Unsuitable content

I'm still undecided on Windows Vista - it's a bit painful getting to know how to do those things that were intuitive in XP land.

One of the features that causes gnashing of teeth in our household is 'Family Safety' - a system that allows us to limit the websites that can be accessed from our computer. If the software decides that a website may be unsuitable it asks you if you are sure about it before allowing you to see it.

So today I tried to visit a website selling clerical shirts - I don't need any yet, but I thought it would be useful to know how much I'm going to have to spend on shirts next year.

However, Vista's opinion of a site that sells clergy shirts is that it "might contain content that your family may not approve of". I suppose the closest it might get to unsuitable content is a picture of a lady vicar with an unbuttoned collar....

"Take a short holiday Baldrick"

There's a famous scene from Blackadder where Baldrick has been rewarded for his efforts with a break from his toil:

Blackadder: "As a reward, Baldrick, take a short holiday... Did you enjoy it? Right; on your way."
That was a bit like my half term - which started at 8.15 and ended at 9.45 this morning. Cambridge terms are so short that there isn't really a chance for a breather in the middle. And there was me thinking that I'd get a 'reading week'. Not a chance. Should have gone to Bristol apparently.....

Oh well, Christmas soon - with visits to Ferndown, Boston and elsewhere. Roll on Easter. No, there's a mission trip to fit in there. Summer maybe? If I can squeeze anything in alongside a 4 week placement and other career enhancing opportunities.

The downside with this 2 year course is that the holidays aren't really holidays so much as space to fit in the non-timetabled requirements of my course.

I'm just going to check the Gospels to see if there's any evidence of Jesus having a mini-break. I think I know what the answer is going to be.

"I have called you by name, you are mine"

Mark Autherson, a second year ordinand here at Ridley, died yesterday as a result of complications following remission from leukaemia and a successful bone marrow transplant.

Although Mark had not actually spent much time studying due to the impact of his illness, he was well loved by those who knew him. He sounds like quite a character. Someone told me that he made me look sensible.

Each weekday the college gathers for about 30 minutes at 8.15am for Morning Prayer and it was my turn to lead yesterday's service. Shortly before I was due to start I learnt the sad news of Mark's death. The Principal announced the news to everybody, and as I sat at the front of the chapel facing forwards I could see a community looking back at me, waiting for me to lead them in prayer.

Little did I know that when I planned the service and chose an infrequently used prayer the words would be so appropriate on the day that it was used:
"Fear Not, for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name; you are mine
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you
When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned"(from Isaiah 43)

I feel so privileged to have had the role I had in that service.


It is very quiet at Ridley. It's normally quite quiet, but it's now like when the office air conditioning goes off and you realise how quiet the real quiet that hides underneath the aircon is.

Please pray for the students, the staff, the spouses and families as we grapple with what has just happened, but especially please pray for Mark's wife Sally and their three young children.

Ridley is wounded and limping a little, but Mark is with Jesus now.

4 loaves and no fishes

It's only just struck me what I did earlier.

I was sent out on a mercy mission a few minutes before dinner tonight, to find some crusty bread to go with our meal. I dashed to Sainsburys (other supermarkets are available) and quickly found a student special, 4 small crusty loaves at 18p each. Bargain!

As I approached the checkout I found myself contemplating the adjacent customer. My eyes rose from looking at his conveyor belt full of food, and met his. And he was the Vice Principal of Ridley Hall. I just held up my four loaves and said "this is my weekly shopping".

It was only a couple of hours later, back at home, that I realised that a famous Galilean did this trick a couple of thousand years ago....

Techie is back, techie is good!

Those reading this blog from St Mary's Ferndown will know that I only seemed to be happy with wires in my hands, a situation which has been alien to me for the past two or three months, as I had a short period of role-refugeeism.

I'm happy to report that the position has now been restored to normality - I'm now part of the highly trained Ridley Hall audio-visual team, and the training was put to the test twice on Thursday.

Morning Prayer was being led by my study-buddy Phil, and included some projected words and images. I Can Do Visual. Easy. Except when it's the first time you've tried to project from your new laptop and it's Windows Vista and you're not entirely familiar with the projector. So we had a full chapel and 30 seconds to go before the system was up and running with no chance for a dry run. Lots of arrow prayers during that service. "Please God, let it be this key that I press to get the next slide and please let there be some words on the next slide. I'll do anything for you, just let it be the right slide next, please, please, please". And it worked.

College Communion was a different challenge - this being the weekly service where the whole college community comes together. I Didn't Really Do Audio Until Yesterday When I Had A Crash Course! The rota'd guy was unavoidably detained elsewhere, so between me and another novice we had to balance the sound mix for the music group, and not deafen or otherwise distract 100-odd people from the solemnity of the service. Now I know what most of the buttons on a sound desk do, in isolation, but there's always been somebody else to do the difficult bit of mixing it all together to make it all sound crisp. Not on this occasion. It took me forever to work out that I hadn't switched the amplifier on! Things went uphill from there, until we had a major power failure 5 minutes before the service started. We were a picture of controlled but radiant panic for a few minutes, but the problem was solved, and everything went to plan. It even sounded good! And it was also, for me, the best service I've experienced yet at Ridley - excellent music, good teaching, an outstanding testimony, and only one cricket joke that fell flat.

Audio-Visual is all about seeing and hearing. I like the visual stuff, because I can usually see why something isn't working. That's why I do computers and lighting, and haven't really done sound before this week - when you can't hear sound coming through it's a lot harder to find where it's gone. In John 20, where Thomas' refuses to believe that Jesus was indeed risen from the dead he is finally convinced only when he can touch Jesus for real. Jesus response is "Do you believe because you see me? How happy are those who believe without seeing me".

So what is your response when you are faced with a God you can neither see nor hear?

Please pray for Mark Autherson

I've added a new link to my list of recommended blogs - http://pleasepray4markautherson.blogspot.com

Mark Autherson is a fellow ordinand here at Ridley Hall, except I haven't had chance to meet him yet, as he's seriously ill in hospital suffering from complications following a bone marrow transplant he received in June. Both staff and students here are covering Mark and his wife and young family in prayer and I bring it to your attention here so that you can pray for them too.

His Spirit is with us!

We have just been challenged in a foundation lecture. Good Anglicans amongst you will be familiar with the statement and response that follows:

Leader: "The Lord is here"
The People: "His Spirit is with us"

But what happens in your church when that second line comes along Sunday by Sunday? Do you shout it out, as if you mean it, or is it mumbled, as if you're rather embarrassed about it all? Does the rousing shout of the congregation cause the roof timbers to shift, or are the bats able to carry on sleeping undisturbed? Is it in bold, 40 point font? Do You Mean It? Or is it in pale grey ink, 8 point?

Even here at Ridley (where chapel worship is rousing and sometimes thunderous, and responses are usually quite loud) we sheepishly whispered our response on this occasion, and embarrassed ourselves. It doesn't matter that we weren't mid-service and therefore not expecting a bit of standard liturgy to be thrown at us - we weren't convicting. We won't be able to write 'be convicting here' in the margins of our sermon notes.

Leader: "Lift up your hearts"
The People: "We lift them to the Lord, but we'd rather he didn't know about it"


(with thanks to Paul Weston, whose thunder it is that I am stealing)

Tired boy

I'm not sure what happened to the last 7 days - it's that long since I last posted anything, although I thought it was about 3.

Since then I've done loads! There's been more forms to fill out, chapel, opportunities to take advantage of, chapel, 2 library briefings, chapel, chapel briefings, chapel, placement briefings, chapel, foundation lectures, chapel, a pastoral/academic interview, chapel, a puddings evening, and church. Oh, and Thursday evening chapel, and Greek twice as frequently as chapel!! My feet seem to have hardly touched the ground (apart from the day when my bike brakes were fading fast and my feet had to touch the ground....). We, the first years, have had a pretty packed programme, with barely a space to make a quick cuppa before we were due to be elsewhere, to the extent that when we did actually legitimately have 35 minutes free this morning we felt sure that we should be somewhere else being talked at.

It should all start to ease off in a couple of days when the lecture timetable kicks in, as the general pattern of my day becomes lectures in the morning and study in the afternoon. I'm going to try to keep my academic work at college as much as possible, as I lose 3 hours doing tea-and-childrens-bedtime, and 9pm isn't a good time to be doing difficult thinking type stuff. Watch this space to find out if I achieve that. There's a danger of getting involved with too many things and filling your time up beyond your capacity to cope. I've only got 2 years here and there is a lot to squeeze in, not only in terms of formal timetabled stuff, but also missions, placements and family time. On paper I have a lot of holiday in those 2 years, in practice we're already starting to think about plans for next summer, so that we do actually manage to get some family time together.

Related to that we had a foundation lecture on so called 'Life and Service' today - this is the 'Vicar School' part of Ridley, as opposed to the theological side. During this it was pointed out that a college full of ordinands is by definition full of people who have been selected for their leadership potential, and therefore there are an awful lot of Chiefs and very few Indians. Two possible results of this are huge conflicts, or total withdrawal from community life. We have to aim somewhere between the two - get involved, but don't try to run everything. I'm trying to get that balance right. How much do I get involved in, and how much is too much? Yesterday saw my first 7pm return home for a very long time, and that wasn't a good start for my college-family balance.

It was Isaac's birthday today - it was good to be able to share my concerns over his settling-down with my staircase friends yesterday and to have them pray for him and us, and so nice today that everybody wanted to know how his birthday was actually going. He's happy - he's got a new bike, and a party planned for the weekend.

Talking of birthdays, we've got an amazing coincidence on my staircase. We're a group of 13, and 2 share a birthday on Jan 29th, and 2 on May 3rd. I'm one of the latter, and next year myself and Christina will be 21 and 40 years old on the same day. Lots of tea will be drunk on that day I'm sure. Maybe even a packet of chocolate Hob-Nobs will be opened in celebration.

From the ordinand's study

My study, which I share with Phil, is high above almost anything else in Ridley Hall, except the roof. In fact it's so High up here that we have to pause on the landing before the final ascent to don ornate robes and set the incense burning. We get extra marks for chanting....

From the base camp underneath the main entrance arch we go through a door, past something called a vacuum cleaner, up some stairs, past the young and not so young people in hoodies and baseball caps (the Centre for Youth Ministry), up another flight of stairs, then push on to the top via another long flight of stairs. A total of 55 stairs. I'll get fit doing that several times a day.

This is called 'A' Staircase. I'm pretty certain it's THE staircase to end all staircases.

But it's worth the effort. I'm told this is the best view in the college, and from my seat I can see (left to right) the lawn, the E and F 'staircases' and the chapel. The lawn is sacred - not sure how we're going to keep Isaac off that until we're allowed on it in the summer term.