Jane's ordination - Every Little Helps

As Roy Castle once sang:

"Ordination, Ordination, Ordination,
That's what you need"

And so the family decamped to deepest darkest Deptford for the weekend to support Jane at her ordination. Jane was on my staircase, a good friend and a free babysitter who liked lying on a real sofa in a real house every once in a while.

We drove down to her house in Deptford, picked up the keys from her vicar, Steve, and helped ourselves to her house. At this point it might help to understand that the last few days before your ordination are spent 'on retreat' away from the distractions of everyday life, in order to allow you to prepare properly for the life-changing ordination day. One distraction that Jane had was her post-ordination party. As a single lady she had to think long and hard about how she was going to find a 'wife' to sort this out for her, so the plan that evolved was this:

1. We, and another family, would spend the Saturday evening in her house, waiting in to receive the online supermarket order of party food that she had placed before leaving.
2. All would then go to Southwark Cathedral on Sunday morning to attend the ordination (except for Beth and Isaac who would be taken off in London by their uncle for the day)
3. Upon return from the Cathedral it would be all hands on deck to get the food out onto the tables.
4. Party starts, everybody happy.

The plan started to fall apart at step zero, on the Friday night, when I got a text from the other family saying that their car had broken down and they wouldn't be able to make it at all. So now we were the primary receivers of the shopping order. So on Saturday, having availed ourselves of Janes house, we went into London to look at Big Ben/Downing Street/Trafalgar Square/Buckingham Palace etc, with Isaac becoming a master climber of statues along the way.

At Tower Bridge as a thunderstorm broke over our heads it was time to head back to make sure that we were there before the opening of the delivery window at 7pm. We were a bit damp after a ride through the rain on the Docklands Light Railway, but we made it with 15 minutes to spare.

We had dinner, put the kids to bed, and waited. And waited. And waited. The delivery window closed at 9pm, with no sign of the order. Checking the copy of the order that Jane had left behind we saw that we could ring Customer Services up until 11pm, so we gave them half an hour's grace before calling. Upon calling them I got an automated message telling me that the lines closed at 8pm on a Saturday and didn't re-open until 10am on Sunday. Hmm....no party food, and due in the cathedral at 10.30am.

Plan B swung into action.

When Jane saw me at Southwark before the service started she made ber own assumptions about Tasha's absence, putting it down to 'childcare problems'. I wasn't confirming or denying anything - it wouldn't be good to lie to a nearly-Reverend, and we'd agreed not to get Jane worried.

I wasn't hanging about after the service. I pegged it across South-East London back to the house to find everything under control, and the last few things being put out onto tables.

So how had this miracle been achieved?

Tasha had stayed house-sitting, ringing Customer Services on the dot of 10am. They tried to help, but ultimately their best offer was to deliver on Monday evening, blaming 'XXXXX Weather'. So she told them to cancel the order and got in the car, finding the local superstore and doing the shopping herself. Of course as she'd been expecting to go to an ordination she only had her 'best' clothes, which drew some strange looks in Lewisham.

Upon her return she now had a couple of hours to kill before everybody was due back, so got everything out onto the tables. Not a bad achievement when you're in a strange house, not knowing what bowls/plates/dishes are available, or even if they've been unpacked yet.

Jane was blissfully unaware of any of this, as the supermarket had not even been bothered to phone her to tell her that the order would not be delivered. She only found out the truth when she arrived home and couldn't work out why the food was already on the table. Needless to say, Tasha was immediately everybody's best friend!

The Christian website 'Ship of Fools' drew my attention this morning to Bishop Jonathan Blake's latest addition to his ministry - the 5th emergency service 'Bishop on Call'. Why, oh why didn't we think of him on Saturday night. Tash could have still come to the ordination whilst Blake cruised the supermarket aisles. I bet he'd have got even funnier looks about his apparel than she did.

On Placement

With all the academic side of life finished until the end of September you could be forgiven for thinking that I'm going to be doing nothing for 3 months.

Wrong!

One course requirement is for me to spend four weeks hanging out with a friendly vicar, to really find out what life in a vicarage is like. You might think it's a bit late for that - vicarage life is going to happen anyway, but some people are still not quite sure what they want to do after ordination. The huge majority will go into a parish life, but others may be considering chaplaincy work, or other roles within the church. This month is a good time to find out how much you like day to day parish work; it's also a chance to do stuff you haven't done before.

So I'm spending a month with James (vicar) and Paul (curate) at St Andrews Histon and St Andrews Impington. As a former scientist I'm tempted to write that as an equation, to save use of multiple 'St Andrews', thus: St.Andrews (Histon and Impington), but that would require it to be the same St Andrews, which it's not. There are two of them. And I've now written more words than I would have saved. Enough rambling.

Starting last Tuesday I've been cycling a 10 mile round trip from my house to Histon, and spending large parts of the day accompanying James and Paul as they do their work. A cafe church ('Essence'), a home communion, a hospital visit and another home visit are among the highlights. This week holds the prospect of some schools work, a playgroup and some evening meetings, whilst also trying to maintain some semblence of family life.

Along the way I'm looking out for interesting situations to comment on, as I'll have to do a presentation and an essay on the placement when I get back to Ridley in September.

And as if the cycle ride wasn't enough I rounded off the week with a Men's Group cycle ride. I've done on of those before, in Ferndown, but that gentle 8 or 9 mile ride had nothing on this Cambridge epic. I never thought I'd cycle from the extreme north of Cambridge (Histon) to the extreme south (Grantchester), but I have now, and done the return trip too! 17.3 miles! Add to that the 10 miles for me to get to and from home and I was ready for bed on Friday night.

The phone lines are closed...

..the votes have been counted and verified, and the results are ....


L - O - N - G


P - A -U - S - E


...in your pigeon holes for collection.

Actually it doesn't seem to be the done thing to talk about our results. Sorry about that. If I actually published the breakdown of my scores somebody would probably get upset. But for those who have been following my progress in Greek, that particular result rhymes with fix-de-swine.

Most of my results started with a 6, only one with a 5, one even with a 7, and the figures 7 and 8 were common as second figures. If we were to get Peter Snow to project these results onto a final degree result, it wouldn't quite rhyme with Thirst. But as I'm only staying long enough to complete a Diploma that's a fairly academic point. (academic! - get it? Oh, please yourself)

A few days after the results were issued we also got our essays back with the examiners comments. This is where we start to get a real feel for what we need to do to improve our marks for next year, if indeed we're aiming to improve - I started out aiming only to pass the diploma, but I feel an increasing urge to continue study after ordination at a slightly slower pace in order to complete to degree level and to see just how well I can do! I do have a common theme of not making sufficient reference to the books that I've read on the subject, or an over-reliance on one particular author. In one case, I read loads of books on Youth Ministry but struggled to find anything of direct relevance to the Romsey Mill situation that I was writing about, so the bibliography was long, but the list of references was very short... I guess I can learn library skills from that for next year.

We now have the summer holidays to decide which modules we'll be taking next year. There is very little choice to be honest, as most people on my course have little prior theological education, so we're guided to the same core choices as each other. Where it will vary a little is in detailed choices such as between studying one pair of Old Testament books or another, and the ability to 'audit' certain additional courses, which means we can sit in on lectures but don't have to submit any assessed work - this way we get to hear material, and can read around what interests us, but without the pressure of related essays.

And I've got all summer to consider my options, even if I didn't make any notes from the options meeting......ooops!

How to stump a leading theologian

Last week we had a visit by a distinguished guest, the highly influential 20th century theologian Professor Jurgen Moltmann. You might never have heard of him, but if you've heard a sermon in the last forty years you will have heard his ideas.

Professor Moltmann was speaking on the occasion of the 2nd annual Moule lecture, held in memory of Charlie Moule, another key theologian who had a long association with Ridley Hall. A marquee full of staff, students, former students, invited guests and members of the public listened to his lecture for nearly an hour, before the floor was opened for questions.

And this was the first question. (Don't worry, it really doesn't matter if you weren't there for the lecture itself. It makes no difference whatsoever to your understanding of the question. Or indeed to Moltmann's understanding of the question. If by any remote chance the questioner is reading this, please let us know who you are. We're not quite sure why we want to know, we just have a morbid fascination.)

Questioner: “This is a double whammy if you will pardon the approach. The first thing is that for years there have been sermons preached about the Parable of the Sower which I think to have been quite erroneous for the simple reason that they ignore the work of C.H.Dodd and Joachim Jeremias in pointing out the context of the parable and trying to make out that Jesus was an idiot because he taught in parables which was a traditional Pharisaic method. So therefore my question is, starting from that point to ask the question: do we not recognize that the Parable of the Sower has two contexts? The context of the ministry of Jesus when he stands in the Hebrew background to understand that there is one particular truth held which is the victory of God that’s coming with a magnificent harvest that is far beyond anything we can dream of and then the context of the Greek speakers who couldn’t understand the Hebrew thinking and tried to deal with the allegory. That is the first bit, and the second bit is related to the question of time, which has been something that has run through all of your lecture, that is the question of how you relate time to eternity. And years ago I came to a certain picture and I’ll share it with you for your consideration, which is to say that if you take a ball and let that represent eternity and you draw a tangent to touch the side of that ball then that represents the amount of time that is in existence from when time began to when it ends. But everyone’s time is interpermeated with eternity and therefore we have that to add to our picture of the historical Jesus who is the eternal Jesus, who interpenetrates everyone’s time, our time now, he’s with us, their time then when he was with them. I offer those two things to you….”

Jurgen Moltmann: “Errr.. I’m not quite sure whether I understood every word you are saying…”


Jurgen is not alone. This was one rare occasion when I was on the same level as the staff.

End of Year

Would you believe that Year 1 of 2 is nearly over? A whole month before Beth and Isaac finish school Dad finishes first!

With our leavers having finished last week (although still departing!) things are a lot quieter round here. At lunchtime there are just three tables occupied rather than the normal seven.

There are a few things to help us pass the time, between packing up our studies into boxes and moving into the basement so that a language school can take occupation next week. On Monday and Tuesday we did 'Community Tasks' - a variety of jobs helping to maintain the college and grounds, ranging from hedge trimming to sorting out the library - which I was assigned to - the only time that it's acceptable to make lots of noise in the library. Unused books were removed, creating space for new acquisitions - it's amazing how satisfying it is just moving books from one shelf to another. However, I'm not sure how easy it was for the visiting student who chose that day to write his assignment on 1 Corinthians. He took out most of the books on that topic, whilst we merrily rearranged and moved the shelf leaving no gap for him to return his books into!

Tuesday lunchtime brought possibly the last game of croquet of the season, and Wednesday the final Common Room meeting of the year (meeting of the student body) where we reviewed the year and looked forward to the things we need to do early next term to welcome the new students.

Thursday will have a final meeting with the staff, a session on our summer placements, and an All Age service to close the term. Which my team is leading.

It's going to be busy tomorrow. And then there's little let up, with a weekend trip to Ferndown and a single day off on Monday before I start tagging along behind a real vicar for a month.

That sinking feeling...

I'm sorry to report that the Ridley Hall punt, Penny, suffered a fatal injury over the weekend. Over time her base had become rotten, and it just took somebody to stand in her to produce a reasonably sized hole. Fortunately this happened close to home, and in the presence of Chris, our friendly punt deacon. For future reference if this ever happens to you, simply sit everybody in one end of the punt to counteract the torrent pouring in the other end whilst making quick headway back to the mooring point.

The punt was given by an ordinand a number of years ago in memory of his wife Penny, who died whilst he was training at Ridley. Now that Penny the Punt has been retrieved and returned to dry land at college her nameplates will be removed and he will give them to his daughters.

Since then, Chris has been busy negotiating with local punt companies and has come up with an amazing deal that enables us to have unlimited use of commercial punts at advantageous rates with none of the expense or hassle of ownership.

This all comes mere weeks after my family took Penny out for a spin. Very nice, but slightly soggy feet at the end. Now we know why.

Leaving and returning

It's one of those odd days at Ridley today. Yesterday was 'Leavers Day' - the official last day for those who are finished their time here. Most will be going off to be ordained, a handful have other plans, or are doing other roles for a year before being ordained next year. In the afternoon there was a children's party, a three-line-whip college communion and a Leavers Dinner in the evening.

There was a definite point when I can identify that I stopped being a First Year and became a 'Returner' - during the communion service all students went forward by staircase to pray for the leavers of that staircase. As my friends stood in front of me there was a real sense of sending them out, commissioning them for the next phase of their ministry, and a sudden realisation that I and everybody else who leaves next year were now in a position of seniority. In twelve months time I'll be the one going out...

As the marquee from the dinner is cleared out today there is a stream of leavers emptying their studies, carrying boxes and pushing trolleys, stuffing cars and vans full of that one roomful of possessions. Some of those who have lived out of college are already moving house today.

Ordinations take place on various dates. Many dioceses ordain at 'Petertide' - the last weekend of June / first one of July, others have to wait for 'Michaelmas' - the last weekend of September. I'm planning to go to one in Southwark on 28th June. For those being ordained earliest the next two weeks looks something like: move, unpack, have a bit of a rest, go on a 2-3 day pre-ordination retreat, get ordained, start work.

For them I reproduce here an article from this week's Church of England Newspaper, an excerpt from a regular column by Catherine Fox*:

Ordination dilemmas for new candidates
This week, some words of wisdom for those preparing for
ordination. ‘Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests,
but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ Bracing
words. The nitty-gritty of discipleship. If the Lord
genuinely called us to be homeless for the sake of the
Gospel, we’d do it, wouldn’t we? ‘Jehovah jireh, my
provider, his grace is sufficient for me, for me for me.’ But
what if the Son of Man did have somewhere to lay his head,
only it was a curate’s house with blown vinyl wallpaper,
a damp poky study that used to be the garage, pub lounge
carpets, with all the good schools nearby full?

Curiously enough, this can feel like an even harder calling.
Grace sufficient for blown vinyl? Ooh, that’s a different
theological category entirely. Brace yourselves, folks, that’s
what you’ll need. Your bathroom suite will be avocado or
Germolene pink. Your kitchen tiles will have wheat ears and
harvest mice on. In short, your curate’s house will be full of
things that are nearly bad enough for you to do something
about, but not quite, because it’s only for three years. Yes,
you can stand it for three years, but it will annoy you for three
years. You will, of course, have your resettlement grant.
Here’s my advice: use it all on carpets. (A chancellor I know
would say use it all on bookshelves, but he’s wrong about that.
Books can be stacked in a corner, but there’s nothing you do
about exploding cabbage carpets.) There will also be a pot of
money for redecoration. If you are lucky, your congregation
will be full of able-bodied volunteers who can wield a roller
and repaint the entire house without falling off a step-ladder and
breaking a hip. Otherwise the parish will have to pay someone
to redecorate, and the money will run out halfway up the stairs.
I know there are ordinands out there snorting ‘At least they’ve
GOT a curate’s house! I’m getting ordained in a matter of weeks
and the accommodation still isn’t sorted!’ Welcome to the C of E!
Let’s find someone to blame. The parish? The bishop? The housing
officer? The DDO? All of the above? The trouble is that the church
is staffed not by villains so much as good-hearted folk trying to
make an impossibly under-funded over-stretched system work.
It didn’t ought to be this way, but it is this way. And you will
survive. You will. Just don’t look to your training incumbent for
sympathy. The minute you raise any of these issues, I guarantee
that older clergy will immediately go into a Monty Python-esque
Four Yorkshire Vicars sketch. ‘Curate’s house? Luxury! We lived
in a wheelie bin in the graveyard!’

*(c) 2009, The Church of England Newspaper

The Besom Project

At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, we did something fantastic last week - "The Besom Project".

Besom started small over 20 years ago and now operates in 30 locations around the country, Cambridge being one of them. It aims to "provide a bridge between those who want to give money, time, skills or things, and those who are in need". For more info on Besom visit their website. I organised a group of ordinands to do something to help a Cambridge family, and all we had to do was give our time. Besom put us in touch with a family in need, and provided the tools and equipment we needed to do the job.

The story is best told by plagarising my own material, so here are edited highlights of my daily prayer updates that I sent to the Ridley community. The names of the family have been changed to preserve their anonymity.

Wednesday

Thank you for your prayers for us in chapel today. A team of five managed to clear an overgrown back garden and painstakingly weed a gravelled front garden. Along the way a fair amount of time was spent chatting and praying with our 'recipient' Sarah, who is happily publicising to anybody who passes what a wonderful job these trainee vicars are doing for her and her family.

Sarah is a single mum who has struggles with aspects of life and with bringing up her two daughters Dawn and Charlotte. Dawn seems to be the one who manages to combine schoolwork with keeping the household going, and is remarkably level-headed for it.

Today the social worker visited and suddenly there is an increased interest in the family, which we hope is unrelated to our presence. We are also making efforts through the appropriate channels to draw attention to a broken soil pipe with Sarah's disinterested faceless landlord, The Council, and have uncovered a bees nest for them to deal with too!

Tomorrow we continue with the gardening, and move on to re-painting Dawn's bedroom, but we have taken the family to our hearts and want to do so much more for them than we can possibly achieve in 3 days.

Becca and Charlie have both prayed with Sarah on her front doorstep, something that she welcomed.

Please continue to pray for the team, both those who will be joining us tomorrow for the first time, and for those who are exhausted from today's efforts. Also that we continue to deal tactfully with issues that arise, and resist the temptation to totally blitz the house to bring it to our own personal standards. Finally, for Sarah, particularly worried about the sudden increase in interest from Social Services, and turning to us for advice.

Thursday

Day 2 in the Big Besom house was as productive as yesterday. We took a van full of rubbish to the tip, some progress towards Sarah's desire to get a skip for most of the stuff she doesn't have the ability to dispose of. Work in both gardens moved on, and we're starting to feel that we're getting on top of it all.

Our main target today was the redecoration of Dawn's bedroom, and we got further than I expected we would. The room was totally emptied (but given how jam-packed full it was this took nearly an hour) before being thoroughly cleaned and painted. So far we've got two coats of paint on the ceiling, one on the walls and one on the woodwork. Tomorrow we need to raise that count to 2 coats of everything, along with returning the furniture and belongings to some sort of order.

Yesterday's 'prayer on the doorstep' was superceded today by Andy’s 'Bible Study on the doorstep', reading some parts of Matthew's Gospel with Sarah. I'm not sure how we can top that on Friday, but we continue to pray with Sarah as and when she needs it.

Please continue to pray for Sarah, Dawn and Charlotte, with whom we have a great relationship. Sarah was really touched by our prayers for her yesterday, and we're finding it difficult to remain emotionally detached. Again, we're all tired after another day's hard work.

Friday

Phew - it's all over! Today we finished everything we'd set out to achieve. With the final coats of paint done by lunchtime, all that remained was lots of finishing flourishes. It's not quite like it is on the TV, where they have lots of money to throw at it, but today produced three rose bushes and a rotary washing line for the garden and some fresh furniture for Dawn's bedroom.

Charlie prayed with Sarah over the new 'rose garden' for a new beginning, blessing the garden and the house. The roses came after Sarah told one of us that she loved them, but that her last rose bush had been dug up some time ago. She now gazes out of her kitchen window at her flowers.

We replaced her dilapidated washing line with a new rotary drier, which we now know is one thing that she's been wanting to save up for. Dawn loves her revived bedroom. With everything having come out and gone back in for the redecoration she can now see the floor, and is having a good clearout as things go back in. A quick search of Besom's limited stock of donated furniture found a desk, CD shelves and rug for her. The desk provides her with an unprecedented place to do her homework, and is already proudly and neatly outfitted with her stationery.

Dawn gave me some insight into the social worker's increased involvement this week - this was extra support being provided as they weren't sure how her mum would cope with all the work being done in her house.

Before we left, Sarah told me that we've moved her closer to God this week, and that as a result she's taking Charlotte to Sunday School at her local church this Sunday. She also told that the support we've given has made her stronger - she acknowledges a problem with alcohol, but has visited 2 shops today and avoided the temptation of buying any. It's her 50th birthday in a couple of weeks time, and she's now planning a garden party to show it off to her friends!

This sort of stuff is where things happen - on the frontiers demonstrating Christ's love. We've learnt loads - but it can be summarised as "be bold, seize the chance"

Monday

As I write this blog entry, we might never know the impact that we've had on that family's life. We do know that Sarah and Charlotte went to their local church yesterday, despite the pouring rain, and that they are intending to go back. Several of my fellow students are attached to that church and each one has told me this morning of how Sarah's spirits have been lifted by this team of trainee vicars. I'm sure we haven't heard the last from her, but we will have left the area long before the story ends.

So the question for us, both students and staff here at Ridley is "what next?". For you, dear reader, in your churches and homegroups, it is "what can I do that will make a difference?". Even if there isn't a Besom project near you, what is stopping you from doing this yourself?

The blog software prevents me from putting as many pictures as I'd like here, so please go to my Facebook photo-album (you don't need to be a Facebook user to go there)