation. I wasn't sure what to expect. I feared a lot of awkward role plays but hoped I would pick up some tips for coping with the inevitable differences of opinion that come up all the time in life. What I didn't expect was to spend a week having my way of thinking utterly challenged and to emerge seeing things in a new way, but that is what happened.

The course itself was based around a theory called 'IC Thinking'. You can see more about it on this website if you are interested and there are a number of good books available too through that link which explain it all in a bit more detail. The basic idea is that to have 'low IC' you see the world in black and white. In a conflict different groups form quickly and soon become entrenched. The other party is dehumanized. As the conflict escalates so does the feeling of 'them' and 'us'. Trust is broken down, communication fails. It seems there is absolutely no common ground between you. Sound familiar?

Though often undesirable this is all perfectly natural as when we are in a conflict situation the blood flood to the limbic region of our brain, the fight or flight bit, and we are literally on alert for our very survival. The trouble is in most conflict situations we meet our survival really isn't at stake and by the blood being diverted in this way it is taken away from the parts of our brain which do our higher level thinking and processing. We are biologically less able to be reasonable until we calm down. It all makes an alarming amount of sense, doesn't it?! IC thinking aims to raise our thinking out of the black and white, to see our shared values and work towards a solution that has something for everyone. It's being used with young Muslim men living in Britain who are experiencing a major world view clash. 

 

From the IC Thinking website https://sites.google.com/site/icthinking/

What I found most liberating about the process was an exercise we did where we were asked to stand on a line somewhere between two values which were in many ways opposite of each other but both good in their own ways. It suddenly dawned on me that I can't hold all values. I have a stance. I hang about the 'equality and freedom' end but does that mean there is no value in 'tradition and hierarchy'? Having the confidence to stand where I stand, to own that and to see that others stand elsewhere and that is ok too was a real lightning bolt moment for me.

One of the underlying principles of the course was that conflict need not be seen negatively. It can be a gift. Encountering other views challenges and widens my own. Seeing where my values cross over with those who are very different from me is enlightening. And it's all just more human. Rather than making anyone who thinks differently to me into the 'other' I can hear their view and I can even disagree but defend their right to exist and hold that view just as I defend the right to hold mine. Differences of opinion need not make us enemies. We do share common ground.

I'm taking away from this week the genuine, scientifically proven benefits of taking a couple of minutes to breath in tense situations. I will be doing a lot more of that totally guilt free! I'm taking away a desire to find links between my values and others, to resist the natural urge to compartmentalize others and their views. And I'm taking away new found confidence about where I stand on these things and a new sense of kindness to myself in that. Everyone stands somewhere, I stand here.

 

What a brilliant week!

The year that was - 2012

I don't know about you but this time of year always makes me a bit reflective. As the New Year approaches you look back over what has been since you last desperately tried to keep yourself awake till midnight (if you are old like me!) and wonder at all that has passed in the last year. This time last year I was where I am heading today, at my in-laws house. I was pretty grumpy as the clock turned twelve because life was so very uncertain.

2012 - the year of good beer and saying farewell to Summertown

I had no idea what 2012 held in store and at that moment I'd well and truly lost the excitement of that and rather felt frustrated. I'd been waiting one year and three months for my interview for ministry training and had another three months to go until it arrived. The biggest question though was what I would do if I didn't get in. Work was, as it had been for many years, uninspiring and with a constant nagging feeling of being utterly in the wrong place but unable to find the right one. And it was easy. I sometimes long for easy now but when I think back to I hadn't been challenged in a role in years. I hadn't cared about what I did every day for such a long time. 

And then 2012 came. With a bang. Five days in and our house was broken in to. All in all I'm pretty much over it but not enough to want to relive those weeks again. But here's how it was if you want to look back (aren't blogs handy?!)

In the midst of all of that the interview came around quite unexpectedly fast. Before I knew it was back home, waiting for that dreaded envelope with the answer I had been waiting so long for. Accompanied by a burst sewage pipe the news arrived, and as we know, it was a yes. Life had changed for ever and in five short months I was off, not before collecting and renovating enough second hand furniture to fill our new house (if not a small shop!) and with a month long sojourn to Zambia with a bunch of sixteen year olds.

 

Wandering the streets with some bookshelves. There was a lot of this going on!

 

Zambia was unexpectedly life changing. I barely had time to register that I was going before I found myself there. I learnt how much fun it is to care, to see other people develop and grow into themselves and I got back to the heart of what really matter just at the right time as when that plane touched down I had four weeks until we were packing up the boxes and moving to college.

Beautiful Zambia

And so what about this year, as the clock turns midnight and I let out an almighty yawn? What does 2013 have in store? Challenge, that's for sure. Change as I continue on this intense journey of training. Joy, as new Greek words become my words and new ancient worlds are opened up to me through study (I'm a geek and I love it!) Im pretty sure I'll be frustrated. I will probably moan on this blog a fair bit. It won't be easy. But I will care and looking back on 2012 I think that is the greatest gift of all. Days that mean something to me. Bring on 2013!

The view from my college study, where you'll find me in 2013.

Getting back to you

The space from college this holiday has given me that most brilliant of things – FREEDOM! (cue singing of George Michael, 'Freeeedom, I'll not let you down....', you with me? No? Ok then.). It has taken a few days but now, much like the girl in the Twinnings advert, I find myself 'getting back to me' as I float away on a sea of Vampire Diaries watching and cake eating induced bliss.

I find myself wanting to set a few things straight. To put some stakes in the ground to mark where I stand and what I stand for while I still have the objectivity that a bit of separation from everyday life brings. Something to look back on as I continue on this journey. Some signposts for the way. So here they are, some rough and early musings that have come up as I've 'gotten back to me'.

Right? Yeah right.

I've been known to get it 'wrong'. Say things in the the wrong order, say the wrong things altogether. Light the wrong candles, narrowly avoid setting fire to the giant flappy sleeved robe I'm asked to wear (I mean, what genius came up with that eh?). But stake one is this – there is no right way (except maybe the setting fire to yourself bit, I'm pretty sure that isn't right...). The right way is an action done with love, compassion, intelligence and integrity. Nothing else really matters.

The future is God-made not Church-made

Ordination is not a one way street to stress, a job you complain constantly about and never seeing your family again. That lifestyle is chosen, no matter what anyone tells me. I've never taken the conventional route. I've never been a slave to other people's expectations or what I 'ought to do'. I'm on an adventure with God, that is what the life of faith is to me. There are many roles and many ways of being in them and there is one for me, as me.

Brighter, bolder. More, more, more!

Quoting my old pal St Iranaeus: 'The glory of God is a human fully alive'. There is a feeling in what I've been taught in the last few weeks of diminishing yourself. There is a call to always blend in despite the major movements in the church being lead by those who did anything but. I was told this term that if I wanted to 'advance' in the church then I ought to wear black, to fit in with the 'boys' as it were.

But the thing is God made me colourful. And if I see ministry at its depth as a calling out to people to be fully alive, fully themselves in all their glorious technicolour, then how can I model that in black when I'd be wearing it to hide or advance? I must be colourful too. And luckily for me I'm not really bothered about advancing I'm bothered about being who God made me to be. Teen drama watching, Christmas obsessed, glittery nail varnish wearing me.

'It's not enough!'

There is a character in Gossip Girl called Cyrus Rose who when he hugs people holds on for the bit too long and when they try and pull away says 'Not enough!' My husband jokes that I am a spiritual Cyrus Rose. I have always had a deep hunger for the extraordinary. Having space from college has helped me to see what is extraordinary and what is just plain run of the mill. When I pray stuff happens. When I go to church I expect God to be there. When I say words I mean them. I've seen extraordinary stuff this term and that's what I want more of. Because anything else, well, it's 'not enough'!

So there we are. A few stakes in the ground. A wee manifesto for next term. And now I'm off to paint my nails and watch the Vampire Diaries. I am nothing if not consistent!!

…..And the mouse within

I didn't plan to write a part two to yesterdays post on this term but today has made me think otherwise. I've always tried to give a fair portrayal of how things really are on this blog. Ultimately this is because I believe whole heartedly in cutting the BS. I can't see any other way to really connect. Until we start to say with honesty where we are at, until we learn to live by the truth rather than the image we project, well, I'm not sure there's much hope for us. Much less in my line of work that has been know for centuries as a place of pomp, of hierarchy and of holier than thou. I don't know about you but I've seen enough of that. I'm looking for something more human.

Today we had a seminar on preaching. I'm excited about preaching probably because I love blog writing so much. That and because I genuinely love diving into the Bible which surprises me, shocks me, does my head in and encourages me in equal measure. But what I realised today in that seminar felt like the weight of fifteen bibles placed on my shoulders. Because, and here's the real secret, half the time I'm pretty convinced I can't do the things I'm being asked to do.

Now I know you're not supposed to say that. You are supposed to have the swagger of authority, to seem like you can hold the cares of the world in the palm of you hand and not even notice it. But I'm not like that. When I think about having something to say to people, something honest and relevant that stays true to the awesome and torturous history of this faith and the whole history of a nation, well, I feel very, very afraid. I feel like a gnat about to be splatted with the book I'm trying to preach from.

I've been known to call my being here a divine joke. Not that I don't think I should be here but that there is still an absurdity to it. I'm a square peg looking at a round hole and saying 'now how do you suppose this is going to happen?' It can be so easy to look around and think about everything I don't know. I can name about three hymns, all the ones people complain about because they are so old hat or sung too often. I have to rename the church silverware by names of Dr Who villains to make them stick in my mind and then very nearly end up calling a Ciborium a Cyborg out loud.

Ciborium or Cyborg?

Oh, I'm a trier, I really am, but sometimes I just want to sack the ritual and stand in the middle of a field to say my prayers that I make up right there on the spot. In the church God made rather than the one we create for him. Sometimes I need to sing Stevie Wonder to God and not something penned circa 1850. Sometimes I want to say I've had a bad day too, let you know that I'm a human being, that dog collars and robes don't mean a thing. We are all the same aren't we? We have the same beginning and the same end after all. The same hopes and fears at the bottom of it.

I don't say this to illicit cries of 'oh no you're more than capable'. Perhaps that is true, perhaps it isn't, perhaps it will become true with time. I say it to anyone sitting at their desk thinking 'I can't do this' or ducking out of what they feel they should be doing because of feeling too small for the task. I say it in the light of all the things I said yesterday. All the very real joys and triumphs of this journey. I'm saying it to be honest with you.

All I know I do have, and why the powers-that-be sent me here in the first place, is an irrepressible love for God. I don't really have any credit for that. It's like a power surge that I've found myself plugged into. One of my favourite poems is a very early, very simple Japanese verse. It goes 'Though one dams it and dams it my heart still breaks through like a swift river, saying how beautiful he is'. And that, my friends, is really all I have and I'm trusting it to carry me through.

I want that to be remembered as I tell my stories here and that's why I say it again now. Don't ever feel like you are too ordinary for the things you have in your heart to do. Perhaps it's the ordinary that will be the extraordinary thing. Who knows?

The term that was

I can't quite believe it but I am in the last week of my first term at vicar college. I was doing some reading today about education in Ancient Greece and the author described how the program for students involved working both body and mind intensively. With all the cycling up and down the world's largest hill (fact!) and the mind bending demands of the Oxford course I feel like this might have survived a couple of millennia and made its way into the ethos of theological college. Hmmm.......

And what else of these first few months? The study is as cool as I thought it would be, no scrap that, it's cooler. I'm reaching new levels of geeky with each passing week. The topics are fascinating. One minute we're in 13^th Century BC on the exodus out of Egypt with Israel (or not, depending on what you make of the research!) and the next we're in the courts of the temple with the Apostle Paul listening to classical rhetoric and the dawning of a new world faith.

College is maddening and brilliant. I'm pretty sure that once the dust settle on this term I'm going to start to realise what has already changed in me. Every week has something new and challenging, whether that is visiting at the hospital or leading a service, reading at church or figuring out the truly mystical inner workings of a church sacristy (the place where they set up all the holy stuff to you and me!).

I am still most definitely an alien on Planet Christian but now I'm in an even stranger place that is Planet Church of England, nay even weirder Planet Theological College! And what a crazy place that has been to be these past few weeks. I'm baffled by something at least once a day (women bishops anyone?!) but then I'm touched by something just as often. I'm learning the art of 'just turning up' when I really don't want to and knowing those moments when like a wink to God, the author of the sense of humour, I can bend the rules a little.

I probably know less now about where I think I'm going than when I started here. I've definitely been drawn to things, sometimes quite brilliantly unexpected things. I've had little hints of where this might all go, what kind of church or community might be the right place for me. What I might be good at and what it might be as well to avoid. But mostly I've learned not to look too far ahead. There really is too much going on today for that and that is pretty darn cool.

Tis the season to....

….sit in a pub, drink beer and have a proper old chin wag. Right?

I haven't given much of an update on here about village life as quite frankly all I've seen of it is has been in complete darkness as I cycle between home and college at 7am and back again at 7pm! This Saturday however was a real turn up for the books and I finally had a free Saturday with no inclination, or previous commitments, to go anywhere further than a three minute walk.

 

Natalie Dee rules!

Luckily our village is abundant in pubs. Pubs are one of the major pluses for living in England if you ask me. And not just any pubs. Local pubs. When we lived in Aberdeen it was either slightly terrifying local dive bar that was reminiscent of a bomb shelter (and called the Broad Sword, I mean, really?!), one dingy student pub where they look at you funny for asking what wines they have or it's into town where you jostle with people who are 'out-out' when you just want a quiet one.

Local pubs are different. It's all jolity and chatting with the neighbours. Think wood burning fires, local ales and gleefully letting a couple of hours tick by. In our local this weekend there was a dog behind the bar, paws up between the beer pumps. I mean seriously, how bloomin' brilliant is that?! I was desperate to take a picture but was worried they would think I was some loon reporting them to environemtal health rather than enjoying the 'dog as bar staff' hilarity. 

 

So this Saturday I chucked on a thick knit jumper and some woolley boots and my long suffering, provider of all my meals and generally hard working husband and I spent a couple of blissful hours catching up over a couple of pints of Old Speckled Hen. I also managed to negotiate stopping by the gem in the crown of this brilliant place, a little second hand furniture and home shop. It had had a little Christmas makeover and I got myself a couple of new decorations for the tree and some gorgeous glasses for a cheeky Christmas cocktail or two. Aren't they beautiful?

 

 

So all in all, amid the essays, VERY dark countryside (whats with all the lack of street lights? Light pollution, pah! I want to see where I'm going!) and slightly perilous cycle rides on flooded roads, all is well here. I'm still a townie and I can't wait to be back and forth into Oxford a bit more once term ends (Shops! Fifteen different options for Coffee!) but for a lazy Saturday, well, what more do you need?!

Christmas Bliss

I was very excited to notice on my calendar today that as of next week I have three weeks left of this term at college! Can you believe it? I barely feel like I've put a foot in the door and term one in done. Rest assured the work doesn't end there as I will be at my placement church making papier-mache snowmen (or something!) over the Christmas season and spending a fair share of my time knee deep in the reading I've abandoned under the pressure of essay deadlines this term.

I will also be dedicating myself fully to Christmas. This is not simply the hanging of a few bits of tinsel and the occasional glass of mulled wine, no! This is full scale dedication to the Christmas cause. I feel slightly virtuous in this as Christmas was the time of year I became a Christian so all the merriment is tied up in a deep seated and very real joy. I've got a reason for the season, that's for sure!

But I am also an unapologetic lover of chintz, Christmas bling and stuffing my little face with any kinds of Christmas fare. Call a spade a spade and all that! A mince pie a day is pretty much standard and the house is always transformed into a veritable winter wonderland. Out with the running reindeer, the twinkly lights and slightly wonky but much beloved tree. There will be Glee Christmas, Michael Buble, Christmas movies on continuous loop. Bliss.

I'm also going to dedicate myself to friends and family this Christmas. Finally a chance to meet up with people, visit for more than one afternoon and enjoy the fruits of winter rather than battle them as I cycle full on into darkness and bracing winds. Then I will be sitting under a blanket, listening to windows rattle and cackling to myself with Glee that I am indoors (there's some Christmas spirit for you!!). All in all, bliss.

I'm also going to dedicate myself to my duvet. I miss my duvet. We meet so briefly, cling on for dear life on a Saturday morning but very soon are cruelly yanked apart. I will study under my duvet, have blessed lie ins. I will reconnect with my sewing machine, wear my Christmas hat with every outfit, stir and sift and bake the afternoon away. Bliss!

But for now it's plodding on with just the twinkle of a fairy light in the distance to sustain me. I am tired dear reader, very tired indeed. My quota for 'exciting challenges' is running low, I'm about to go into full hibernation mode. In fact, thinking about it, perhaps I ought to crack out those mince pies and Christmas cheer a little early?!

Wave your flag

All this book learning is turning me into an extremist. Now before you send the men in white coats (or some other more sinister government agency) round for me, let me explain myself! I'm talking about extremism for good ends, extremism for equality. I'm getting more and more riled up about it, sitting here at my kitchen table with piles of reading for my latest essay around me.

Being a woman in an institution that fundamentally discriminates against me may seem like utter lunacy to most people. It probably is really but as I've said before I have this odd attachment to it, this bizarre thing called church, like holding a broken bird in my hand and I just want it to get better with everything in me.

Having an attachment to the Bible probably seems like an even greater lunacy (here come those men in white coats again) but I've always loved it since I picked it up for the first time seven years ago and read it cover to cover. Yes, it contains the verses that are used to bash me and many other over the head and into submission but if someone hits me over the head with a spade does that make the spade the problem or the person who is using it all wrong?

So what is getting me particularly excited is having this time to steep myself in the New Testament. To dwell in all those sticky passages, all those places people get hot under the collar about and to find there, with great excitement and the companionship of some fabulous scholars, that this faith, this book, this message, is fundamentally one of equality. Yep - race, sex, background. Forget it. Irrelevant. THAT is how it should be.

Of course this isn't the first time this has dawned one me and likewise I've got it massively wrong many times, said so many dumb things, made dumb judgements, that I wish I could take back. But now I'm finding the hard evidence for this very real conviction, that I so want to live out, from much more intelligent people than me. It is utterly liberating.

Now you're probably thinking, 'Equality? Doesn't look much like any church I know.' Trust me there is a great irony in making these intellectual discoveries alongside being at a University where the mantra is 'you are the elite!' and a church where status is way too often everything. Here we are again with the broken baby bird. With a nasty nip when you try to help her. Oh yes, there is some healing to do but I feel like I am making foundations, in my life at least, for everything I attempt to do in that area with all my own frail, fudged up attempts.

So there we are, waving my flag, Extremist for Equality!

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 100^th 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.

Tired and Inspired

I've been itching to write a blog post since I started college on Monday. But as it is this week has been planned down to the last minute, nay second, with meetings, tours, warnings, encouragements all neatly packaged into twelve hour days. Tired doesn't cut it!

The church in Cuddesdon - the site of much damp, chilly prayer this week! (from www.oxfordcitybranch.org.uk)

 

Tired, yes but also inspired. Every corner of college is a piece of history. Samuel Wilberforce, founder of the college and son of the great emancipator William Wilberforce, looks down on us as we eat our meals. The wings of the building are named after past principals, vice principals and benefactors each with their own fascinating story. All of them innovators, lots of them the thorn in the side of their contemporaries because of it. Each of them standing up for something different, for higher ideals that they refused to compromise.

Samuel Wilberforce, what a legend.

The history is as winding as the staircases. I'm captured by it, a bit entranced. Ready to be a tiny little bit of the history of this place and very thankful for it. The library is a slice of heaven, volumes and volumes lined up around perfect reading nooks all looking out onto the rolling hills of the Oxfordshire countryside. Study has begun in earnest, my first essay is due next week, but I'm smiling to myself as I leaf through the reading list. I'm finally here at last!

Today we visited some churches, barely a few days in I can't help but wonder about the end when I'll be back in the community, ordained with a ministry of my own. We visited a couple of churches near Oxford ending up at Dorchester Abbey. Every ordained role is so different, every community so unique and for the first time I feel inspired by the people I meet. I want their jobs. I've never felt this way. I've always been the one in the training rolling my eyes and thinking 'man, I DO NOT want your job!' and despairing that I feel that way. Wondering if I will ever find my 'thing'.

But oh am I tired! My legs feel like planks of wood from cycling up and down the hill. I have a cold coming and I know it's only getting tougher, busier, more challenging from here. But I AM HERE! For the first time I have a bubbling excitement at my work, a rising hope in me for the future. I've got a secret smile and that wonderfully happy-making feeling sneaking up on me in quiet moments that this is exactly where I am meant to be.