A-Maize-ing Grace

After our London trip we've managed a few days lazing in the garden, reading books, doing Sudoku, reading more books, doing a jigsaw puzzle. The pattern of the day is getting a little tedious. So yesterday we had a change of scene - a day by Lammas Land paddling pool in Cambridge, not far from Ridley. I exercised some brain cells by exchanging a few books in the college library and saw a couple of familiar faces for a chat - the ways in which the summer holidays are being filled is as varied as the number of ordinands! Some students are about to embark on an MA course and consequently have just had an intensive 2 week summer school, with a full-on program of lectures and reading. That's a bit too extreme a contrast to my current lifestyle for my liking, so I'll stick with 'predictable-if-a-bit-dull' for a few more weeks.

Today was a return to familiar territory - the Milton Maize Maze, where we were hosting SPICE (the partners group). Looking back I find an article I wrote about the Maize Maze on Sept 5th 2008 a few weeks after we arrived, where we were the new family meeting the old hands. Fast forward a year and we 've switched positions. We spent a couple of hours meeting Jodie and her family, and Mark sent his family even if he couldn't be there. Jodie arrived in Cambridge earlier this week and needed the break from unpacking, and Mark will be arriving soon. Us former first years are beginning to realise that people will be looking to us as their seniors in a few weeks time.

Some of us wandered around the maize maze while others sat and chatted about life as an ordinand('s spouse). The maze is planted with a different pattern every year, and is a fleeting temporary thing - in a few weeks it will be harvested and turned into animal feed.

Ridley too has a different set of people each year - we were constantly being told that our year was 'more lively' and 'less serious' than the previous first year - and in a few months we too will be turned out and fed to the waiting masses!

Up Deptford Creek with a rabble

Continuing the latest in our series of "What do trainee vicars do in their holidays?", here's the latest installment, which could be easily entitled "What else can we do for free?"

With Bethany packed off on a coach back to Shepton Mallet for Soul Survivor we had 2 options:

1. Take advantage of our relative North-ness and go a bit further North for a few days camping near York, do the Railway Museum, the Yorvik centre, North York Moors Railway etc.


2. Go to London and do the Science Museum and anything else we can think of.
   

With the weather forecast looking dodgy, Eboracum being three times further away than Londinium (and therefore costing three times as much in diesel), and knowing of free accomodation in Deptford we went for the second option.

24 hours later the not-quite-newly ordained Rev. Jane Yeadon was welcoming us back to her Creek Road pad, this time with unpacking completed, pictures on the wall and cat installed.

We mastered Oyster cards and spent a day enjoying the Science Museum (well, Isaac and I enjoyed it whilst Tasha did a load of crosswords). We stumbled across the Albert Hall, which is so big that it is perfectly possible to walk past without noticing it is there, and enjoyed a cup of tea and a chocolate muffin in the Diana Memorial Playground whilst observing London life and different styles of parenting. For example, when Isaac plays in sand and water we tell him to wait until his feet are dry then to brush them off before putting his socks and shoes back on. Others have a complete change of clothes, bottles of water specially reserved for washing feet, towels, the works. I guess it allows them to exhibit Jesus-like behaviour in washing feet, but what a hassle!!

The following day we ascended the tower of Deptford St Nicholas and marvelled at the panoramic view before returning to ground level, Greenwich Maritime Museum and Greenwich Observatory.

Returning home our car accidentally ended up in the car park of a certain Swedish furniture retailer but luckily we managed to emerge only with some meatballs inside us, a few packs of batteries and a picture frame.

The trip to York will have to wait for another day.

New Whine

Ater our return from Ferndown we had a few days at home, before preparing for one of the major events of the summer, the family trip to New Wine - a Christian festival/conference for families.

We had heard reports that the previous week at Shepton Mallet (it runs for 2 weeks there, one at Newark) had not been the best weather-wise. As in it had tipped down pretty much continuously, some camping areas had been flooded and moved to the car park. More than slight drizzle. Upon arrival on Sunday 2nd August we weren't particularly encouraged to find that our camping area had been moved. Previously 'Green 2' we were now to report to 'Yellow 3'. But we drove past 'Green 2' on the way to 'Yellow', and found that our group was camping there anyway, as Yellow had already filled up (and actually over the coming few days looked worse than Green anyway!).

So, having set-up camp we now had time to re-acquaint ourselves with our 43 other friends from Ferndown over the course of the next seven days, which was largely done via the medium of wine, beer, brandy, nuts, crisps and biscuits.

New Wine has two main worship meetings per day. The first choice you have to make is whether you are a Venue One or Venue Two person, as the event is so big that there isn't a marquee big enough to hold everybody in one place (ignoring the vast Big Top that's going up in the field behind for Soul Survivor). Here's a handy guide:

Venue One: like worshipping in an aircraft hangar. I'm sure there was a discarded Vulcan bomber in a corner. Think of a Party Conference with bright colours, rows of cut flowers on the edge of the stage, hosts cheesily nice in nice comfortable polo shirts and safe haircuts. Music is acoustic gee-tars, pianos and muted drum kits. And my favourite - 'Worship Barbie' - a blonde female singer who sings squeakily and jumps randomly. Always spare seats.

Venue Two: More like worshipping in the kitchen that's the best place at the party. No cut flowers, hosts in black and grey with stubble. Music is all electric and the drummer wouldn't know what muffling is! Often a struggle to find either grey hair or a seat, even after all have 'scooched' up to fill empty gaps.

Suffice to say that we bought the CD of the band ('Trent') that was playing in Venue Two!

While the adults do Venues, the children have their own fantastic age-specific groups to attend, and with our children being 9 and 13 we only really had to entertain them for 5 hours in the afternoon, and they're old enough to go and come back themselves. Great!

Unfortunately, theological students are a nightmare at places like this. Over the last year I've learnt to reflect on various situations. This can also be translated as 'criticise'. I'm not sure if I'm pleased with myself that I now look at song lyrics and dissect them, saying things like "this verse doesn't mean anything, it's just a load of thoughts stuck together because they rhyme". Maybe that's good, maybe it's not. Tasha got a bit bored of me wrinkling my nose at things, whether it be leadership style, content or theology of speakers. But the church would be boring if we all did things exactly the same, and New Wine is a place where people can explore their boundaries and influences.

Another side effect of this education is that when speakers refer to the original Greek text of the new Testament I get heads turning towards me asking me to confirm if that's true. I don't know! I translated 5 chapters of John, I didn't memorise the whole flippin' book!!!

The weather was grotty for the first 3 or 4 days. The rain built on the previous week, and mud became sloppier and sloppier, before it finally became sunny on Thursday and things started to dry out, although the ground never became truly solid - there was always a squelch underfoot somewhere.

A return home on Sunday to a roast dinner prepared by our house-sitters, a hot shower and a soft bed was most welcome. As I write this Bethany is preparing to go back to Shepton Mallet tomorrow for 5 days at Soul Survivor. Hopefully the ground has dried further, as the forecast is for more rain.

Light of the world

A former colleague texted me to ask what trainee vicars get up to in the holidays. I referred him to this blog, only for him to reply that I haven't written anything for 3 weeks. Whoops!

So, I'm still waiting for news from the bishop, but lots has happened since then. Let me tell you in several easy chunks, starting with my reason for being back in the south three weeks ago.

A few years ago, my children were in the local dancing school, First Position School of Dance (Google it if you live in Bournemouth!), which was about to do its first ever stage production. They were looking for somebody to do the stage lighting, which was a dormant hobby of mine, so I was volunteered for it. I must have done a good job, as I've done each major show since! And I must have done well this time as I'm now having to ponder my availability another two years hence.

As I'm on university terms my summer holiday this year is over three months long, and things like this serve several purposes:

1. Keeps me off the streets
2. Gets the family back 'home' to see old friends
3. It's a cheap holiday. On top of my grant from Salisbury I receive a rather generous 'long vacation' allowance of just over £300, which presumably is meant to cover the cost of a family holiday - I'll probably spend that in petrol costs this summer!

So I spent most of the week in a darkened theatre programming a computerised lighting desk, taking part in over-running Technical and Dress Rehearsals, and four performances, along the way providing a Wogan-style commentary to the crew on the backstage headsets. By the final performance all the lights were perfect!

Along the way I renewed old friendships, and had an amazing number of conversations with these people, who when I last worked with them had no idea of the turn my life was about to take. As one old gentleman said "you don't meet many people in your line of work these days" (by which he meant people who were in training for the Ministry). People are fascinated by what I'm doing, and joked about wanting to come to my church if services were going to be technologically anything like what I'd just accomplished.

Well I can't promise that, as not many churches have the budget to have amazing lighting (but if I found one that did, I'd use it to help focus attention on proceedings, appropriately without distracting from the main purpose of worship). But many places do have more technology than you realise. Before I left St Mary's Ferndown we had upgraded the vision system from a 'simple' projector based song-words set-up to a multi-monitor, multi-location camera based set-up, allowing better sight of what was happening at the front/back/sides - wherever the action was taking place, enhancing the worship experience for all. But again, if technology is overused in worship it becomes distracting, so the key is understanding what the limits are - what your congregation can cope with - and this will vary depending on what the service is!

When I know where I'll end up I'll maybe have further chances in the technology department. Maybe I'll be somewhere where a radio microphone is cutting-edge.....